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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
you were jaunty about that hay i know i was maybe it's the eye shadow of it all it's the eye shadow You look great.
You've never looked better.
One of my daughters, while we were getting them ready for dance, decided to give me a makeover.
Yeah. Because while you're waiting, you know.
Might as well. And she grabbed a Halloween palette.
Yep. A Halloween palette that I have. And I actually kept that palette.
Haven't used it because I wanted to wait for Halloween.
and i figured they could use that palette because i'm sure they're gonna want to be something fun and fancy and you know all that fun stuff but boy did they use there is pumpkin orange glitter and glitter glitter in this palette like drag queen glitter like so glitter so glitter yeah and she said mom close your eyes and i said okay and she she did it she lipsticked you too but that She lipsticked me too, but that went away.
But the eyeshadow remains.
It might remain until the day I die because it's really embedded in there.
But I feel spooky, ooky.
You look great. You know what?
She gave me a gift. She gave you her all.
She did. They were like, what did they say?
Oh, the other one wanted to do mine.
And I was like, I already have makeup on.
And Elena goes, you can never have too much. And I was like, nope, you can.
less is more bye i want to dance so here i am here i am sitting with my fancy eyeballs okay i got it i'm sorry you feel inadequate now i don't i don't i feel safe over here you feel safe because of this disco ball you know on facebook when people are like i've been marked safe from like you're horrible safe from glitter it was i it was i wasn't marked safer my at the The bottom of my hair is so crusty.
Wow. Okay. Like dry.
What's so funny over there, Glitterhead?
That made it sound weird. The fact that you had to like clarify what you meant.
You were like dry. Dry?
Like not just crusty.
No, like these crusty crusts I got on the bottom of my hair.
For Glozella, it was her lips.
For me, it's my ends.
There you go. That speaks to someone.
I'm sorry about that, but summer's almost over, everybody, so don't worry about it.
Yay! Because spooky season is coming.
Is upon us. It's here, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, and I have a hair appointment tomorrow, so party.
Oh my God. I saw, I saw.
I was really trying to connect that.
You were like, what does that have to do with spooky season?
But it started with hair.
I was still on my hair.
I see, I see. It's called being self -centered.
Look it up. um so i guess there's no better way to go into no a case than that yeah what better way um this i have like a bummer one today obviously um and it's it's interesting i was reading like articles to try to find my next couple of cases and i saw a book pop up and i was like whoa that looks interesting and that's how i discovered the rainbow family i don't think i've ever heard of this one nor had i yeah so it all starts with a girl named nancy and from a very early age nancy santomero knew whatever she ended up doing for her career she wanted it to be something that helped people and i
think that automatically is just really fucking sweet yeah her mother jean told reporters in 2000 she had such promise such a free spirit she wanted to be a forest ranger it was the end of the 1970s and she was non -materialistic she just wanted to improve society.
Oh, Nancy. It was almost like Nancy was born a couple years too late.
In the late 70s, her love of nature and, you know, her deep feelings of empathy and compassion for others reminded most people of the hippie subculture that had recently been left behind.
Now, most people were going on to a period that was, you know, maybe a bit more self -centered and definitely a whole lot more materialistic.
But Nancy's family always encouraged her interests and respected the the kind of hippie -esque culture that she felt so close to.
That's a good family.
It is. They just supported her and loved her for who she was.
And she had a lot to offer.
Her mother later said, I didn't even worry when she was hitchhiking because her family, and her mother included, knew she had a close -knit group of girl friends and just friends in general who could very much hold their own in a potential conflict.
I love that she was like, I wasn't worried.
Like, they're boss bitches.
I'm not worried about them at all.
No, she's like, they got this.
Now, one of those girls was 26 -year -old Vicki Durian.
Vicky was known to her friends as Bright Star.
Stop it. Like, immediately, I was like, I love Vicky.
I was just going to say, like, I just want to be around these people.
Right. And so Vicky being also known as Bright Star, you can see why she and Nancy hit it off immediately.
They both had very free spirits.
They were open people, friendly people.
Vicky was born and raised in actually a very rural area, Wellman, Iowa.
It was a town where there were only about a thousand people.
Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. But like Nancy, Vicky had a strong sense of empathy and compassion.
She really liked helping people.
What a duo. I know.
After high school, she became a licensed practical nurse.
So she was also like a multifaceted Chica there.
Oh, yeah. And it seemed like a natural fit for somebody with her skills and personality.
Now, even though she had a well -established career and she was very much professionally trained, Vicky still identified, it seemed, even more so as like a a free -spirited person who wanted to get out and experience the world.
Yes. I love it. It starts off so beautifully.
Now, Vicky and Nancy's friend, Liz John -Drow, told reporters, Brightstar was a loving person.
She was real open to everybody, even if they weren't like her.
Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's like the kind of people.
That's how everybody should be.
Yeah, that's the kind of people you want to surround yourself with.
Yeah, just be open to people.
Yeah. So Liz actually had met Vicky outside of a food co -op in Tucson in the late 70s, and the two of them became really fast friends because Vicky let then -teenage Liz stay at her apartment when she had nowhere else to go.
Now, it was through Vicky that Liz eventually met Nancy, and then the three girls bonded together over their increasingly uncommon interest of the hippie lifestyle, which is crazy that, like, even at the end of the 70s, it was pretty much done.
Yeah, like that, it changed over so quick, it seems. Like, it was just all of a sudden, like, oh, nope, that's not okay.
Yeah. Like we're on to new things.
On to material items. But now look, the hippie like, you know, look at least like aesthetic is still, it's constantly in style, I feel like.
100%. In some ways.
Yeah. And I think there's like a lot more music festivals now that kind of try to like borrow from the ones back in the day.
Yeah. But yeah, so they were, there were a couple of hippies and they loved hitchhiking.
Okay. It was just a good way to get around.
Now, as we all know, it was obviously wildly popular in the 70s to hitchhike.
in the early 70s but by the end of the decade most of the general public kind of realized how dangerous it could be especially like accepting a ride from a stranger it's so sad which i think the the reason a lot of people started to realize it is because the news and the press started covering more serial killers and more instances of violent crimes from hitchhiking yeah you're never hearing about like like i'm a like i would never hitchhike just because i'm scared of everybody but now it's so different but like you also back then were not hearing about the millions of successful hitchhikings
that happened every single day where somebody was brought to the place they were looking to go and had a nice conversation and met somebody kind and great and yep was better for the experience like you didn't hear about any of that you only it's like a plane crash exactly you only hear about the bad ones you're not hearing about the thousands that take Take off a day that successfully get where they need to go.
Precisely. Look at you.
Just, you know, you get it.
Yeah. Girls that get it get it.
That's me. No, but listen, even with that awareness, there were still people who felt like the benefits, like we were just saying, outweighed the risks and they were comfortable taking rides from strangers.
