Speaker 1: Hey, this is Joe and I have a new podcast.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard already, it's me and also my
Speaker 1: friend Vincent. Say, hi, what's up Caldoni? Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: we're presenting an episode of it. You might have heard
Speaker 1: our first episode last week before. Warned this is not
Speaker 1: going to be showing up in the Sideways feed forever,
Speaker 1: so you need to go out to iTunes look up
Speaker 1: The Shocking Details, which is the name of our new podcast,
Speaker 1: Details Shocking Details. Yeah, subscribe of course, give us a
Speaker 1: rating five stars and all that stuff from thinking Sideways podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm there. Welcome to another episode of The Shocking Details.
Speaker 1: I am Joe, joined as always by Vincent Caldoni, and
Speaker 1: we've got on the story for you this week. Interesting
Speaker 1: little story that you probably never heard about. And I
Speaker 1: know it's not Halloween, but really, any time of the
Speaker 1: year is a good time for a ghost story, right Vince,
Speaker 1: especially if it's an Arkansas go story. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: in Arkansas gost story. This particular story got a lot
Speaker 1: of national publicity back when it happened. This is in
Speaker 1: late nineteen nine, but it's completely dropped into obscurity sense,
Speaker 1: so I had never heard of this when you sent
Speaker 1: this to me and I heard it was the Arkansas Ghost.
Speaker 1: I literally thought it was a different story altogether. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so don't I know this one, But it was not
Speaker 1: the story that I that I read wasn't just a
Speaker 1: ghost it was a ghost trial. Yeah. I thought, anyway,
Speaker 1: we should dread the story up and shock you all
Speaker 1: with the gory details. And so I started the beginning.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right. The Judge Marcus Bone presiding in the
Speaker 1: child of these defendants of the murder of Mr Conrad C.
Speaker 1: Franklin is the state's prosecution president. Today is the defense president.
Speaker 1: Is the victim president. In January ninety nine, a man
Speaker 1: named Connie Franklin came to the St. James settlement in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: That's the town of St. James. If you want to
Speaker 1: know where this town is, it's about ten miles east
Speaker 1: of the town of Mountain View, about seventy five miles
Speaker 1: north northeast of Little Rock, about a hundred ten miles
Speaker 1: northwest of Memphis, Tennessee. And it's really it's there today,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of a white spot in the road really,
Speaker 1: but it's still there. But Connie Franklin found himself jobs
Speaker 1: as a farm hand and a timber cutter, and when
Speaker 1: he wasn't working, he was known for playing his French
Speaker 1: harp also known as the harmonica or just the harp um.
Speaker 1: And also if we're hitting on the local women, which
Speaker 1: you know, what else does there to do right now?
Speaker 1: And talk to the girls pretty much. She met a
Speaker 1: local girl named Tiller Ruminer. Tiller was sixteen, by the way,
Speaker 1: Connie was about twenty two years old. The two of
Speaker 1: them hit it off real good, had a whirlwind romance,
Speaker 1: and according to Tiller, on March nine, Connie proposed marriage
Speaker 1: and she accepted. So that is whirlwind. That's like two
Speaker 1: months he's really yeah, it is. But then Connie Franklin disappeared.
Speaker 1: A few of the town's folk noticed, although nobody seemed
Speaker 1: to think it was exceptionally odd, because Connie was, after all,
Speaker 1: kind of an itinerant farm hand type of guy, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of that back This is you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people drifted around from odd job.
Speaker 1: Oh definitely, especially in the world like like wheat and stuff.
Speaker 1: They would it would follow the harvest as it as
Speaker 1: it matured. Absolutely did seem a bit. Uh. Apparently Connie
Speaker 1: had left his knapsack behind and his mail was still
Speaker 1: being delivered to the local post office, which you wouldn't expect.
Speaker 1: I mean, if he had taken up residence somewhere else,
Speaker 1: you would think he would have have has mail forwarded.
Speaker 1: Perhaps makes sense, yeah, But nonetheless, it was just as
Speaker 1: soon by most everybody that Connie had just drifted out
Speaker 1: of town the same way he drifted in. And he'd
Speaker 1: only been there a couple of months after all, anyway, right,
Speaker 1: all right, so he was soon forgotten by most of
Speaker 1: the folks in the town, except a few of them
Speaker 1: found his unannounced departure to be kind of suspect, especially
Speaker 1: if somebody named Bertha Burns we will talk about a
Speaker 1: little later. She was an armchair detective who got kind
Speaker 1: of involved in this mystery. Yeah, she was. She was
Speaker 1: actually sort of harassing the sheriff on and off about
Speaker 1: this for months after Connie's disappearance. You gotta do it
Speaker 1: if you want stuff done. Yeah, But of course, you know,
Speaker 1: just because Bertha is suspicious about something does not mean
Speaker 1: that sheriff can go arrest somebody. Right, what what did
Speaker 1: Tyler think about this? I mean, she must have had
Speaker 1: an opinion about him running out of town. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't really talking interestingly enough until until later
Speaker 1: that year, in November nine, That is when Tyler finally
Speaker 1: came forward and told her story. She went to the
Speaker 1: local sheriff, Sam Johnson and told him that Connie Franklin
Speaker 1: had been murdered back in March. She hadn't said anything
Speaker 1: about it to anybody because the murderers were local guys
Speaker 1: night riders in other words, vigilantes, and they had told
Speaker 1: her that she and her family would all be killed
Speaker 1: if she snitched. But eventually Taylor did decide to snitch,
Speaker 1: and here is her story. On March, Connie and Tiller
Speaker 1: we're on a country road, headed a local Justice of
Speaker 1: the peace Finnish Ford to get a marriage license south
Speaker 1: of St. James, not far from the tiny town of
Speaker 1: Red Stripe, Arkansas. Love that name, that's a great name,
Speaker 1: Jamaican beer. Yeah. They were ambushed by four men, Joe White,
Speaker 1: Bill Younger, Herman Greenway, and Hubert Hester Greenway. And Hester
Speaker 1: raped Tiller and they made her watch while they beat
Speaker 1: Connie to death with rocks and sticks. It's a hell
Speaker 1: of a way to go. Uh. They built a large
Speaker 1: fire and burned Connie's body. Many of the news articles
Speaker 1: made reference to mutilation and dismemberment as well, but none
Speaker 1: of those stories. All right, get down to the details
Speaker 1: of what what got caught off? Yeah yeah, what exactly
Speaker 1: they did to him? It sounds pretty horrifying. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And we should note that there's at least one newspaper
Speaker 1: that said that Connie was unconscious but still alive when
Speaker 1: he was put into the fire. But whatever, by the
Speaker 1: time he was all done, he was he was dead.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and there wasn't much left around but charred bones. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those ones are hard to get rid of. Uh. Tiller's
Speaker 1: story was corroborated by Ruben Harrold, a deaf, mute guy
Speaker 1: who happened to be there. He also happened to be
Speaker 1: Tiller's second cousin. Not sure why he was there, or
Speaker 1: maybe he was tagging along as a witness to the wedding.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're just stocking the stock. Maybe he was secretly
Speaker 1: in love with his second cousin, and it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that happens. Yeah. I was hoping we would get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of what he was up to, but we
Speaker 1: don't ever really find out, do I guess he could
Speaker 1: have just been out on the road and it was
Speaker 1: just a coincidence. If it's a rural area, maybe yeah.
