June 8, 2026

Sandy and Tom Bird/Lorna and Marty Anderson - Part 1

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When 33-year-old Sandra Bird, a devoted mother and the wife of popular Faith Lutheran Church pastor Tom Bird, was found dead in the Cottonwood River near Emporia, Kansas, the town mourned what appears to be a tragic car accident. But Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper John Rule felt like something was off. From a complete lack of skid marks to mysterious bloodstains found where they shouldn’t have been, the physical evidence just didn’t add up.

Months later, the community was rocked again when Martin Anderson, the husband of the church's secretary, Lorna Anderson, was gunned down on a dark highway in an apparent robbery gone wrong.

What followed was one of the most tangled criminal cases in Kansas history: competing trials, a jailhouse reversal, a made-for-TV movie, and a legal fight that stretched across nearly a decade.

Today’s snack: Biscoff Bala Baiana

Listen to part 2 on Patreon

Sources:

WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm rich. You know, if there's one thing we've

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learned it over twenty years of marriage.

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It's some days you you'll feel like killing your husband.

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Some days you feel like killing your wife.

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Welcome to love, Mary Kill Hi, Tina, Hey rich, I

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am good.

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How are you? I'm doing good?

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That was I was laughing because I couldn't look at

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you because you had like the biggest read on your face.

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And it's just a big old cheesy grid.

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I'm just so happy to sell it.

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It's a beautiful day here in southeast Michigan.

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Beautiful day to be here in the light bulb lab

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recording a podcast with you.

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Yeah, no place i'd rather it be.

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If you hear screaming in the background, it's only because

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we have our windows open and our neighbors are out outdoors.

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And there's probably gonna be a camp meowing as well.

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Because he is also in the room. I think he

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gets excited when we record it.

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Does seem to really like it.

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Do you think it's time that we moved to the

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old folks community because whenever the neighbor kids are out,

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we're like old Pool again.

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We're becoming curmudgeons, aren't we.

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I mean, I don't think actually you did say that

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the other day.

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So well, the other day they were they were out

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at the pool and one of the like somebody who

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was over their house, walked over into our yard. This

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is the most random thing. They walked into our yard

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and they picked up a turtle. It was in our

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yard and they brought it back to show with the kids.

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I guess, which was fine, but I really wanted to

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run out and.

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Just well the other day I saw it was yesterday,

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I saw someone with a shovel and I think it

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was like dog feces, and they they didn't put it

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in our yard, but they put it in like the back,

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like the back in our yard that we don't mow.

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But I was like, why are you not putting it

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in your yard? Anyway?

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These are always trauma things, not really. So your car

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is in the shop, and I believe they have decided

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to keep it.

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So, I mean, it's only been two days, forty eight hours.

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It's fine.

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The thing that drives me crazy, though, is we made

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an appointment, Like what is it? What does it mean

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to make an appointment?

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They didn't know what needed to be repaired.

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I don't think they've even looked at it.

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Yeah, that is kind of a bummer.

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Yeah, so it might be.

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I like it though, because then you get to show

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for me everywhere and I get to be It's like

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driving Miss Tina.

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That's my favorite. Yeah.

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We're not quite there yet, but in a few years,

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I'm not going to be driving anymore and you're going

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to have to drive me any everywhere anywhere.

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Well, I don't mind chauffeing you around. It's my pleasure. Well,

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I have an exciting announcement for our listeners.

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Okay, well and for me too, because I don't know

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what you do.

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You do know, we have a website. I'm very excited

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to announce that you can go to lovemarykill dot com.

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We didn't have that before. No, we didn't have I

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have no idea what's going around.

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No, After however many years we've been doing this podcast,

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I finally decided we should probably have a website. And

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I'm just gonna say it's not the greatest website.

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It's not the most work in progress though, right.

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But it's a nice little place you can go and

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you can listen to our episodes there, you can sign

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up to you know, talk to us, you can leave

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a message for us. You can leave a voice message

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for us, oh, which I think that's kind of cool.

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What if people are just like to tell us for

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our idiots and swearing at us.

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You get a bunch of prank calls.

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Yeah, yeah, okay, that sounds fun. Something important to me though,

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that we are going to work on. We're going to

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put resources on the website, resources for people that might

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be suffering from domestic violence or you know, other family issues,

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and we hope to have that and active soon.

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Yeah. We'll keep kind of growing the content that we

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have on the website over time, but yeah, we definitely

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want to add resources there. But keep in mind that

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it's just us doing the podcast, the website, social media

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and everything, so we will do what we can to

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make it a really great website. But just be patient.

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That's all I have.

