Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: And when he said, why did you do it? She
Speaker 2: would cross her legs and smoke a cigarette and just
Speaker 2: sort of smile.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. I'm really thrilled to have
Speaker 1: my buddy Skip hollands Worth on the show this week.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called She Kills, and it's a
Speaker 1: collection of updated stories from Texas Monthly, focusing on fascinating
Speaker 1: and often shocking female murderers and some of these cases
Speaker 1: I've never heard of. Skip is one of the best
Speaker 1: storytellers around, so let's talk about the book. First. Is
Speaker 1: this the first book that you've had out since The
Speaker 1: Midnight Assassin.
Speaker 2: It is the first book I've had out since The
Speaker 2: Midnight Assassin. And it wasn't even my idea. It was
Speaker 2: an editor at Texas Monthly, Megan cry We had this
Speaker 2: deal in place with Arper Collins. Texas Monthly did there's
Speaker 2: a certain number of books. And she said to me,
Speaker 2: do you know how much you write about women? And
Speaker 2: I went, no, keep going thinking I was going to
Speaker 2: get in trouble in some way, and she says, why
Speaker 2: don't we do a book of your favorite women criminals who.
Speaker 1: Came to mind for you? Because I did read the
Speaker 1: origin story of your fascination with women who kill with
Speaker 1: the what do you call them? Oilcatter. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you can get into that story, but that was
Speaker 1: you were in high school, and this story was coming
Speaker 1: out near where you were growing up, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I grew up as white bred as they come,
Speaker 2: in a town called witch Soft Falls north of Dallas,
Speaker 2: and I was a cellist in the school orchestra. I
Speaker 2: volunteered at the state hospital. I was an eagle scoup.
Speaker 2: My dad was a pastor. I mean, you can't get
Speaker 2: any more boring. Than that, but there was this part
Speaker 2: of me that did sort of have a fascination with
Speaker 2: the shadow side of life. And when I was about
Speaker 2: sixteen years old, after my junior year in high school,
Speaker 2: my dad brought in a copy of the witch Soft
Speaker 2: Falls Record News, the local newspaper, and the headline went
Speaker 2: millionaire olman and wife found in their mansion. And it
Speaker 2: was Bobby Burns, this lean, charismatic wildcatter who had been
Speaker 2: shot to death in his bed. There was a Dick
Speaker 2: Van doc Day, so he had a bed and his
Speaker 2: wife had a bed on the other side of the bedroom.
Speaker 2: Then someone had shot her to death. She was wearing
Speaker 2: a gown from naming Marcus. I mean, they were ultra rich.
Speaker 2: They would fly in their own private plane to Dallas,
Speaker 2: which took about ten minutes on the plane, so that
Speaker 2: she could go shopping. You know. She was this charming
Speaker 2: ex model, and he was this gung ho wildcatter who
Speaker 2: was drilling big wells and so they were richest chocolate.
Speaker 2: They had this well, this huge mansion, eight thousand square
Speaker 2: feet in size. We all just were sort of fascinated
Speaker 2: by him. And here it turned out that they had
Speaker 2: been murdered by we figured some rival. I will never
Speaker 2: forget being at my church youth group that night, Sunday
Speaker 2: night going the killer could still be in our neighborhood
Speaker 2: right now, he could still be checking any of us.
Speaker 2: And suddenly my imagination took this giant leap as I
Speaker 2: began to realize there was this whole other world I
Speaker 2: knew nothing about. Well, that isn't the end of the story,
Speaker 2: because a few days after the shootings it turned out
Speaker 2: that the medical examiner had discovered that she, the wife, Abby,
Speaker 2: had shot Bobby and that she then in turn got
Speaker 2: climbed back into bed and shot herself. And no one
Speaker 2: to this day knows what happened, and it's haunted me
Speaker 2: ghost like all these years, last fifty years.
Speaker 1: How is that possible that nobody had any kind of
Speaker 1: an inkling, you know, of their mental health struggles that
Speaker 1: she had, or nobody dug into this enough to be
Speaker 1: able to figure it out.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think there are a lot of people who
Speaker 2: knew there was, you know, rumors that would go through
Speaker 2: about her private life, his private life. Maybe she shot
Speaker 2: him because he was going to take her, or he
Speaker 2: was going to go live with another woman. Maybe she
Speaker 2: shot herself because she didn't want to go to prison.
Speaker 2: You know, the names of people who could have had
Speaker 2: or could not have had affairs with either one of
Speaker 2: them just whipped through that town like a prairie fire.
Speaker 1: Wow. How did the medical examiner come to this conclusion?
Speaker 1: You know, was it the powder burns on her or
Speaker 1: the trajectory or what was it?
Speaker 2: Powder burns? Where the gun fell, how the gun was
Speaker 2: used was pretty standard stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they probably checked her hands for residue and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: So I used to swim laps. I'd go to the
Speaker 2: country club to which I calls country club with my
Speaker 2: wealthier friends, and I would swim laps and slow down
Speaker 2: past the spot where the mothers would sit in their
Speaker 2: lawn chairs and gossip. And I would be doing this
Speaker 2: horrible version of the Australian crawl, hoping that I would
Speaker 2: be able to hear something true.
