Speaker 1: This episode is the second in a two part series.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard Barbara Part one, please go back
Speaker 1: and listen. Thanks, and on with the show. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know I have a passion for dance.
Speaker 2: No, I know that.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if I could because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be giving break dancing lessons online, and I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you could put up a flyer about it at
Speaker 1: the hospital. Do you guys have like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a little staff room or something not a lover
Speaker 1: of dance, I guess from Gimblet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein
Speaker 1: and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Barbara Part two Barbara Wilson.
Speaker 1: Right after the break, Barbara's online obituary contradicted everything my
Speaker 1: mother in law, Becky, thought she knew about her old friend.
Speaker 1: So Becky tasked me with finding out the truth. In
Speaker 1: the process, I uncovered the murder Barbara committed in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, But reading through the trial transcripts, the prosecution's
Speaker 1: argument didn't make sense to Becky or to me. Why
Speaker 1: would being asked to leave the nest provoke Barbara to murder?
Speaker 1: To understand the why, I need to better understand the
Speaker 1: who who was Barbara before Becky met her in Copenhagen.
Speaker 1: So I'm heading back to the beginning when Barbara Shot
Speaker 1: was Barbara Wilson. I start where I always start when
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get to the bottom of anything in
Speaker 1: my life. YouTube. Me and a buddy, Brian are down
Speaker 1: here off of Whipper Wheel. This is Douglas and his
Speaker 1: buddy Brian. On their YouTube channel. They post videos of
Speaker 1: semitaries and other creepy locales that have fallen into ruin, and.
Speaker 3: We have located the remnants to an old house down here.
Speaker 1: What's this place called Galilean Children's Home?
Speaker 4: Galilean Children's Home.
Speaker 3: You can google it yourself.
Speaker 1: If you were to google it, you'd see that the
Speaker 1: Galilean Children's Home was an orphanage outside Corbin, Kentucky that
Speaker 1: shut down in the nineteen fifties. The orphanage is where
Speaker 1: Barbara was raised, back before she was adopted by the Shots,
Speaker 1: back when she was Barbara Wilson.
Speaker 5: Dad, Gum, here's an old boot.
Speaker 1: There's a kid's sized boot right there. Founded in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine by a self ordained mountain preacher named John Vogel,
Speaker 1: the orphanage was home to over eighty kids who considered
Speaker 1: themselves brothers and sisters and called John Vogel Daddy. When
Speaker 1: he was a boy, a house fire killed Vogel's five
Speaker 1: step siblings but spared him. He took it as a
Speaker 1: sign that he'd been chosen by God for a higher purpose.
Speaker 1: Vogel brag that the Galileean Children's Home wasn't supported by
Speaker 1: any church, state, or public endowment. He raised money through
Speaker 1: donations and by touring the kids around the country in
Speaker 1: a yellow school bus as a children's choir. Much of
Speaker 1: what I learn about Vogel in the Home comes from
Speaker 1: his autobiography, which, as my nephew THEO learned during his
Speaker 1: lessons with Becky, is a book written by the person
Speaker 1: that it's about.
Speaker 6: Right Otto means self.
Speaker 1: Vogel's autobiography, This Happened in the Hills of Kentucky, is
Speaker 1: filled with folksy anecdotes about precocious kids getting up to
Speaker 1: naughty shenanigans. I search the book for a mention of Barbara,
Speaker 1: but only find one anecdote. It's about a little Barbara
Speaker 1: who tries to convince Vogel to let her chew gum.
Speaker 1: Barbara is a quote champion chatterbox who argues that if
Speaker 1: her mouth is busy chewing gum, she won't be able
Speaker 1: to talk as much. Barbara is given no last name,
Speaker 1: but she reminds me of adult Barbara, who knew how
Speaker 1: to get what she wanted. One of the comments on
Speaker 1: Barbara's online obituary is from a fellow Galilean Children's Home resident,
Speaker 1: a man named Larry Brewster, whom I decided to phone.