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I wanted to thank everyone for all the nice views.

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We asked for views on a recent episode and you

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guys really followed through. So yeah, makes our hearts so

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warm and grateful. So thank you so much if you

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took the time.

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To do that. Yeah, it really is awesome. We appreciate it.

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We I have a snack for you. Would you like

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I am hungry. Yes, that's good. I'm really I hope

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sandwich anything like you that.

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I saw it in the in the meat drawer because

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I just making a sandwich and so I was like, oh,

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that looks interesting.

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You know what it is, though, I bet you don't

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really know what it is? Sort of caramel, it's sort

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of It's so there's a dessert in Brazil, which the

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case today has nothing to do with Brazil. I just

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happened to see a video online. It's called Bala Baiana.

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I believe it is.

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How it's did we make that win?

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No, I've never made it. It's got it's It normally

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has coconut in it, but this variation I found it

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is made with bisc off and it's basically like, yeah,

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it's kind of a calmely sort of thing. It looks

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a little like a cake pop, but it's got like

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a candy coating on the outside that's supposed to be

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like a glass kind of you know candy. I haven't

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tried them yet, so I'm what exciting to try Richard

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very little create a really great website. Maybe it is

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one thing, but yeah, let's give these to try. What

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did you think of the Discoff Alla Bayana.

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They were amazing, so good. It took me about twenty

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minutes to choose, but so good.

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Yeah. I really like them too.

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Yeah delicious.

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I love discoff flavor and having like a carmele texture

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like that. Yeah.

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Really, it would say nine point eight out of ten.

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Well, that is pretty good on the Tina rating scale.

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I would take ten out of ten, but I feel

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like we need to be slightly more discerning. What do

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you give it?

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Well, I guess given that, I'll also give it a

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nine point eight out of ten copycat. Today we are

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going to go back to the nineteen eighties in Kansas

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to tell the story of Sandy and Tom Bird and

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Lorna and Marty Anderson, two couples involved in today's case.

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This was a recommendation from our longtime listener and friend Perry.

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Thanks for the recommendation.

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Perry is one of our biggest supporters and we appreciate

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her so much.

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On a Sunday morning in July nineteen eighty three, a

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group of canoeists came around a bend in the Cottonwood

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River just south of Emporia, Kansas, and found the body

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of a woman floating face down in a foot of

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water beneath a wooden bridge. A white station wagon lay

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upside down in the shallows nearby. Her name was Sandra Bird.

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She was thirty years old, a mathematician and a mother

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of three. Her husband was Tom Bird, the pastor of

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a fast growing Lutheran church four miles away. She should

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have been there that morning, getting her kids ready for

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Sunday school, teaching the teenager's Bible class, and sitting in

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the front pew for her husband's sermon. A highway patrolman

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named John Ruhle was among the first investigators on the scene.

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He had worked more than seven hundred accident calls in

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fourteen years on the job. What he found at the

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bottom of that sixty five foot embankment troubled him. There

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was blood in the wrong places, no skid marks leading

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up to the scene, and the seat was pushed back

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too far for a woman who stood five foot one.

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He went back to the station and told his supervisors

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he didn't think it was an accident. Nobody wanted to

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hear it. The county coroner ruled Sandy Bird's death an

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accident a few days later, and Emporia tried to move on.

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It might have stayed that way, just another closed case

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that left a family grieving over a tragic accident. But

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three and a half months later, and fifty miles away,

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on a lonely stretch of highway in the Flint Hills,

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another person connected to Sandy and Tom Byrd turned up dead,

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and this time the circumstances were harder to explain away.

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This is the story of two marriages, two murders, and

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the small Kansas city that found itself at the center

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of both. But let's go back two years to nineteen

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eighty one, where our story really begins. The leaders of

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Messiah Lutheran Church in Emporia, Kansas, had to make a decision.

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The church's congregation had grown large enough to either expl

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band or divide and create something new. They chose to

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create something new, Faith Lutheran Church. The original church's pastor,

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Reverend Larry Calso, knew that the new church needed the

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right kind of pastor, not a traditionalist trying to maintain

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the status quo, but a builder, someone who could walk

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into a half formed congregation and make people believe they

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were part of something worth building. When Kelso reached back

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into his seminary years trying to think of the right

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man for the job. One name kept surfacing. A young

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pastor he had known back then, someone currently serving two

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small churches in the Arkansas Delta Country outside of West Memphis.

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He had turned down other opportunities before, but when calso

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called Tom Byrd said yes. Tom was thirty one years old.