Liz would later tell reporters, hitchhiking is a cheap, easy, free way to travel.
We could get off anywhere we wanted.
No worries about gas or cars.
You meet people who are just interested in hearing about your travels.
We were no strings attached people.
people and wouldn't it be nice if that's all it was that'd be great meet people get a little different perspective on stuff yeah hear about their fun trip they're taking and then be like bye and like you said like maybe even leave better for it you know like oh what a cool guy what a nice gal that was just the way it was and we could be that way as a species it would be so sick it would be but we're one of the most terrifying species ever sure so in june of 1980 vicky Vicki traveled from Wisconsin, where she had recently moved for work, to her family home in Wellman because she was attending her brother's
graduation. And Nancy planned to meet Vicki at Vicki's parents' house in Iowa after the grad party was over.
And together with Liz, the three of them were going to hitchhike their way to the Rainbow family's 4th of July celebration in Marlinton, West Virginia, otherwise known as a rainbow gathering.
This sounds adorable.
Oh, it's just so pure.
Like, I could see myself wanting to go to this if I, like, lived back then.
Oh, you would have been all over this.
100%. Now, the Rainbow family was started in 1971.
It's, like, very interesting reading about it because you're like, who exactly started this?
What happened? There's a couple people that started it, but they're like, we're pretty informally led.
Oh. So, it was started by an informally connected group of mostly young people with pretty progressive ideals.
deals and they're known for organizing really large gatherings that are just supposed to celebrate the spirit of the counterculture movement from the 70s oh that's fun hippies yeah they don't really have any specific agenda there's not really any organizing principles they're mostly understood by the public as a well -intended group who quote are out to seek a little earnest spiritual fulfillment learn a thing or two and have a good time in the process that seems wonderful like who the fuck doesn't want to go to that yeah now their annual gatherings were pretty free form they included events and activities
that drew from spirituality like new age spirituality and the back to nature movement and they also incorporated cultural elements of the 1960s like music and sexual freedom oh lots of stuff going on it's fucking awesome yeah it's like very woodstock it sounds like yeah you know no I loved it we loved it as the Washington Post described it, it was as if the rainbow people had slipped through a time warp, a slice of the 60s suddenly wedged into the 80s.
That's interesting.
Sign me up. Let's do the time warp again.
I'll watch from far away.
I'll make sure you have popcorn and stuff.
I'll support you. I'll write you a postcard from there.
While the attendees of the rainbow family gatherings may have been mostly well -intended, it seems, their annual convergence on very, very rural locations investigations had a tendency to worry local law enforcement over what they referred to as, quote, the high potential for user conflict.
Essentially, they were worried about the largely progressive counterculture attendees coming up against the largely conservative locals who really resented public nudity, the like flagrant drug use and what they felt was a general disregard for authority.
OK, just two different sides of a coin coming together.
Very opposite Opposite ends of the spectrum here.
Luckily, the troublemakers seemed to be pretty few and far between, and most attendees overall were like Vicki, Nancy, and Liz.
Just free -spirited people trying to keep up the ideals of hippie culture alive in a very different world.
But still, in the weeks before this gathering was set to begin in Marlington, West Virginia, the Secretary of State James Manchin, excuse me, A.
James Manchin, actually filed a suit against the group in an attempt to stop this gathering from happening altogether.
He told reporters West Virginia didn't need this bunch of derelict misfits.
I mean, that was a choice, having it in West Virginia.
I will say that. It was a choice.
I'm not saying it was a bad choice.
I'm not saying it was a good choice.
It was just a choice.
It's simply a choice.
It was an interesting choice.
Derelict misfits. I mean, yeah.
I think they're just trying to vibe.
That's what I think.
It sounds like they're not doing anything.
Like, let them hang.
Let them vibe. Let them hang.
Let them just do their thing.
Yeah. It'll end and then they go home.
And then that's it.
Who cares? Now, his suit was unsuccessful at keeping the Rainbow family from coming to West Virginia.
I figured. But that specific instance definitely highlights the tensions that were building over before the event.
Yeah. You can see that it was clearly like an issue.
And people in town were not excited about it.
Yeah. And a big issue.
This isn't like a bunch of people just being like, oh, this is annoying.
It's like the secretary of state is trying to see them.
That's a lot. That's pretty big.
Now, when Liz, Nancy, and Vicki left from the Durians' house on June 20th, their plan was to hitchhike to the gathering, which was going to be held in, I looked this up so I'm going to do my best, west virginia's manonga gila for national forest wow yeah impressive very cool you're talking about my pronunciation right thank you very impressive so that was the plan they were going to hitchhike there and then when they got there they were going to meet up with nancy's sister kathy who was also going to be going to the festival okay kathy's plan was to drive herself down a few days later okay however
their plan changed just a few days later when they reached richmond virginia on the the 24th of June.
The day before, the three friends were picked up in South Carolina by the driver of a commercial bus.
And Liz later told reporters, it was raining.
And as I stared out the window, something told me not to go to the rainbow gathering.
Ooh. She just had like a premonition.
Ooh, always listen to your gut, man.
And she did. So many times I have not listened to my gut and I regret it every time.
Yeah. She said it was just something like telling her not to go.
Wow. So instead, she placed a call to her father in Connecticut and she arranged for transportation to get back home.
She really listened.
She's a spiritual girl.
Of course she did. And actually her dad was going to be getting married the next weekend.
So going home seemed like the right thing to do anyways, even despite her feeling.
Seems like there was a lot of convergence of signs there that she was like, you know what?
Yeah, that's the thing.
And I wonder if she just kind of like kept the feeling to herself and was like, it's about me, like not about them kind of thing.
So the three of them made plans to get together in Vermont later that And they were they totally understood that Liz didn't want to go anymore.
And the last thing Vicky and Nancy said to Liz was be careful.
And then they proceeded on their way to West Virginia to the Rainbow Gathering.
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hey weirdos you know ash and i have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong oh yeah there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that well get ready for a love story that's gonna blow your minds because this one is happening right now and get this it's hosted by our friends hannah and saruti from red handed meet travis he falls head over heels for lily rose she's gorgeous she's understanding and she's literally perfect fict, and she's not human.
That's right, Lily Rose is an AI companion, a computer program designed to be Travis's dream woman.
And at first, it seems like a perfect relationship.
But when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange, this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming.
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Now, around 9pm on June 25th, so just one day after Vicky and Nancy parted ways with Liz, a student walking back to his lean -to in Briary Knob near Droop Mountain Park discovered two bodies lying face down in the woods, both dead from apparent gunshot wounds.
Now, they were nearly 40 miles from the Rainbow family gathering, but police immediately believed that these two women had attended the gathering Now, other than that, neither woman had any identification or other clues about their identities.
So the news of the two murders came as a shock to some, but not all, attendees at the Rainbow family gathering.
One of the organizers of the gathering, Tony Crow, told reporters about an unrelated instance.