Speaker 1: Crime reporter right there in high school.
Speaker 2: Huh Yeah, hollins Worth reporting mission had begun.
Speaker 1: In the book you said you could have started your
Speaker 1: own little detective agency back then. Was that like a
Speaker 1: serious Did you really think about that? You really were
Speaker 1: were going to keep files on this kind of a story.
Speaker 2: Not at that moment. I didn't know. You know, I
Speaker 2: had read an Agatha Christie novel. I think I'd read
Speaker 2: some Sherlock Holms short stories. But I didn't even know
Speaker 2: anybody who had been arrested. Back then, none of my
Speaker 2: friends had gone to jail. I just didn't know that
Speaker 2: world at all. But it stuck with me as I
Speaker 2: went on with life.
Speaker 1: Moving back to the main point of your book here,
Speaker 1: what do you think was so fascinating? Was it the wealth?
Speaker 1: Was it the mystery of this case, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean just for you, for everybody, or was it, you know,
Speaker 1: that the possibility that this woman did do this? And
Speaker 1: I also wonder if people believed that this really was
Speaker 1: a murder suicide. There's a lot of questions at once.
Speaker 2: Uh, the fact that they had so much money, that
Speaker 2: they lived such an elegant live. They would go in
Speaker 2: these safaris in Africa, and Abby she was a better
Speaker 2: shot than her husband. So you know, people tried to
Speaker 2: tie it together as to what would have made her
Speaker 2: do this. She was not a violent person. She had
Speaker 2: not done anything remotely wrong. I mean, it was a
Speaker 2: brutal execution. And you know, this is what drives true
Speaker 2: crime because you're not really writing or interested in true crime.
Speaker 2: By definition, it's the story of people, these people who
Speaker 2: cross this invisible line and do something no one expects.
Speaker 1: And I think people now understand that women can be
Speaker 1: just as violent, you know as men, sometimes more violent.
Speaker 1: But I still think that is there's certainly like a
Speaker 1: sexism involved there, because there still is that disbelief going back,
Speaker 1: of course hundreds and hundreds of years, but really squarely
Speaker 1: landing on Lizzie Borden, wouldn't you think that's one of
Speaker 1: the origins. That's one of the big cases where you
Speaker 1: just think, there's no way this woman didn't do it,
Speaker 1: some people might think, and then there's a jury of
Speaker 1: men who acquits her in something like forty five seconds.
Speaker 1: That's probably exaggerating, but I mean, don't you think that
Speaker 1: that's a prime example of people just saying that a
Speaker 1: woman could have never done this, at least a woman
Speaker 1: of a certain socioeconomic background.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there are women who are hardwired to
Speaker 2: commit as much crime as men.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you're going to say those are not
Speaker 1: the most interesting ones, interesting ones that don't seem are
Speaker 1: wired like that.
Speaker 2: Those are not the most interesting ones. The interesting ones
Speaker 2: are the Abby Burns, the other women in my book
Speaker 2: who were like wallflowers who sort of stayed in the shed,
Speaker 2: you know, just had their own little, quiet lives that
Speaker 2: never did anything remotely rebellious. And something began bubbling to
Speaker 2: the top. And I don't know if it was, you know,
Speaker 2: in long held resentment and a long simmering jealousy, something
Speaker 2: that began to gnaw away at them and they let loose.
Speaker 2: Now the Oxygen Network would say these women snapped and
Speaker 2: they should be on our show. That's not true. They
Speaker 2: didn't snap. Something was going on in them for them
Speaker 2: to finally lash out to get some kind of vengeance
Speaker 2: or justice or redemption. And those are the women that
Speaker 2: fascinated me. Like talking about quick verdicts. One of the
Speaker 2: stories in the book is about a woman named Candace
Speaker 2: Mussler who was the great socialite of Houston in the sixties,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen sixty four she was arrested with her
Speaker 2: young nephew she persuaded him. According to the police and prosecutors,
Speaker 2: she persuaded her nephew, young Hansoon looked like Elvis, to
Speaker 2: stab her husband to death. Then she got accused of
Speaker 2: stabbing him, trying to stab the nephew to death who
Speaker 2: that she was having this big affair with. And she
Speaker 2: goes to court, and she had charmed so many people
Speaker 2: over the years. You know, this outcast girl from Georgia
Speaker 2: and Louisiana who comes to Houston and Mary's this extremely
Speaker 2: rich financier. She doesn't show any violent tendencies until something
Speaker 2: happened in this day in nineteen sixty four, and she
Speaker 2: was acquitted quickly because the male jurors just could not
Speaker 2: fathom that a woman with big heels, high heels and
Speaker 2: this sweet southern smile could pull something like this off.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you go back to all of these
Speaker 1: different layers of the way that women can be seen,
Speaker 1: women killers especially. I don't know if you would consider
Speaker 1: Abby Burns and Candice Muscler as the I don't think
Speaker 1: fem fatale is the right word, but there is that
Speaker 1: fascination with the dangerous woman. I assume that Muscler is
Speaker 1: in more of that category than you would think that
Speaker 1: Abby Burns is.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Abby Burns was no fem fatale. Candace was
Speaker 2: a fem fatal I mean she married again, I think
Speaker 2: for his third time, and somebody supposedly threw that man
Speaker 2: off the roof of her Reverokes mansion. You know, it
Speaker 2: was phenomenal the attention she used to get. When her
Speaker 2: trial happened, the New York Times sent a reporter to
Speaker 2: cover it, back before the New York Times had reporters
Speaker 2: that did that kind of thing, and he described it
Speaker 2: as one of the most spectacular criminal trials in the
Speaker 2: history of the United States. It's just unbelievable. And when
Speaker 2: you go and watch the testimony or read the transcripts
Speaker 2: of the testimony, it feels like you are being sucked
Speaker 2: back into time when Candace was pretty much as famous
Speaker 2: as Jackie Kennedy. People today don't even know who she is.
