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Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. We are your host.
Speaker 3: I'm a veg and tee Lay and I'm her baby sister,
Speaker 3: Rashia Piccuerrero, and as always, our favorite Texan Trevor Young
Speaker 3: is here as well.
Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, welcome back.
Speaker 3: I wish we were all together still, but I do
Speaker 3: love that we're virtually together. I have a question for
Speaker 3: you all. So I am not the biggest book reader
Speaker 3: like I used to be, and I think with social
Speaker 3: media and with screens and everything, I feel like I
Speaker 3: kind of let that get away from me. But lately
Speaker 3: I've been reading a ton of autobiographies and right now
Speaker 3: I am obsessed with Simu Liu's book and Semu Liu.
Speaker 3: For those of you who don't know, he is Marvel's
Speaker 3: superhero Shang Chi and he has a book out called
Speaker 3: We Were Dreamers, an immigrant superhero origin story, and it's
Speaker 3: so like just beautiful to see what his parents went through,
Speaker 3: you know, they immigrated from China to Canada. And then
Speaker 3: of course he's here now in America. But I want
Speaker 3: to know, what are the two of you reading? What
Speaker 3: inspires you when you're not here with me on Facing Evil?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I really love books. I love to
Speaker 2: hold them. I like the smell of them, and especially
Speaker 2: during the pandemic. Like, I've read so many different autobiographies,
Speaker 2: but the book that I am on right now is
Speaker 2: viol Davis, which is called Finding Me. And you know,
Speaker 2: I've always been a huge fan of hers, but to
Speaker 2: read her story and where she came from and where
Speaker 2: she is now is truly inspiring. What about you, Trevor.
Speaker 1: So, I've got about three books I'm in the middle of.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people who's like reading a bunch
Speaker 1: of different stuff at once and like puts one down
Speaker 1: for a couple of days and moves on to another.
Speaker 3: Of course you are, I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So on my mantle, I've got a collection of
Speaker 1: stories by J. R. R. Tolkien. It's The Unfinished Tales,
Speaker 1: which is, as the name implies, a bunch of unfinished
Speaker 1: stories that he had written that kind of fit into
Speaker 1: the world of Middle Earth, which is Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings for this, Yeah, I'm also reading a biography of
Speaker 1: Anthony Bourdain which is really good and then love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I miss him. And then I'm also reading the fourth
Speaker 1: installment of Frank Kurbert's doing series. Dune is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite sci fi series, and I'm almost about the
Speaker 1: fourth book, which is called God Emperor of Dune.
Speaker 3: How many books are there in Dune?
Speaker 1: So there are six main books that Frank Herbert Rose
Speaker 1: the primary author. His son Brian Herbert has kind of
Speaker 1: carried on his legacy writing a bunch of spinoff series
Speaker 1: in prequel series. A lot of the fans of the
Speaker 1: Dune series don't super love those books, so I kind
Speaker 1: of take a grain of salt with the spinoffs. But
Speaker 1: if we're talking like core canon, it's just those six books.
Speaker 3: The six so there could potentially be six movies, got it?
Speaker 1: Or more because they're very long.
Speaker 3: Right right, right, right, right right?
Speaker 2: With that being said, Trevor, will you take us through
Speaker 2: today's case.
Speaker 1: Roseanne Quinn was a twenty eight year old woman who
Speaker 1: was killed on New Year's Day of nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: She was a school teacher and a single woman who
Speaker 1: lived by herself in New York City. On the evening
Speaker 1: of January first, she went to a bar in her neighborhood.
Speaker 1: There she met a man named John Wayne Wilson, and
Speaker 1: the two went back to her apartment together. When she
Speaker 1: didn't show up for work a few days later, a
Speaker 1: coworker went to go check in on her. They found
Speaker 1: Roseanne Quinn dead, stabbed to death in her own apartment.
Speaker 1: A manhunt began for Wilson, who was eventually found and arrested,
Speaker 1: but while in jail, he hanged himself, and so no
Speaker 1: charges were ever officially filed in the murder of Roseanne Quinn.
Speaker 1: After Roseanne was killed, many criticized her sexual proclivities, suggesting
Speaker 1: a so called promiscuous lifestyle was the reason for her murder,
Speaker 1: but since then feminist scholars have pointed out that this
Speaker 1: rhetoric was both false and harmful. The events also inspired
Speaker 1: a popular novel and subsequent movie, Looking for Mister Goodbar
Speaker 1: and So. Who was Roseanne Quinn? What were the actual
Speaker 1: events surrounding her death and how did those of create
Speaker 1: the perfect conditions for a national media frenzy.