He said, quote, there were 11 shots fired into the site.
It looks like some of the locals have gone a little gun crazy.
So basically, people were targeting this event.
Wow. And like the site where the gathering was actually taking place, that's what had happened.
People shot into it.
Now, but like I said, unrelated incidents, or incident, excuse me.
That's scary. But despite the deaths, the event continued without a second thought.
thought one attendee told reporters it's a really bad thing that it should happen but I know that those two sister who have passed on to another realm would be very unhappy if they saw that it affected the energy of this gathering no comment I'm just gonna stay here I don't know how they would feel I have no idea I yeah we'll leave it at that yeah but since the deaths did not affect the gathering the identities of the victims were still unknown and Nancy's sister Kathy had no reason to change her plans.
So at the end of June, she and some friends traveled to West Virginia to meet up with her sister.
Years later, Kathy told reporters, when I arrived, no one knew where Nancy was.
That week, I heard two girls were killed in the country, but there were no photos.
I was a little worried, but someone said the victims were American Indians.
Now, when Kathy still hadn't been able to locate her sister after several days, She just figured that Nancy had found something that interested her more, so she left the area.
She said that would have been pretty typical of her because, again, like very free -spirited people.
I was going to say that's the thing.
And, I mean, this is like in your wildest nightmares.
You couldn't imagine that this happened to your sister.
No, of course not. And nothing in your brain wants to believe.
Exactly. So it's going to tell you no way.
There's no way. Right.
Right. So Kathy and her friends drove back to New York on July 5th.
But when she got home, some friends had received a copy of the Pocahontas Times and showed Kathy the pictures of the two young women who had been killed.
Now, at first, Kathy wasn't sure the girl in the photo was her sister.
There definitely was a resemblance, but she couldn't be sure.
So she drove back down to West Virginia to see if the girl in the photo really was her sister.
I wonder if it's one of of those things where she was pretty sure but like again her brain didn't want to be like no that's definitely her yeah so as she made her way back to west virginia investigators continued to struggle to make any kind of headway in this case and like i said a minute ago neither girl that was found had any identification and the only personal items found with them were a swiss army knife and a pocket comb and then the post -mortem exams were just as unhelpful the cause of death was gunshots this is horrible.
Vicky had been shot twice in the chest. Nancy had also been shot twice in the chest but also once in the head.
With what the technician believed was a high -powered rifle.
Wow. Now although they hadn't identified the bodies yet, local authorities felt confident that the killer was local, quote, because of the rural area in which the bodies were found.
And they were also pretty certain that the girls had been killed in one location and then dumped where they'd been found because there was no blood pooling around the exit wounds.
Now, Kathy reached Pocahontas County on July 8th and immediately went to the local police who took her to see the bodies.
She later recalled, quote, my girlfriend knew right away, but I could not believe it was Nancy.
Then I saw that she was wearing the silver bracelet I had given her.
Like gut -wrenching.
Oh, that's an awful way.
I can't imagine having to identify a family member, let alone like your sister.
Yeah. Yeah. So after identifying the bodies, Kathy was able to help the investigators get in touch with Vicky's family.
And then she got in her car and drove back to New York to deliver the news to her mom in person.
She said, I didn't want to have to tell her about Nancy on the telephone.
Wow, that's, yeah. Can you imagine just having to, like, it's just you.
And you're driving, knowing what you have to do.
After just seeing what you saw, like that's your sister and her friend who you probably knew.
And you're showing up at your mom's house.
She's probably going to answer the door being like, oh, my God.
Hey, girl. So happy to see you.
Like, la, la, la. Like, mom stuff.
And this is what you have to.
And to think, too, that you were at the gathering and you had no idea.
Yeah. It's awful. So a couple of days after Nancy and Vicky were identified, the state police held a conference, a press conference, to announce the identification.
justification other information about the investigation was still really scarce investigators didn't believe that the motive was robbery and actually sometime later nancy's backpack was found about 50 miles from where the two bodies were discovered and this is strange nothing appeared to be missing but strangely a confederate flag was found among the possessions oh and like neither one of them would have had that vicky or nancy strange and when liz was asked about it she said she didn't remember Vicky or Nancy being in possession of one and she elaborated that it would have been very odd given
who they were and what they believed in yeah that seems to go against so it seems like whoever did this to them left that there as like a fuck you wow now as far as motives went though there was no evidence that either had been sexually assaulted so that was ruled out as well and in fact aside from the murders there had actually been no reports of violence in the area so investigators had no suspects What the fuck?
Like, nothing. Now, the biggest and most unexpected information revealed during the press conference was that in addition to the murders, Vicki and Nancy's friend Liz, who had been traveling with them, was still missing.
Ah. Because obviously nobody knew that, like, only Vicki and Nancy knew what had happened.
That she had gone home.
That she had gone off.
So it took nearly a week before West Virginia authorities were actually able to track Liz down.
She was in Vermont vacationing with her family and had no idea how close she was to becoming the third victim.
Wow. Now, unfortunately, while Liz was able to fill in the timeline between when they left Iowa and got to Richmond, there really wasn't much else she could do or provide beyond hitchhiking from one destination to the other.
Now, when reporters asked her whether she would continue hitchhiking, she said, right now, I don't think I'll do it again.
It's kind of scary.
Very. I guess not all the good rides make up for the one bad one.
Which, like, what a haunting statement.
I know. For the one bad one.
That one bad one. Like, ugh, it gives me, like, chills.
Because usually that's all you get is one bad one.
Yep. Ugh. So local authorities investigated the case for two years, but they kept hitting dead end after dead end after dead end.
They weren't able to turn up any leads, any additional evidence, nothing.
Of course, they had some theories due to the remote location in which the bodies were found i think i said this earlier they definitely suspected that a local was responsible but who and why completely yeah and then their investigation was further hindered by the fact that most local residents were pretty tight -lipped when it came to talking to law enforcement and especially when the crime was committed against two quote -unquote outsiders yes they're not they don't want to get involved they're not going to concern themselves which Which is really fucked up because it's like two young girls.
Two people. No one in this town had like teenage sisters, teenage daughters, teenage cousins, like Jesus Christ. But the first break in the case finally came in July of 1982 when Vicky's family reported that they had received several anonymous calls from a man who seemed to know something about Vicky's murder.
Whoever was calling refused to identify himself, but claimed to the local police, police, excuse excuse me, quote, were not doing their job when it came to the investigation.
And this caller said as somebody who had a daughter himself, he was really sympathetic to the family's suffering.
But it was odd. They were turned off by these phone calls.
