Marie and Frank Hilley - Part 1 of 3

0:00 Hi. I'm Rich and I'm Tina. And if there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of marriage, some. Days you'll feel like killing your husband. And some days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary Kill. Hi, Tina here, Rich. How are you. I'm great? How are you doing good? I went for a walk this morning at the Metro Park. Yeah, and I almost have my ten thousand steps already, so I am feeling perky and good. Well, that's good to hear.

0:40 Yeah, it's still unusually warm here in Michigan. Yeah, it is. We've had like one or two days where like at night it's gone below freezing, but hardly any at all. Right, Yeah, very unusual. I'm glad you are feeling energetic because today's case is a doozy. It must be. It's a real humdinger. You've been You've been really tight lipped about it. I know they've been working really hard though. It is one of the craziest cases I've ever researched. It's probably going to be a three parter just the morning and it. But it's a good one, all right, I'll buckle up. Yeah, But before we get to that, do you want to talk about our merch. Sure, okay, no one worry. You don't have to remember this. We'll put it in our show notes. But if you go to bonfire dot com, slash store, Slash Love Dash, Marry Dash, Killed Dash store, but that's where you can find our merch. But I'll put a link in social media and on our show notes. And we've got some t shirts and sweatshirts and some other cute things, not with our logo, but with something someone designed for us, and we think it's pretty cute. The store will be open until December fifth to hopefully guarantee shipping by Christmas, and they will ship internationally, but it might not get there in time for Christmas.

1:57 Right, and fifty percent of the proceeds of all of our merch sales are going to go to Saint Jude Children's. Hospital, so check that out if you're so inclined. Hey, guys, if you're listening to this. On Monday, November eighteenth, we were hoping that the merch store would be open, but we have had some difficulties with that. Hopefully it will be up by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. I will post on social media when it is open. Thank you so much for your support and patience. Well, today's case starts out in the great state of Alabama, and you know how I like to find a snack that goes along with the patient if I can, so I have done that. Any ideas what it might be.

2:37 Well, I saw something in the garage and the recycling bin that I was shocked to see. I don't know if that is because it's you think it's going to be three parts. I think you have three snacks, So I am not sure if that goes along with part one or not. Right, Well, today, well, I don't want to steal your thunder. It does go with part one that way, what you saw was an RC cola. That's only part of the snack will be. It will not be. I have a taste of it. But the rest of the snack is moonpie. Okay, so technically moon pies are made in Chattanooga. Why is that big box of moons? It's all fine, but technically they're made in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

3:18 But that is just a hop, skip and a jump from Alabama. And moonpies are very much loved in Alabama. In fact, every year, on New Year's Eve, mobile Alabama hosts a moonpie themed celebration called Moonpie over Mobile. The event features a one hundred and fifty pounds edible moonpie that you can eat a slice of, and there's a giant electric moonpie that drops at the stroke of midnight. Well that's amazing. Yeah, that's pretty cool, isn't it. That's amazing. You know, I love stuff like that. Yeah, So I have a little a few more facts about moonpies. So they were I. Have so many questions about moonpies. I'm sure you do. They were invented one hundred and seven years ago, nineteen seventeen. I think, as most people probably know, moonpies consist of two gram crackers. They're shaped into round cookies with marshmallow filling in the center. They're dipped in a flavored coating, with chocolate being the original.

4:10 Moonpies reached the peak of their popularity during the nineteen fifties, when many workers would buy them as an inexpensive snack to tide them over until their work shift was over. At this time, the typical cost of a moonpie was five cents, and a soda to drink was also five cents. Ourc cola became the drink of choice to accompany the moonpie, and people began referring to this combination as the working man's lunch, really really and there's actually a song about it too, So you can enjoy your moonpie and RC cola. While listening to a little bit of the song RC Cola and a Moonpie by NRBQ, Wow, no salon, I want my life. And you know it's assy color's all right?

5:14 Don't you know it's all right? It's all night. Don't you know it's all right? It's all that assy color. How did you enjoy your working man's lunch? I enjoyed this song. That was a really good, really good jingle. I didn't love the moon pie, and I didn't love the RC so wow. But this is quite a big box of moon pies. The one thing I know about moon pies I don't know if i'd ever had one before, is if you have a lot of allergies, they're like one of those foods that it's so processed.

6:03 There's no like milk or nuts or anything like that in it. So one of our daughter's friends, she couldn't have a lot of treats, but she can have a moon pie. So that's good to know. But what did you think? I like the Moonpie. Actually, I don't mind the arc Cole. I'm more of a diet you know, soda drinker, as you know. But yeah, it's pretty good. Well, what would you rate them? I would give the moon Pies an eight out of ten and the RC cola six out of ten. Wow. I would give the moon Pie a two out of ten and the RC one because I just don't drink sugar soda, so it just tastes funny to me. I'm sure it did disappoint you. I think it's one of those things that growing up, I think I think my parents did drink arcy. But well done, good job. You're very thorough and I applied seriously.

6:53 I mean, you're it's a three part episode and you went out of your way to find a song and a snack. I hope you like the snack for part two. Better Part two is going to be a homemade snack, so just you got that to look forward to. Well again, I mean, thank you for your effort. Marie and Frank Hilly seemed to be living the American dream in their hometown of Aniston, Alabama. They met while still in school and married while Frank was on leave from his service in the Navy at the beginning of the Korean War. They had a son, Mike, followed by a daughter, Carol. After his service was complete, Frank took a job at the foundry and was working his way up while Marie was working as a secretary. But in the fall of nineteen seventy four, Frank got sick. He started suffering from nausea, fever, headaches, and diarrhea. The doctors were unsure of the cause, but eventually diagnosed him with infectious hepatitis. He died in May nineteen seventy five. Now a widow, Marie Hilly carried on as best she could, but trouble kept finding the family nuisance, phone calls, arson, money troubles, extortion, teenage, rebel, you name it. Marie and her family seemed to experience more than their fair share of problems. At age nineteen, Carol started experiencing symptoms similar to those that had killed her father. Desperately seeking help for her daughter, Marie took Carroll from one doctor to another, but they were baffled. No one seemed able to help her. Gradually, however, family members started putting the puzzle pieces together and came