Speaker 3: So when I think about this case, I think about
Speaker 3: us needing to flip the script, right, Like I feel
Speaker 3: like Roseanne was portrayed a certain way, and you know
Speaker 3: what happened to her is one of those things that like,
Speaker 3: it's all of our worst nightmare, right Eve, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know going home with someone or in this case,
Speaker 3: you're bringing them into your own home and then you
Speaker 3: end up getting murdered. I mean, it's horrible to even
Speaker 3: think about. I know this happened, you know with Angela's
Speaker 3: Simota that we just spoke about not that long ago.
Speaker 3: But it's yeah, the worst worst thing you can imagine happening, right,
Speaker 3: just you.
Speaker 2: Know, coming home from a night of dancing or partying
Speaker 2: and you know, going to your safe space at home.
Speaker 2: It you know, it's just, yeah, it's really devastating. And
Speaker 2: this is one of those cases in which the true
Speaker 2: story of what happened to Rosennu in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: it has almost been overshadowed by this book that I
Speaker 2: was speaking of earlier and the movie Russia. Did you
Speaker 2: ever see the movie Looking for Mister Goodbar?
Speaker 3: You know, I never did, And you know, I always
Speaker 3: try to watch documentaries or movies or anything about all
Speaker 3: of the cases that we're covering so that it can
Speaker 3: kind of get into my brain even more. I mean,
Speaker 3: on top of all the research that are amazing researcher
Speaker 3: Claudia helps us with, but I couldn't even find it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know that Diane Keaton starred in it,
Speaker 3: but I couldn't even get a snippet of it on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, you can get like snippets
Speaker 2: of it, but it's so hard to find the entire movie,
Speaker 2: you know, in its entirety, like unless you go out
Speaker 2: and probably rent it somewhere. But I don't even know.
Speaker 2: Are there Blockbuster? Are there Idyot? Those video plays?
Speaker 3: I think left? Yeah, ever have you seen the movie?
Speaker 1: I have not seen the movie, though I've read quite
Speaker 1: a bit about it, and my understanding is that it
Speaker 1: didn't have the most tasteful representation of what Roseanne went
Speaker 1: through or how best to portray her. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that flipped the script thing that you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: Rashia is a big part of the story, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about it a lot today. But you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that she, essentially, according to the media, wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed to do this thing that is very natural and,
Speaker 1: at least in today's world, considered to be an expectation
Speaker 1: for anybody who has a social life. Right, that that
Speaker 1: was somehow, you know, her fault for pursuing any sort
Speaker 1: of relationship outside of a domestic family situation. So again,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the movie, but my understanding is that
Speaker 1: it didn't portray that very well. So I guess I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit turned off by it, but maybe I'll
Speaker 1: change my mind on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Trevor, what you're saying, I can totally see that,
Speaker 3: because this happened at a time in history that there
Speaker 3: was this huge cultural flashpoint, right, an era of a revolution.
Speaker 3: This was the second wave of the feminist movement, and
Speaker 3: the purpose of that feminist movement was to champion reproductive
Speaker 3: and workplace rights and to redefine the expectations of women's
Speaker 3: personal and political lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting timing wise that this was this case
Speaker 1: happened right in the middle of this second wave feminist movement.
Speaker 1: But generally what you are seeing is that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's more common to have more single career women and
Speaker 1: it's more common for you know, women to not settle
Speaker 1: down super fast and have children and want to get
Speaker 1: married and all those things. And this is all happening
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies, as you know, all sorts
Speaker 1: of other things are happening with the cultural revolutions. So
Speaker 1: you also get expanded access to birth control. The pill
Speaker 1: was first approved by the FDA in nineteen sixty, but
Speaker 1: it took the Supreme Court case in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: for it to become legal for unmarried women. Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is just crazy. But the next year,
Speaker 2: of course, you have Roe versus Wade, and that's legalizing abortion.
Speaker 2: And this was a huge time and we can get
Speaker 2: into a whole discussion about this, you know.