Speaker 1: But he he gave a written statement to the county
Speaker 1: prosecutor backing up Tiller's account. His account, by the way,
Speaker 1: didn't claim that he had seen the raper the murder,
Speaker 1: just that he saw the accused caring Connie's body through
Speaker 1: the woods. Maybe he was out there moonshine and so
Speaker 1: he saw them carrying out his dead corpse. But this
Speaker 1: is not part of the story. That which is why
Speaker 1: did why did these guys spare him? Yeah? Did the
Speaker 1: spare Reuben? And did he was he hiding from them?
Speaker 1: Or maybe they thought they had never talked? Maybe they
Speaker 1: threatened him the same way they did Tiller. Of course
Speaker 1: the Reuben actually couldn't talk, but he was still right,
Speaker 1: what's she, which is how he made his statement. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to imagine that if there was
Speaker 1: something like that Reuben wentdn't hit right, that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have mentioned that, Like that seems like a detail to me,
Speaker 1: right that I would want to include, Like if I
Speaker 1: was witnessed to a murder and I was giving a
Speaker 1: statement about what I had seen that day, I would
Speaker 1: for sure include why didn't the killer try to kill me? Well,
Speaker 1: he might have. I mean, most of the accounts of this,
Speaker 1: this is actually kind of a lot was written about
Speaker 1: this in the national press at the time, but of
Speaker 1: course the press being what it is, a lot of
Speaker 1: there were there were a lot of distortions, a lot
Speaker 1: of valuable little details like that got left out about Lumen.
Speaker 1: I read a number of accounts that mentioned Reuben and
Speaker 1: his account. They didn't say exactly why he didn't get
Speaker 1: killed by that, by these guys or whatever. They didn't
Speaker 1: say that, and so I you know, I really can't
Speaker 1: say why. So they left out some really good, important
Speaker 1: little details and and also inserted some probably fictional more
Speaker 1: soelations details to make the story a little juicier, no doubt,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how they did it. Back then, a
Speaker 1: local woman named Bertha Burns, as I mentioned before, took
Speaker 1: an interest in the Connie Franklin mystery. Bertha apparently lived
Speaker 1: not too far from where Connie had been murdered, and
Speaker 1: she had found a bloody hat in the woods that
Speaker 1: she believed was Connie's. She showed it to Sheriff Johnson.
Speaker 1: Sheriff Johnson presented it the hat to a grand jury,
Speaker 1: which declined to indict anybody because you know, it's not unreasonable.
Speaker 1: It's it's a bloody hat, after all, I'm not much
Speaker 1: else that blood does get on stuff. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you cut your head for some reason, you might
Speaker 1: just throw your hat off and me like, I'm not
Speaker 1: wearing that ever again. Yeah, And actually I feel as
Speaker 1: we'll get to you a little bit later on the story,
Speaker 1: there was kind of a not unreasonable explanation for that, that
Speaker 1: that being bloody. Yeah. So, in the summer of Connie's sister,
Speaker 1: or at least a young woman claiming to be Connie's sister,
Speaker 1: came to St. James looking for him. Bertha Burns took
Speaker 1: this is more evidence that there had been indeed foul
Speaker 1: play after all. So if Connie had simply migrated, surely
Speaker 1: he would have let his family know where he had
Speaker 1: gone to. Bertha dug out the bloody hat to show
Speaker 1: to the sister, and then led Sheriff Johnson into the
Speaker 1: woods near her home to a pile of burnt bones, teeth,
Speaker 1: and ashes. This was all that remained of Connie, or
Speaker 1: at least that's what Bertha believed. She also told the
Speaker 1: sheriff that she'd heard a scream coming from the area
Speaker 1: on the night that Connie disappeared were more likely some
Speaker 1: time around that time, since Bertha couldn't have actually precisely
Speaker 1: known which exact night Connie had disappeared. A little puzzling,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Yeah it is, yeah, so and so hearing
Speaker 1: all this till the rumor finally sat down with Sheriff
Speaker 1: Johnson and told her tale of murder. Not long after,
Speaker 1: of course, Tiller's cousin Rubens, admitted his written statement backing
Speaker 1: her story up. This was finally enough for the grand
Speaker 1: jury to indict, and they did Esther, Greenway, White, and
Speaker 1: Younger were all indicted for murder. Another local named Alex
Speaker 1: Folks was also indicted, even though Tiller had not mentioned
Speaker 1: him originally in her story. Apparently he was accused because
Speaker 1: he was known to be the ringleader of this little gang,
Speaker 1: so of course he must have been involved, right, There's
Speaker 1: no way he took the night off, no, of course not.
Speaker 1: What else was there to do is to go out
Speaker 1: and with your fellow night riders and have a little fun,
Speaker 1: right sure? Yeah, But it turns out also that Alex
Speaker 1: Folks and a few of his friends had beaten Bertha Burns,
Speaker 1: his husband a few months prior to this for unknown reason.