8:25 to suspect something unthinkable, But could they solve the mystery in time to save poor Carol. Audrey Marie Fraser was born in June nineteen thirty three to Lucille and Hughey Fraser. Hughey and Lucille had a child two years earlier that was still born. They were determined to have another child, and so they were ecstatic when Audrey, or Marie as they called her, was born healthy. She was raised an only child. Lucille stayed home to raise Marie while Hughey worked at the local mill in nearby Blue Mountain Thread Company, But Hughie had a lot of health troubles and would regularly go visit as twin brother Louis in Texas and then later Utah Huey and Louis or twin brothers. To help support the family, Lucille went to work at the mill as well. With both her parents either working or away, Marie was largely raised by her grandma. Being an only child and being one of only a couple girls in her extended family. It's said that Marie got away with a lot. Although the family didn't have much money. She was spoiled and usually got what she wanted. Growing up, Marie was close to her cousin Robbie, one of the only other girls in the extended family. But in contrast with Robbie, who was a tomboy, Marie was considered very dainty and ladylike. At age fourteen, she was voted the prettiest girl at Quintard Junior High School. That same year she met Frank Hilly. What year is this, Well, I think when she was fourteen, it would have been in

9:55 nineteen forty seven. Okay, in twenty twenty four. I don't think girls are vote what is the prettiest girl in school? At age fourteen, especially, Frank was four years older than Marie. He asked Marie out, and they went to see a movie on a double date with a friend of Frank's. Soon they were going steady. Frank later said that he knew right away that he was going to marry Marie. Frank had a younger sister, Frieda, who became close to Marie as well. Frida was three years younger than Frank and a year older than Marie. As soon as he finished high school, Frank enlisted in the Navy. The Korean War was just beginning, and Frank was shipped off to Guam, a strategic military base during that conflict. As Marie was finishing up her junior year of high school, Frank came home on leave and the two got married in May nineteen fifty. Marie had trained to be a secretary after high school. With Frank still in the military, Marie got her first job as the secretary to an attorney. She used her first paycheck to make a down payment on a sewing machine for her mother and the first new suit her father had ever owned. In early nineteen fifty two, Frank was reassigned to the Boston Navy Yard, and Marie moved to Boston to be with him. Soon, the couple learned that Marie was pregnant. When Frank finished his tour of duty with the Navy, they moved back to Anniston, Alabama, to be near family and to raise their new son, Mike, who was born in nineteen fifty three. Frank went to work at the foundry that made cast iron pipes, while Marie got a secretarial job at the Alabama Gas Company.

11:27 Both of them were very good at what they did. Frank got promoted to head of the shipping department and started taking evening classes at Jacksonville State University in hopes of furthering his career. Marie was seen by her employer as fast, efficient and reliable. She was an excellent typist and good at shorthand as well. They had a small circle of friends that they socialized and played pinuckle with after work. Frank would often meet some friends at the Elks Club for a couple of beers before heading home for dinner. Seven years after Mike was born, Marie gave birth to a daughter, Carol. People saw the Hillies as the all American family when people would see them attending Mike's Little League baseball games. They seemed like a happy, well adjusted family, but there was trouble brewing under the surface.

12:15 There's always trouble brewing underneath the surface. While Marie and Frank's combined income was modest, Marie had expensive tastes. Say Marie. She always had to be impeccably dressed in clothing from the nicest department stores in town, and she always wanted to drive the nicest cars. The couple bought a small house after they were married, but Marie wanted something better. While they saved to buy a bigger house. Marie hired an interior decorator and spent a lot of money on new furnishings for her current home. Frank didn't care much about material things, but he wanted to keep Marie happy, so whatever she wanted she got. From her days as an only child, Marie was accustomed to getting her way, but friends started work that the couple was over their heads.

13:03 This might be a dumb question, but how much credit were people given back then? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know it wasn't in the form of credit cards, right. It was like you would go to the bank and say, hey, could I get a line of credit? Or at the department store you would ask for a line of credit there. So it's a bit different. But I don't know how much credit people usually had at that point. Okay, so it was less likely for people to be in credit card debt, but you could still be in debt, yeah, for sure. Another source of trouble was Frank's drinking. While Frank initially would just have a couple of beers with the guys at the Elks Club after work, his drinking grew heavier as time went on. By the nineteen sixties, he had been promoted again to foreman at the foundry, with a lot of men working under him. He became a fixture at the US Club, drinking more and staying longer than the guys who worked for him. Friday nights at the Elks Club were family night. One time, when Frank was there with Marie and Mike, he got very drunk and it developed into a fight. When they left the club and Marie went to get the car while Frank and Mike waited near the entrance, Frank got nauseous and started wretching in the bushes. Then, as Marie was pulling up, he lay down in the drive and shouted, come on, run over me. Put me out of my misery. Mike witnessed this event and later said that he felt like his mom was actually starting to accelerate towards Frank when someone else from the club dragged him up to the sidewalk. Marie, still close to Frank's sister Freda, complained to her about Frank's drinking and about how much time he was spending at the Elks Club, watching football and baseball and playing

14:36 poker with his friends. Another source of tension in the household came about as Carol got into her teenagers. Mike had always been the golden child and seemingly could do no wrong in Marie's eyes, but she and Carol clashed regularly, and although they fought, Marie didn't know how to discipline her kids. She hadn't been disciplined growing up as a child, and likewise she didn't know how to say no to her children. Carol was rebellious, got into trouble regularly, and wasn't afraid of defying her mom. Not only that, but Carol did not dress or act in a traditionally feminine way, which must have wrinkled Marie with her penchant for a ladylike behavior and attire. At some point, Marie must have started to suspect that Carroll was a lesbian, which also did not sit well with her. Marie would often ask her daughter why she didn't seem interested in going out with boys, instead choosing to hang out with girlfriends. At the same time, as her relationship with her mom struggled, Carol grew closer to her dad. Frank would take her golfing or fishing with him. This, in turn, made Marie feel like Carol and Frank were teaming up against her.