Speaker 5: Mister Bruce's speaking.
Speaker 1: Oh Hello, mister Brewster.
Speaker 7: Yes, how did I guess? I'll like you to get
Speaker 7: to call the new Oh.
Speaker 1: I don't know how lucky it makes you, but I
Speaker 1: appreciate you saying that I am. Once I've hand fanned
Speaker 1: the blush from my cheeks. I explained to Larry that
Speaker 1: I'm calling about Barbara Wilson and what life was like
Speaker 1: at the Galilean Children's Home.
Speaker 7: We had as many as twenty twenty one, twenty four
Speaker 7: of us in one room.
Speaker 5: We had three months high m hmm.
Speaker 7: I was taken there at the age of two years old.
Speaker 7: I stayed there until nineteen fifty five. I brought them
Speaker 7: thirteen years one long as it kids.
Speaker 1: Hah.
Speaker 5: I thought that's where everybody lived, had no, No, my house.
Speaker 7: Wants me to tell you that we had Christmas dinner
Speaker 7: with Colonel Sanders five years in a row.
Speaker 1: Does Larry mean that Colonel Sanders? I wonder, But then
Speaker 1: I take stock of my Yankee bias. Can one not
Speaker 1: earn the rank of colonel in the great state of
Speaker 1: Kentucky without being mistaken for a white van Dyke chicken
Speaker 1: frying string tie tying fast food mascot. But Larry assures
Speaker 1: me that indeed he is talking about that colonel. It seems.
Speaker 1: Colonel Harlan David Sanders was a patron of the Galilee
Speaker 1: and Children's Home, and according to his memoir, life as
Speaker 1: I have known it has been finger licking good. The
Speaker 1: colonel had many failed careers insurance salesman, army mule tender,
Speaker 1: ferryboat entrepreneur, and, perhaps most alarming of all, amateur obstetrician.
Speaker 1: But then, at the age of sixty five, the colonel
Speaker 1: opened his first KFC, and where he'd failed at birthing children,
Speaker 1: the Colonel excelled at birthing chickens. His very first restaurant
Speaker 1: was located in Corbin, near the Orphanage. So you guys
Speaker 1: had fried chicken for Christmas time.
Speaker 7: Chicken everything, apple pie and ice cream on the cob,
Speaker 7: biscuits and gravy.
Speaker 5: We had it all. He spoiled. He said he wanted
Speaker 5: to be our grandpa.
Speaker 7: Did you know it won't be legal, but I will
Speaker 7: be your grandpa.
Speaker 1: Larry speaks warmly of his time at the home. He
Speaker 1: says he attended class in a little schoolhouse, sang in
Speaker 1: the choir, and performed farm chores like milking goats and cows.
Speaker 1: When I asked him about Barbara, though he doesn't remember much.
Speaker 1: The boys and girls were kept pretty separate.
Speaker 7: The one time we saw the girls are at school
Speaker 7: because the miss Halls were separated. Girls had their own
Speaker 7: Miss Hall and the boys had their own Miss Hall.
Speaker 1: John Vogel was pretty strict about segregating the boys and girls,
Speaker 1: especially as they entered puberty. Was John Vogel like a
Speaker 1: like a father?
Speaker 5: Oh? He was more definitely Uh?
Speaker 7: In his mind. He wasn't for ours. It was was
Speaker 7: we call him Dad Vogul. I have no nothing but
Speaker 7: but uh.
Speaker 5: The rest of the memories. I tried to forget the
Speaker 5: bad ones. Sorry, I tried to forget the bad ones.
Speaker 1: And there there were bad ones. Well, Larry hesitates, as
Speaker 1: though what he's thinking of saying next might stir up
Speaker 1: the bad ones.
Speaker 7: They didn't have me come back once after I had
Speaker 7: left to go to court for Dad Vogel.
Speaker 5: I had to go to court for some reason, and
Speaker 5: I went to court. I gave him a.