Speaker 1: These guys were essentially kind of self designated Mora land
Speaker 1: forces in the area. Yeah, I was gonna ask what
Speaker 1: their what their affiliation? Where were they just highway bandits?
Speaker 1: Were they in the clan? What was their deal? They
Speaker 1: were not in the clan as far as I know.
Speaker 1: They were just kind of vigilantes and moral enforcers. And
Speaker 1: so somebody had strayed, somebody had committed the after, you know,
Speaker 1: some transgression, they would go administer a little, a little
Speaker 1: frontier justice apparently, well that's short, of course, a lynching,
Speaker 1: except you know, I mean, Connie as far as I know,
Speaker 1: is the only person that they ever killed. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, apparently somebody had transgressed, especially if they transgressed
Speaker 1: against them personally. I'm gonna have more questions about that
Speaker 1: later on. Yeah, sure, keep going. Yeah, but but this
Speaker 1: this leads to a question about Birtha Burns and her
Speaker 1: role in all this. Was she was she just an
Speaker 1: armchair detective or was she sort of spirit heading out
Speaker 1: a way to get back at these people for attacking
Speaker 1: her husband and beating him and what the very least,
Speaker 1: she's got a conflict of interest a little bit, I
Speaker 1: would say, there's a reason to wonder exactly about her
Speaker 1: objective objectivity in this whole thing. So it's also worth
Speaker 1: mentioning that the day after Connie's murder or disappearance, our
Speaker 1: four vigilantes rated the cabin that Tiller Ruminer and her
Speaker 1: family lived in. They accused Charlie Ruminer Tiller's father, a theft.
Speaker 1: Though I can't tell you what she's what he stole,
Speaker 1: I don't know what didn't. They administered beatings for the
Speaker 1: entire family from that nice guys, right, can you imagine
Speaker 1: being a kid, like like you're like eating your your
Speaker 1: cheerios and someone comes to be like your dad stole
Speaker 1: from me? Like, kid, what did I do? I mean?
Speaker 1: These are it should be pointed out to mean, this
Speaker 1: is it's hard to sort out truths from rumor from
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, this whole story, yeah's a strange story.
Speaker 1: So they beat the whole family, and after that they
Speaker 1: took Tiller's brother Hoy with them to work on one
Speaker 1: of their farms as reparations for Charlie's crime whatever that was.
Speaker 1: So it must have been a crime against them, like
Speaker 1: we know that much. Yeah, he stole something from one
Speaker 1: of them, apparently, you know. So. Tiller would later say
Speaker 1: that they took Hoit as a hostage to keep her
Speaker 1: silent about the murder. I guess that's sort of halfway
Speaker 1: makes sense. I mean, you know, it was just your
Speaker 1: day after that whole thing. Maybe they thought, you know,
Speaker 1: that threats were not quite enough. Let's go, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: as kind of an insurance, Paul, And that makes sense.
Speaker 1: This kind of makes sense. Now, Remember all of this
Speaker 1: happened before there are any serious accusations of murder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this happened that this would have happened in mid March. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's let's lash forward to the trial of Greenway, Hester, White,
Speaker 1: Younger and folks. It was all set for December nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine, and local anger towards the accused was running high,
Speaker 1: so they were being kept in jail cells outside the
Speaker 1: county for their own production. Evidence for the prosecution was
Speaker 1: this too. Witnesses that would be Tiller and her cousin.
Speaker 1: The ear witness testimony of Bertha Burns regarding the scream,
Speaker 1: a bloody hat and what was left of the body,
Speaker 1: which was some charred bones and teeth, and of course
Speaker 1: the fact that Connie Franklin was gone, which seemed to
Speaker 1: kind of point towards some sort of foul play. Right.
Speaker 1: The five defendants, however, had been saying since their arrest
Speaker 1: that no murder had taken place. Connie was not dead.
Speaker 1: They said, well, in that case, then where was he
Speaker 1: was the obvious question? Nobody knew this, but the case
Speaker 1: by this time and received statewide publicty. So Connie was alive.
Speaker 1: You would think he would have heard about this and
Speaker 1: come forward, right, So you know, the prosecution did appear
Speaker 1: to have some sort of a case, then, I mean,
Speaker 1: well it would would it be beyond in your opinion,
Speaker 1: would it be on the pale that Connie could have
Speaker 1: left the state, it went someplace else to work or
Speaker 1: do whatever. Sure not, it's not beyond the relic possibility.
Speaker 1: So that the prosecution seems to think they had some
Speaker 1: sort of circumstantial case. An attacked body probably would have helped, right,
Speaker 1: But still that's was growing in some quarters as to
Speaker 1: whether there really had even been a murder. Yeah, the trout,
Speaker 1: but well, the trial was hold on. So actually I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you this when you when you sent
Speaker 1: me the research material. Yeah, unless Bertha was lying, someone
Speaker 1: got murdered, someone got burned on her property, right, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: or in the woods near her home that was her
Speaker 1: property or not. It appeared it appeared from the ashes,
Speaker 1: the bonus of teeth and everything, that somebody had been murdered. Right.
Speaker 1: This is not for forensick, yeah, you know, like we
Speaker 1: have today. They didn't probably even have blood typing, especially
Speaker 1: if a body has been thoroughly burned. But I would
Speaker 1: think that them, being a farming community, could tell when
Speaker 1: you're looking at human teeth versus a deer or something,
Speaker 1: right like, well, you know, and they sent that, you know,
Speaker 1: they wanted to be all official about it. They actually
Speaker 1: gathered all the evidence up and sent it to the
Speaker 1: state crime lab to be examined. So somebody is dead.