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He had grown up in Little Rock, played football, and

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ran cross country well enough to earn a scholarship to

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the University of Arkansas. He was the kind of man

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who competed at everything. He still ran more than five

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miles a day, played basketball with the Optimist Club, and

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played first base on the church softball team. People who

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knew him used words like tireless and magnetic, the kind

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of preacher who made you feel, sitting in a pew

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that he was talking directly to you. He arrived in

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Emporia in early nineteen eighty two, bringing with him three

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young children and a wife who had no intention of

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being a traditional pastor's wife. Sandy Bird, had been the

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valedictorian of their high school graduating class. In Little Rock.

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Tom played ball while Sandy was at the top of

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the academic rankings. She had gone off to Rice University

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in Houston after graduation, one of the more demanding science

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programs in the country, before transferring to Arkansas after her

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freshman year to be closer to Tom. They married on

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August twenty first, nineteen seventy one in Little Rock. Sandy's

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mother had reservations. She worried that by marrying young Sandy

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would never reach her full potential. It was a fear

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that Sandy seemed determined to disprove.

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So they were high school sweethearts.

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Yes, she had a bachelor's degree and a master's degree,

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both in mathematics and in Emporia. She got a job

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teaching at Emporia State University while simultaneously working toward a

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second master's degree in computer mathematics. This was nineteen early

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nineteen eighties. Computers were pretty new at that point in time.

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That was a great career choice.

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She barely paused for anything, including She would have been

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the first to admit housework. She once told a neighbor,

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when I start cleaning, it's either because I'm moving or

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because my mom and dad are coming. Tom wasn't much

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for yard work either. The lawn at the Birdhouse had

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a way of reaching chin height before anyone got around

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to mowing it. But if the house occasionally showed the

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strain of a busy family life, their work at Faith

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Lutheran was another matter. Tom maintained a sixty five hour workweek.

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He preached, he taught, he organized, He and Sandy ran

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a couple's club, arranged potluck dinners, and taught a class

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on family living together. Tom taught the Sunday Bible class

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while Sandy taught the teenagers. The plan for the new

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church was to gradually build up a following and establish

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their financial footing. The original church, Messiah Lutheran, had expected

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to carry the new congregation financially for several years. Instead,

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within eight months of its founding, the new church broke

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off on its own. By the fall of nineteen eighty three,

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membership had tripled. The main reason people agreed was Tom.

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His exceptional charisma, tireless work, ethic, and community focused initiatives

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helped the young mission parish blossom much faster than expected.

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So he wasn't the pastor at both of the churches.

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No, he was just at the new church that started up.

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The other couple involved in our story is Laurna and

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Marty Anderson. Martin Anderson had not had an easy start.

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He'd grown up in Wellington, a small city in south

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central Kansas, the younger of two sons. He graduated from

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Southwestern College in Winfield with a biology degree in June

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nineteen seventy and two weeks later married a young woman

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from Scott City. Seven months after that, they separated. The

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divorce was finalized in April nineteen seventy two. The reason

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listed on the paperwork was incompatibility.

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I think back then incompatibility was just sort of the

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default that they would put on divorce certificates. It could

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really mean just about anything.

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Well, today, isn't it a reconcilable differences? Marty was emotionally devastated.

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He found his way into a fundamentalist religious community that

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took him in with warmth, and for a time he

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threw himself into it completely. He became, by his own behavior,

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something of a zealot, telling acquaintances that they were condemned

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heading for the devil. The drinking stopped, swearing stopped In

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their place came the rolling in the aisles, the speaking

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in tongues. It was the faith of a man who

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had been badly hurt and needed somewhere new to direct

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his attention.

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I bet all his old drinking buddies were really happy

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with Marty changing and telling them you're all going to hell.

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Yeah, that's a wild transition. Then Marty met Lorna Slater.

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Laurna was twenty years old, slender and attractive, with a

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sweetness and tolerance about her that seemed to reach something

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in Marty that their religion hadn't quite managed. He was

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six foot two, beefy, tough talking, a man who seemed

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to distruss the world after being burned once already. But

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Lorna found the soft in tear beneath all of that. Slowly, steadily,

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she brought him back to himself. They married in Hutchinson

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in June nineteen seventy three. Marty was twenty four. In

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nineteen seventy eight, Marty took a position as chief medical

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technician at Newman Memorial County Hospital in Emporia. He arrived

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to find a lab that was poorly equipped and understaffed

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and set about fixing it, adding personnel and badgering administration

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for funding of new equipment. He was good at his job,

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and he knew it at home. The family grew four daughters,

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00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:10.519
all of them younger than ten by the early nineteen eighties.