Speaker 7: Testimony, and I don't know if it helped the director,
Speaker 7: if it hurt it did he did ask me to
Speaker 7: come back anymore.
Speaker 1: Huh, what what what do you remember about the court case?
Speaker 5: No? I really don't know much about it.
Speaker 1: What court case is Larry talking about? When I get
Speaker 1: off the phone, I look into it, and the records
Speaker 1: I discover reveal a much darker portrait of the place
Speaker 1: Barbara was raised than that of Larry's memory. And just
Speaker 1: a quick warning, the details I'm about to share deal
Speaker 1: with child sexual abuse and other sensitive subject matter. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, sixteen years after opening the home, John
Speaker 1: Vogel was indicted for rape. A headline from the Lexington
Speaker 1: Herald reads, Daddy John Vogel was a serpent in a
Speaker 1: hilly garden of Eden. Two sisters who had grown up
Speaker 1: at the home accused Vogel of raping them. The abuse
Speaker 1: began in their early teens and lasted years. Vogel threatened
Speaker 1: to send them to jail if they ever told anyone.
Speaker 1: Whennita was twenty when she finally came forward Ruby nineteen.
Speaker 1: Ruby's case went to court first, and parenthetically it was
Speaker 1: Colonel Sanders who posted Vogel's bail. A hung jury led
Speaker 1: to a mistrial, and at the retrial, Vogel was found innocent.
Speaker 1: As for Weanita, fearing a trial would cause her public embarrassment,
Speaker 1: she eventually withdrew the charges, but she always maintained that
Speaker 1: her accusations against Vogel were true. John Vogel wasn't the
Speaker 1: only person to publish a memoir about life at the
Speaker 1: Galilean home.
Speaker 6: Memoir comes from a French word meaning memory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sort of sounds like memory, yes, Now a
Speaker 1: memoir is the self anointed. Love and Terror in my
Speaker 1: Father's House is written by John Vogel's only biological child,
Speaker 1: Leonor Duprie. Lenore is now eighty seven years old and
Speaker 1: lives in a Senior Residence hotel in Michigan, where she
Speaker 1: talks to me over the phone about her father.
Speaker 2: He could charm the bands off the people, you know,
Speaker 2: and everybody thought he was a real wonderful person, but
Speaker 2: behind the scenes he was pretty much of a dirty dealer.
Speaker 3: How do you mean, Well, if she got all.
Speaker 2: Involved with these girls because he didn't want them ever
Speaker 2: to go away, so he started missing around with them
Speaker 2: so they would feel obligated to him. Oh, you know,
Speaker 2: then everything just kind of got in the wrong pocket.
Speaker 2: You know, people have can try to make you do
Speaker 2: things for God, and it's not really for God. It's
Speaker 2: for them, and they hold the power of you that way.
Speaker 1: In her book, Lenor describes her father calling her into
Speaker 1: his study after a fight they'd had. All the other
Speaker 1: girls seems so committed to me, Fogel says, why are
Speaker 1: you so slow to commit yourself to God? He reached
Speaker 1: up and put his hand on my breast, then pulled
Speaker 1: me down and kissed me on the mouth. I shuddered. Later,
Speaker 1: Lenor writes that she told one of the other girls
Speaker 1: about what had happened. The girl just shrugged. He does
Speaker 1: things like that all the time, the girl told Leonor.
Speaker 1: I explained to Lenora the reason for my call about
Speaker 1: my mother in law, Becky, about Copenhagen, about a girl
Speaker 1: who grew up at the home named Barbara Wilson.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, I do remember Barbara. Yeah, she was
Speaker 2: a real cute little kid. She was sort of dark
Speaker 2: haired and quite pretty, and she got along real well
Speaker 2: with the other kids. She actually was adopted by somebody
Speaker 2: after she left there, and she got in a lot
Speaker 2: of trouble or something.