15:44 Marie started complaining to Frank's sister Freda that no one loved her. Frank spent all his time with the Elks Club, drinking with his friends, Mike was off to college and getting ready to strike out on his own, and Carol didn't care about her at all. Marie continued her lab spending on clothes and household furnishings, and the family's debts started mounting. By nineteen seventy three, Marie owed money to a dozen department stores, banks, and finance companies. Her balance at Wakefields, the most expensive women's clothing store in the area, kept growing. Marie rented a po box to receive bills so that Frank wouldn't see them. Word started spreading around town that the Hillies were borrowing money but not paying it back.

16:28 This case stressing you out? Yet, I know cases about like that involved finances and people getting in debt over their heads can be very stressful. It does stress me out a little bit. Yeah. When she was about thirteen years old, Carol met a ten year old girl named Sonya Gibson at church. Marie must have thought that Sonya would be a good influence on Carol. She was pretty finishing second place in the school beauty contest and active in the Brownies. Marie would call Sonya's mom and invite Sonya over Voluntar Hearing to pick her up and drive her over and back. It's a little odd to think about today, of like girls that are ten or fourteen years old, like winning beauty contests and things. It's very very going.

17:12 To me, but that's just me. Yeah. Well, it's also in the South too, and I think beauty in the South and you know, being like demure. That was a good point. Sonya hung out at the Hilly's house several times over the Christmas holiday in nineteen seventy three. In early February nineteen seventy four, Sonya got sick with mild flu like symptoms. It didn't seem like anything serious, but two days later she took a turn for the worse. Suddenly she developed a high fever, stomach pain, uncontrolled vomiting. Anne was unable to walk. Her mom rushed her to the emergency room, where they decided to airlift her to the Children's Hospital in Birmingham, but sadly, she died during the trip. An autopsy was performed, determining the cause of death to be a severe viral illness, which led to an inflammation of Sonya's heartlining. Her mother never understood or accepted the conclusion. It just didn't make sense.

18:07 Sonia had been a healthy young girl, hardly ever sick her whole life. That's very sad. I know, it's really sad, isn't it. Over the years, Marie held several secretarial jobs. There seemed to be a pattern where Marie got on well with her male bosses, but often had trouble getting along with her female colleagues. Sometimes the business executives that Marie worked for bought her lavish gifts. One local executive bought a pony for Carol. That's a lavish quite a bonus, yeah. Another bought Marie a pair of expensive diamond earrings. Frank acted like he wasn't bothered by these gifts, but inside he was in turmoil. Over time, he started tentatively confiding his concerns with others.

18:52 By nineteen seventy four, Mike had met a girl at college named Terry Henderson, and the two had gotten married. Frank had continued moving up at the foundry and was now assistant superintendent. Salespeople would give him tickets to sporting events, including his beloved Auburn University football team. On Thanksgiving nineteen seventy four, Mike was bringing Terry over along with his in laws, so Frank invited Mike's father in law, Happy Henderson to the Great Name to attend the Auburn versus University of Alabama football game. As they drove to the game, Happy could tell that something was troubling Frank. Frank started talking about Marie and her mother not getting along, always fuscin at each other. As he put it, all the arguing between Marie and her mother made Frank feel like he was in the middle trying to keep the peace.

19:41 Then Frank started turning the conversation in a different direction, saying, there's something else I want to tell you, but I don't want it to get around. The conversation was making Happy uncomfortable. After all, he barely knew Frank, so he said a minister is always a good person to talk to. That put an end to the conversation, but Frank also opened up to his son. One day in the spring of nineteen seventy five, Frank and Mike were out on the golf course when Frank said, you know, Mike, things aren't so great at home these days. Your mother and I aren't really getting along that well. We're going through a rough time with you and Caroll growing up. Things are changing again, though Frank seemed uncomfortable sharing any more details.

20:22 A few weeks later, Mike and Frank went golfing again. This time Frank shared more. He said, I don't know what I'm going to do. Something's happened. I just don't know what I'm going to do about it. He seemed reluctant to say more, but Mike prodded him. Finally, Frank said, you know, me and your mother have not been getting along lately. I got sick one day at work and came home early. Your mother was in bed with Walter Clinton. No, she was not. She was. Walter Clinton was the founder of a business, Clinton Controls, and he had hired Marie as his executive secretary. Frank said he walked in, saw them in bed together, then turned and walked out. It's not clear whether or not Marie or Walter saw Frank. Oh boy.

21:04 It was around that same time that Frank started getting sick. He told a friend that He had been running a fever that kept coming back, along with some really bad headaches. He had been to the doctor, but they couldn't figure out what was causing it. Frank told his friend it was probably just hay fever. One day in May nineteen seventy five, Frank came home from work early, vomiting and suffering from diarrhea. His coworkers were speculating that maybe the chemicals they used at the foundry were causing his illness, but no one else at work seemed to be suffering from similar issues. Over the next couple of weeks, Frank kept waking in the night with fever and chills. His doctor said it was probably a stomach virus and recommended chaopectate and maylox. Are those medications still around? You don't hear much about chaopectate and maylox these days?

21:50 Yeah, I don't know what. My grandpa always had maylox with him, did he. Yeah. Nothing seemed to help Frank. At three point thirty am one morning, rewoke to find Frank disoriented wandering around the yard in his underwear. She took him to the hospital. This time, doctors diagnosed him with infectious hepatitis, a condition that generally clears up on its own in a month or two. While infectious hepatitis can be fatal, deaths caused by the disease were rare even back in those days. Sadly, Frank never made it out of the hospital. After alternating between periods of clarity and hallucinations, Frank died on Sunday, May twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five. The official finding was that Frank Hilly had died from infectious hepatitis. County health officials took water samples from the Hilly home and from the Union Foundry, where Frank had worked, but didn't find anything out of the ordinary.

22:45 I mean, I'm no doctor, but you have your suspicions. I have my suspicions. I'm going to keep him to myself. Though Frank's funeral was held two days after he died, and two days after that, Marie filed a claim on Frank's life insurance more than thirty thousand dollars or one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars today. She also received thousands of dollars from Veterans Insurance along with Social Security survivors benefits. The mortgage on their house was paid off by Frank's life insurance policy, as was the debt in their credit accounts. Oh, in a lot of the cases that we cover, we talk about that. Oh, the spouse called the insurance company within twenty four or forty eight or whatever hours. Right, what do you think the acceptable amount of time is to wait? I think you do have to call pretty quickly.