Speaker 3: Ye a whole nother cantor we won't.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But meanwhile, you know, there are a lot more women
Speaker 3: working outside of the home, you know, so they were
Speaker 3: moving into a space where they could control their own bodies,
Speaker 3: do their own thing, both professionally and sexually. And the
Speaker 3: idea of casual sex was you know, i'd say, gaining
Speaker 3: more acceptance, especially during you know, the sixties and the seventies,
Speaker 3: and during this time, but you know, not everywhere, but
Speaker 3: in places like New York absolutely, Like I think it
Speaker 3: was definitely more acceptable. Think so, yeah, And I think
Speaker 3: that brings us back to Roseanne Quinn and that's where
Speaker 3: she was living in New York.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, she was She was born and raised in the
Speaker 2: Bronx and this was in nineteen forty four. She was
Speaker 2: a big part of a Catholic family of five, and
Speaker 2: you know, she grew up in this very nice middle
Speaker 2: class upbringing, and then the family eventually moved to New
Speaker 2: Jersey and she graduated high school in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 2: and she got a degree in elementary education. So of
Speaker 2: course she becomes a teacher, which is obviously a very
Speaker 2: traditional job, you know, for a female at the time,
Speaker 2: right at the time, but she began teaching at Saint
Speaker 2: Joseph's School for the Death in the Bronx and she
Speaker 2: taught eight year old kids, and from what we understand,
Speaker 2: she was apparently just be loved by her students and
Speaker 2: her fellow teachers, So it seems like she had really
Speaker 2: found her calling. She really enjoyed, you know, teaching the
Speaker 2: deaf kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and earlier that year, in May, she moved into
Speaker 3: her very own two bedroom apartment on the Upper west
Speaker 3: Side in a building that's actually still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was going to say, you know, now on
Speaker 2: the Upper west Side, you know, to have a teacher's salary,
Speaker 2: you could not touch that. It would be untouched odly now, right,
Speaker 2: But back then, you know, she's living on her own
Speaker 2: on the Upper west Side, Like, what a life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure it's a very nice apartment, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I doubt she could afford that today, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: according to the New York Times story about this crime,
Speaker 1: she chose that apartment for quote, the comparative security of
Speaker 1: the building and the street. So I guess there's a
Speaker 1: bit of sad irony there that that ended up not
Speaker 1: really helping her. But yeah, in general, yeah, it does
Speaker 1: seem that Roseanne Quinn had a pretty nice life going
Speaker 1: for herself. She was twenty eight years old at the time,
Speaker 1: She had a job that she really liked where she
Speaker 1: was respected, and she was living in Manhattan. She also
Speaker 1: had a very active social life, lots of friends. She
Speaker 1: was often spotted reading books at bars on the West Side.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it sounds like a pretty pleasant life up
Speaker 1: until disaster strikes.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Something that you said really makes me think about the
Speaker 2: movie that was made, you know, based on this crime,
Speaker 2: and that's the movie Looking for Mister Goodbar with Diane
Speaker 2: Keaton's character. You know, they portray her as a fairly happy,
Speaker 2: go lucky person. Obviously you two haven't seen the movie yet,
Speaker 2: but you know they give her the same job and
Speaker 2: she is a teacher for death children. But in the contrast,
Speaker 2: you know, the real Roseanne Quinn like always right, you
Speaker 2: never see her on the phone, like talking to her friends,
Speaker 2: or meeting up with the teachers, or you know, for
Speaker 2: drinks like what you just said, Like what you just described.
Speaker 2: You don't see that in the movie. There are always
Speaker 2: these shots of her where she's like sitting alone in
Speaker 2: this big, dark, empty apartment, and she's always alone at bars.
Speaker 2: But I did find myself saying out loud to the screen,
Speaker 2: like where where are all your friends? Like you know,
Speaker 2: why are you always by yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it sounds like the movie was trying to
Speaker 3: set up a picture of a woman or a girl
Speaker 3: who was a loner, and as if to say, maybe
Speaker 3: that's why she goes home with all of these men.
Speaker 3: Is that what I'm hearing you say?
Speaker 2: Yes, But there's even this dramatic scene where she, you know,
Speaker 2: she leaves her family behind, she moves to New York
Speaker 2: and there's this feminist movement that's happening, and it leads
Speaker 2: you to believe that, Okay, well, women are you know,
Speaker 2: being taken away from their their safety nets, their families,
Speaker 2: and they're going off to live in this dangerous solitude,
Speaker 2: you know, in New York City, I mean a.
Speaker 3: Big, scary New York City.
Speaker 2: I guess that's what they're trying to portray there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems to me to be a rather surface
Speaker 1: level attempted trying to understand feminism, you know, and also
Speaker 1: trying to imply that Rosanne herself was like an avowed feminist,
Speaker 1: when in reality, I don't think we have any way
Speaker 1: to know that. I don't really think she considered herself
Speaker 1: a feminist. I think she was just a normal person
Speaker 1: trying to like live her life right right, didn't really
Speaker 1: fit in with the normal expected lifestyle that was being
Speaker 1: impressed upon her. And really I really think it's that simple.
Speaker 1: But the movie, I guess, has to try and tell
Speaker 1: a story or create a narrative that you know, makes
Speaker 1: a point.