Speaker 1: We just don't know if it's it appeared that somebody
Speaker 1: was dead, but it did appear to be that then,
Speaker 1: and of course, uh, the some more evidence about this
Speaker 1: comes out a little bit later about the body. But
Speaker 1: this is now beginning of December, early December, the trial
Speaker 1: is about to begin. Uh, And that is when the
Speaker 1: ghost of Connie Franklin appeared. I know who said it
Speaker 1: was a ghost story. I know, hey, but I know
Speaker 1: Attenion atension mounts. But before we go any further, time
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Speaker 1: So the five men were about to be tried for
Speaker 1: the murder of Connie Francis, but then said Connie Francis,
Speaker 1: Connie Franklin, I might leave that in. Yeah, Connie Francis
Speaker 1: a singer, Yeah, good singer. Okay, So the five men
Speaker 1: were about to be tried for the murder of Connie Franklin,
Speaker 1: but then one Elmer Wingo from the nearby town of Moralton,
Speaker 1: says Connie Franklin passed through there looking for work a
Speaker 1: week or so after the alleged murder was supposed to
Speaker 1: have allegedly taken place. Elmer Wingdo was a farmer and
Speaker 1: Connie Franklin had worked on his farm a few years before,
Speaker 1: so he would know what Connie looked like, right, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Arkansas newspapers ran the story along with Connie's photo,
Speaker 1: and the families of the accused also offer rewards for
Speaker 1: anyone who could find him, and amazingly, Connie Franklin was found.
Speaker 1: It was a little money to motivate people. Uh, buttrick
Speaker 1: still works, Yeah, it does. He was working on a
Speaker 1: farm in the town of Humphrey, apparently unaware that he
Speaker 1: had been murdered. He was brought back to the county
Speaker 1: seat and delivered to the defense attorneys. They were happy,
Speaker 1: of course, as were the accused and their families, and
Speaker 1: of course the media when word got out, I mean,
Speaker 1: the media had already been drawn to town because of
Speaker 1: the depravity of the story. It's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that excites people, you know, and that it had already
Speaker 1: made the national news even before the return of Connie Franklin.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's a good story, right, I mean
Speaker 1: it was a heinous crime. I mean, people say, are
Speaker 1: on their way to get their marriage license and overtaken
Speaker 1: by batties, beatings, rapes, burnings, and it's a good story,
Speaker 1: it said. Yeah, so it was. And so the media
Speaker 1: was already kind of all over this. But then when
Speaker 1: Connie returned to town, Oh my god, then that's when
Speaker 1: things really got crazy. And apparently the town of Mountain View,
Speaker 1: which is where the county courthouse was, which is where
Speaker 1: the trial was supposed to take place, became the town
Speaker 1: became a circus. It was over with reporters and just
Speaker 1: curiosity seekers and stuff like that, you know, you know
Speaker 1: that was back in the those stays. Yeah, everybody came
Speaker 1: from far and wide because there wasn't much in the
Speaker 1: way of entertainment. There was no internet, no TV, you know,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, the national press descended like a murder
Speaker 1: of crows. And uh, it's it did shock the nation. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's really been said too that's the stereotype of
Speaker 1: the Ozark Mountain people as to pray. The leader at
Speaker 1: Morons kind of began with this story. Some people have
Speaker 1: said this, and I think there's something to that. Since
Speaker 1: Connie Franklin had, after all, risen from the dead, he
Speaker 1: was Nick's nicknamed the Arkansas Ghost in the media. Great name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Ghost story went viral, or at least, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever passed for virality in those days. Yeah. Story, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a pretty fascinating story. It would
Speaker 1: be pretty amazing if that happened today. I mean, the
Speaker 1: world's different. But yeah, just a guy turned up at
Speaker 1: his own trial, yea, his murder trial, murder trail. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So some people weren't convinced that this new Connie was
Speaker 1: the real Connie, or maybe it was his ghost. Some
Speaker 1: people thought it might have been a ghost. That would
Speaker 1: be a twist. Maybe someone had hired a ringer. Maybe
Speaker 1: the sheriff was wondering that too, So he set up
Speaker 1: a test, recruited several girls who resembled Tiller Ruminer, and
Speaker 1: he put them in a room along with Tiller herself,
Speaker 1: and then he asked Connie air quotes there to pick
Speaker 1: her out, which he did without hesitation. Okay, so maybe
Speaker 1: he'd seen a photo of hurt them may have been
Speaker 1: photos in the paper for all we know, right until her,
Speaker 1: for her part, said that this guy was not the
Speaker 1: Connie that she'd known. But Connie knew all sorts of
Speaker 1: personal things about Tiller and their relationship, and she did
Speaker 1: have an incentive to lie, because making a false police
Speaker 1: report like that is a crime. Yeah, maybe she thought
Speaker 1: if it was false, she just thought Connie was gone,
Speaker 1: he wasn't coming back, and she'd get away with it.
Speaker 1: So Connie, Connie says, do you remember these songs are
Speaker 1: saying to you? And we say outside the Creek and
Speaker 1: tell her says to him and says, okay, well, if
Speaker 1: you're kie, let's hear you sing the Lonesome Pine, which
Speaker 1: Connie did, and Connie does, and as she does a
Speaker 1: pretty creditable rendition of it. Then Tiller's dad, Charlie Ruminer, says, well, okay,
Speaker 1: let's hear you play Turkey and this raw the French harp.
Speaker 1: Connie does that too, along with some other tunes, you know,
Speaker 1: just as well as the original Connie did. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: according to the according to the papers, they seemed. They
Speaker 1: seemed a bit unsure at this point in time, although
Speaker 1: later on eventually they decided to new Connie was definitely,
Speaker 1: most definitely not the old Connie. What made them decide this,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just his looks or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's um, you know. I Well, we'll get
Speaker 1: into why it was so hard. It was so hard
Speaker 1: to figure out if this was a real Connie or not.
Speaker 1: Publican public opinion in town was pretty divided on the issue.