23:31 Yeah. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with calling and filing acclaim on life insurance within a couple of days. Because there's funeral. Expenses, And that's what I was going to say. Funerals are very expensive. So I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. But it sometimes sets out off an alarm, Yes it could. Over the next few months, Marie went on a spending. Spree that she did. She paid cash for a new Oldsmobile, spent a bunch of money on new clothes and jewelry from the nicest department store in town, and bought several pieces of furniture and other household items. She bought a stereo and a new Honda for Carol, and a new washing machine for Mike and Terry. She took Terry on a shopping trip to buy her new nicer clothing, telling her, Honey, you shouldn't be buying your clothes at Kmart. It doesn't look right for Mike's wife to be shopping there. Mike was a pastor at this time, so apparently it's not acceptable for a pastor's wife to be seen in Kmart clothing.

24:26 Oh, I think it's perfectly acceptable. I think too. I grew up in Kmart clothing, so. Yeah, that I'm the same. Really. A week after Frank's death, Marie's mom, Lucial, found a lump in her breast and was diagnosed with cancer. She died a year and a half later, in January nineteen seventy seven. Carol was fifteen at the time of her father's death. She and Frank had been growing closer over the last few years of his life, which coincided with increasing strife between her and her mom. Frank's death just seemed to make things worse between Marie and Carol. Carol saw her mom as controlling, wanting to know everything about her social life. Marie gave Carroll material things, but was enabled to provide emotional support or parental guidance. Carol felt angry and resentful, which Marie saw as a lack of gratitude. Marie would complain to her friends and Frank's sister Freda that no one loved her.

25:22 She said Carol was making her life miserable and everyone was against her. Freda put it down to Marie going through a difficult time, having just lost her husband and now helping to care for her mother during her battle with cancer. Mike and his wife, Terry, had been living three hours away, but soon after his dad died, Mike was offered a job as an assistant pastor at a church back in Anniston. Knowing that his mom was going through a hard time and burdened with taking care of his grandma, he accepted the job so he could be closer to home. Marie invited Mike and Terry to move into the house along with Lucille and Carroll. She had plenty of room, but within two months, Mike and Terry started to look for an apartment. There was too much conflict and tension in the house and they were anxious to get out. Marie was not happy that they were moving out and tried to make Mike feel guilty about leaving his grandma behind. For her to care for on her own. Mike assured her they wouldn't be far away and could still help out. The night before they were set to move out, a fire broke out in Marie's house.

26:24 No one was home at the time. Neighbors noticed the smoke and called the fire department, who arrived just as Marie was pulling into the driveway with Lucille, saying they had gone for a drive. The home sustained significant smoke damage, which took a month to repair. During this time, Marie, Carol, and Lucille all moved into Mike and Terry's apartment with them. The cause of the fire was never determined. Pretty pretty convenient A Mike, please don't move out, Please don't move out. And then the day he's moving out, oh, ihead a fire. We have to move in with you. What are you trying to accuse this poor widow of Mike? Dare you? But let's see, right about the time Marie, Lucille, and Carroll were preparing to move back into the house, another fire broke out. This time it was in the apartment next to Mike and Terry's. Smoke drifted through the events of the building, making their apartment unlivable, so Mike and Terry moved back into Marie's house. Soon they moved to another apartment, this time without incident. These fires were just the beginning of a number of incidents that seemed to follow Marie. A few months after Mike and Terry moved out, Marie called the Anniston police, saying that she smelled gas fumes in the house. They came out, but they didn't find any signs of a leak. A month after that, Marie called the police again at four am.

27:43 This time a fire had broken out in the hall closet. Marie seemed to think someone had broken in and started the fire, but the police found no signs of a break in. The damage this time was minor. Someone would break in and start a fire in your linen. Closet, yeah, it seems a little unlikely. After that, Marie's neighbor Doris, came home from an out of town trip to find that a fire had been started in her Haull closet. Luckily, it had burned itself out and the damage was minimal. Again, there was no sign of forest entry. Before going out of town, Doris had given Marie a key to her house, to keep an eye on things. Marie said she hadn't gone into Doris's home while she was away and didn't see anything suspicious.

28:25 In the days before reen cameras, yeah, exactly. The Anniston police, especially a lieutenant named Gary Carroll, started to take notice of Marie Hilly. She had called them four times over a period of three months. Another time, she reported that her house had been burglarized with jewelry, guns and a hair dryer stolen. Yep, they got that hair dryer. That's a weird One. One day, she came home to a note tacked to her back door that said, quote, you are going to be sorry if you don't move. Lieutenant Carroll decided to investigate this incident himself because he wanted to meet this woman, Marie Hilly, who was starting to become well known to the Anniston police. He went to her house, examined the note, and interviewed Marie. He came away with a feeling that she was genuinely scared that someone was harassing her, but there wasn't much else to go on, so he filed the note away in the evidence locker. Another officer, Billy Atherton, became a regular visitor to Marie's house to respond to various incidents. She would invite him in for a coffee, and one day she put her hand on his legs, saying quote, I'm so alone. I need a man to help me. Billy started a casual fleeing with Marie. He would stop by versas during his off duty hours, while at the same time showing up to take reports when Marie would call with another incident.

29:48 A little bit of a conflict of interest there. Maybe Marie sure seemed to have an awful lot of incidents. He sure did. We'll be back after a break. During the months that Mike and Terry lived with Marie, Terry was pregnant. She got very sick during her fourth month, developing extreme nausea and vomiting along with stomach and leg pain. Marie took her to the hospital where they put her on an IV to rehydrate her. The doctors were worried that perhaps she had contracted infectious hepatitis from Frank before he died. The doctor wanted to give Terry a gamma globulin shot. Gamma globulins, also known as immunoglobulins, are a type of blood protein that helped the immune system fight off foreign substances and diseases, but the doctor wanted to consult with Terry's obstetrician first. In nineteen seventy five, there was not a consensus as to whether gamma globulins were safe for pregnant women. Most doctors now believe that they are safe and that the benefits outweigh any risks. Trying to be helpful, Marie volunteered to call Terry's obstetrician. After making the call, she told Terry and her doctor that the obstetricate had given his okay. A month or so later, Terry was seeing her obstetrician and mentioned the gamma globulin shot.