Speaker 3: Yes, you are so right, Trevor, you know, but she
Speaker 3: definitely lived with that kind of freedom that came from
Speaker 3: the feminist movement. Like I don't think she could have
Speaker 3: done that ten years before, like living on her own,
Speaker 3: having her own job and being unmarried and doing what
Speaker 3: she did. But anyway, she did have friends and she
Speaker 3: was seemingly happy. But you know, shocker, she takes men
Speaker 3: home to sleep with despite all of that, And it's
Speaker 3: almost as if she's a normal, well adjusted young woman
Speaker 3: who likes to have sex, like sex is aoka in mind.
Speaker 2: She's just living her life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Trevor said that, just living her life, yep.
Speaker 1: And so this is what she's trying to do. On
Speaker 1: New Year's Day of nineteen seventy three, on that day,
Speaker 1: Roseanne Quinn goes to a bar just across the street
Speaker 1: from her apartment, and that's a place called Wm Tweeds.
Speaker 1: And we know that there were two men there that
Speaker 1: night who were friends with each other and their names
Speaker 1: were John Wayne Wilson and Gary Guests. So at about
Speaker 1: eleven that night, Guests leaves the bar, and a bit later,
Speaker 1: Roseanne Quinn takes John Wayne Wilson home to her apartment.
Speaker 3: And that's the last time that anyone will see Roseanne
Speaker 3: Quinn alive.
Speaker 1: And we'll hear more about that after we take a
Speaker 1: quick break.
Speaker 3: On New Year's Day, nineteen seventy three, Roseanne Quinn leaves
Speaker 3: the neighborhood bar with a stranger. That man is named
Speaker 3: John Wayne Wilson, and Roseanne Quinn invites him back to
Speaker 3: her home, an apartment on the seventh floor across the street.
Speaker 3: Once they're there, the two reportedly smoked some pocololo or
Speaker 3: marijuana and attempted to have sex. Wilson later told authorities
Speaker 3: that when he failed to perform, Roseanne mocked him for
Speaker 3: it and told him to leave. This is when an
Speaker 3: argument ensued and he took a knife, and he ended
Speaker 3: up stabbing her fourteen times. Afterwards, he covered up her
Speaker 3: body with a bathroom, cleaned himself up in her shower,
Speaker 3: and wiped down her entire apartment before leaving. This is
Speaker 3: all what he says happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just disgusting, you know. But of course, you know,
Speaker 2: we have to pause here for a moment because we
Speaker 2: really don't know exactly how it went down. You know,
Speaker 2: he he makes this classic excuse, right that she mocked
Speaker 2: him for you know, not being able to perform his
Speaker 2: manly sexual duties, you know, and that somehow justifies this
Speaker 2: anger and then murder. Right, And also I have to
Speaker 2: go back to the movie, and again we don't know,
Speaker 2: we don't know what happened, but in the movie, you know,
Speaker 2: they portray him to be possibly gay in the movie closeted,
Speaker 2: closeted gay. So but again I don't know if that
Speaker 2: is true or not. But the thing about this is
Speaker 2: the police actually buy this excuse, you know, not being
Speaker 2: able to get it up exactly, of not being able
Speaker 2: to perform. Are you joking or.
Speaker 1: That the rage is justified as a result, right, I
Speaker 1: mean different times, But that's wild. I mean this kind
Speaker 1: of goes back to the Dominique dun case. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: looked at a few episodes ago. Obviously that was twelve
Speaker 1: years later, but we had a judge sympathizing with a
Speaker 1: guy who strangled his girlfriend, saying he was caught up
Speaker 1: in the heat of passion because she'd angered him in
Speaker 1: some way, right, And he was only found guilty of
Speaker 1: voluntary manslaughter as a result. So I really don't think
Speaker 1: you're wrong. I think again, in both cases, law enforcement
Speaker 1: or the legal system is citing with the men in
Speaker 1: these situations and saying that their justifications are totally valid.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe Roseanne Quinn did actually mock Jane Wayne Wilson,
Speaker 1: but do we really think that gave him a right
Speaker 1: to harm her physically and then kill her? Absolutely not, No,
Speaker 1: of course, obviously not. It's wild that anybody would ever
Speaker 1: take that perspective.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, no way.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: So after he leaves Roseanne Quinn's apartment, Wilson then goes
Speaker 3: to his friend Gary Guests, and that's the same friend
Speaker 3: who he'd been with at the bar the night before,
Speaker 3: and he ends up confessing to Geary Guests what he
Speaker 3: had done to Rozanne, but Guests did not believe him
Speaker 3: and thought he was just trying to get money home
Speaker 3: for a flight to Miami. So anyway, he bought him
Speaker 3: the plane ticket home, and Wilson flew to Miami, where
Speaker 3: he picked up his wife. I have no clue what
Speaker 3: he actually told his wife, but the two of them
Speaker 3: then flew together to Indiana, where Wilson's mother was living.