Speaker 1: But you know, it should be said that Connie wasn't
Speaker 1: around that long, not that many people had known him
Speaker 1: that well, right, many people saw the guy was Connie,
Speaker 1: maybe said he was, so many said he wasn't. But
Speaker 1: the problem for the sheriff and the county prosecutor is
Speaker 1: that they really couldn't find anybody who had known Connie
Speaker 1: who didn't have an interest in the case. On one
Speaker 1: side of that makes sense, Yeah, So it was a
Speaker 1: tough one for these small towns. Are Yeah, So, rather
Speaker 1: than pull the plug on the case, the prosecutors decided
Speaker 1: the best way to resolve the issue is to let
Speaker 1: the jury decide. I would to hold on that for
Speaker 1: a moment. The victim may not actually even be deceased,
Speaker 1: and they're going ahead with the murder trial. I mean
Speaker 1: that's pretty spectacular. That's insane. Do you imagine that happening today? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, I mean a defense attorney would definitely have
Speaker 1: a have a good time with this whole saying. But wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to highlight that. That's that was
Speaker 1: really for me when I was reading the material you
Speaker 1: sent at first, I was like, that is crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy case. Right. So the trial gets underway beginning
Speaker 1: on December sevente and sitting at the prosecutor's table was
Speaker 1: Hugh Williams in the County d A. The attorney for
Speaker 1: the defense was Ben Williamson. He was brother. As you
Speaker 1: can imagine, the national press one nuts over that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one more reason to make fun of these silly os
Speaker 1: ark people, man, yeah, yeah, along with the general strainess
Speaker 1: of a murder trial where the victim is like walking
Speaker 1: around right now. The first day at the trial, Tiller
Speaker 1: gave some pretty dramatic testimony. She recounted how white younger
Speaker 1: Greenway and Hester ambushed them and beat Connie unconscious. They
Speaker 1: then mutilated his body, and no details for that are available,
Speaker 1: they built a large fire around him and put him
Speaker 1: on the fire, even though he was still alive. She said,
Speaker 1: the body rolled off the fire, so the murderers had
Speaker 1: to rebuild it and put the body back on, and
Speaker 1: when it was done, the unburned parts of Connie were
Speaker 1: put in a bag and tossed into the river where Connie.
Speaker 1: Prosecution placed the charred bones and teeth into evidence, but
Speaker 1: their case took a bit of a hit when the
Speaker 1: state health officer testified in a cross examination that the
Speaker 1: bone fragments were too incomplete to be able to determine
Speaker 1: whether the bones were even human, much less Connie Franklin's.
Speaker 1: The record is not totally clear on this, but apparently
Speaker 1: there had been Originally in the romains there was a
Speaker 1: chart of what appeared to be human skull, and that
Speaker 1: piece of evidence had particularly apparently gone missing by the
Speaker 1: time of the trial. So without that shard of skull,
Speaker 1: essentially there was no proof that these bones were even human. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what about the teeth. Human teeth are pretty easy
Speaker 1: to identify. Competitive Yeah, Well, a dentist testify it also.
Speaker 1: He had examined the teeth and said they were actually
Speaker 1: from a dog or perhaps a sheep, wait, wait, or
Speaker 1: a sheep a dog, or maybe a sheep a dog
Speaker 1: or a sheep. Yeah. Then on day two Connie Franklin
Speaker 1: took this tent as a defense witness. This was, as
Speaker 1: far as I know, the only time in US history
Speaker 1: that somebody has testified at the trial for his own murder.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty groundbreaking legally speaking. But according to Connie's testimony,
Speaker 1: and his murderers got drunk on the night that he
Speaker 1: was allegedly murdered and headed a mountain view to obtain
Speaker 1: a marriage license, and Connie fell off his mule at
Speaker 1: some point because of course he was drunk and was
Speaker 1: injured badly enough that he probably blooded his hat for
Speaker 1: one thing, and also didn't get back to St. James
Speaker 1: Settlement that night, And that was his story. I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows. They were all drunk. Maybe they decided to
Speaker 1: go out and have a little bachelor party and uh
Speaker 1: did some improper things. You don't really know. But apparently
Speaker 1: he was expected back in town that night by Tiller.
Speaker 1: So the next day, when he did get back, Tiller
Speaker 1: told him she was postponing the wedding until the fall.
Speaker 1: He threw down an ultimatum, which was marry me now
Speaker 1: today or I'm leaving town. She said, so he left
Speaker 1: town and that was that. The prosecution argued that Connie
Speaker 1: was an impostor. This is a new car. He also
Speaker 1: asked the jury, why would Tiller have made up a
Speaker 1: story like this, that's my question, good point, which would
Speaker 1: send several innocent men to the gallops. Why would she
Speaker 1: even do that? What did she have against that? What
Speaker 1: would be the motive? Yeah? Right, So the other three
Speaker 1: witnesses said the new Connie was an impostor. Tiller, her dad, Charlie,
Speaker 1: and one Coleman Foster, who had known Connie. Coleman was
Speaker 1: also Um Taylor's cousin. They were there's a lot of
Speaker 1: cousin problem. It's a small community, and let's give the
Speaker 1: people at least that much credit. Of the people who
Speaker 1: swore that Connie was not the real Connie, none really
Speaker 1: seemed to be unrelated to the accuser. So was Connie
Speaker 1: really Connie? Well know, his real name, it turns out,
Speaker 1: was Marion Franklin Rogers, and he was about ten years
Speaker 1: older than what he had told me. He lied, he
Speaker 1: said he was a younger man. Uh, he had a wife,
Speaker 1: and kids. Right, it turned out, yeah, that was the case,
Speaker 1: and he had abandoned them. Oh, and he had done
Speaker 1: some time in a mental hospital. He had been committed
Speaker 1: in ninety six and escaped three months later. Uh, he'd
Speaker 1: been drifting around the state ever since. So this new
Speaker 1: Connie Franklin wasn't real then, right? Oh? No, Actually he
Speaker 1: was ideated as Marion Rogers two fingerprints and dental records,
Speaker 1: he was indeed Marion Rogers, but he said he had
Speaker 1: been traveling around since his escape from the mental institution
Speaker 1: under an alias of Connie Franklin. What's kind of I
Speaker 1: guess makes sense. So he said that even though even
Speaker 1: though I lied about my name, I really truly am
Speaker 1: the Connie Franklin you guys knew previously. I was just
Speaker 1: lying to you back then about my past and about
Speaker 1: my real name. All right, And what's notable is that
Speaker 1: this is short of ground ground shaking for the case
Speaker 1: of the prosecution's case. At this time, Tiller changed her story.