31:07 Her doctor was confused. He said, I told your mother in law in no uncertain terms that she shouldn't have that shot. Terry was confused, but she assumed that there had been some miscommunication. Wow. I mean, first of all, you don't if you're a doctor, you call the doctor yourself. You don't have your mother in law do it. But that's yeah, that would never happen today with like you know, hippo rules and privacy and all that. But but yeah, it is. It is horrible. I mean, as I said, it's not a big risk to pregnant women. We know that today, but at the time we didn't know that. Terry did start feeling better and was released from the hospital and returned to Marie's. House Marie's House, abhorrors.

31:48 Yeah, no kidding. A few days later, she started getting sick again. This time she began hemorrhaging, and sadly, she lost the baby. Oh no. After the miscarriage, Marie helped take care of Terry, bringing her soup and other food. Terry got violently ill again several weeks after the miscarriage. Mike took her to the hospital again, where she stayed recovering for more than a week. All told, Terry went to the hospital four times during the few months that she and Mike lived with Marie. In the summer of nineteen seventy seven, a few months after Marie's mom, Lucille passed away, now seventeen year old Carol was home alone and snooping in her mother's bedroom, as kids will do. She opened a drawer and found a letter addressed to her mom. The letter was from someone that Carol didn't know, a woman who was supposedly Marie's aunt. The letter said, now that your mother is gone, there's something you should know. You know how your father, Huey was a twin. Remember he had a twin brother Louis.

32:46 I'm hoping the letter says that they were actually triplets and there was a Dewey too. Not quite. The letter said that Marie also had a twin, a sister named Mandy, who lived in Texas. The letter writer explained that Hughie had been very unhappy being a twin and he didn't want that for his daughter, so he shipped one of the girls off to a distant relative in Texas. What the letter claimed that even Marie's mom didn't know she had twins. This is the part that's really hard to imagine. She had been very sick and out of it after giving birth and never knew that she had given birth to twins and that Hughie had sent one of them off to live in Texas.

33:27 Oh that's wild. Are you serious? I'm serious that Carol found this letter. Now, just because Carol found this letter doesn't mean it's real. I think, as you're starting to get the idea, maybe Marie is a little off. Okay, so wait, she wrote the letter. I think she wrote the letter. Yes, what would her motivation have been? Just empathy? Well, it's a good question, I think, Marie. As we'll find out more as we go along. She had a very rich fantasy life, like she was just making stuff up all the time. Way to say it, Yeah, I think so. So. I don't know. I don't know what the motivation was for this, but she was like inventing other lives for herself. Let's just say that Carol was shocked when she read the letter. She felt guilty, and she decided not to confront her mom about it. She put the letter back. She did tell a friend about it, but she didn't mention it again to her mom. While all this was happening, Marie kept reporting incidents of harassment to the Anniston Police Department. She said she was getting harassing phone calls, flower pots were upended, a pound of hamburger disappeared from her kitchen counter, and one time she reported that she was being followed while out running errands. Marie's neighbor, Doris, was also receiving nuisance phone calls. She reported thirty two calls in the span of a month. The police put tracing equipment on both Marie's and Doris's phones, but as soon as they did, the calls seemed to stop. They removed the tracing equipment and the calls started up again.

34:58 This seemed to become a pattern over the next several months. It got to the point where Lieutenant Carroll was surprised if two days went by without Marie calling them about something. Well. As time went on after Frank's death, Marie burned through the insurance money and Frank's veterans Survivor's benefits. She started getting deep into debt once again. In the spring of nineteen seventy seven, Mike was offered a job with a new ministry in Pompino Beach, Florida. As he and Terry prepared to move, Marie came to Mike saying that she had tried to get a loan from the bank, but they had turned her down. She asked Mike to co sign the loan. According to her, the bank was discriminating against single women, and Mike agreed. Mike and Terry were relieved to be moving out of the state. It was exhausting being around Marie and the constant drama. After they moved, Marie sold her house and she and Carol moved to a smaller apartment. Despite the new home, Marie's troubles continued.

35:56 The nuisance phone calls resumed again. The police put a trace on her line, but again the calls stopped. Carol's car was reported stolen while she was at the mall. It was later found burning. Someone had set it on fire. Carol later told Mike that she and Marie had done it for the insurance money. When Carol graduated high school, Marie called Mike to let him know they were moving to Florida, which I'm sure Mike was thrilled to hear. Marie felt like Carol lacked direction and maybe a change of scenery would be good for her. They stayed with Mike and Terry while Marie looked for work. Mike made the mistake of giving his visa card to Marie to help her out. He was surprised when he saw six hundred dollars about three thousand dollars in today's dollars worth of charges on the card. Marie promised she would pay him back when she was able. Terry had been healthy since she and Mike moved to Florida, but strangely, now that Marie was staying with them, she became sick again.

36:54 She ended up in the hospital. This time, doctors believed something was wrong with her kidneys, but again and no clear diagnosis was made. Wow, Mike and Terry were both happy when Marie and Carroll decided to move back to Anniston. A few months later. After moving back to Alabama, Frank's mother, Carrie Hilly, offered to have Marie and Carroll come and live with her. She said they could stay rent free as long as Marie agreed to take care of the utilities. Carrie would eventually discover a bunch of unpaid utility bills talked away in a drawer. More strange incidents occurred while Marie and Carroll were staying with Carrie. A sleeping bag caught fire in the dryer, the power cord of a window fan was cut, and Carrie found some burning paper towel in the garbage. One day. Additionally, Carrie got sick. She got nauseous and started vomiting uncontrollably. She went to a doctor, but they could find no explanation for her illness. With her financial troubles mounting, Marie turned to a few different men for help. She did secretarial work for one in the evenings at his home. He paid in cash. Another man, Kelvin Robertson, was someone Marie had known since they were thirteen years old. Kelvin had been head over heels in love with Marie during high school. She ended up with Frank Hilly, but Kelvin's feelings for Marie never died. Despite getting married, having three kids, and moving to California, Marie kept in touch with Kelvin over the years. Over Thanksgiving nineteen seventy eight, while Kelvin was back in Alabama visiting family,

38:26 she told him that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She seemed optimistic, but told Kelvin how expensive the treatments were. A few days later, Calvin sent her a check for three thousand dollars. It's a lot of money, the man, huh. She and Kelvin talked regularly over the phone. Despite the fact that he was married, he was still in love with Marie and willing to do anything for her. He was shattered when Marie wrote him a letter telling him that she was getting married. She said that she was in love with her future husband, a man named John Romans, but he was good to her and would take care of her, She wrote, I won't be the happiest person in the world, but neither will I be unhappy. Since I can't have you, I can settle for what I will have with John, and I don't feel I'm cheating him.