Speaker 1: I explained to Leonora that, in fact, it's that trouble
Speaker 1: that I'm phoning about. Is there anything from Barbara's past
Speaker 1: that might help explain why she later did the thing
Speaker 1: she did? Lenora volunteers the details she remembers, including how
Speaker 1: Barbara came to live at the home.
Speaker 2: Their background was kind of cool. I think that the
Speaker 2: mother was slightly feeble minded and had a terrible palsy.
Speaker 3: A palsy a nervous disorder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was shaking so hard all the time.
Speaker 2: She couldn't take care of her children.
Speaker 1: Barbara wasn't the only Wilson and left at the orphanage.
Speaker 1: An older brother, Earl, had been brought there too. Growing up,
Speaker 1: though Barbara and Earl barely knew each other, since Vogel
Speaker 1: kept the boys and girls segregated. When I ask Leonora
Speaker 1: if she thinks John Vogel might have prayed on Barbara.
Speaker 1: She says she doesn't think so that it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: fit his mo O. Vogel was mostly focused on the
Speaker 1: older girls. Barbara was only a couple of months old
Speaker 1: when she arrived at the orphanage.
Speaker 2: She was taken special care of by one of our teachers,
Speaker 2: Miriam Jones, just almost adopted her as her private child.
Speaker 1: Was it was it typical like were there other teachers
Speaker 1: who kind of adopted informally adopted students there?
Speaker 2: Or was that? Oh? Miriam Jones fell in love with
Speaker 2: Barbara and she raised her in her You know, the
Speaker 2: workers had these separate rooms, and she kept Barbara in
Speaker 2: there with her and took care of her, and really
Speaker 2: it was wonderful to her.
Speaker 1: Leonor depicts the Galileean Children's Home as a dogg eat
Speaker 1: dog war. There were the favorites, and there were the
Speaker 1: semi favorites, Lenor tells me, and then they were the
Speaker 1: lost and forgotten. You needed someone looking out for you
Speaker 1: to survive. Listening to Leonore, a pattern emerges. Miss Jones
Speaker 1: at the galilee In Children's Home, the warden Miss Wheeler
Speaker 1: at the Marysville Prison. Throughout her life, Barbara procured benefactors.
Speaker 1: One of the first things Becky told me about Barbara
Speaker 1: was that she knew how to get what she wanted.
Speaker 1: But what Becky thought was a function of growing up
Speaker 1: rich and spoiled was actually just the opposite. Barbara learned
Speaker 1: to manipulate in order to survive, and it might have
Speaker 1: all begun at the galilee In Children's home, but when the.
Speaker 2: Home all broke open, she kind of, like everybody else,
Speaker 2: got scattered to the winds.
Speaker 1: Though John Vogel was acquitted of the rape charges, he
Speaker 1: lost his license to operate the orphanage, so he went
Speaker 1: to Florida, where he tried reopening with the remaining children
Speaker 1: from the Galilean Home. Among them Barbara.
Speaker 2: She was one of the kids that was left because
Speaker 2: so many people came and took their children, and Welsare
Speaker 2: came and took some of them. But if she went
Speaker 2: to Florida, this means she was one of the core
Speaker 2: group left that nobody claimed.
Speaker 1: And so unclaimed. At the age of nine, Barbara moved
Speaker 1: three states away with an accused rapist. With his reputation
Speaker 1: in ruins, Fogel wasn't able to get the orphanage in
Speaker 1: Florida off the ground, and when it finally fell apart completely.