Speaker 1: She said that she had witnessed a beating, but now
Speaker 1: admitted that she hadn't actually seen a murder or seeing
Speaker 1: Connie's body being burned. So that's kind of tough for
Speaker 1: the prosecution to one. Yeah, the accuse said that Tiller
Speaker 1: accused them of rape and murder as payback for the
Speaker 1: raid on her family. Makes sense. Yeah, Actually, it could
Speaker 1: be argued that the entire story of Connie Connie's murder
Speaker 1: was the fruit of a conspiracy, and that conspiracy was
Speaker 1: just another chapter in a long running feud. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: orchestrated by perhaps birth of Burns, or at least she
Speaker 1: seemed to have had some role in this. Maybe the Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe the rum and her family and Bertha got together
Speaker 1: decided they could pull this off. It's hard to say.
Speaker 1: It's been said the story had roots in a local
Speaker 1: moonshine war between the s clan on one side and
Speaker 1: the Youngers and Greenaways on the other side. Can feels
Speaker 1: that way, I mean not. Yeah, really, there's a big,
Speaker 1: old back story here that we never heard about. Right.
Speaker 1: It does feel like we're witness like this whole trial
Speaker 1: is the tip of a big iceberg, and that there's
Speaker 1: probably going to be more in here we don't even
Speaker 1: know about. Yeah, So, presented with these weird and conflicting stories,
Speaker 1: probably the same thoughts that we're having right now, the
Speaker 1: jury they couldn't decide they were. The judge, the Honorable
Speaker 1: Marcus Bone, great name as a great name for a judge,
Speaker 1: informed them that the county had already spent it on
Speaker 1: godly amount of money on this case, and they God will,
Speaker 1: God willed damned come to a verdict one way or
Speaker 1: the other. So they voted for acquittal. Yeah, probably not
Speaker 1: a bad choice, it does. That's probably what i'd vote.
Speaker 1: Although Hester and Greenaway were held over for trial on
Speaker 1: charges of rape, but those charges were dropping her later.
Speaker 1: I wonder why. It doesn't sound like it was a
Speaker 1: very incredible no, no, incredible. Unfortunately, the mystory lives on, though.
Speaker 1: I hear that the story of the Arkansas Ghost is
Speaker 1: still the big topic of debate in Stone County, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Everybody involved is long dead, of course, so we'll never
Speaker 1: know for sure what actually happened. Was there actually a murder,
Speaker 1: It's hard to say, but I suspect that there was not.
Speaker 1: That's the prosecution said. Of course, it's hard to believe
Speaker 1: that Tiller Ruiner would make up such a heinous story.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, people do make false accusations
Speaker 1: from time to time, and certainly the fact that she
Speaker 1: changed her story mid trial is sufficient reason to question
Speaker 1: all of it. Yeah, and I also have to say
Speaker 1: that depravity of the crime is she describes, it makes
Speaker 1: it a little hard to believe. I mean, the guys
Speaker 1: that these guys were, they were vigilantes, they were jerks,
Speaker 1: they were violent to a certain extent, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound to me like they ever committed anything more heinous
Speaker 1: than basically a kind of a beating. You know, that's
Speaker 1: actually the The exact thought that I had was that
Speaker 1: if you're gonna kill a man, rape his fiancee, and
Speaker 1: burn him to death still alive, it's probably not like
Speaker 1: your first rodeo. Yeah, probably not. That's not where you're
Speaker 1: starting now, that's where you build up to over time. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so it was Marion Rogers, the original Connie Franklin. Again,
Speaker 1: this is hard to say. I mean, Franklin was not
Speaker 1: in St. James long enough for very many people who
Speaker 1: get to know him. As I mentioned before, everybody involved
Speaker 1: had some bias. Lots of people said he wasn't the
Speaker 1: same guy. A lot said he uh said that. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he was a lot of people that said
Speaker 1: he wasn't the same man really seemed to dislike the
Speaker 1: accused men and so yeah, confusion reigns. My conclusion is
Speaker 1: that Marion Rodgers was probably the original Connie Franklin who
Speaker 1: showed up in the early nine but I wouldn't bet
Speaker 1: my life on it. I think it probably was, But
Speaker 1: I think so it might actually be the case that
Speaker 1: Franklin was brutally actually brutally murdered in March nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Marion Rogers was an impostor. Uh. And maybe Tiller changed
Speaker 1: her story mid trial because friends of the accused somehow
Speaker 1: got to her put the fear of God into her,
Speaker 1: or maybe not, I don't know. I think part of
Speaker 1: what this hangs on is that the bone pile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if those really were dog or sheep bone,
Speaker 1: I guess because those are easy to confuse, then um,
Speaker 1: you know that I would be inclined to go your
Speaker 1: way if those bones had turned out to be human,
Speaker 1: which an expert even then could have told you, even
Speaker 1: though I mean this is Arkansas, the twenties, the experts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if they had that, or even if you know
Speaker 1: they're around somewhere today, which are probably not, then um
Speaker 1: I I would and they turned out to be human,
Speaker 1: I would be inclined to say, somebody got killed that night,
Speaker 1: and that person was likely whoever Connie Franklin was, whether
Speaker 1: that was his real name with that was an assumed name.
Speaker 1: That again, yeah, then again, and again, you gotta like
Speaker 1: looking at the whole thing. I mean, um, Bertha Burns
Speaker 1: had a grudge against these accuseman who would beat in
Speaker 1: her husband the room and her family had a grudge.
Speaker 1: And she's you know, she was the one who led
Speaker 1: law enforcement to this pile of bones and ashes and
Speaker 1: teeth and stuff. And so maybe she just thought, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, forensic science isn't what's going to
Speaker 1: be in fifty sixty years, ha ha. Because but and
Speaker 1: so I'll just I'll just throw a bunch of sheep
Speaker 1: and dog bones into a pile of Burnham, crunch him
Speaker 1: up so that they're just unrecognizable, and and and lie
Speaker 1: to the police. Maybe she maybe that's what she did.