So later that month, the police put a tap on Vicki's family's phone and that led them to 36 -year -old West Virginia tractor salesman and farmer and father jacob beard now in 1982 jacob beard he was actually already pretty well known to the police due to a few charges of animal cruelty he was facing at the time and he was facing those charges at the time that he was making the calls to vicky's family trigger warning here i'm just going to quickly tell you what those call those um charges were about so if you want to skip forward i would do that now according to the charges he had killed his girlfriend
his former girlfriend's cat and left it in her bed for her to find and he had also been accused of trying to kill her dog but luckily the dog was able to be saved oh he also did this on christmas eve what no because the charges were still pending the county prosecutor actually offered to dismiss those animal cruelty charges in exchange for jacob beard's cooperation in the case oh shit and they they also offered to grant him immunity for any after -the -fact involvement that he may have had in Vicky and Nancy's deaths.
Damn. Crazy, I know.
They were desperate to get this solved.
Yeah. Now, but if it was found that he was directly responsible for the deaths, immunity would be off the table.
Wow. Okay. Yeah. So according to Jacob Beard, he had left for work about 5 .15 that night, the night that Vicky and Nancy were killed.
then he said he went home to eat something for dinner and then headed off to a school board meeting with his wife he told authorities that he and his wife were returning from that meeting around 9 p .m that night when they saw three local residents christine cook palmer atkinson and william mccoy entering into the woods near droop mountain park with two women he said resembled vicky and nancy oh now he also claimed that there was actually a third victim from the rainbow family killed by Palmer Atkinson.
And he knew that because Palmer and another local resident, Arnold Cutlip, had brought the body back to his own property, Jacob's property, and disposed of the body by putting it into his corn chopper.
What? So this is, like, a very fantastical tale, if this is all true.
Oof. Yeah. So the police arrested the men that Jacob claimed were responsible for the murders, But after two months of investigation, they determined his story was a hoax.
And all three men were released from custody.
So he just came up with this entire story and named random people involved?
Supposedly. Wow. Maybe.
It gets hairy. Oh, okay.
So the shift in focus away from those suspects coincided with suspicions falling on two new suspects, suspects, 42 -year -old Gerald Lee Brown and 20 -year -old Bobby Lee Morrison.
Now, according to Morrison, he had been out driving around with Gerald Lee Brown, excuse me, on the night of June 24th and he said they picked up Nancy and Vicky who were hitchhiking and then he claimed the four of them spent some time drinking.
He passed out in Gerald Brown's van and when he woke up, Morrison claimed he witnessed Brown shoot both women and then he said he helped Brown move the bodies out to briery knob before returning to town why are so many people admitting to having some kind of part in this oh so many people you're barely at the tip of the iceberg right now what the fuck it's why this case is one of the craziest ones when it comes to the investigation i think that i have personally researched like wow it's wild now both men were arrested in april 1983 bail was set at $100 ,000 for Brown and 50 ,000 for Morrison.
And in a press conference, prosecutor J.
Stephen Hunter told reporters he, quote, in all probability would try to seek Morrison as an adult, or excuse me, would seek to try Morrison as an adult, even though he was a juvenile at the time of the murders.
So this is public now.
Wow. Now, while the arrest of Morrison and Brown seemed like a pretty positive turn of events in the case, a lot of people in town were pretty confused or weary about how investigators actually became suspicious of those two in the first place.
Prosecutor Hunter told reporters, quote, at the time, he, meaning Morrison, wasn't a suspect.
It just happened that this turned out to be the lead that led to an arrest. But he would never say what the lead was that led them to Morrison and Brown.
Because there wasn't one.
In all reality, Morrison himself went to the police out of nowhere to report himself and Brown as the men responsible for vicky and nancy's murders what so strange okay but a few weeks later during the i can never say this preliminary hearing morrison recanted his initial confession and told the judge and prosecutor that jacob beard had manipulated him into confessing in order to take the heat off of himself so jacob beard is back back again what the fuck morrison claimed that beard told him quote something would happen to his family if he didn't make make the statement.
Jesus. And that was the only reason he made up the story about picking up the hitchhikers in the first place.
Wow. So under those circumstances, the prosecutor had to drop those charges against Morrison and Brown, and the case went cold again.
This is a whirlwind, and this is barely even the beginning.
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it didn't take long before investigators had a new suspect though on march 1st 1984 while being interviewed by special by a special agent from the wisconsin department of justice for unrelated crimes i feel like they should shorten their name maybe convicted serial killer joseph paul franklin confessed to murdering two white female hitchhikers near droop mountain forest and he even provided a crudely drawn map of the location where he left the bodies what now i just want to give a trigger warning probably i would say for racism here because this guy is a racist piece of shit so skip forward if you don't
want to hear about him i feel like his name is familiar yeah you probably know about him he's he's a yeah monster yeah so joseph paul franklin had actually been born, James Clayton Vaughn Jr., but changed his name to honor Benjamin Franklin and a Nazi leader named Paul Joseph Goebbels, I think is how you say it.
Sounds right to me.
He's pretty terrible, so I don't actually care how to pronounce his name.
Yeah. Franklin himself was a fucking deplorable monster.
He was a member of the American Nazi Party, a member of the KKK, an avowed white supremacist and a serial killer oh he checks all the the really bad guy boxes all the deplorable boxes at the time of his confession he was already serving multiple life sentences for murder uh he mainly targeted black men and interracial couples wow and he would eventually be convicted of killing eight people but suspected of killing more than 20 wow he confessed to over over 20 murders, but they were never able to completely pin them down.
Wow. So this would be out of his victim profile.
It would be. But when you hear his quote unquote motive or what at least what he says it is, not necessarily.
So according to his confession, he picked Vicki and Nancy up in West Virginia, and the three had been just engaging in small talk.
And the subject of interracial dating came I'm sure he was the one to bring that up.
And he was disgusted when neither woman objected to the idea of dating a black man.
There it is. He said one of them said she had, and the other said if the opportunity arose that she would.
Yeah. Now, it was then, he claimed, that he decided to, quote, waste both of them right there.
Jeez. He's a disgusting human.
My gosh. In a prison interview, he said, it only took one shot for the first one.
Then I just turned real quick over the seat and shot the other one.
Okay. and later awful horrible and just like to think that one question and then that's it but later he said he regretted killing nancy because according to him it was vicky that was the one who had an interracial relationship before and he said when he asked nancy if she would consider it she said she would but he said he still wished he didn't kill her what the fuck he it's he's i don't even know if he did this like i don't really know what my opinion is because it gets so convoluted along along the way but i'm like either way like you're a fucking asshole yeah you're disgusting so franklin's
confession would seem to have brought the mystery to an end but there were more than a few unanswered questions and a lot of people suspected he wasn't telling the truth because after his initial confession he refused to discuss the murders with law enforcement again and while he may have confessed to these murders he actually seemed to have very few details about the crime and some of them wrong right exactly for one thing you probably noticed he said he only shot each girl one time yeah before dragging their bodies out to the woods when like i said earlier the technician who had performed the examinations
the post -mortem examinations was clear that vicky had been shot twice and nancy had been shot three times yeah and then in addition to that it was believed that the um a high -powered rifle was the murder weapon that's what i didn't get a gun like that would be very awkward to use in the close confines of a car and it just didn't make a lot of sense none of it lines up so finally there was also the fact that he had a history history of making supposedly false confessions there you go so they were like i don't know about this you i do i'm like you monstrous like truly monstrous to try to take credit
for this kind of stuff it's like my goodness and by the time he was executed by lethal injection in 2013 like not that long ago he had confessed to more than 20 murders across the country wow including the shooting of hustler magazine founder larry flint in 1978 and urban league president vernon johnson in 1980 oh so he was just like taking credit for everything they were never able i guess to prove that he like didn't uh do either of those shootings Yeah, but they weren't able to prove he did either.