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I think the youngest were the youngest two I believe

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were twins.

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Marty lived for those girls, and Lorna, to all outward appearances,

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00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:21.600
was exactly what the community saw a devoted, capable mother.

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The kids were always clean, well dressed, and well behaved.

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Neighbors looked at Lorna and thought super mom. From the outside,

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it looked like a solid, stable, happy family.

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We say this every eight I know, and it never

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really is, is it.

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00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:38.559
But there was another side to Lorna that the neighbors

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who admired her didn't always see, though plenty of others did.

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By the summer of nineteen seventy eight, not long after

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the Andersons arrived in Emporia, Lorna had developed a reputation.

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It was most visible around Marty's hospital softball team, where

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it became over the course of that first season something

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of a running joke among the players. After the game,

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Lorna was available to whichever of them was interested. The

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00:15:05.360 --> 00:15:08.279
men placed informal bets on who she'd set her sights

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00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:11.759
on that particular night. Many of them were men that

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Marty worked with every day. Lorna wasn't always discreet about it.

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At a party one evening, Marty was drunk on one

305
00:15:19.080 --> 00:15:21.159
side of the room while Lorna was on the other

306
00:15:21.559 --> 00:15:24.559
openly pawing another man. I thought Marty stopped drinking.

307
00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:27.639
Well that was when he had his brief spell of

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00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:32.320
religious zelotry, but he that Lorna, yeah.

309
00:15:32.159 --> 00:15:35.320
Oh okay. Lorna and the man slipped out together and

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00:15:35.399 --> 00:15:40.080
returned twenty minutes later. Lorna pursued Marty's friends from high school,

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00:15:40.080 --> 00:15:43.759
and she even pursued his best friend, Larry Shulk. What

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00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:46.799
she seemed to want more than any particular man was

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00:15:46.840 --> 00:15:50.559
the feeling of being wanted. Being desired made her feel good.

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Whether Marty knew the full extent of it or simply

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chose not to see it was never entirely clear, but

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among the people around them it was no secret the

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00:16:00.200 --> 00:16:04.799
supermom was maybe not so super after all. Twenty twenty

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00:16:04.840 --> 00:16:08.120
six were not supposed to call women supermoms, because that's

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you know, making women seem like they should be able

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to do it all. When if you see a woman

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00:16:13.279 --> 00:16:16.120
that is a supermom, it means that she's overworked and

322
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you know, tie up.

323
00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:18.559
Ah that's a very good point.

324
00:16:19.159 --> 00:16:23.000
But Laura, so is she having sex with all of

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00:16:23.039 --> 00:16:23.919
these men or.

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Is she just Yes, Lorna was having a lot of affairs.

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She would have like one steady boyfriend on the side,

328
00:16:31.639 --> 00:16:34.200
and then she would also have other flings that were

329
00:16:34.480 --> 00:16:38.559
less serious. But she was always, according to you know,

330
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the people that knew her and the people that were

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00:16:40.440 --> 00:16:42.960
around them, she was always having affairs.

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00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:44.879
And it sounds like Marty was turning a blind eye

333
00:16:44.919 --> 00:16:48.679
to it. Yes. The Anderson household ran on Marty's salary

334
00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:51.799
from the Newman Memorial and some additional money that came

335
00:16:51.840 --> 00:16:54.720
in from his work as a captain in the Army reserves.

336
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In total, they made about thirty seven thousand dollars a year,

337
00:16:58.399 --> 00:17:01.399
or about one hundred and fifty thousand today. It was

338
00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:04.200
a decent living, but it was never quite enough, and

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when twin daughters arrived in nineteen eighty one, bringing the

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00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:10.599
total to four girls, the gap between the income and

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00:17:10.680 --> 00:17:15.440
expenses widened further. They borrowed money from family and from

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the bank. When the credit cards reached their limits and

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the checking account ran dry, they kept writing checks anyway.

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In May nineteen eighty three, they overdrew their checking account

345
00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:29.440
around twenty times in a single month, each overdraft carrying

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00:17:29.519 --> 00:17:34.119
a ten dollars penalty. The math was not working at home.

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This strain went deeper than the finances. Marty loved his

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daughters completely, but he wasn't always certain they were his.