Speaker 2: I just have to stop you there, and you think about,
Speaker 2: like if you have a friend who comes back and
Speaker 2: tells you that, like, what wouldn't you kill you someone,
Speaker 2: what wouldn't you be Like what did you say? Like right,
Speaker 2: wouldn't you want to know?
Speaker 3: Like you wouldn't pay for them to get out of town?
Speaker 2: Not at all. So anyhow, meanwhile, back in New York,
Speaker 2: Rosanne Quinn, you know, her friends and her colleagues, they're
Speaker 2: getting extremely worried. She hadn't showed up to school where
Speaker 2: she taught, and so on January third, a fellow teacher
Speaker 2: went to her apartment and of course, when she didn't
Speaker 2: answer the door, he had the building superintendent open it,
Speaker 2: and that's when they found her. Sadly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a bit of a gruesome crime scene.
Speaker 1: So she's laid out on her fold out bed. Not
Speaker 1: only had she been stabbed fourteen times, but she had
Speaker 1: also been raped, and the murderer had placed on top
Speaker 1: of her face a sculpted bust of another woman.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a lot to intake, as all of you know,
Speaker 3: the murder scenes are, of course, but this is really
Speaker 3: when the press frenzy begins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you can imagine like that kind of
Speaker 1: story is to blow up very fast, right for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. But the immediate news coverage following Roseanne's
Speaker 1: murder doesn't really focus on this woman getting killed, but
Speaker 1: more about how scandalous the whole thing appears to be.
Speaker 1: So the daily news headline takes up three quarters of
Speaker 1: the page and reads, in all caps, quote teacher found
Speaker 1: nude and slain. And I'd say that's pretty typical of
Speaker 1: a lot of like news coverage of the time, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think outlets really made a point to like
Speaker 1: talk about her physical appearance, like how pretty she was,
Speaker 1: talk about how young she was, and then of course
Speaker 1: all like the weird extreme violence and the bust and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But it was weird. It was like
Speaker 1: her status as this attractive young woman who was killed
Speaker 1: after a sexual encounter. You know, it was portrayed as
Speaker 1: almost like titillating, right, like it was just for the
Speaker 1: tabloids exactly.
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to say. And I was
Speaker 2: going to say, it's just it's so so sad, you know,
Speaker 2: because again, as we said, she's just this independent woman
Speaker 2: who's living her life, having a great time. She's a teacher,
Speaker 2: she has people who love her, and then to be
Speaker 2: you know, blasted right all over the newspapers in this
Speaker 2: sensationalism and titillation, you know, especially by using that word nude,
Speaker 2: you know, and the pictures that they showed, Like, just
Speaker 2: how awful is that, you know, for her family and
Speaker 2: all of the people that knew her. You know, just
Speaker 2: think about her student and the student. That's exactly what
Speaker 2: I was going to say, her students.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting. There's an essay by Susan Brown Miller.
Speaker 3: And Susan Brown Miller wrote the famous book Against Our Will,
Speaker 3: and that book helped change the way we talk about rape.
Speaker 3: But in this essay she talks about the headline that
Speaker 3: you mentioned, Trevor teacher found nude and slain. She writes, quote,
Speaker 3: the introduction of the operative word nude was significant. No
Speaker 3: longer simply a victim of male violence, Roseanne Quinn had
Speaker 3: been transmogrified in death into an object of sexual fantasy.
Speaker 3: A teacher was not even naked, but nude, nude the
Speaker 3: way strippers are nude, the way prostitutes are nude, the
Speaker 3: way statues are nude, the way lovers are nude. Any
Speaker 3: man could now fully fantasize about Rosanne Quinn's nude body
Speaker 3: on her disheveled bed end.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: You know, so that really says something right about how
Speaker 3: rape and violence against women were thought of as kind
Speaker 3: of titillation for a long time, and it's just sickening.
Speaker 2: It is, and it's something that we will still continue
Speaker 2: to push back against. And you know, I have to say,
Speaker 2: you know, one of my all time favorite movies was
Speaker 2: It's called The Accused, which is done in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight with Jodie Foster, and it's you know, similar but different.