39:13 He knows that I'm not in love with him, but he does know that I admire and respect him. She went on, we will both belong to someone else, and probably our paths will never cross again. You will always be there in my heart. You will always be near me no matter where I am. I will always reach across the miles and take your hand, kiss you good night, and say to you I love you, my darling, for always. Oh. She ended with Kelvin, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing in marrying John, not when I want you so, but I'm doing it to get me out of your life. I wish I knew the words to say so that you could know how much I love you. I want to hold you close to me, so close that we are one person. I want to kiss you, to hold your hand, to hear your voice, to take care of I want to say to you I'm here, sweetheart.

40:03 I'll always be here for you, for whatever reason you want. Please love me and keep me in your prayers. God has heard you and it had to be you. No one else knows how ill I am, and I've never asked him to let me get well, I love you for always. Well. Well, she's quite a writer though, Like you can just tell kind of how she manipulating people's feelings. And I guess she wrote. I didn't put it in here, but she wrote a very similar letter to Harold Clinton, the guy that had been her boss, that Frank had found her in bed with very similar thing about getting married and how but he was her true love and all this kind of thing. Oh boy, Kelvin replied with a long letter saying his love for her would never die. He also indicated in the letter that his wife knew about his feelings for Marie.

40:51 He said he couldn't leave his life in California, but he was forever devoted to Marie. She must have been really bummed when she got that letter. Yeah. Another attempt to ease her money troubles, Marie told her aunt in Texas that Carol had been diagnosed with leukemia. Marie wanted to take her to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, but the expense was too much for her. Marie's aunt offered to lend her a few thousand dollars, which Marie gratefully accepted. Over time, Marie was supposed to come visit Mike and Terry in Florida, but she canceled at the last minute. She told Mike she had been driving to the airport in Birmingham when she was run off the road by two men who stole her purse and cut her arm with a knife. She was very vague about the whole thing, other than to say the cut on her arm wasn't serious. Mike was concerned, so he called the Alabama State Police and the local Birmingham police to get more information, but no one was aware of the incident.

41:45 Growing more concerned for his mother, Mike gently suggested that she consider getting a psychiatric evaluation, after all, she had been under a lot of stress since Frank died. Marie was offended by the suggestion, telling him there was nothing wrong with her and she did not need any help. I think Mike. Mike might have had a point there, definitely, Marie had fallen behind on her payments on the Oldsmobile she bought after Frank died. And needed to downgrade. Mike mentioned that he had a Chevy Nova that he was planning to trade in because he had had a lot of problems with it. Marie offered to take it off his hands and take over the payments. Mike said, are you sure it has a lot of problems. Marie said, don't worry. I know a good mechanic. So Mike agreed to give Marie his car in exchange for her taking over the payments. As you might imagine, this proved to be a big mistake when Mike started getting calls from a collection agency several months later saying that no payments had been made on the car. He called his mom, who claimed that she had sold the car. Mike made a trip to Alabama to try to straighten things out.

42:52 Mike went to the car lot where Marie said she had sold the car. They told him that they had given Marie twenty six hundred dollars for the Nova and that she had promised to bring the title to them, but she hadn't done it. Mike was angry at his mother. She was destroying his credit rating. The collection agency said that he owed two thousand dollars. Marie said, don't worry about it. I'll just sell some of your father's stock. Marie had been claiming for years to her children that Frank had left her a bunch of company stock. She said that she just needed to go to the bank and take care of it. Mike demanded that they head to the bank right after lunch to take care of things. But after lunch, Mike got very sick. He started vomiting, and when it didn't subside, Marie took him to the er, where they gave him some medication to help with the nausea and to help him rest. The next morning, when he woke up, Marie gave him the money she had sold Carol's car, which was fine, she said, because Carol didn't need her car anyway. I'm sure Carol was thrilled.

43:52 Kids, But yeah, yeah, I can't imagine treating your children like that. No, it's hard to imagine. The next week, Mike was back in Florida and his mom called with another bazaar story. She said that a man had been calling her demanding money. The man said that Frank had been deep into gambling debt and owed him a bunch of money. If she didn't pay up, he would hurt both Marie and Carol. By this time, Mike was at the end of his rope with his mom and her constant drama. He told her, you need to call the FBI if this is happening. They're the ones who are equipped to deal with this, not me. She did call the FBI and told them about the threatening calls. She said that she had no idea who the man was, but he seemed to know a lot about her and her family. He said that Frank owed him ten thousand dollars and he wanted her to make a payment of at least five thousand dollars now or there would be consequences. The FBI called the Anniston Police Department and spoke with Lieutenant Carroll. He told them about his experience with Marie, saying that her story was most likely made up, but the FBI decided to take it so seat seriously, just in case. The man who called Marie left specific instructions for her. He said, put five thousand dollars in an envelope, take it to the local wind Dixie supermarket, and put it in the dog food aisle behind the ALPO. The FBI and the local police put the package together a few hundred dollars bills wrapped around some blank papers enough to make it

45:22 look like five thousand dollars. They then sprinkled the package with thief powder, which I had never heard of before. Apparently it's dust that stains purple once it comes into contact with moisture from your hands. Officers took their places in the parking lot, along with having an undercover officer pose as a shopper in the store. Then Marie took the envelope into the store and put it behind the Alpo cans in the pet food aisle. Then they waited. Eventually, a man wearing a suit and tie walked in. He seemed nervous. The officers were immediately on high alert. He went and picked up some toilet paper, looking around apprehensively, and then he made his way to the pet food aisle.