Speaker 2: But that was the crime of the You know, every
Speaker 2: year there's a crime of the century. That was it
Speaker 2: for a year or two?
Speaker 1: Is she the woman who it was scandalous that she
Speaker 1: had dated or had an affair with a black musician.
Speaker 1: Was that her?
Speaker 2: That's her? And I'm trying to remember the name of.
Speaker 1: The musician, Chuck Berry.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean, think of this now. She gets acquitted
Speaker 2: in the trial of the century, as the reporters were
Speaker 2: calling it, and then, you know, the reporters down there.
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of a woman reporter for the
Speaker 2: New York World named Theo Wilson. Yes, she was the
Speaker 2: first great female crime writer. She was the Brenda Star
Speaker 2: of America. And it's amazing that there haven't been more
Speaker 2: historical books written on this group. She'd befriended Judy Garland.
Speaker 2: After her acquittal, she went to a Martin Luther King
Speaker 2: Southern Leadership convention and set next to him at private
Speaker 2: dinner she threw at her home. She had Chuck Berry
Speaker 2: play a concert at the backyard of her house. Is
Speaker 2: She covered the outdoor swim well with she glass so
Speaker 2: that people could walk on it, and she said, now,
Speaker 2: ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to present to
Speaker 2: you Chuck Berry. He comes on to the stage and
Speaker 2: she lays a kiss on him. That Dick de Garon,
Speaker 2: the famous Houston defense attorney, who was an up and
Speaker 2: comer at that time, said, shocked the city of Houston
Speaker 2: from you know, down to its soul. And she didn't care.
Speaker 2: She was just this free spirit who happened to have
Speaker 2: a need to kill men.
Speaker 1: What was her motive for the husband? Is it money?
Speaker 2: I assume it was money. But she had a lot
Speaker 2: of money if she just divorced. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: And that was If you read that story, you will
Speaker 2: think that I didn't answer that question. And some of
Speaker 2: these questions, just like Abby Burns, are not meant to.
Speaker 1: Be answered, and you actually write quite a bit of it.
Speaker 1: I feel like about unanswered questions. You know, you had
Speaker 1: your podcast Tom Brown's Body, you wrote about, you know,
Speaker 1: the servant girl annihilator from Austin in the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: unsolved case. So have you taken a look at why
Speaker 1: you like those kinds of cases where you just have,
Speaker 1: regardless if it's women or men as the killers, where
Speaker 1: you just have all of these unanswered questions floating around.
Speaker 2: I just think it's more interesting when it's not a
Speaker 2: cut and drive case. And you know, when there's times
Speaker 2: you're not going to know the answer, like the that
Speaker 2: Smith forever on that book about the serial killer in Austin,
Speaker 2: and it was just hours days going through old no
Speaker 2: you know this, and going through old nineteenth century newspapers
Speaker 2: looking for one quote from a sheriff or a police
Speaker 2: officer that would give me on the right track, and
Speaker 2: I never got there. Now I found really interesting stuff.
Speaker 2: But did I find the answer? No, which is what
Speaker 2: makes it, you know, the story even more interesting. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, when the BTK killer was finally found by
Speaker 2: the next day, almost everyone was bored with that story.
Speaker 2: You know, it's always the uncalled that are the most interesting.
Speaker 2: That's why I enjoyed doing those.
Speaker 1: In my other podcast, Buried Bones, I work with Paul Holes,
Speaker 1: who's a forensic investigator, and he most famously helped solve
Speaker 1: the Golden State killer case, which you know, this was
Speaker 1: a rapist, sadist killer who Paul had pursued for so
Speaker 1: long because he was in California as an investigator. They
Speaker 1: catch Joseph DiAngelo and then I asked him, I think
Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago, why where are we with
Speaker 1: that case? Did he plead what happened? And he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't really care at this point
Speaker 1: because he's caught, And so I wonder if you It
Speaker 1: sounds like you might have that same kind of attitude, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's a good story to tell
Speaker 1: with a lot of these types of stories that have
Speaker 1: an actual ending, but the mysterious ones are the most interesting,
Speaker 1: especially if they are with women. What do you think
Speaker 1: of the phenomena that happens. I mean, set aside the
Speaker 1: Richard Ramirez women fawning all over him and asking him
Speaker 1: to marry them and stuff, what about the men who
Speaker 1: fawn over the candae mosclers of the world, world who
Speaker 1: invite the dangerous woman in.