Speaker 2: But you know, Jodie Foster's character was you know, she
Speaker 2: was at a bar, she was having a good time,
Speaker 2: and you know, they tried to turn it around. You know,
Speaker 2: she ended up getting gang raped in the movie, but
Speaker 2: they tried to flip the switch and say, well it
Speaker 2: was because she was dressed like this, you know, like
Speaker 2: she was asking for it. And again, like I said,
Speaker 2: we will we will always continue to push back against this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, moving on with the story here. One other thing
Speaker 1: that the New York Papers publish is a sketch of
Speaker 1: who they believe the perpetrator is given to them by
Speaker 1: police based on accounts from people at the bar that night.
Speaker 1: But the sketch was not of John Wayne Wilson, the
Speaker 1: man we know who killed her, but instead of Gary Guest,
Speaker 1: the friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was the guy who was there at
Speaker 3: the bar that night with Wilson, who later bought him
Speaker 3: that ticket out of town.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, the guy that he confessed to.
Speaker 2: Right, he didn't believe his story, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So Gary Guest, as you can imagine, sees this in
Speaker 1: the newspaper and is terrified, right right, So he's obviously
Speaker 1: worried that he's going to get implicated in Roseanne's murder.
Speaker 1: So the first thing he does is go straight to
Speaker 1: the police. He tells them that Wilson actually is the
Speaker 1: one who confessed to the crime and went home with
Speaker 1: her that night.
Speaker 3: Oh now, he tells him, right exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could have been that that was the
Speaker 1: first time he had seen that Roseanne was murdered. And
Speaker 1: he puts two and two together, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Finally believes them. Maybe yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Either way. He gives them Wilson's location in exchange for
Speaker 1: your immunity. So the NYPD then flies to Indiana with
Speaker 1: the goal of arresting John Wayne Wilson for the murder
Speaker 1: of Roseanne Quinn. And we'll talk about what happened next
Speaker 1: after we take another quick break.
Speaker 3: So having been alerted by his friend Gary, Guest then
Speaker 3: flew to Indiana, where they promptly arrested Wilson at his
Speaker 3: mother's home. He is then incarcerated at the Manhattan Detention Complex,
Speaker 3: which is also famously known as the Tombs. From there,
Speaker 3: he is sent to Bellevue Hospital Center for testing, and
Speaker 3: the reason he was sent there is because his lawyer
Speaker 3: wanted to see if he had suffered brain damage as
Speaker 3: a child in order to support an insanity defense. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: it just baffles me to even say those words.
Speaker 2: You hear about the insanity defense every now and then,
Speaker 2: and you definitely hear about it in movies, right, But
Speaker 2: how common is it really?
Speaker 1: I mean, it feels like we hear about it a lot, right.
Speaker 1: It feels like anytime there's one of these murders motivated
Speaker 1: by anger, that the defense lawyer's default to this insanity
Speaker 1: defense plea. But according to the numbers anyway, it's actually
Speaker 1: not that common. In fact, only about one percent of
Speaker 1: all felony cases in the US involve the use of
Speaker 1: the insanity defense, and it's very rarely successful. So the
Speaker 1: thing to remember here is that the so called insanity
Speaker 1: defense is just a legal concept. It's not like a
Speaker 1: medical concept, right, So you won't find doctors or psychiatrists
Speaker 1: like using it in their office. So it's really just
Speaker 1: based on the idea that at the time of the crime,
Speaker 1: the defendant was experiencing quote severe mental illness like temporarily
Speaker 1: and is therefore incapable of understanding the difference between right
Speaker 1: and wrong, and because of this there of course not
Speaker 1: accountable for the crime. But just having a mental disorder
Speaker 1: is not enough to make someone not accountable for a crime,
Speaker 1: at least so you would think, and most logical people
Speaker 1: would think that. At any rate, it's really like hard
Speaker 1: to determine what legal insanity is, and it's even harder
Speaker 1: to defend it in court. So even though you do
Speaker 1: sometimes kind of hear about it, it's really only in
Speaker 1: high profile cases kind of as a hail Mary, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's almost impossible.
Speaker 3: To back right, like a last ditch effort.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, so in this case, did it work.
Speaker 1: No, it definitely did not work. You know, there was
Speaker 1: really no chance for it really to even be investigated
Speaker 1: or attempted. So shortly after his visit to Bellevue, Wilson
Speaker 1: got into an argument with a guard at the tombs,
Speaker 1: and that guard mockingly encouraged Wilson to kill himself and
Speaker 1: he even tossed him some bed sheets into his chamber.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Wilson did kill himself. He hanged himself
Speaker 1: in his cell using those very sheets.