46:04 He looked around and reached behind the bags of Alpo. Remember, Marie had placed the envelope behind the cans, and so he didn't find the envelope. As he was doing this, another shopper came down the aisle. The man quickly walked away and left the store. One of the officers recognized the man. It was Walter Clinton, prominent local businessman and the man whom Frank Hilly had walked in on in bed with his wife. Lieutenant Carroll paid a visit to Walter Clinton, who told him that a woman had called him in a quiet voice. She told him that she had some papers that would be very useful to him, and that she would leave them behind the alpo at the wind Dixie. Clinton said he had no idea who the caller was or what it could pertain to, but he had been involved in a lawsuit with a former customer, so he thought maybe it was related to that. The whole thing was just bizarre. Lieutenant Carroll was convinced that Marie had made the whole thing up and had made the call to Walter Clinton, but he couldn't prove anything.

47:03 The matter was dropped crazy. It was just crazy, isn't it. Yeah. In nineteen seventy nine, Carol turned nineteen. Marie was concerned that Carol seemed to lack direction. Marie encouraged her to attend the State Technical School in Anniston to learn a trade. She attended for a semester, thinking about going into nursing or cosmetology, but she abandoned it after just one semester. She then started attending Jacksonville State University, majoring in law enforcement, although she didn't really know what she wanted to do with that. She was still living at home while taking classes. Do you think Marie got nervous when she said she was taking law enforcements? She should have gotten nervous. In early nineteen seventy nine, Marie took out some life insurance policies on herself, Carol, and Mike. For the policies covering herself, the total amount was fifty thousand dollars, with Carol and Mike as the beneficiaries.

47:57 The policies on Carroll totaled thirty nine dollars dollars with Marie as beneficiary, and the policy on Mike was for twenty five thousand dollars, also with Marie as beneficiary. Seems really odd to me to take out life insurance on your children, because I bet that's a very unusual thing. Yeah, especially when your children are adults, and maybe back in the nineteen seventies they wouldn't have been informed. Yeah, that insurance policy was taken out on that right. That could be that spring Carol, who was tiny at five foot one and one hundred and five pounds started getting sick. It started with nausea and vomiting that didn't seem to improve. Eventually, Marie took her to the er, where they took a blood sample and gave her a shot to help with the nausea. By the next day, Carol was feeling mostly back to normal, but a few days later she got sick again, nausea and vomiting again, now accompanied by severe abdominal pains. Carol was frightened because her symptoms were reminiscent of her dad's when he first got sick again. Marie took her to the er where they ran some tests. Again. They were inconclusive, but Carol eventually started feeling better and was released again. However, she was back the next day. The doctors were baffled. Carol's illness dragged on and on. There would be periods when she would feel better, but she would invariably get sick again.

49:19 She started falling behind on her classes, and she became anxious and depressed. Marie told Carroll's doctors about her growing depression and anxiety. After four months of being in and out of the hospital, doctors started wondering if Carol's illness had a psychological cause. Carol was outraged at the suggestion and was adamant that she didn't need to see a psychiatrist. As time went on, Carol's condition worsened. In addition to the nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain, she started to become fatigued and to lose feeling in her extremities. Her toes were numb and her legs were weak. She couldn't walk up more than a few stairs by herself. Marie took her to a new day, this time a specialist in internal medicine. He was shocked at Carol's condition. She was down fifteen pounds from one oh five to ninety. She was badly dehydrated and could barely walk. The doctor wanted to hospitalize her, but Carol refused. The doctor couldn't force her to stay, so he prescribed thorazine tablets for the nausea, and Carol returned home with her mom. Carol sunk deeper into depression and attempted suicide by swallowing several tailand all tablets one night. The next morning, she woke up feeling terrible, and Marie took her back to the hospital. Now the doctors were thinking that perhaps Carol was anorexic. This angered Carol, who swore that she wasn't starving herself, she just couldn't keep any food down. She told the doctor, though, that she was having suicidal thoughts. Marie's conversations with the doctors

50:49 reinforced the idea that Carol's problems were psychological in nature. Carol had become very impatient and short tempered as her illness progressed. She would vacillate between anger, screaming and yelling, to becoming depressed and withdrawn, just staring into space. Marie also knew that Carol was using marijuana. Carol was placed in the hospital's psychiatric ward. While Carol was battling her unknown ailment, Marie's financial troubles continued worsening. She was bouncing checks left and right, including checks that she sent to cover the life insurance policies she had taken out earlier that year. Marie would open bank accounts, telling the bankers that she had just sold a house in Florida and would be depositing the proceeds. She wrote bad checks to open the accounts, then would withdraw the money before the checks were returned. From her other bank. It was a juggling act that was bound to fail eventually.

51:44 And now I'm really stressed out. Yeah, and you know, things are so different now. But back then, you could do that for a time, right, You could write a check and it would take a few days before they found out. Oh yeah, I played that game for a while for sure. Yeah. Mike and Terry were receiving threatening letters from MasterCard when visiting one time, Marie had apparently found a credit card that Mike kept in a drawer but never used. Eventually, after Marie had cashed a total of more than five thousand dollars in bad checks, the bank filed charges and Marie was arrested. I just ran that through the inflation calculator and that's twenty four thousand dollars. Then you're to twenty four thousand dollars and all the other moneies too that she's stolen or conned Mike out of. That's horrible to do to your and he's a pastor and he probably doesn't make a lot of money.

52:38 Yeah, she really took advantage of him. Carol learned about the arrest of her mom from a friend. The next day, Marie came to visit Carol in the hospital as if nothing had happened. Carol said, I heard you were arrested. What's going on? Marie said, Oh, it was just a mistake, nothing to worry about. Soon after Marie was arrested for the bad checks, Mike came from Florida for a visit day, visiting with his grandmother, Frank's mom, Carrie. Carrie asked him, Mike, do you remember when your dady died? Did you ever know anything about your mother giving him an injection while he was home sick that week before he died. Mike said no, he didn't know anything about that. Carrie told him that Frank had said something to her about it while he was in the hospital and that something just didn't seem right about the whole thing to her, which I can imagine right, like somebody's giving you an injection in the hospital and it's not a doctor or a nurse.