Speaker 1: That was when Barbara's life became even less stable. She
Speaker 1: bounced around in the Florida foster care system, and at
Speaker 1: the age of thirteen, was brought back to Kentucky, where
Speaker 1: she moved every few months between distant relatives, some so
Speaker 1: poor their homes were without running water. In her junior
Speaker 1: year of high school, at the suggestion of her benefactor
Speaker 1: from the children's Home, Miriam Jones, Barbara enrolled in a
Speaker 1: high school run by a nearby college called Berea, and
Speaker 1: it was at Berea that she met the family that
Speaker 1: would finally adopt her, the Shots. In a long interview
Speaker 1: Barbara gave to the Papers after her arrest, she recounts
Speaker 1: the day she originally met Jane Shot. Jane was a
Speaker 1: doctor at the Berea infirmary, but Barbara says she didn't
Speaker 1: meet her as a patient. Instead, she went to the
Speaker 1: infirmary that day to see the doctor that everyone said
Speaker 1: was Barbara's doppelganger. All the kids on campus told me
Speaker 1: that she and I looked so much alike it was uncanny.
Speaker 1: Barbara is quoted as saying, and sure enough, we did,
Speaker 1: and it's true. In a photograph, taken around the time.
Speaker 1: Barbara and Jane stand side by side. They're both petite,
Speaker 1: with small noses and tight lip smiles. They both have
Speaker 1: dark hair the same short, boyish cuts. Barbara got close
Speaker 1: with Jane and her husband, Charles, a dean at BREA.
Speaker 1: Charles tutored Barbara in math, and Barbara babysat their two
Speaker 1: younger biological children. When the family moved from Kentucky to
Speaker 1: Ohio before Barbara's senior year, they adopted her and took
Speaker 1: her with them. Something still doesn't make sense to me, though.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to befriend a young high school student,
Speaker 1: but another to adopt her, especially at seventeen, one year
Speaker 1: away from legal adulthood.
Speaker 3: He had a wife that was much younger than he was.
Speaker 5: Other than that, I don't remember a single thing.
Speaker 1: Charles was a beloved figure at Berea College. The class
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty nine even dedicated their yearbook to him.
Speaker 1: But when I reach out to alumni who might have
Speaker 1: insight into the adoption, I don't find much.
Speaker 2: I don't really think that I have anything to contribute.
Speaker 2: He was a kind man.
Speaker 7: I have absolutely no memories, no contact.
Speaker 1: I make a request to Barea for Charles's papers, his
Speaker 1: personal notes and correspondence, which they keep in their collection,
Speaker 1: anything that might offer information about the family, And I
Speaker 1: find something among the documents is the transcript of a
Speaker 1: tribute Charles was honored with after his death. In it,
Speaker 1: there's a section dedicated to honoring Charles Shutt the family Man.
Speaker 1: But as I read further, I slowly realized that the
Speaker 1: family under discussion is not the family he had with Jane.
Speaker 1: It turns out before Charles was married to Jane, he
Speaker 1: was married to a woman named Elva Weidler, with whom
Speaker 1: he had two children. In the tribute, neither Jane nor
Speaker 1: Barbara are so much as mentioned. They're missing from the
Speaker 1: story of Charles's life. Just like in Barbara's obituary, anything
Speaker 1: in anyone remotely related to the tragedy has been completely erased.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you really picked a story.
Speaker 1: This is Charles's granddaughter from that first family. Something new
Speaker 1: to tell me about Barbara after the break.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you really picked a story.
Speaker 1: Charles's granddaughter asked me not to use her real name,
Speaker 1: so we decided to call her Nancy. It seems I
Speaker 1: phoned her in the middle of her daily exercise.
Speaker 3: I've been walking because I can't get my steps counted
Speaker 3: while I talk.
Speaker 1: Okay, what do you how many steps do you average
Speaker 1: a day?
Speaker 3: Five thousand is sedentary, so you have to have over
Speaker 3: five thousand a day. Yeah, how many do you get?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: These days, after a few of my patented hems and
Speaker 1: trademarked hawes, I reluctantly check my iPhone way below sedentary.
Speaker 1: It seems I haven't left my desk in days. Barbara's
Speaker 1: case has become all consuming. Nancy is Charles's granddaughter from
Speaker 1: his first marriage, but she grew up knowing Jane and
Speaker 1: Charles and their kids, which is to say, Nancy grew
Speaker 1: up knowing Charles's adopted daughter, Barbara.