Correct, exactly. Correct.
Correct. I always sound very condescending when I say that.
Correct. Correct. Now, given the questionable validity of his claims, authorities in West Virginia declined to prosecute, saying that the confession, quote, lacked the requisite guarantees of trustworthiness.
Yeah, it doesn't line up for me.
No. Yeah. Now, in the context of West Virginia law, the confession fell into the category, I thought this was interesting, of what's known as a statement against interest or a statement that is so contrary to the declarant's interests that it's unlikely to be true.
Huh. Yeah. Now, because they're mostly determined to be false, a statement against interest is typically not admissible in court.
Oh, okay. And without any more corroborating evidence, West Virginia prosecutors were like, yeah, he's not a viable suspect.
This would be a supreme waste of time.
that's basically how they felt now i don't know i'm not sure what i think about it because when you think about the fact that a confederate flag was left with their belongings oh yeah but i mean he's not the only then that's what i was just gonna say like he that seems like something he probably would have done but again he's not the only person that would do yeah i don't to me i don't just from hearing that i would say no yeah the fact that he didn't know how many times each shot and i guess it was a high -powered rifle that would be very difficult to do in a car in a car right and um the map
he drew was not it was like all right but they were like i don't know like you could have got that from reading different sources about this case no don't buy it yeah well you're not the only one and law enforcement officials were not the only ones who considered this confession self -serving wildly inconsistent with the details all of the above a lot of people including actually nancy's own family found these claims yeah hard to believe and like many investigators nancy's sister kathy believes franklin had picked up a few details from magazines or news reports which would account for the lack
of specificity in his claims because he gave no details no that would be something only the killer would know exactly and if you can't give me that then you weren't there exactly that's the thing if you can read it in a magazine or a newspaper i don't i don't trust it that's the thing and actually at the time he was arrested he supposedly i couldn't like totally pin this down but i read in a couple sources that he was said to have a magazine in his possession that laid out a couple of the key details from the case yeah and those were the ones he pointed to there you go so authorities in west virginia they
shared kathy's theory an anonymous source from the prosecutor's office told reporters his story has evolved over the years when he when he began this scenario he really knew none of the details he did not know how many times the women had been shot he did not know what areas of areas of the body the wounds were sustained and he could not accurately describe his route before and after the murders yeah so bullshit yeah now after the quick collapse of his confession the investigation into vicky and nancy's murders went inactive yet again getting you know the occasional review every so often but other
than that remaining mostly cold and it wasn't until late 1991 when a new group of investigators decided to give the case a second look now in that review this is so interesting detectives or at least to me detectives found a note from 1985 regarding a local woman named alice roberts who had contacted them and they had never followed up with her initial like like reaching out to them.
What? So when detectives got in touch with Alice, these new detectives, she redirected them to her daughter, Pam Wilson, saying that she actually knew her daughter thought, or she believed that her daughter knew something about the murders.
Oh, wow. And they just ignored her the first time around?
Just never got back to her.
Cool. Right? So according to Pam Wilson, she had been in town on the day that the murders occurred, and she said she saw two quote -unquote hippie -type women get into a blue van belonging to a man named Richie Fowler.
And she said Richie Fowler wasn't alone that afternoon.
He was in the company of two other local men, Winters Peewee Walton and William McCoy.
William McCoy had previously been arrested.
I was just going to say, that rings a bell.
Yeah. And he was arrested alongside Jacob Beard, so the tip was definitely of interest. Yeah.
So around the same time, investigators were also contacted by an inmate named Keith Culliner, I believe is how you say his last name.
He was serving a 10 -year prison sentence for forgery and he said that he was willing to trade information about the murders in exchange for better prison conditions.
I was gonna pause there.
Better prison conditions.
Just saying. I'm like, if you got something again, I don't know if I believe you.
Yeah, I don't know.
But he claimed that he had actually been at Gerald Brown's home several months after the the murders and while he was there he overheard gerald brown confess that he richie fowler and two other men had been responsible for the murders and that quote everyone should just keep their mouth shut whoa so that's pretty interesting jeez this is like set of people number four the amount it got so confusing at the end because there's going to be even more players and a bunch of them have the same last name or like one has a last name that's somebody else's first name i I was getting really confused, but after investigating
Pam's tips as well as Keith's, investigators learned of more eyewitness accounts who had spotted a group of men, including Pee Wee Walton, William McCoy, and Richie Fowler together on the day of the murder.
Now, one tipper claimed they actually saw three of the men hosing out the back of the van on the same night.
That's chilling. Now, based on the, and remember, they had said they didn't believe that they had been killed there.
They believed that they had been killed elsewhere and dumped there.
So that's interesting that they maybe were posing the ban out, allegedly.
Now, based on the tips, arrest warrants were actually issued for a man named Richard Lewis, who also eventually was brought into the equation, Gerald Brown, Pee Wee Walton, and Arnold Cutlip.
All of them denied any involvement, but still, obviously, they were not like, yeah, your word's the best ever.
Yeah, they're like, oh, sounds good.
Oh, okay, never mind, you're free to go.
so they were held on a hundred thousand dollars bond all of them.
Now in his statement to the press prosecutor Walt Wayford refused to speculate on any kind of motive but he said the arrests to date are the result of an intensive investigation conducted by Sheriff Jerry Dale and Sergeant Robert A Alkire.
They worked a lot of long and hard hours.
Now Sheriff Dale was also pretty vague about what led investigators to these four men who had been arrested and all he really said to to the public was people got older and became less intimidated and frightened about the subjects who were responsible for the murders okay which like sure okay he declined to add any additional details but to me it sounds like they probably um should have listened should have listened to the original tip from six years ago yeah you know but like okay maybe just call her back just call her back six years ago she reached out for a reason and it looks like she had
some valuable information you've just arrested how many people so within a few days actually additional charges were brought against three other men believed to have been involved in the crime johnny lewis jacob beard yet again and william mccoy now all three of them had been suspected of some involvement at some point as we all know at this point in the previous decade how many men were involved in this jeez i think seven total wow one resident told reporters a couple of those are very surprising and then Then there's a couple of people that's not so surprising.