Speaker 2: And there were men who flew into Houston just to
Speaker 2: get their shot at her. I mean there was a
Speaker 2: famous Houston society columnist named Maxine Messenger who essentially kept
Speaker 2: a running tab on who Candice was going out with.
Speaker 2: This is after her, you know, one husband disappeared, the
Speaker 2: second husband had been stebbed to death, the third husband
Speaker 2: had been thrown off the roof of their mansion. And
Speaker 2: you just think people would run for their lives. No,
Speaker 2: men were wanting to, you know, have their shot at
Speaker 2: her so they could tell their buddies just how close
Speaker 2: they came.
Speaker 1: So I also think when I think about female killers,
Speaker 1: I go to, well, I feel like it's sort of
Speaker 1: at the other end of the spectrum, Eileen Warnos, where
Speaker 1: you have a really dramatic movie Monster that won awards
Speaker 1: and was just such a compelling portrayal of this woman
Speaker 1: who had endured a lot of abuse before she you know,
Speaker 1: kills a series of men when she's a sex one
Speaker 1: and so you know, this is Eileen Warners has had
Speaker 1: things made about her, but she's sort of at the
Speaker 1: opposite end of the spectrum, a different kind of dangerous woman.
Speaker 1: And we certainly do pay more attention to not women
Speaker 1: on the fringe like that, more of the unexpected gentleman.
Speaker 1: You could be sleeping right next to her and she'll
Speaker 1: kill you kind of women, don't you think. And that's
Speaker 1: a weird it's a weird dynamic to have with a
Speaker 1: true crime audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's the women that are beguiling that draw
Speaker 2: men in. Candice after her acquittal, moves back to Houston,
Speaker 2: of all places, and people drive past the mansion and
Speaker 2: there are tour buses that drive past the mansion just
Speaker 2: so these people will pay ten bucks to get a
Speaker 2: look at her, and sometimes she would wave at them.
Speaker 2: So there was this mystery to who she was. She
Speaker 2: did not hesitate to go out in public and support
Speaker 2: public call and you know, she gave money to the
Speaker 2: Boys Club, She gave money to the Houston Rodeo. She
Speaker 2: wore you know, cowgirl outfits every night to the rodeo,
Speaker 2: and she would just look at you when if a reporter,
Speaker 2: if he ever brought up the idea that maybe she
Speaker 2: was guilty of these killings, and you would think, well,
Speaker 2: here we go, she's gonna something's going to blow up,
Speaker 2: and she would charm the reporter. You know a lot
Speaker 2: of them came down. There are a lot of New
Speaker 2: York reporters. The guy Jim Bishop who wrote all those
Speaker 2: the day Lincoln died, the day Kennedy, he was a
Speaker 2: big best selling author. He came down and covered her
Speaker 2: trial because he could not get enough of her.
Speaker 1: Let's finish up with Candace, because I don't think we
Speaker 1: talked about how she died. She died at fifty six,
Speaker 1: fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Maybe she'd had so many Perkidan like drugs that were
Speaker 2: in her system that she died in her sleep. Well
Speaker 2: did she die in her sleep? You know there's a
Speaker 2: conspiracy group at out there that will say that she
Speaker 2: was killed by somebody that didn't want his secret to
Speaker 2: come out, like the nephew or he became her nephew
Speaker 2: who she had the grand love affair with, became the
Speaker 2: Hugh Hefner of Houston and would go to a bar
Speaker 2: called Tgi Friday's. Now, this is a man who everyone knew,
Speaker 2: stabbed the husband, the nephew, the young nephew, completely entranced
Speaker 2: by Candace. Women went after him in the same way
Speaker 2: that men went after Candace.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about Peggy Joe. Is it talus? Is
Speaker 1: that how you say her last name?
Speaker 2: Peggy Joe Talis who did not commit a murder. But
Speaker 2: she's a story I was ho It's maybe my favorite
Speaker 2: story I've written about.
Speaker 1: Comes to crime, I can tell, and the way you
Speaker 1: write it I can tell.
Speaker 2: I mean, here was a woman who grew up driving,
Speaker 2: you know, when she was she dropped out of high school.
Speaker 2: She got a Fiat, He's fiat. She drove it to
Speaker 2: San Francisco one weekend just to see if she could
Speaker 2: meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the City Lights bookstore. She was
Speaker 2: a free spirit. I found that the woman who was
Speaker 2: her best friend, who said Peggy Joe just was a
Speaker 2: free spirit. She just wanted to do her own thing.
Speaker 2: She didn't care about money or children. She just wanted
Speaker 2: to get in that Fiat and fly around town and
Speaker 2: stop at concerts. And they went to the Doobie Brothers
Speaker 2: concert in the seventies and the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger
Speaker 2: was writhing around, still wrinkle free. I think she began
Speaker 2: a relationship with a guy. She didn't have much of
Speaker 2: a job. She worked behind the counter at a Marriott.