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Lorna's extramarital interests had never stopped. She almost always had

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a steady lover and occasional side interests. Beyond that, Marty knew,

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00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:54.200
at least in part. One afternoon, he came home to

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find Lorna in the bathtub and her latest lover sitting

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beside her on the edge of the tub, the two

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of them talking casually, as if nothing were unusual. Marty

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turned around and walked back out of the house. He

356
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wanted to hold his family together, and he wanted it

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00:18:09.359 --> 00:18:11.599
badly enough to shut out what he couldn't bear to

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look at directly. Three times in the late seventies and

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early eighties, Lorna was admitted to a psychiatric ward, never

360
00:18:18.839 --> 00:18:21.839
staying longer than a week. The nature of whatever treatment

361
00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:23.680
she received there is unknown.

362
00:18:24.119 --> 00:18:26.880
I watched a documentary on this case from A and

363
00:18:26.880 --> 00:18:29.279
E Network, and one of the people they interviewed was

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their former babysitter, and she would talk about like she

365
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would have the kids downstairs and Lorna would be home

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00:18:35.400 --> 00:18:38.200
upstairs and men would come over while she was like

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taking care of the kids downstairs, and she was the babysitter.

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Was fairly young at the time, and so she didn't

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really know what was going on. But like later she

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was like this something that didn't seem right about this.

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00:18:48.920 --> 00:18:51.599
That's bananas to do that when your kids are at home. Yeah,

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do you have that show linked in show notes.

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I do.

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We'll be back after a break.

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In the summer of nineteen eighty two, Denise Cohen moved

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into the Anderson Home on Meadow Lark Lane to help

377
00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:11.759
with the children while Marty was away for a month

378
00:19:11.839 --> 00:19:15.400
at Army Reserve camp. What she found there gave her pause.

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00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:19.119
Lorna's lover was at the house regularly, sometimes staying the

380
00:19:19.200 --> 00:19:22.920
night while the four girls were home. Denise told Lorna

381
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she thought it was bad for the kids, but Lorna

382
00:19:25.599 --> 00:19:29.640
didn't seem particularly concerned. When Marty came back from camp,

383
00:19:29.759 --> 00:19:31.799
Lorna told him that she didn't want him in her

384
00:19:31.839 --> 00:19:36.039
bedroom anymore. He would need to move downstairs. Denise asked

385
00:19:36.079 --> 00:19:39.839
Lorna the obvious question, why not just divorce him? Lorna's

386
00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:43.039
answer was cold and practical. She couldn't take care of

387
00:19:43.079 --> 00:19:45.480
all four children on her own and wouldn't be able

388
00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:48.240
to support them financially if she and Marty lived in

389
00:19:48.279 --> 00:19:52.519
separate households. So Marty stayed in the house, sleeping downstairs,

390
00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:56.119
and the marriage continued in name. Marty, for his part,

391
00:19:56.240 --> 00:19:59.319
told friends he no longer loved Lorna either, but that

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00:19:59.359 --> 00:20:02.680
he couldn't afford to leave. He also realized that paying

393
00:20:02.680 --> 00:20:05.799
for two households was beyond his means, and the thought

394
00:20:05.799 --> 00:20:08.839
of losing access to his daughters was something he couldn't

395
00:20:08.839 --> 00:20:12.359
bring himself to accept. It seemed that they were stuck together.

396
00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:16.200
So it seems like both Marty and Lorna were staying

397
00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:20.400
together purely for like financial reasons and practical reasons, which

398
00:20:20.440 --> 00:20:23.839
is really sad, very sad. It is because I think

399
00:20:23.880 --> 00:20:26.400
neither of them felt like they could live on their

400
00:20:26.440 --> 00:20:29.160
own with the income that they had kind of split

401
00:20:29.240 --> 00:20:31.000
into two households.

402
00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:32.319
And this is not good for their kids.

403
00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:35.480
No, it's not good for anybody. In January of nineteen

404
00:20:35.519 --> 00:20:38.720
eighty three, Lorna told her friend Jan over drinks, that

405
00:20:38.759 --> 00:20:42.200
she was sleeping with her hairdresser, a man named Danny Carter,

406
00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:45.240
and that there was no love left between her and Marty.

407
00:20:45.720 --> 00:20:48.400
She said matter of factly that she had never really

408
00:20:48.440 --> 00:20:51.400
loved him. By February, she told the same friend that

409
00:20:51.480 --> 00:20:54.359
she had a new boyfriend and that she was in love.

410
00:20:54.960 --> 00:20:57.839
The Andersons, perhaps as a last ditch effort to keep

411
00:20:57.880 --> 00:21:01.359
their family together, had found their way to Faith Lutheran Church,

412
00:21:01.759 --> 00:21:05.079
a new growing congregation not far from their home, led

413
00:21:05.119 --> 00:21:07.759
by a charismatic young minister who had a gift for

414
00:21:07.839 --> 00:21:11.680
making people feel like they belonged, Tom Byrd. The connection

415
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:14.759
between the Andersons and the Birds grew naturally over time.