Speaker 1: That's I find that as easy to believe, if not
Speaker 1: easier to believe. The only problem I have with that
Speaker 1: is that conspiracies are hard to maintain. That I mean,
Speaker 1: we've seen that in the research we've done. You can
Speaker 1: listen to other podcasts, read books about it. This requires
Speaker 1: a lot of co conspirators. Right, so you've got birth
Speaker 1: and her husband, you got the room and her family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what if it was entirely orchestrated by Bertha. She
Speaker 1: just manipulated the other people around her. And once she
Speaker 1: once she talked Tiller into into basically telling this story.
Speaker 1: She kind of had her on the hook because Tyler
Speaker 1: couldn't go back on it. She that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: like she'd be in there. Well, it's not pretty. It's
Speaker 1: report false reporting of a crime or yeah, harsh penalty.
Speaker 1: It should really, I mean something something like this. You
Speaker 1: waste not only time and money. Judge bones that it
Speaker 1: cost him a lot of money. It did. Apparently it
Speaker 1: broke they broke the county's budget that year. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, throw one more theory at it, you though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why we're talking. What if those were human bones
Speaker 1: in there, but they weren't. Whoever Connie Franklin, yeah, slash
Speaker 1: Marion Rogers was would have Bertha killed somebody and this
Speaker 1: was her plan to cover it up. That's a good
Speaker 1: possibility to you know, there's there's a lot of kinds
Speaker 1: of reasons to burn a body. I mean, some people
Speaker 1: not everybody buries their bodies. Maybe somebody thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I will burn them, like burn him like our ancient
Speaker 1: ancestors did. Maybe this person died of something, something infectious,
Speaker 1: and they just thought, okay, let's burn the botty. Now
Speaker 1: it's true, and then also you get you know, I
Speaker 1: just this is just popping in my head. But you
Speaker 1: know this is during prohibition. Yeah, if moonshiners were out
Speaker 1: there moonshine and one of them died for one reason
Speaker 1: or the other, yea, the last thing you want to
Speaker 1: do is all the corner. Yeah that's possibility. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's uh, yeah, there's not. This is back, not even
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, but in all kinds of places around America.
Speaker 1: Thinks that there wasn't so much paperwork when somebody died
Speaker 1: as there is today. Nope. So there's a rumor that
Speaker 1: Judge Marcus Bone again, because of all this negative publicity,
Speaker 1: ordered all of the records from the trial destroyed. Yea,
Speaker 1: I know, I love it, except for the ones that
Speaker 1: he was legally obligated to keep. That's why there are
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about the Arkansas ghost is it.
Speaker 1: You can't just pull up these you can't just go
Speaker 1: look off these things because yeah, and also you know,
Speaker 1: even if he didn't do that, things have a way
Speaker 1: of disappearing. Um, you know, I was there was another
Speaker 1: case I was researching where there was some stuff that
Speaker 1: had just been swiped out of the out of the
Speaker 1: county records. Well there's that, and there's you know, like
Speaker 1: there's a podcast that I follow and they're trying to
Speaker 1: get old court records from you know, just from the nineties.
Speaker 1: But they're they've been stored in properly, they're covered in
Speaker 1: mildew and you know this is only from the you know,
Speaker 1: from nineteen right, So if you've stored them in properly
Speaker 1: in a place where water is leaking, where there's mold
Speaker 1: and mildew, and you play that out over eighty ninety years,
Speaker 1: well then they're gone. They're dissolved altogether. And it actually
Speaker 1: really is a problem in our country how we have
Speaker 1: all of these civil and legal records that are just
Speaker 1: not properly being stored and are decaying, making it harder
Speaker 1: to know about the older cases and filings. The plus
Speaker 1: side though, is that you know, if you if you
Speaker 1: were convicted of a crime yourself, then hey, maybe the
Speaker 1: record is sort of just naturally being Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: love to hear like a ninety year old convicts feelings
Speaker 1: on that, but I don't know any Well, back to
Speaker 1: our story, or speaking speaking of Marion Rogers, what happened
Speaker 1: to him? Yeah, well, after the trial he left town
Speaker 1: again resumed his itinerant lifestyle. In nineteen thirty two, though
Speaker 1: he was found the line by the side of a road,
Speaker 1: half dead, and he died two days later of appendicitis
Speaker 1: and exposure. Till a Ruminer went on to get married,
Speaker 1: had some kids, and beyond that she just sort of
Speaker 1: dropped back into obscurity and I know no more of
Speaker 1: what happened to her. So Also the tiny hamlet of
Speaker 1: Red Stripe, Oh yeah, awesome name. That's a great name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where the murder supposedly took place, or nearby anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the road to it or outside. It's still there,
Speaker 1: but after the trial they changed her name to Pleasant
Speaker 1: Grove because of all the negative publicity. Nice, I like again,
Speaker 1: and you can find it's still there just typing pleasant Grove, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it pops right up. Oh yeah, actually I did
Speaker 1: that and I found it actually super far from more.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine grow really she's from that area.
Speaker 1: Governor of Arkansas publicly now suppressed for their behavior and
Speaker 1: said that they had made the citizens of North Arkansas
Speaker 1: had to be hayses and idiots. As I said earlier,
Speaker 1: the story really does appear to have had a cultural
Speaker 1: impact and cementing the image of rural America's backward and
Speaker 1: ignorant in the minds of city as well as with
Speaker 1: a special place reserved for the Hillbills of the Ozark
Speaker 1: who really were described in the national papers as depraved,
Speaker 1: your literate morons. Uh, there is a There was a
Speaker 1: guy named Brooks Blevin's he u is or was at
Speaker 1: least a professor at University of Missouri or no, excuse me,
Speaker 1: Missouri State University. He wrote a book about this case
Speaker 1: called Ghosts of the Ozarks, and I read an article
Speaker 1: that he wrote about this as well. I wanted to
Speaker 1: quote when this real quick like um talks about the
Speaker 1: writing of one Kansas city journalists who went in went
Speaker 1: in town and basically sent out reports that were picked
Speaker 1: up by papers all across the nation. November is a
Speaker 1: quote now from Brooks Blevins On November nine, the Journal
Speaker 1: Post banner headlines set the tone for the weeks to follow.