Speaker 2: She began a relationship with a guy who was a banker,
Speaker 2: and she decided one day to go visit him at
Speaker 2: his home where at his place of work, just outside
Speaker 2: of town, outside of Dallas, and she watched a woman
Speaker 2: getting his car and drive away, and she realized that
Speaker 2: was his wife. So there are these series of little
Speaker 2: disappointments that began to run through her life, which is
Speaker 2: not uncommon for middle class, middle class women who have
Speaker 2: been abused, not necessarily abused, but just ignored. And she
Speaker 2: was began to live with her mom in a little
Speaker 2: two bedroom apartment in Garland, Texas, a suburb of Dallas,
Speaker 2: because her mom was getting sick and needed some help.
Speaker 2: And she began to see her life, according to the
Speaker 2: friend I talked to, drift away, and she got a
Speaker 2: job at a courier service driving envelopes around. This is
Speaker 2: before the Federal Express days. She stopped going out, and
Speaker 2: then these bank robberies began to happen in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, and I was a young reporter, new reporter
Speaker 2: then for Texas Monthly, and so I would cut these
Speaker 2: articles out, thinking there might be a story here. Because
Speaker 2: the story was about a man dressed as a cowboy,
Speaker 2: wearing this big ten gallon hat with a big belt buckle,
Speaker 2: cowboy boots, a beard. We c FAI said, well, they
Speaker 2: probably pasted that on with some sort of glue, but
Speaker 2: no one ever thought, well, that's a woman. It was
Speaker 2: a man. And he began to hit all these small
Speaker 2: town banks, getting a thousand dollars here, two thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: and driving away, never showing his face. Always he had
Speaker 2: taken a license plate from a nearby apartment near the bank,
Speaker 2: and he would take his office screw a new one on.
Speaker 2: So the FBI, when they would look at tapes and
Speaker 2: see what car was driving away, they were getting diverted
Speaker 2: and around the FBI headquarters he became known as Cowboy Bob. Well,
Speaker 2: Cowboy Bob finally made a mistake and did not take
Speaker 2: off the license plate of his own car, so they
Speaker 2: were able to trace him back to this apartment, and
Speaker 2: there sat Peggy Joe Talas with glue starting to come down,
Speaker 2: her face, and that had been keeping the beard on.
Speaker 2: And the head FBI agent in charge of the bank
Speaker 2: Robbery division then said to his other agents, gentlemen, we're
Speaker 2: no longer looking for Cowboy Bob. We found Cowboy Bob.
Speaker 2: Bett was stunning that someone could pull off these bank robberies. Now,
Speaker 2: what she was good at was no job. Robberies, as
Speaker 2: the cops call them. You hand them a note, you know,
Speaker 2: and even that it's a pretty dangerous thing to do.
Speaker 2: It's it's not going after blowing up a vault. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the most dramatic of heyst but this was still
Speaker 2: you had to be very careful not to run out
Speaker 2: of the bank, not to squeal away, to keep your
Speaker 2: head down, to make sure that you hadn't been given
Speaker 2: some baked bills. And this robber, you know, never showed
Speaker 2: a gun. And when they realized and caught him and
Speaker 2: realized there was a woman, they tried the FBI tried
Speaker 2: to get her to talk about how she learned to
Speaker 2: do this, because that surely couldn't be the first time
Speaker 2: that a woman could rob a bank like that, But
Speaker 2: maybe it was she found something, as her friend said,
Speaker 2: she found something joyful about doing something so daring, so frightening,
Speaker 2: and she got away with it, and she was able
Speaker 2: to use the money to pay off her mother's high
Speaker 2: medical costs.
Speaker 1: What is the time span of this.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and one, and
Speaker 2: here's what happened next. She got a three year sentence,
Speaker 2: which is unheard of if she robbed like ten or
Speaker 2: eleven banks. She got a three year sentence, went off
Speaker 2: to prison. Her niece came to see her. She came
Speaker 2: through the door, she smiled, she said, I'm sorry, I'll
Speaker 2: never do that again. She just seemed so casual. And
Speaker 2: a psychologist was brought in, this man who had interviewed
Speaker 2: all kinds of bank robbers, and he couldn't get a
Speaker 2: thing out of her. He was, you know, in transpire
Speaker 2: because here was this woman who had pulled off these robberies.
Speaker 2: And when he said why did you do it? She
Speaker 2: would cross her legs and smoke a cigarette and just
Speaker 2: sort of smile. Well, she was let out after three years.
Speaker 2: She went back to live with her mother in an
Speaker 2: apartment in Garland.
Speaker 1: Her mom was still alive, still alive.
Speaker 2: Her mother eventually died from her from a bone cancer,
Speaker 2: and they had a funeral. Peggy shut everything down, gave
Speaker 2: away her plants. She was good at growing plants on
Speaker 2: the front porch. You know. She handed out and gave
Speaker 2: away her furniture. She bought an RV with purple curtains,
Speaker 2: used RB that weized as it went up a hill
Speaker 2: for four thousand dollars. Now, you know, in another several years
Speaker 2: had passed when her mother died, she bought the RV
Speaker 2: and she started living in these little public drive up
Speaker 2: parks you can spend the night in at local lakes.