416
00:21:15.279 --> 00:21:18.200
Marty and Tom had met at a softball game, and

417
00:21:18.279 --> 00:21:21.480
Marty took a genuine liking to Tom. He invited Tom

418
00:21:21.519 --> 00:21:25.119
to join the Thursday night basketball games and eventually sponsored

419
00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:28.519
him into the Flint Hills Optimists Club. Through the spring

420
00:21:28.559 --> 00:21:31.559
and summer of nineteen eighty three, they played volleyball and

421
00:21:31.640 --> 00:21:35.440
softball together. After games, Tom would sometimes stop by the

422
00:21:35.480 --> 00:21:39.559
Anderson House for a postgame beer. Some Sunday mornings, Tom

423
00:21:39.599 --> 00:21:44.440
conducted confirmation classes in the Andersons living room. In January

424
00:21:44.440 --> 00:21:47.319
of nineteen eighty three, the church had grown busy enough

425
00:21:47.359 --> 00:21:50.160
that it needed part time office help, no more than

426
00:21:50.200 --> 00:21:54.960
fifteen hours a week. Lorna Anderson stepped forward. She mentioned

427
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:57.799
she had worked as a church secretary once before, back

428
00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:02.000
in Sterling, Kansas. Congregation was glad to have her, and

429
00:22:02.039 --> 00:22:04.359
it would bring in a little extra money for Lorna

430
00:22:04.359 --> 00:22:07.759
and Marty. The job was supposed to be fifteen hours

431
00:22:07.799 --> 00:22:10.680
a week, but as the weeks went on, Lorna began

432
00:22:10.759 --> 00:22:12.359
staying longer and longer.

433
00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:16.960
She must have been just a great employee staying those long.

434
00:22:16.920 --> 00:22:22.079
Hours, Yes, very much so. To the congregation, the Birds

435
00:22:22.119 --> 00:22:25.000
looked like what they had always been, a busy, committed

436
00:22:25.079 --> 00:22:28.960
pastoral family, fully invested in the church they were building together,

437
00:22:29.480 --> 00:22:34.440
Tom preaching, Sandy teaching, both of them, running programs, keeping schedules.

438
00:22:34.519 --> 00:22:38.319
Showing up. From the outside, the picture was intact. But

439
00:22:38.440 --> 00:22:42.000
inside the yellow beige raised ranch where the Bird family lived,

440
00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:47.039
something was coming apart. Sandy's mother, Jane Grismer, first noticed

441
00:22:47.039 --> 00:22:50.799
a change in her daughter sometime in early nineteen eighty three.

442
00:22:50.839 --> 00:22:53.839
She couldn't have named it precisely, but something was off.

443
00:22:54.519 --> 00:22:57.839
Angie Dunsing was a member of the faith Lutheran congregation,

444
00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:01.200
who also ran the church's preschool, a program that she

445
00:23:01.279 --> 00:23:03.880
and Tom had started together in the fall of nineteen

446
00:23:03.920 --> 00:23:07.559
eighty two. She was around the church constantly, and she

447
00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:11.319
was observant. She didn't know exactly what was happening, but

448
00:23:11.400 --> 00:23:15.039
she felt something, a certain electricity. When Tom and Lorna

449
00:23:15.119 --> 00:23:17.200
were in the same room, in the way that they

450
00:23:17.240 --> 00:23:20.240
looked at each other, she began to notice other things.

451
00:23:20.680 --> 00:23:23.559
Passing the church office. On certain days, she would see

452
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:27.119
Lorna crying. Once she saw Tom put his arm around

453
00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:30.920
Lorna to comfort her. Another time she found him embracing

454
00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:33.920
Lorna in a hug. When they worked side by side,

455
00:23:34.119 --> 00:23:38.440
sometimes their shoulders touched their knees, touched small things, maybe,

456
00:23:38.440 --> 00:23:41.799
but Angie Dunsing noticed and was troubled by it. She

457
00:23:41.920 --> 00:23:45.319
thought it wasn't proper, and she said so to people

458
00:23:45.319 --> 00:23:48.440
inside the church, to people outside it, and eventually to

459
00:23:48.519 --> 00:23:52.319
Sandy Bird herself. We don't know how Sandy responded, but

460
00:23:52.400 --> 00:23:54.960
it's clear that she knew all was not well with

461
00:23:55.039 --> 00:23:59.279
her marriage where Sandy. The new man that Lorna told

462
00:23:59.279 --> 00:24:03.039
her friend Jan in February nineteen eighty three was Tom Byrd.