Speaker 1: Quote Ozark murder reveals system of p NH barons said
Speaker 1: to be back of brutal crime unquote. Secret went on
Speaker 1: to spin a tale of feudal oppression and privilege and
Speaker 1: is in an Ozark land of illiteracy and violence places
Speaker 1: inhabitants quote knowledge of Christmas is almost as limited as
Speaker 1: their idea of what Thanksgiving is intended to convey unquote.
Speaker 1: Vote and in isolated hamlet called Saint James, the caball
Speaker 1: of baronial families ruled with quote the hickory stick and
Speaker 1: the squirrel rifle unquote. That's just that's just a pretty
Speaker 1: um um hate. His charges against the entire community, the
Speaker 1: entire county, of the entire state. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: and this was picked up again and reprinted in papers
Speaker 1: all around America. I mean, that's one way to frame it.
Speaker 1: But I think you know, you're, you're you're laying bear
Speaker 1: a pretty a pretty terrible bias. These are hard working
Speaker 1: farmers who are people, aren't that. Yeah, they're poor, and
Speaker 1: they don't have the best education, and they probably are
Speaker 1: doing some moonshining, but they're trying to get by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know, you could easily just flip that
Speaker 1: D and eight degrees talking about the same people doing
Speaker 1: the same things. Now all of a sudden, they're salt
Speaker 1: of the earth, hard working agricultural Americans. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: really is. I mean, this is like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you know. I mean, in a sense, this kind
Speaker 1: of comes down to like basic human nature, which is
Speaker 1: that we all want to have somebody that we can
Speaker 1: look down our names act exactly. It's totally true, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've all got up and so you're living in the city,
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't have the best job, you're not
Speaker 1: that rich yourself, you live in a crappy neighborhood. But
Speaker 1: there's somebody. There's somebody, you know. It was just worse
Speaker 1: than you are somebody up in the mountains playing a
Speaker 1: French harbor. Uh. Yeah, So here's a question for you.
Speaker 1: Would Deliverance have been written and what the movie Deliverance
Speaker 1: had been made? Yea, if this incident had not taken place,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, well okay, So, like like I was
Speaker 1: saying earlier, you know, what did I yeah, other than
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, what did I know about
Speaker 1: Arkansas Georgia? Actually? Yeah, so yeah, that's built. And actually Hillary,
Speaker 1: Hillary is not even a product of Arkansas from Chicago
Speaker 1: or OK, I think it was Illinois. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: she's not an Arkansas person. She didn't like Arkansas very much,
Speaker 1: apparently not. And so yeah, so so prior to Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: what is a young man? What the heck did I
Speaker 1: even know about what went on in Arkansas? I knew
Speaker 1: one thing, deliverance. Yeah, Deliverance was the one that's out
Speaker 1: of the impression of and and and so, you know,
Speaker 1: people like you and me, that's what we know about
Speaker 1: these people as deliverance. While people backing on it in
Speaker 1: the one thing they knew about these people was the
Speaker 1: Arkansas ghosts and all these to pray morons and the
Speaker 1: murder morons. It kind of has, you know, the story
Speaker 1: of like a you know, you can picture that sort
Speaker 1: of the archetype of like a country kangaroo court. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you're on trial for the murder of Connie Franklin,
Speaker 1: who said right there. It really doesn't paint them in
Speaker 1: a good light. It's it is uh yeah, it is
Speaker 1: a yeah, it's just strange all the way around. I
Speaker 1: can't blame these people for being embarrassed a little bit. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's nest to be embarrassed about that, because when you
Speaker 1: think about it, I mean, there's so many dumbass stories
Speaker 1: out there in human history, all over this, all over
Speaker 1: the world that you know they're they're not that special,
Speaker 1: you know. You know the thought I had, Joe, uh
Speaker 1: we're reading about this thing about your deliverance and Arkansas
Speaker 1: and stuff, is you know how many people are in
Speaker 1: the exact reverse thing, right, So, like you're from somewhere
Speaker 1: in Oregon, from some farming community in eastern Oregon, from Boardman,
Speaker 1: let's say, and you meet somebody from out of state,
Speaker 1: and what do they know? They know Portlandia, so they
Speaker 1: assume you're like a hipster with a handled bar mustache
Speaker 1: and a top hat. And you're like, no, like I
Speaker 1: work on a watermelon farm, or I'm you know, I
Speaker 1: work at the port or I'm I'm down there doing
Speaker 1: wheat or something, wheat and potatoes. Yeah, I know, people, well,
Speaker 1: people like you know that, you know, I'm from Portland.
Speaker 1: I live in Portland, and people assume that I'm on
Speaker 1: board with all the general you know, Portland need nous
Speaker 1: and I ride a bike and I'm a hipster. You
Speaker 1: know and all this stuff now not actually, actually I'm
Speaker 1: not not exactly the stereotypical, and neither are most people,
Speaker 1: which I mean, yeah, so one stereotypes are generally like
Speaker 1: totally inaccurate, right. But then also, a story, whether it's
Speaker 1: a true story or whether it's a you know, it's
Speaker 1: a narrative of some kind, can can paint people with
Speaker 1: a with a brush that's not always fair to them.
Speaker 1: That's not always that the story. It's not fair. And
Speaker 1: these people had and they have had since they've had
Speaker 1: very little in the way of a voice to counteract
Speaker 1: this whole thing. And there's been there's been just no
Speaker 1: end of people, you know, writing stories about them and
Speaker 1: making fun of them. And if one of these people
Speaker 1: wanted to write a book making fun of New Yorker
Speaker 1: as well, who would publish it and who would read it?
Speaker 1: So you know, it's been a one sided fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's kind of too bad, which I think is it's
Speaker 1: too bad because there could be a city with a
Speaker 1: cool name like Red Stripe. Red Stripe had to go away,
Speaker 1: and that's sad. But back in Stone County, Arkansas, the
Speaker 1: legend of the Arkansas Ghost lives on even if none
Speaker 1: of the rest of us have heard about it. Well,
Speaker 1: you've heard about it now and that's another story another week,
Speaker 1: so we will see you next time. Please stay tuned.
Speaker 1: We've got a few important facts to tell you and
Speaker 1: otherwise we'll see you next week. All right, Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: This has been Shocking Details. I'm shocked. I'm shocked. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to get ahold of us, so, you can
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