Speaker 2: Then one day she disappeared, and at the same time
Speaker 2: a story began to come out that a woman dressed
Speaker 2: as a man who was robbing banks and tyler this
Speaker 2: town in East Texas. Now, because all the old FBI
Speaker 2: agents who worked on the case had retired were moved
Speaker 2: on to different positions, no one put it together. So
Speaker 2: she robbed a guaranteed bank, she robbed another one, and
Speaker 2: then she robbed the original guaranteed bank she robbed the
Speaker 2: first time, and ended it off to Mexico in her RV.
Speaker 2: She was quickly followed by the cops, by the FBI.
Speaker 2: It was the strangest posse you could imagine. And she
Speaker 2: turned into a call to sac where neighbors got on
Speaker 2: their front porches and were filming everything that was happening
Speaker 2: with their video cam cam quarters that everybody had back then.
Speaker 2: And she stood out on her front she opened the
Speaker 2: door to her RV and I'll let you guess. I'll
Speaker 2: let you read what happened next. It's just two. It's
Speaker 2: not my writing that does justice to that scene. But
Speaker 2: what happened is so moving and heartbreaking and wonderful.
Speaker 1: And you said that's your favorite story. Is it because
Speaker 1: of her?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's not because she was necessarily a good criminal,
Speaker 2: so that played into it. It is how did she
Speaker 2: pull it off time after time? But here was a
Speaker 2: woman who was finally getting chance to bring back her
Speaker 2: youths again and to you know, be a free spirit.
Speaker 2: So many, not just women, but so many people as
Speaker 2: they begin to age, they don't have this kind of
Speaker 2: life to look forward to in retirement that they thought
Speaker 2: they might have. It's not going to be easy street
Speaker 2: for them. And she wanted to go out with one
Speaker 2: last great hurrah. And you know, as her niece told me,
Speaker 2: that ends the story. She goes, uh. I wouldn't wanted
Speaker 2: to say good for you, Peggy, Joe, good for you.
Speaker 1: One of my kids is into true crime, and she
Speaker 1: does not like stories about female killers at all, female criminals.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want to watch them. She wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: the Karen Reid story, any of these, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of more high profile stories. And I finally said, why,
Speaker 1: why don't you want to watch one where the woman
Speaker 1: as a perpetrator, because we are constantly you know, reading
Speaker 1: or watching stuff that's at words, you know, men killing women.
Speaker 1: And she said, because I don't want to sympathize with
Speaker 1: the kill. And she said, I will no matter what,
Speaker 1: sympathize with the woman, whether she's a victim or the killer.
Speaker 1: And she said, I said, morally, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was really interesting because we're not
Speaker 1: always skip as reporters or as you know, people who
Speaker 1: are interested in true crime. We're not always searching around
Speaker 1: for why Dennis Rader did what he did or Ted Bundy.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not looking, But I feel like we're
Speaker 1: always looking for the reason women did stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, there's not this backlash you would think at some
Speaker 2: point never happens.
Speaker 1: Do you have another story in that book that stands
Speaker 1: out to you. You had one about a nurse I
Speaker 1: think of this character.
Speaker 2: Her name was Vicky Don Jackson, that she lived in Nakona,
Speaker 2: which is a town of about twelve hundred people in
Speaker 2: North Texas. Now you know, you know all the big
Speaker 2: time serial killers that have come out of Texas, Henry.
Speaker 1: Lee, Lucas, Kenneth All McDuff.
Speaker 2: Bigdoff, they were vicious men. Right. Well, here was a
Speaker 2: woman who had twenty six nurses uniforms neatly pressed in
Speaker 2: her closet. She wanted to be Florence Nightingale. She took
Speaker 2: her job very seriously. She was very devoted to her patients.
Speaker 2: She cleaned them, brought them food, helped them to their
Speaker 2: cars when they were being released from the hospital. Everybody,
Speaker 2: I mean no one had a bad word to say
Speaker 2: about nurse VICKI until one night in nineteen ninety she
Speaker 2: pulls out a syringe and fills it up with my
Speaker 2: vacarium chloride, which is a medicine that can stop respiratory breathing.
Speaker 2: And doctor choose it to get like if they need
Speaker 2: to intimate a patient to get the tube down the
Speaker 2: throat of a patient and then they can knock you know,
Speaker 2: get them out of the stop the medicine which is
Speaker 2: coming through the IV, and they're fine again. But she
Speaker 2: was killing off patients. She killed off ten in the
Speaker 2: in the last couple of months of two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven or eight. I think then she killed off ten more,
Speaker 2: and she might have killed off five more. That's in
Speaker 2: a lot of members of the town. She worked the
Speaker 2: night shift. She would get in her closet put on
Speaker 2: and she told me this, you know, she was trying
Speaker 2: to tell me that she was innocent. But I just
Speaker 2: did a series of interviews with her, thinking at some
Speaker 2: point she's going to explain why she did what she did.
Speaker 2: And she would always, you know, call me mister Hollinsworth.