Speaker 3: She was aunt Barbara. She was part of the family.
Speaker 3: It is kind of a surprise, obviously when someone is
Speaker 3: adopted when they're an adult, but we didn't really think
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: According to Nancy, Barbara was distraught when she learned of
Speaker 1: the move. Charles and Jane were planning from Berea to Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: which is why they adopted her.
Speaker 3: She was just begging them to take her with them,
Speaker 3: don't leave her behind, don't abandon her. And then if
Speaker 3: they left, you had no one she had no family,
Speaker 3: She had no one. Barbara was communicating to them that
Speaker 3: if they didn't adopt her, they were hurting her, they
Speaker 3: were harming her.
Speaker 1: Once the adoption was official, Nancy says Charles and Jane
Speaker 1: were very attentive to Barbara, sometimes at the expense of
Speaker 1: their other kids. She remembers family gatherings where all the
Speaker 1: energy was focused on to Barbara, what she was up to,
Speaker 1: how she was doing. Nancy remembers an extended family conversation
Speaker 1: about Barbara's trip to Copenhagen, a graduation gift from Jane
Speaker 1: and Charles. Nancy says was especially devoted to Barbara. He'd
Speaker 1: buy her anything she wanted and take her on expensive vacations.
Speaker 1: In fact, the summer after Jane's murder, while Barbara was
Speaker 1: out on bail, Charles and she went to Florida together.
Speaker 1: Throughout his life, Charles remained convinced that Barbara was innocent.
Speaker 1: He continued to visit her in prison, driving the two
Speaker 1: hours each way and always bringing little gifts.
Speaker 3: He had an emotional attachment to Barbara.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, wouldn't that have been why he I mean,
Speaker 1: did he think of her as a daughter? Nancy hesitates
Speaker 1: choosing her words carefully.
Speaker 3: They were According to one of my cousins, they were
Speaker 3: closer than you would expect a father daughter pair to
Speaker 3: be in our culture.
Speaker 1: How do you think they meant that?
Speaker 3: Well, I know what he meant. He meant that he
Speaker 3: went to a drive in movie with them, and he
Speaker 3: was in the front seat and they were in the
Speaker 3: back seat. He described them as hugging and.
Speaker 1: Kissing, like romantically like.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, that was one of the discoveries that they
Speaker 8: had some kind of romantic relationship.
Speaker 6: Charles and Barbara.
Speaker 1: Yeh yeah. For my mother in law, Becky and I,
Speaker 1: the discovery fills a gap and are understanding of Barbara's
Speaker 1: motive to commit murder?
Speaker 6: Was it to get rid of a rival? I mean,
Speaker 6: if she was in love in that way with her father,
Speaker 6: how did she feel about her mother? Did she hate
Speaker 6: her mother than her mother was in the way?
Speaker 1: Did Barbara murder Jane not just because Jane was kicking
Speaker 1: her out of the house, as the prosecution argued, but
Speaker 1: because she saw her mother as a romantic competitor, someone
Speaker 1: who was trying to break up her and Charles.
Speaker 6: In some ways, it kind of makes the story, It
Speaker 6: makes it makes more sense I mean, if you're in
Speaker 6: love with somebody and you feel like that's going to
Speaker 6: be taken away from you, that's a pretty strong motivation.
Speaker 6: You know, you can fall pretty hard when you're a
Speaker 6: twenty three year old girl.
Speaker 1: You can also be taken advantage of. I think back
Speaker 1: on the letters from Charles that Becky so envied in
Speaker 1: Copenhagen and what they might have actually contained. Charles had
Speaker 1: been fifty one years old when he married Jane, who
Speaker 1: was just twenty at the time, around the same age
Speaker 1: Barbara was when they adopted her. Was Charles using Barbara
Speaker 1: to replace Jane? Did Jane want Barbara out of the
Speaker 1: house because Jane was threatened by her? I put the
Speaker 1: theory to Charles's granddaughter Nancy.