Speaker 2: Whoa, I mean, so that really is the end of
Speaker 2: the case, you know, with him committing suicide. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's heavy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of it, right.
Speaker 3: Gosh, it makes me think about her family, like do
Speaker 3: they feel like they got any justice or like you
Speaker 3: wonder if they feel like they were robbed of something
Speaker 3: because they have no reason and don't know why he
Speaker 3: did what he did right, Yeah, yeah, maybe?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean I sometimes wonder that in
Speaker 1: cases where the perpetrator gets killed before they're able to
Speaker 1: stand trial. It's not unheard of, and it's definitely complex,
Speaker 1: but you know, at least they are pretty sure, pretty
Speaker 1: confident that he did it right, Like they have Roseanne's body,
Speaker 1: they know who did it. I mean, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that a lot of people don't get a
Speaker 1: lot of families don't even get that much.
Speaker 2: So definitely very true, Trevor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's definitely a piece of closure. For sure. So
Speaker 3: you know, Roseanne Quinn is eventually buried in Saint Mary's Cemetery,
Speaker 3: just a mile away from her family's home in New Jersey.
Speaker 3: So three years later, the novel that we've been talking
Speaker 3: about and the movie we've been talking about, Looking for
Speaker 3: Mister Goodbar ends up getting published as a novel casting
Speaker 3: its main character as a self destructive young woman who
Speaker 3: seeks men that would harm her. And then five years
Speaker 3: later is when the movie is made Diane Keaton, and
Speaker 3: when Roger Ebert reviewed the movie, he called it a
Speaker 3: quote cautionary lesson that promiscuous young women who frequent pickup
Speaker 3: bars and go home with strangers are likely to get
Speaker 3: into trouble end quote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I read that sometimes wondering if he was
Speaker 1: being kind of sarcastic or being literal right in either case.
Speaker 1: The media took that message very literally, and they really
Speaker 1: drive that home, especially after the movie comes out, so
Speaker 1: they focus on the fact that she would come home
Speaker 1: with men late at night who would stay over. There
Speaker 1: was even one neighbor who told a reporter that there
Speaker 1: was a night that Roseanne and a man she brought
Speaker 1: home got into a fight and that they had to
Speaker 1: go intervene in the fight, and when they did, they
Speaker 1: found Roseanne sobbing with two black eyes as though she
Speaker 1: had been beaten. Right, So it seems like everybody's painting
Speaker 1: Roseanne as somebody who's getting into trouble unnecessarily.
Speaker 2: Right, painting her as like a charlatan.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It is good though that that neighbor was there during
Speaker 3: that particular incident to help Roseanne out, But we could
Speaker 3: definitely do without all the slutshaming that was going on, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, hello, yeah, there, of course there is a
Speaker 3: risk to bringing someone that you don't know very well
Speaker 3: to your home, absolutely no doubt about it. But it
Speaker 3: does not mean that you, in any way, shape or form,
Speaker 3: deserve violence or harm full stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I mean you can dress, you can
Speaker 2: have as much sex as you want. You can, you know,
Speaker 2: have whoever you want come into your home. I mean
Speaker 2: that is your right, that is your choice, you know,
Speaker 2: but it does not give anybody the right to be
Speaker 2: killed or raped because of nope, their lifestyle that they're living. Again,
Speaker 2: she was, you know, an independent woman who has an
Speaker 2: amazing job. We can go on and on, right, like
Speaker 2: people loved her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean all that said, I think it's not
Speaker 1: surprising to me that, you know, tabloid papers in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and you know, moving book adaptations in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies would take this kind of approach to this story.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just a different time. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you're all correct this was not okay and that you know,
Speaker 1: there are realities to this that should have been better represented.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think since then, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of work done and you know, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: need bad representations, you know, we need misrepresentations to know
Speaker 1: that that was wrong and we're going to do it
Speaker 1: better next time. Yeah, yeah, sure, so we can work
Speaker 1: on this as a society and like, you know, do better.
Speaker 1: And you know, I hate to say that, like this
Speaker 1: was an example to be made of some sort, but
Speaker 1: it was just like something that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of feminist scholars would look back on and be like,
Speaker 1: you know, this was a crucial point and hiss for
Speaker 1: you because we learned what not to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, you know.
Speaker 3: To piggyback on that, Trevor, I actually found a Slate
Speaker 3: article that talks, you know, about that time and like
Speaker 3: you said, like I think we've come a long way
Speaker 3: in our society today, but that was a different time
Speaker 3: back then. And this particular Slate article it points out
Speaker 3: that quote much of the public discussion centered on Quinn's
Speaker 3: private life. Wilson wasn't the first man she'd brought home.