Oof. Now, within a few weeks of the arrest, people in town were talking, and they had their own theories about the motive of the killers.
Most people agreed that it was anger surrounding this supposed hippie invasion of the Rainbow family, but the prosecutor's office had yet to make any formal statement as to what they believed was the motive.
Gerald Brown's defense attorney, Paul Dech, was suspicious, though, when it came to the evidence that led to the arrests, And he told reporters, it's a bunch of police officers who are on a witch hunt.
They've got people held on paperwork that wouldn't hold an assault and battery case.
Whoa. So it was shaky grounds here that they were holding them on. And Arnold Cutlip's lawyer, Martin Safer, agreed, saying they're going to have to flush out the allegations of the warrant if they can.
Eek. So he was like, I don't know.
know now dutch safer and many others in town actually suspected that the prosecutor's office didn't really have any new information about the case but they just wanted to clear the notorious cold case to make it seem like they were getting shit done i mean and that does happen of course it does and the county prosecutor on the case walt wayford wasn't doing much to stifle those suspicions he wasn't talking a lot yeah he which you can look at two ways one he's not talking Because he barely has anything.
Yeah. Or he has a shit ton and he's keeping it close to the chest. Exactly.
Which is about how many times.
All he would say to the public was that the evidence would be presented at the grand jury hearing.
But other than that, nothing.
Okay. So by the time the case did reach the grand jury, things did not appear to be going smoothly for the prosecutor's office.
The charges against Pee Wee Walton had been dropped for lack of evidence.
William McCoy was already serving a sentence in Nevada for an unrelated crime.
crime jacob beard was living in florida at this point and fighting extradition and the two others who were involved were invoking their fifth amendment rights and refusing to cooperate cool in fact by may 1992 only two cases arnold cutlip and gerald browns were bound for trial wow two months later the cases against the seven men charged with these two murders had pretty much fallen apart.
And the prosecutor, Walt Waford, had no choice but to drop the charges.
He told reporters, I'm sitting here with a case that's been torpedoed.
Now what he was referring to was some new information that had come to light about investigation procedures.
According to the prosecutor's office, trooper Michael Jordan of the state's Bureau of Criminal Investigations had used improper investigation procedures and quote unquote seriously compromised the case, Oh, no. Wayford said he still planned to present the case to a grand jury in August of 1992, but he wasn't hopeful that it would go anywhere.
Oh, man. Now, he was right to be discouraged.
By the time the grand jury did review the evidence and considered the accusations of police misconduct, all the charges were dropped.
Oh, man. And in the weeks that followed, they kept on trying.
New indictments were issued against Jacob Beard, Richard Fowler, William McCoy, and Arnold Cutlip.
But of all of those new indictments, only Jacob Beard would end up going to trial.
Wow. I mean, he's been a consistent name in all of this for sure.
He has. Now, his trial started in late May of 1993, and he was facing first degree murder charges for obviously the murders of Vicki and Nancy.
From the moment the trial began, the prosecution's case seemed pretty flimsy.
They relied on hearsay testimony from some of the men that had previously been charged alongside Jacob Beard. Oh, boy.
And they alleged, the prosecution, that after picking up Vicki and Nancy, Jacob Beard attempted to convince one or both of them to have sex with him.
And when they turned down his advances, he shot them both and dumped their bodies in the woods.
That was their theory.
Their quote -unquote evidence against him included, one, statements from that previous inmate that we talked about, Keith, and Pam Wilson, which placed him at Gerald Brown's house on the night that the men were heard confessing.
Okay. Two, a statement from a man who claimed he saw Beard, quote, driving at a high rate of speed away from Droop Mountain, which was where the bodies were found, on the night of the murder.
And three, statements from Johnny Lewis and Pee Wee Walton that implicated Jacob Beard as the killer.
It should be noted that these two men had actually been beaten by investigators previously, and that's why they had confessed previously.
Oh. That's what I meant earlier by improper investigative procedures.
Oh, yeah, that would be improper.
Mm -hmm. And actually, one investigator previously stated that Johnny Lewis, quote, could be talked into saying anything.
Wow. Wow. Lewis only, this is like sad that they went after him if he had nothing to do with this.
He only had an education up to the third grade and he didn't even know who the president was at the time he was being interrogated.
Oh, man, that gives me Jesse Muskelly vibes.
That is immediately what I thought of and I knew you would too.
And the same investigator - If he didn't have something to do with this, of course.
The same investigator, I don't, I don't know if I think he did.
The same investigator said said Louis only gave the confession because he was scared and he had previously been hit.
He actually, I think the direct quote was that he was so scared he felt like he was going to pee.
Oh. Which is, like, heartbreaking, again, if he had nothing to do with this.
Yeah. But both of those men had been beaten previously into confessing.
So, yeah. I don't really know how we're going to believe their testimony.
Not great. Now, Jacob Beard's defense attorney, Stephen Framer, of course, claimed his client's innocence.
And he noted that the case is, or excuse me, the state's case relied almost entirely on testimony from known liars and accusations from two men who had only recently been given immunity in exchange for their testimony against jacob beard again not great not great the defense also made several motions to introduce evidence that maybe wouldn't necessarily prove innocence but at the very least would have cast doubt on these charges against jacob beard and that evidence included uh joseph i guess paul franklin's confessions from years earlier but the trial judge refused to admit any of the defense's
evidence calling it hearsay and unreliable oof it's like i think it's hearsay that all these other people who were previously accused and unreliable that we would believe them too this is a mess like i'm not saying that jacob beard didn't have anything to do with it because i don't know one way or the other but i mean this This is who we have testifying against him?
Yeah, I mean, what's really sad about this whole thing is that Vicky and Nancy are just at the center of this chaos.
But got, like, completely lost in this bullshit trial.
That's the thing. They're just like, we don't even know anything about what happened to them.
And it sounds like, in my opinion, it sounds like the investigators didn't even really care to find out what happened to them.
They just wanted to close the case.
That's the thing. That's what it kind of feels like.
It became less about let's get justice for these two young girls who were just going to a music festival.
Yeah. Like some little get together.
Like a hippie festival.
Like a rainbow gathering.
Right. Instead of really focusing on that part of it, they're really just focusing on clearing their books.
Yup. And it's like, and doing it quickly.
And they're not even doing it properly.
No, that's the thing.
Like you're beating people to confess.
You really feel good about that?
It really, like West Memphis 3 vibes, because in that case, it's the same thing.
They grabbed the three kids who they could pin this on Because they needed to clear this off the books And it's like, that never works Like, nobody wants you to just bullshit everybody into thinking it's been solved Right, because eventually we're going to find out People are going to find out No, it wasn't And they're going to find out that, one, you didn't care about the actual victims And two, that you put everybody in danger By letting the real people get away with it Exactly It's really, honestly, this is like a tragedy in so many different ways i mean i can tell you right now i have no fucking
clue who is innocent here and who isn't i have no idea i have no opinion on it because i it's all lost by the end of this i had read so many different things to try to convince myself whoever did it yeah or whoever had done it did but i'm still at a loss i have no idea so far i'm i have no opinion i just think it's a mess So in his closing statement, Stephen Framer reminded the jury of the unlikely scenario presented by the prosecutor, and he told them, if the state is right, Jacob Beard would have had to kill two girls in front of a group of people he mostly did not know.