Speaker 3: I could only speculate that Jane would be more concerned
Speaker 3: about the boundary violate about this as a boundary violation
Speaker 3: than as a threat to herself. She would not see
Speaker 3: it as healthy.
Speaker 1: Not healthy for Barbara. Correct that is, Jane wasn't threatened
Speaker 1: by Barbara, she was worried for her. She might have
Speaker 1: been more concerned with Barbara's well being.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in Barbara's mental health.
Speaker 1: There's another version of how Barbara first met Jane that
Speaker 1: day on the Berea campus, one that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with them looking alike. According to the court transcript,
Speaker 1: Barbara was brought to the campus infirmary because she'd attempted
Speaker 1: suicide by drinking ammonia, and Jane was the attending physician
Speaker 1: who received her. Jane would have known just how fragile
Speaker 1: Barbara was. Nancy believes that Jane was kicking Barbara out
Speaker 1: of the house not because she was jealous, but to
Speaker 1: protect her from Charles. All Barbara's life, she sought benefactors, protectors, mothers.
Speaker 1: It's ironic that the mother who was arguably trying to
Speaker 1: protect her from the greatest harm, the one really looking
Speaker 1: out for her well being, is the one Barbara killed.
Speaker 3: I would like to know what else your mother in
Speaker 3: law knew about Barbara. Did Barbara ever mention her by
Speaker 3: a lot her family of origin, No, because she never
Speaker 3: mentioned them to us either. The story we got was
Speaker 3: that she had no family, and it wasn't even true
Speaker 3: her obituary it describes a family.
Speaker 1: The shots aren't mentioned in Barbara's obituary, but the Wilsons are.
Speaker 1: Besides Barbara's deceased brother, Earl, the obituary names a few
Speaker 1: surviving relatives, including a niece. Patty a reach out to her,
Speaker 1: and though she doesn't want to be recorded, she agrees
Speaker 1: to talk. Patty tells me that in the last few
Speaker 1: years of Barbara's life, her extended biological family reconnected with her.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, the Wilsons knew of their distant
Speaker 1: and Barbara, who had been abandoned as a baby, and
Speaker 1: finally tracked her down for the first time in Barbara's life.
Speaker 1: She wasn't the one seeking family, family was seeking her.
Speaker 1: Patty tells me that in her later years, long after prison,
Speaker 1: Barbara moved into a retirement home. The other residents were
Speaker 1: from wealthier backgrounds, and Patty says Barbara try as she
Speaker 1: might never really passed for the fancy type like she
Speaker 1: had in Copenhagen. In Becky's eyes, Patty thinks Barbara was
Speaker 1: shunned by the other residents and that drove her to
Speaker 1: her death. It was a suicide. Patty tells me Barbara
Speaker 1: committed suicide in twenty twelve. In the end, there were
Speaker 1: no benefactors in the home to turn to, no one
Speaker 1: to offer sanctuary. In trying to understand who Barbara was.
Speaker 1: I spoke to many people who knew her from many
Speaker 1: different points in her life, her school days, her working life,
Speaker 1: her retirement. But when I talked to the kids she
Speaker 1: lived with at the Galilee in Children's home, there was
Speaker 1: a recurring refrain. No one wanted to believe that Barbara
Speaker 1: had done it, perhaps because Barbara was the one who
Speaker 1: got out, the one who graduated college, who found a
Speaker 1: nice family and made something of herself. I'm eighty four
Speaker 1: years old, said one woman from the home, who didn't
Speaker 1: want me to use her name. What happens to you
Speaker 1: as a child, you will never get over it, never ever, ever.
Speaker 1: I often wonder how many of these kids made it okay,
Speaker 1: how many of these kids didn't go to jail or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: A baby was born at the county jail and we
Speaker 2: were asked to take him. His name was Jackie.
Speaker 1: This is Leonora again, John Vogel's daughter, reading from her memoir.