Speaker 3: Neighbors had heard fighting in her apartment before. Was this
Speaker 3: rough sex gone wrong? Was she suicidal? Had she wanted
Speaker 3: all the sex in the world with no consequences? Was
Speaker 3: she what Gloria steinem was going to the barricades for?
Speaker 3: End quote, And it goes on to say in that
Speaker 3: same article, quote, the reason Rosanne Quinn's death terrified people
Speaker 3: wasn't that she was a freak or a hippie. It
Speaker 3: was that she was steadily employed, modestly dressed, well liked.
Speaker 3: She was normal, but she was a new normal one
Speaker 3: that decades later, we're still trying to deny or scare away.
Speaker 3: End quote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we could say that she was ahead
Speaker 2: of her time, right, that people they just weren't ready
Speaker 2: for her. And again, I mean it's absolutely not over.
Speaker 3: You know, any case that we choose to do on
Speaker 3: facing evil, Eva and I and now Trevor, we're always
Speaker 3: looking for that Emua, right, like that what that theme
Speaker 3: is throughout the entire episode, like why are we telling
Speaker 3: this story? And I really believe that we're telling Roseanne
Speaker 3: Quinn's story because we need to flip the script right.
Speaker 3: She was vilified as a victim just because of the
Speaker 3: way she dressed, who she slept with, being by herself,
Speaker 3: you know, being an independent young woman. And we are
Speaker 3: here to tell you that it doesn't matter how you dress,
Speaker 3: what under you identify as, where you are in your life,
Speaker 3: if you like having sex, if you don't, if you're asexual,
Speaker 3: doesn't matter. You do not deserve to be harmed. You
Speaker 3: don't deserve violence. You do not deserve to be murdered.
Speaker 3: And I want to highlight some great things about who
Speaker 3: Roseanne Quinn was as a human being before she was
Speaker 3: a victim. So just a few facts, little few nuggets
Speaker 3: to know about Roseanne. She suffered from polio as a child,
Speaker 3: and she walked with a slight limp, but she never
Speaker 3: let that bother her. She enjoyed going on ski trips.
Speaker 3: She was very dedicated to her work and to the
Speaker 3: children that she got to teach American Sign language too.
Speaker 3: She often brought breakfast in for her students because they
Speaker 3: didn't have time to eat at home because they were
Speaker 3: catching the school bus. And of course Rosanne probably wasn't
Speaker 3: a saint, but but I'm sorry, no one is, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure she was a very complex person, but she
Speaker 3: above all deserved to live and she is way more
Speaker 3: than her victimhood.
Speaker 2: Or the way that she died. Amen to that, Rasha, Amen,
Speaker 2: absolutely absolutely, you know, and again I can just add
Speaker 2: in there she was truly ahead of her time. You know.
Speaker 2: She was, like we've said in so many cases, she
Speaker 2: was living out loud, and she was doing all the
Speaker 2: things that she loved to do, and the way that
Speaker 2: her life was taken is just tragic.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: And we have to remember that gender based violence is
Speaker 2: a real thing, and it's the system that perpetuates this
Speaker 2: harm that we need to challenge every single day, and
Speaker 2: not the people who find themselves victims of these crimes,
Speaker 2: but the people who are actually doing the crimes. And
Speaker 2: that brings us to this week's EMUA.
Speaker 3: We'd like to dedicate this week's final message of hope
Speaker 3: and healing to Roseanne Quinn and to all of the
Speaker 3: other women who have been targets of violence.
Speaker 2: And so with that we will keep working to point
Speaker 2: out the ways that our unconscious bias feeds a harmful system.
Speaker 2: And for you out there who are soldiering through your
Speaker 2: days in a world that would box you in, that
Speaker 2: would label you and harm you, we see you, we
Speaker 2: support you, and we are right there with you. Onward
Speaker 2: and upward. Emua emua. Well, that is our show for today,
Speaker 2: and we'd love to hear what you thought about today
Speaker 2: discussion and if there is a case that you would
Speaker 2: like us to.
Speaker 3: Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Speaker 3: Facingevil pod at tenderfoot dot tv. And one request, if
Speaker 3: you haven't already, please find us on iTunes and give
Speaker 3: us a review in good rating. If you like what
Speaker 3: we do, your support is always cherished.
Speaker 2: Until next time.
Speaker 3: Aloha.
Speaker 1: Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Russia pacquerero In Avet Gentile,
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams, our executive producers on behalf
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald
Speaker 1: Albright and Payne Lindsay, our executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico.
Speaker 1: Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
Speaker 1: social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.