Speaker 2: She would ask how I was doing, She asked about
Speaker 2: my health. She was in county jail, so the rules
Speaker 2: are a little different. If you're in the state prison,
Speaker 2: you know, you get like thirty minutes with an inmate
Speaker 2: and that's it. They throw you out. But if you
Speaker 2: have a kind, kindly old sheriff, he'll let you sit
Speaker 2: in the interview room day and night until something breaks.
Speaker 2: So in December eleventh, two thousand, she would put on
Speaker 2: one of these starched nurses uniforms. She would wash her
Speaker 2: hair under the kitchen sink with Lady Clare that she
Speaker 2: would buy that she would get at Walmart discount. She
Speaker 2: would go buy the Dairy Queen, the one nice restaurant
Speaker 2: in town, and she would order the same meal two tacos, dinner, salad,
Speaker 2: rice and beans, and I see sweet. And she would
Speaker 2: walk by people's tables and go, how are you, How
Speaker 2: are you mister Stevens, how are you, miss Johnson? I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a Florence nighting the countryfide Florence nightingale. And then
Speaker 2: she would go murder these patients, and the doctors were
Speaker 2: so bewildered they could not imagine this was crime. It was,
Speaker 2: you know, as a cold winter. Old people were dying,
Speaker 2: people were getting respiratory illnesses. This is just what happens
Speaker 2: in a small town hospital. Until someone found a tube
Speaker 2: of my bacia and chloride in the trash looking for
Speaker 2: an answer. There were people that would go to the
Speaker 2: Dairy Queen and see her every night. There was one
Speaker 2: man who would drive his riding lawnmower, his seers riding
Speaker 2: lawnmower to the Dairy Queen. And I interviewed him and
Speaker 2: I said, did you have any idea? He said, I'd
Speaker 2: tell my wife every day after she got After Vicky
Speaker 2: Don got arrested, How could someone be so good during
Speaker 2: the day do these kind of killings at night? Well,
Speaker 2: there was this uproar in town. Why was Vicky Don
Speaker 2: killing these people? And I joined the upper you know,
Speaker 2: I went up there and I would interview her as
Speaker 2: she waited for trial, kept trying to figure out what
Speaker 2: was going to break. I was using every skill I
Speaker 2: could come up with, which obviously wasn't much because I
Speaker 2: couldn't get her to confess to anything. But she would
Speaker 2: say things occasionally. For instance, there was this one hundred
Speaker 2: year old lady named Missus Jennings who would slap and
Speaker 2: bite Vicky when she ever. She came up to take
Speaker 2: care of her at the hospital, and Vicky had known her,
Speaker 2: Vicky I learned since she was in high school. Since
Speaker 2: Vicky was in high school, she took care of her
Speaker 2: back then in a nursing home, and so here in
Speaker 2: the last days of her life, Missus Jennings life the
Speaker 2: widow Jennings people called her. Vicky let loose and murdered
Speaker 2: her with a my vircarium and so by the time
Speaker 2: I got to the story, it was known that she
Speaker 2: had gotten after this woman, and I said, well, what
Speaker 2: did you think of her? Oh, mister Hollinsworth, I liked
Speaker 2: her so so much. She was so kind to people. Well,
Speaker 2: maybe not kind is the right word, and maybe she
Speaker 2: could have been a little kinder to everything I had
Speaker 2: done for her. And then I began to realize what
Speaker 2: was going on, or what could have been going on,
Speaker 2: which was here was in her teenage years, she was
Speaker 2: ignored by all the other students. She was this wallflower.
Speaker 2: She would come to the dairy queen dressed in what
Speaker 2: she called western tops, you know, little tube tops, and
Speaker 2: no one would let her drive around with them in
Speaker 2: their car. So when she saw them years later in
Speaker 2: the hospital with her taking care of them, here was
Speaker 2: her chance and getting back at all the years of
Speaker 2: being ignored were being made fun of. She even went
Speaker 2: after an ex husband. The ex husband was having an affair,
Speaker 2: was leaving Vicky, and so Vicky decided to when she
Speaker 2: had the shot. When the husband's father came in to
Speaker 2: the hospital, she popped him with myva carre and chloride.
Speaker 2: So all these people were dying. A guy that invited
Speaker 2: asked one of Vicky's children out on a date, cussed
Speaker 2: her and tried to ruin a reputation when she said no.
Speaker 2: When the daughter said no, and Vicky never forgot it,
Speaker 2: and years later she went after him when he came
Speaker 2: into the hospital as a patient. There was a girl
Speaker 2: that went to the nightclub and she wore this black
Speaker 2: dress that zipped up and down. And I called her
Speaker 2: one day and I said, did you know Vicky Jackson?
Speaker 2: And she begins to cry and she says, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I never knew her. I said, you graduated from high
Speaker 2: school with her. She just assumed that Vicky went after
Speaker 2: her because she was getting the attention with that black
Speaker 2: dress with the zipper, and VICKI had never gotten the
Speaker 2: same kind of attention. So you saw her beginning to
Speaker 2: spiral down, and it became obvious that she was spiraling.
Speaker 2: But I don't know it. Just you know, I'm sure
Speaker 2: there are people that thought, well, good for her. We
Speaker 2: always know this kind of woman who had never who ignore.