463
00:24:03.640 --> 00:24:05.640
She said The two of them had been taking day

464
00:24:05.640 --> 00:24:10.480
trips to Topeka and Wichita, spending afternoons together in motel rooms.

465
00:24:10.920 --> 00:24:14.039
She offered her assessment of the pastor without much hesitation.

466
00:24:14.559 --> 00:24:17.880
For a minister, he's really good in bed. The affair

467
00:24:18.039 --> 00:24:21.240
was not as hidden as Laura may have believed. In March,

468
00:24:21.440 --> 00:24:24.640
Jan called the Anderson home, expecting Lorna to answer, but

469
00:24:24.799 --> 00:24:29.119
Marty picked up. When Jan asked for Lorna, Marty sounded confused.

470
00:24:29.480 --> 00:24:32.720
Lorna was in Wichita, he said, meeting with her, wasn't she.

471
00:24:33.240 --> 00:24:36.880
Jan scrambled and came up with an explanation. The next day,

472
00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:40.599
Lorna called Jan to apologize, explaining that she had needed

473
00:24:40.640 --> 00:24:44.319
a cover story. She also mentioned almost in passing that

474
00:24:44.400 --> 00:24:46.720
she was worried one of her daughters may have seen

475
00:24:46.759 --> 00:24:48.920
her kissing Tom a few days earlier.

476
00:24:49.680 --> 00:24:52.440
So Jan is covering for Lorna here. Would you cover

477
00:24:52.599 --> 00:24:53.880
for a friend in this situation?

478
00:24:54.440 --> 00:24:56.039
That's a really tough one, But I don't think so.

479
00:24:56.319 --> 00:24:59.400
I think that's a really icky feeling to be covering

480
00:24:59.440 --> 00:25:02.359
for a friend who was having an affair on their spouse.

481
00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:04.799
You know, I would like to think that I would too,

482
00:25:05.119 --> 00:25:07.960
but I might give them one chance, yeah, and then

483
00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:10.279
say end this or you know I'm never going to

484
00:25:10.319 --> 00:25:11.559
cover you for you again?

485
00:25:11.720 --> 00:25:11.880
Right?

486
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:12.200
Yeah.

487
00:25:12.240 --> 00:25:14.279
I think it depends on the circumstances, but I could

488
00:25:14.319 --> 00:25:17.799
see that. On April nineteenth, Lorna arrived late to meet

489
00:25:17.799 --> 00:25:20.759
her friend Jan. She complained that her home life was

490
00:25:20.799 --> 00:25:23.839
worse than ever and that her feelings for Tom were deepening.

491
00:25:24.279 --> 00:25:27.359
Then she said something that Jan would not forget. I

492
00:25:27.400 --> 00:25:30.640
know this sounds really terrible, Laura said, but sometimes I

493
00:25:30.759 --> 00:25:33.240
just wish that something would happen to Marty and to

494
00:25:33.319 --> 00:25:35.799
Sandy so Tom and I could spend the rest of

495
00:25:35.799 --> 00:25:39.519
our lives together. That same month, Laurna ran into one

496
00:25:39.559 --> 00:25:43.640
of Marty's hospital colleagues named David Workman at Newman Memorial.

497
00:25:44.079 --> 00:25:46.720
She was crying and he could see bruises around her

498
00:25:46.720 --> 00:25:49.000
eye and cheek. He asked if she had been in

499
00:25:49.039 --> 00:25:52.039
an accident. She said that Marty had been hitting her.

500
00:25:52.480 --> 00:25:54.400
They went out to her van in the parking lot

501
00:25:54.440 --> 00:25:57.359
and talked for nearly an hour. She told Workman that

502
00:25:57.400 --> 00:25:59.400
if Marty didn't stop, he was going to get a

503
00:25:59.400 --> 00:26:03.039
dose of his own medicine. That her hairdresser and former boyfriend,

504
00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:05.880
Danny Carter and his brother Darryl were going to beat

505
00:26:05.920 --> 00:26:09.039
Marty up if it continued. And if that wasn't enough,

506
00:26:09.079 --> 00:26:11.079
she said they were going to drug him and run

507
00:26:11.160 --> 00:26:14.839
him off the road or shoot him. Workman wasn't entirely

508
00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:17.039
sure what to make of what he was hearing. He

509
00:26:17.119 --> 00:26:21.039
never told Marty, and he never called the police. Marty

510
00:26:21.160 --> 00:26:24.319
carried life insurance, as he always had, enough that if