That's true. It's pretty weird. Framer also reminded the jury that his client actually had an alibi that contradicted the statements made by the men formerly accused alongside him.
And this included evidence showing that Jacob was almost certainly at work that night and around the time that the murders were committed.
That's interesting.
However, I did read that his time card was handwritten.
Okay. So that could easily be changed.
All right. And I just will say that.
Now, in his closing arguments, Prosecutor Walt Wayford told the jury, quote, the only person who has testified here who can tell you where Jake Beard was between the hours of 315 and 8 p .m. that day is Jake Beard, implying that the accused can't be trusted, which is fair.
Even though most of his key witnesses had actually been the accused at one point or the other.
Legitimately, no one can be trusted here.
None. on now on June 4th 1993 the jury deliberated for six hours before returning with a guilty verdict on both counts of first degree murder and Jacob Beard was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole otherwise known as life without mercy damn yeah now we're not done because what should have been a moment of relief or you know possibly I know you can't necessarily get closure but some kind of closure for nancy and vicky's friends and family was instead completely suspicious and most people were still skeptical about all the details involved nancy's own mother jean spoke
to reporters about the conviction later saying you should have heard the testimony i didn't think there was enough evidence and i wasn't convinced he was the one wow so like that tells you something one of the victim's own mothers is like i this evidence was wild and And the testimony was insane and I don't think he did it.
Or I wasn't convinced he did it.
As a loved one of somebody who this happened to, you would want to be convinced that they have the guy who did it to your child or your loved one.
You don't want to just go, okay, I guess.
You want to walk out of there being like, yes, they convinced me.
That is him. Right, because that's the thing.
Essentially, if you're not convinced, then the question on your mind is like, well, is this another life lost in this case?
Like, is this it? Or like, are there more that we don't know about?
Like, you know, there's just a lot here.
I feel really bad for the family members here.
I do too. Because they did not get that moment of at least for a minute justice being served.
And unfortunately, I don't think they ever did.
I think that this family was left with more questions than they probably had even in the beginning of the tragedy that happened.
And again, I have no idea if this man did it or not.
I really don't feel confident saying either way.
Nor do I. So in January of 1995, this is where things get a little bit complicated.
There's a lot of legal jargon here, but I did my best to kind of...
I looked into it myself and I was like, I am not quite sure what that means.
So then I kept looking into it and I broke it down in an ash way for you.
Okay, cool. So in January 1995, Jacob Beard appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
Among other things, the appeal cited the refusal to admit key pieces of the the defense's case, like Franklin's confession, the result of Beard's polygraph test, the fact that he had actually been granted immunity from prosecution in 1983, and the fact that 11 years had passed between his arrest and his conviction.
Now, the appeals also cited numerous errors supposedly committed during the trial.
Those errors were allegations of police misconduct to what was considered credible evidence, everything in between.
Now, regarding the a claim of immunity, Beard's attorney acknowledged that the 1983 deal didn't necessarily protect him if he was the principal actor.
That's true. However, his role in the crime was supposed to be determined in what's known as a Castigar hearing.
And that never occurred.
Now, a Castigar hearing is based, excuse me, a hearing based on a 1972 Supreme Court case.
And essentially, it states that a witness who is compelled to testify after they've been given immunity, but then is later prosecuted has a right to this hearing where the state has quote the heavy burden of proving that all evidence it proposes to use was derived from legitimate independent sources okay that makes sense right i thought so in their decision the justices wrote the state argues that the failure to grant a castigar hearing is harmless where it is otherwise evident that that any immunized evidence admitted at trial did not prejudice the accused.
And that's where things get hairier, because in order to invoke this harmless error rule, there would have had to have been a Castigar hearing.
So it all goes back to the Castigar hearing.
Right. Yeah. So after reviewing the evidence and the trial transcripts, the justices upheld the lower court's conviction, but they did remand the case for review in the lower courts, quote, quote, to determine whether any prosecution evidence had been developed from leads Beard provided after being granted limited immunity.
Okay. Because if he provided those leads that led to him, it would fuck things up from my understanding.
Yeah. It wouldn't necessarily be derived purely.
That makes sense. Right?
Yeah. It's very convoluted, but you made it easier to understand.
Okay. I hope so. Thank you for that.
You're welcome. So Jacob Beard finally did get his castigar hearing, which was held in early September 1996 in the Circuit Court of Greenbrier County.
The judge in that case ruled that the evidence was properly obtained.
He wrote that, quote, the state had not violated the use of immunity agreement and entered to with Beard. Okay.
But undeterred, Jacob Beard and his attorney appealed the lower court's decision again in 1998.
but again the supreme court of appeals upheld the lower court's conviction okay now with no additional errors to claim in the trial beards lawyer lawyer filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus now that is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action okay so the argument there was that certain evidence mainly the sworn deposition from Joseph Paul Franklin's confessions was barred at Jake Beard's original trial.
Now, the petition also included the earlier testimony from Arnold Cutlip, which had also been barred from evidence at trial, in which he admitted he had actually been with Richard Lewis on the day of the murders.
And contrary to what he said at trial, the two men actually had not seen Beard that day.
That previously wasn't allowed in court.
So, in layman's terms, Beard's defense attorney, Stephen Framer, was arguing that this was crucial evidence that should never have been withheld from the jury, and that with this evidence, his client could likely be proven innocent.
Yeah. That makes sense.
Basically saying, I have evidence here, and it wasn't allowed, and that's why we should retry this.
Yeah. Cool. Cool. So in a statement to the press, Stephen Framer indicated his intent to request a retrial saying Franklin certainly has the resume to have done what he's done, what he says he's done.
So talking about that original confession, the serial killer, the serial killer's confession that we weren't so sure about.
Yeah, I don't know about that one.
But again, that all I have to go on is very little information.
And it's valid to bring up in that trial.
Of course it is. say, because it's a valid argument to be like, well, multiple people have confessed to this.
So look at these people also doing the same.
Yeah. And he also talked about the seriously questionable sources that the prosecutors used as evidence for their conviction, specifically Pee Wee Walton, who, like I said earlier, only accused Jacob Beard after he had been wildly intimidated.
Yeah. Which is a new legal term that I made.
Look it up. Framer told the press, quote, he didn't remember anything about this until he was beaten by state police talking about arnold cutlet now in january of 1999 the writ of habeas corpus was granted and beard's conviction was vacated with orders for yet another new trial wow now jacob beard's new trial began in may 2000 this time in braxton county because there had been so much press coverage and public awareness in pocahontas county yeah but he was never going to get a fair trial there.