53:30 When Mike returned to Florida, he told his wife Terry about the conversation. She suggested they talk to her dad, Happy Henderson and get his advice. Happy asked, Mike, are you suspicious that your mom killed your dad? Mike felt a sense of relief. Someone had finally given voice to his deepest fear, something that he was unable to say himself. But yes, deep down, that's exactly what he was starting to believe. Happy suggested that Mike call the coroner's office, who had done the autopsy and Frank. Mike called them the next day and asked whether a diagnosis of infectious hepatitis could possibly be consistent with someone being poisoned. They said yes, in theory, that could be the case. Mike asked them if they could exume Frank's body to do further testing. The coroner said it was possible, but there would need to be more evidence to justify something like that.

54:22 They told Mike to let them know if he learned anything else that might point in that direction. And I think that is where we're going to end Part one. Wow, what a story. What do you think about Marie so far? I think Marie might have some issues. Yeah, I think she might. Why do you think? I mean, I know she has issues, But why did she make all these calls to the police about all these incidents? Yeah? Well, she needed a lot of attention, and I think she probably really liked mail attention. She was used to mail attention, and her husband was gone for some reason, and you know, she was getting older and probably not getting as much attention as she was used to.

55:05 So yeah, yeah, that makes sense. What do you think about Marie's relationship with her daughter Carol? They were very different and parents back in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties didn't have the mindset that parents do today that I will accept my child and love them for who they were. I think parents were more controlling, and they wanted their kids to turn out a certain way and did everything they could to make them, you know, turn out how they wanted them to write. Yeah, and I think or are they really messed up, mess them up psychologically, you know, by trying to control them. Yeah, for sure. I think they were very different in a lot of ways, but in some ways they were the same. And that like, they were both very kind of headstrong and had their own ideas, and so I think they would clash because of that. But I feel like Marie almost like either hated Carol or was jealous of Carol or something. But there was definitely, you know, something there that was just not a healthy relationship between the two of them, right.

56:06 I wish that Carol would have severed ties with her mom. I think that probably would have been the best thing for her. Yeah, for sure. This story takes place, you know, in the sixties and seventies, And I also find it interesting, like Marie's career as a secretary, partly because my mom was a secretary and it was just you know, I know that job has kind of morphed into administrative assistant now, but. I was an executive assistant for several years. Yeah, that's right. My mom used to write shorthand, which it just always kind of blew my. Mind when you talked about shorthanded. Yeah, it brought me back, because, yeah, it used to be a thing. It's just a whole other like language. I would look at what my mom would write and be, what, what the heck is this? It just looks like a bunch of. Squiggles that well King just write really fast and stive, you know, making those little Yeah.

56:50 Yeah, it's a whole different world now, we just don't have that. I could use an assistant, Yeah, couldn't you. I mean I think we all could. Yeah, I had various people. You've never had an assistant just for you what you've shared them with? Your team or whatever, like admin, and it. Has like in jobs that I have had an admin support, like my team or whatever, it has felt like a luxury, like being able to just hand over receipts and exactly. Yeah. I had a hard time getting used to actually asking someone to do that for me, but it was very nice. There are a lot of moving parts to the podcast and life, and it is hard to get everything done.

57:31 It is. So the other day, I thought you were trying to kill me? Wow, would you think that I was. I went into our bathroom to take a shower, and I stepped into the shower and I almost fell, like I slipped really bad, and there was what I thought was so a shampoo bottle was on the ground, and I thought like it had spilled all over and it made the title, which is actually kind of slippery anyway, this yeah, and so this shampoo was all over and it looked like the shampoo bottle had fallen and cracked. And that was going to be your story to the police, that the shampoo just kind of, you know, leached out of the bottle and I thought it was you. But then upon further inspection, I had left a bottle of body wash and I had put it back on the shelf and it was still open and it had like leaked all the way, like the whole bottle had looked out on the floor of the shower. Wow, that's a great story. But I really my condition was, oh my god, he's trying to kill me, because if one of us ends up debt, it's gonna it's gonna be a good story.

58:41 I'm not sure how I feel about that that that was your first thought, is that rich is trying to kill me. I mean, I've had I've had some trumpet in my life. It's still you know. The thing is like whenever we go on a trip and we go to the bathroom. I might have mentioned this before because I literally think this every time, and you were so nice, but and you're always there. But whenever we're like, okay, well you I'll go to the Yeah, we'll just go to the bathroom. We'll meet out here, I'm always convinced that you're not going to be there. I'm just going to drive off leave you at the rest. Yes, yes, preferably without a purse or my cell phone. Yea, yeah, it must be tough going through life. You'll just go dark. Yeah, it just happens. I was going to guess when you were telling the story about the shower, I was going to guess that it was one of our cats who tried to kill you, because I could I could totally see that.

59:24 Well, that's what you're going to tell the police. I was the cat. It wasn't me. Boy. Well, I'm glad you did not fall, and I'm glad you're okay. But it took like forever to like, you know, because it was like a half bottle of kind of expensive body wasts. I was a little pumped, But that happens. Well, most important thing is that you're saying. Well, and I so you didn't slip at all. No, it must have happened between the time you took a shower and I took a shower because I always go after you. Yeah maybe, so, Hey, don't forget. If you're interested in buying any love Mary kill Merche, go to bonfire dot com slash his store Slash Love Dash Airy Dash Killed Store, but that will also be in her show.

1:00:06 In the show notes, thank you in advance for anyone that makes a purchase there. Thank you everyone for listening. We really appreciate it. We hope you come back for part two and part three. If you'd like to hear all three parts today, consider supporting us on patreon dot com slash Love Mary Kill. We have one tier five dollars, a month early ad free access, and a monthly bonus episode Until next time. Don't kill your wife and try to blame the cat. And don't kill your husband. M gamma globulin is also known as immunoglobli. Save that one as a blue parl