Speaker 1: But do you see how we're both searching? You search
Speaker 1: and I do too, particularly with female killers. You're looking
Speaker 1: for a reason, and I don't look for a reason
Speaker 1: for a lot of male killers. I just think, why
Speaker 1: would this woman have done this? What happened? And I
Speaker 1: end up doing stories on women. I've done several who
Speaker 1: simply have psychopathy and there's no rhyme or reason for
Speaker 1: why they did this. But it's interesting that we go
Speaker 1: to thinking about that, Okay, that's she was ignored and
Speaker 1: now she's getting revenge. So I think that's interesting that
Speaker 1: we're just always and I probably always will just kind
Speaker 1: of say we've got to figure out what happened, and
Speaker 1: then it becomes something like my kid says, it's some
Speaker 1: kind of sympathetic thing where then you're almost rooting for
Speaker 1: the woman. I don't know, I find it, and I'm
Speaker 1: not agreeing or disagreeing with any of it. I just
Speaker 1: think it's interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, well, she definitely didn't have a fan club,
Speaker 2: and you know, Nikono wasn't going to say Okay, we
Speaker 2: forgive you. I mean, it was never going to be
Speaker 2: anything like that. But I kept thinking, understand her, no
Speaker 2: matter how much psychopathy she had, I understand her.
Speaker 1: So one of the you know, the killer nurses, quote unquote,
Speaker 1: the most famous one, did you look? And I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is mentioned in the book did you
Speaker 1: look at Jane Toppin'? Okay, So from the eighteen hundredth
Speaker 1: lady to probably the most famous nurse, they call him
Speaker 1: Angel of Mercy, which is quickly followed up with the
Speaker 1: line they showed no mercy for their patients. She was
Speaker 1: a private nurse, so she was able to get away
Speaker 1: with a lot more. But she targeted people, you know,
Speaker 1: who had personal she had personal issues with. She targeted
Speaker 1: random patients. She you know, was moving from house to house.
Speaker 1: But her motive, besides I think the number one motive
Speaker 1: was you know, you would think, oh, it's the revenge,
Speaker 1: or it's the money or whatever. It was rejection, you know,
Speaker 1: but really it came down to she derived sexual gratification
Speaker 1: from watching somebody die from a poison that she administered.
Speaker 1: So imagine that late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, she's
Speaker 1: doing this. More than one hundred people was the claim
Speaker 1: that she killed, and you know, just to think about that,
Speaker 1: and I mean there was proof because there were some
Speaker 1: patients who survived to observe she'd climb into bed with
Speaker 1: these people, and she still was not executed. She was
Speaker 1: committed to a mental health facility until she died, and
Speaker 1: I think she was in her eighties when she died.
Speaker 1: I mean even then, she's not hanged like somebody who
Speaker 1: would have robbed a bank one time would have been
Speaker 1: hanged a man.
Speaker 2: Show you how significant a role these women had played
Speaker 2: in people's lives. One of the more unusual stories I
Speaker 2: wrote about was a prison band, and they came from
Speaker 2: the prison's women, the women's prenitentiary, the Gory Unit, and
Speaker 2: in the nineteen forties there was only one prison for women.
Speaker 2: It was called the Gory Farm Gory State Farm, and
Speaker 2: a woman there named Revel Childs decided she was going
Speaker 2: to start a band, just like the men had one.
Speaker 2: And she'd walk around the dormitory and say, we can
Speaker 2: do one as good as the men. And they started
Speaker 2: a band, and they basically became the Dixie Chicks of
Speaker 2: their day. They were on WBAP radio every Wednesday night,
Speaker 2: played in a show called a prison show called Behind
Speaker 2: the Walls. Back then, prison's offen had big music programs.
Speaker 2: And then she was paroled. Others in the band were
Speaker 2: paroled and they disappeared. They never they could have had careers.
Speaker 2: They wanted to become famous so that the governor would
Speaker 2: like them, and they could get out of prison, so
Speaker 2: they became famous in order to disappear. To this day,
Speaker 2: you know, I couldn't find I found one, one or
Speaker 2: two women. And this past week I wrote that story.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many years ago, but this past
Speaker 2: week the phone rang and it was the sister of
Speaker 2: another of one of the performers, who had no idea
Speaker 2: what had happened to her sister after she got out
Speaker 2: of prison, just disappeared. And you know, you think history history,
Speaker 2: need to remember the history never dies. There's no such
Speaker 2: thing as a story fading into the past. The past
Speaker 2: has never passed.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Sinner's All About the
Speaker 1: Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
Speaker 1: Don't Forget There are twelve seasons of my historical true
Speaker 1: crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,
Speaker 1: scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
Speaker 1: is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This
Speaker 1: episode was mixed by John Bradley, Curtis Heath is our composer.
Speaker 1: Artwork by Nick Toga, Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Speaker 1: Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and
Speaker 1: Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more.
Speaker 1: And if you know of a historical crime that could
Speaker 1: use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked,
Speaker 1: email us at info at tenfoldmorewicked dot com. We'll also
Speaker 1: take your suggestions for true crime authors. For Wicked Words
Speaker 2: Was a number