Yeah. Now, in this trial, he actually testified on his own behalf, admitting he couldn't remember his actions the night of June 25, 1980, but he maintained that he had never met and definitely did not kill Vicki and Nancy.
Yeah. Which I think is a fair thing to say.
Who the hell would remember what they were doing on June 25, 1980?
But you can definitely remember if you killed someone.
100%. Yeah. Fair statement to me.
Yeah. Now, also testifying now in his His defense, remember, a man previously testified against him, was Arnold Cutlip.
Oh, shit. He told the jury he had lied in his earlier testimony and that he, in fact, had not seen Beard on the day of the murders.
Instead, Stephen Framer told the jury it was Paul Yosef Franklin who had committed the murders.
And this time, his confession was entered into evidence.
Okay. Now, Nancy's mother, Jean, actually also wrote a letter for the defense stating she believed Jacob Beard was innocent.
Wow. Yeah. Now, when it came time for the prosecution's case, the most damning evidence they still had were the two calls that Jacob Beard had placed to the Durian home, Vicki's family home, two years after the murders.
I actually forgot that that was him.
I don't believe you.
Glad you brought that back.
There's been a lot of characters.
case now that had actually gone a long way in his original trial to convince the jury that he was guilty yeah but he didn't he didn't say any it's weird that he called them in my opinion but wasn't he just saying I have a daughter yeah and it bothers me that you are not getting the information that you should be getting yeah he was sympathizing which again I understand why the family members so we're like this is strange and freaking me out definitely but it sounds like if you look at it just purely from what it is it's like okay it doesn't look like if he's innocent then it looks like he just
didn't have any malicious intent and literally was just trying to share information or sympathize that's the thing because i can't tell i i think i would feel differently if he had been like calling them and heavy breathing on the other line or hanging up like a creep exactly like harassing them i mean he he did refuse to identify himself which was strange but maybe it was like him just being freaked out because he was under those animal cruelty charges charges at the time which is not great which also that's not a good thing he maintains he had he didn't do anything to do with that and those
charges were dropped so okay we don't necessarily know i was I was going to say, if he maintains he didn't do it and the charges were dropped, then we'll negate that.
And the charges were dropped again because of these new charges where he was granted immunity.
It's all very complicated.
But it makes sense not to even go there at this point because let's just look at the information we have. And then you think he was criticizing the police in this case.
Yeah, he sure was. And that's just a statement.
That's just a statement that he was.
And, yeah. And I mean, I'm just, the fact that Nancy's mother, Jean, wrote a letter.
for the defense stating she believed he's innocent, that compels me to stand more on her side.
Right. Not only that, but even when he had been previously convicted of this crime, she spoke to the press and was like, yeah, I wasn't convinced.
And the evidence and testimony at that trial was insane.
And now, I mean, if she's willing to have this guy out, that tells you a lot.
She really doesn't believe that he did it.
Like, there's no way you're going to want somebody who killed your daughter in such a callous and awful way just walking around yeah if you don't truly believe in your heart that he didn't do it exactly this is very interesting i will say that nancy's sister kathy wasn't so sure she didn't it doesn't seem like she thought jacob did it but i don't think she thought that he didn't she wasn't convinced she was like us yeah i was gonna say i have no idea what happened here and it's a tragedy either way this is awful for this these families it's It's horrible.
Because I'm frustrated right now.
I can't even begin to fathom how they feel.
Exactly. Now, again, just going back to the prosecution's main case here again was those two phone calls that he made to the Durian family.
In his defense, Beard said he read an article in 1982 about how the murders remained unsolved, and as a father himself, he was sympathetic.
He told the jury, I was sorry the police hadn't followed up the way many people in the area thought they should.
You know? When you hear that, you're like, okay, Okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, I don't know if you necessarily need to call a grieving family.
No, I do not agree with your methods here, sir.
But okay, if you're saying it's pure.
I'm hoping the thought was pure behind it.
Correct. Correct. Correct.
Now, the jury deliberated for less than three hours this time and came back and acquitted Jacob Beard on all charges on May 31st. A year later, Jacob Beard filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit against the Pocahontas County Police Department department and in january 2003 the county agreed to settle the case awarding him two million dollars wow yeah i will say i saw two million dollars in some sources and 1 .3 million in other sources still a lot of money either way he got millions you got a lot of money yes i think he said he bought a new tractor but he wasn't about to buy like a bunch of other
shit okay that's what he said all right now i don't i don't know i don't i just don't know i don't know how to feel about any of this so neither do I I'm just gonna say okay I know that Kathy Nancy's sister didn't love that he was awarded that okay because again she still wasn't convinced that he was innocent or that he was guilty okay and in her mind if he was guilty he just got awarded millions absolutely that's why I'm gonna stay over here just and then I think Jean was just like good for him like I can't like whatever yeah which is awful so the rainbow family continues to hold annual gatherings
around the United States.
Actually, incidents of violent crime remain low at the gatherings, but murders continue to occasionally take place at the events, with the last murder as recent as 2021.
I'm going to look into some of those and potentially update if it's gone enough for a full case.
Wow. But interesting.
Very interesting. And sadly, as of today, the murders of Vicky Durian and Nancy Santomero remain unsolved.
unsolved. That's awful.
That's honestly the biggest thing in this case is I can't believe that just they got lost in it.
And I blame the investigators in this case.
You can't intimidate people into confessing because it muddies the waters.
You've lost all your credibility at that point.
Any trust, any kind of anything, professionalism, whatever you have going in, it's taken all out.
And you fucked up the case.
And it's like if you do your job, job then you and you are good at your job then you will convince somebody to give you information or you will have evidence to keep them exactly like you don't need to beat it out of them i really hope that like someday there's some form of you know dna that gets found or i mean i think they would have found it at this point you i guess you would assume but i just hope somebody talks i want someone to talk somebody to that has a real confession yeah like like you just said actual meat to it.
Like somebody can sit there and go this is what I saw.
This is who I saw there and they can put the pieces together.
But now there's so much information out about the case.
Exactly. It's so muddled.
But I just feel bad for their families.
Like their brothers and sisters just not having any idea what happened.
And to be like conflicted on whether this guy is really innocent or not or guilty or not.
It's like that's really hard. It is.
You don't know. And for him it's like if he's guilty walking around with that much money it's like jesus fucking christ yeah but if but if he's innocent then like and he got lambasted like that yeah then he lost like you know years of his life everything really no yeah it's it's really tragic all around it is and to think that again if he's innocent to think that he spent that much time in prison holy shit yeah so that wow is a very unfortunate case that's a sad one it is i mean they're all sad but that one's just just like you don't get that sense of like, at least we know who did it.
Yeah, no justice and just a very layered case, layered with tragedy.
Yeah. But we hope you keep listening.
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