Speaker 1: In it, she never mentions Barbara, but she does include
Speaker 1: a passage about a little boy named Jackie. Jackie is
Speaker 1: the pseudonym Lenor used for Earl Wilson, Barbara's older brother.
Speaker 2: His name was Jackie. The mother was a ripe victim,
Speaker 2: and the baby was tiny and sickly. It was a risk.
Speaker 2: If he had died, we would have been in for
Speaker 2: some kind of investigation. But the baby lived and no
Speaker 2: one ever inquired about him, and watched him grow and
Speaker 2: become a beautiful child. Sometimes I stare at him, wondering
Speaker 2: how such an exquisite thing could come into the world
Speaker 2: under such horrible conditions. Was it possible that each life
Speaker 2: was a fresh start, a gift channel straight from the beyond,
Speaker 2: without regard to its surroundings? Did Jackie have a chance
Speaker 2: to grow up normal? Sometimes I get a bit choked
Speaker 2: up and I can't do it on the Did Jackie
Speaker 2: have a chance to grow up normal? Did any of us?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Leonora. When my mother in law, Becky first
Speaker 1: told me Barbara's story, Copenhagen was just one more interlude
Speaker 1: in Barbara's life with privilege and good fortune. But Copenhagen
Speaker 1: might have been a special for Barbara as it was
Speaker 1: for Becky. The trip is mentioned in the court transcript.
Speaker 1: It comes up when Barbara's lawyer asked Barbara to give
Speaker 1: an account of her life. She lists a series of
Speaker 1: milestones getting into Berea, finally being adopted and the summer
Speaker 1: she spent working at the laundromat in Denmark. The first
Speaker 1: time I saw it, it surprised me. But now knowing
Speaker 1: what Barbara's life was like before the trip and after it,
Speaker 1: I think I understand.
Speaker 6: I believe that she was totally happy when she was
Speaker 6: in Denmark, and I just wonder if maybe that wasn't
Speaker 6: one of the happiest times, or certainly her last happy time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might have been.
Speaker 6: Our friendship was almost I had a purity to it,
Speaker 6: like we didn't bring our baggage to it. We enjoyed
Speaker 6: the moment with each other and that was all. It
Speaker 6: had no past and it had no future no matter
Speaker 6: what she did afterwards. We had what we had and
Speaker 6: that won't change for me.
Speaker 1: While at my in laws for dinner recently, I saw
Speaker 1: pinned to the kitchen courtboard, beside the emergency phone numbers
Speaker 1: and coupons, a photograph of Becky and Barbara. In the photo,
Speaker 1: they're in city Hall Square in Copenhagen. Becky is in
Speaker 1: jeans and a striped t shirt, carrying a tote bag.
Speaker 1: Barbara has an expensive looking leather purse and is wearing
Speaker 1: a skirt and trench coat. She looks as glamorous as
Speaker 1: she does in all the newspapers and courtroom photos, except
Speaker 1: in this photo she's smiling.
Speaker 4: Now that the fern entures riff turning to its goodwill home,
Speaker 4: now that the last month's rent is scheming with.
Speaker 1: The damage to poss take this moment.
Speaker 2: To to solve.
Speaker 5: If we ment, if we talked, we.
Speaker 4: Remember felt around for five t from things that accidentally
Speaker 4: talked to.
Speaker 1: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Stevie Lane, along
Speaker 1: with me Jonathan Goldstein, and Maheiney mcgaukerd Our. Senior producer
Speaker 1: is Khalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: Fia Bennen, Justin McGoldrick, j T. Townsend, and Jackie Cohen.
Speaker 1: Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,
Speaker 1: John K. Sampson, Sean Jacoby, Michael Hurst, and Bobby Lord.
Speaker 1: Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimltmedia
Speaker 1: dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The
Speaker 1: Weaker Bands, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimltmedia dot
Speaker 1: com we'll be back with new episodes after Thanksgiving, exclusively
Speaker 1: on Spotify