511
00:26:24.359 --> 00:26:27.599
he died accidentally, Lorna stood to collect in the neighborhood

512
00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:30.720
of a quarter million dollars. Just before he left for

513
00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:34.160
Army reserve camp in Washington State that May, they added

514
00:26:34.240 --> 00:26:37.759
a little more. Marty traditionally would add more life insurance

515
00:26:37.759 --> 00:26:40.079
when he would go away for Army reserve camp, because

516
00:26:40.119 --> 00:26:43.319
he would tell Lorna that his odds of dying at

517
00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:47.319
reserve camp were like significantly higher than it was day

518
00:26:47.319 --> 00:26:49.720
to day. So he was actually a big believer in

519
00:26:49.759 --> 00:26:53.160
life insurance. But Marty came home safely from camp and

520
00:26:53.279 --> 00:26:56.920
the extra coverage expired. Sandy Bird was not a woman

521
00:26:56.920 --> 00:27:00.319
who unraveled easily, but by the spring of nineteen eighty three,

522
00:27:00.599 --> 00:27:04.079
the pressure was showing. Tom had never fully made peace

523
00:27:04.160 --> 00:27:07.440
with Sandy's career. What he wanted, it seemed, was a

524
00:27:07.480 --> 00:27:11.200
pastor's wife in the traditional sense, someone whose primary role

525
00:27:11.319 --> 00:27:15.000
was the church and the household. Sandy was incapable of

526
00:27:15.039 --> 00:27:18.359
being that person. She loved learning and she loved teaching,

527
00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:21.839
and the tension between what Tom wanted and who Sandy

528
00:27:22.039 --> 00:27:24.079
was had been building quietly for years.

529
00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:27.200
You remind me, Sandy is a college professor.

530
00:27:27.480 --> 00:27:29.400
She was teaching at college. I don't know if she

531
00:27:29.440 --> 00:27:31.480
was a full professor, but yet she was working on

532
00:27:31.519 --> 00:27:36.359
her master's degree in computer mathematics and also teaching. Sandy

533
00:27:36.400 --> 00:27:38.839
told a friend that she was worried that Tom didn't

534
00:27:38.880 --> 00:27:42.079
love her anymore. She didn't know exactly what was happening,

535
00:27:42.119 --> 00:27:45.200
but she could feel it. Tom had stopped asking her

536
00:27:45.319 --> 00:27:48.400
to review his Sunday sermons, something he had done as

537
00:27:48.400 --> 00:27:51.160
a matter of course. He told her he no longer

538
00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:54.359
wanted her dropping by the church unannounced or calling while

539
00:27:54.359 --> 00:27:57.119
he was at work. She noticed how much time he

540
00:27:57.200 --> 00:28:01.960
was spending with Lorna. On June firstnineteen eighty three, Tom's birthday,

541
00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:05.079
Sandy stopped by the church, even though Tom had told

542
00:28:05.079 --> 00:28:08.119
her not to. She found Tom and Lorna and all

543
00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:11.200
seven of their children from both families together in the

544
00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:16.480
fellowship hall mid party, a birthday celebration. Sandy hadn't been invited,

545
00:28:16.599 --> 00:28:20.319
but she stayed. Anyway. Can you imagine that walking into

546
00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:23.400
the church, finding your own kids as well as your

547
00:28:23.880 --> 00:28:29.519
husband's girlfriend's kids. Yeah, all having a part. Yeah, it's outrageous.

548
00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:33.880
Sandy's neighbor noticed the weight loss around this time, fifteen

549
00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:37.480
maybe twenty pounds gone. Sandy, when it was mentioned, was

550
00:28:37.559 --> 00:28:40.079
matter of fact about it. Yeah, she said, that's what

551
00:28:40.160 --> 00:28:42.920
stress will do to you. And then in early July,

552
00:28:43.319 --> 00:28:46.200
Sandy seemed to have made peace with whatever was going on.

553
00:28:46.920 --> 00:28:49.640
She told her mother that her life was right with God.

554
00:28:49.799 --> 00:28:52.599
Whatever Tom needed to sort out, that was between him

555
00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:55.799
and God. It's not clear exactly what Sandy meant by

556
00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:58.160
this comment to her mom, like whether she had just

557
00:28:58.279 --> 00:29:02.480
accepted that she was guiltless in whatever was going on

558
00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:04.799
with her or Tom, or maybe she had made a decision.

559
00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:05.680
We don't really know.

560
00:29:06.039 --> 00:29:09.920
Mmm, whatever is going on here sounds like Sandy does

561
00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:10.640
not deserve that.

562
00:29:11.000 --> 00:29:14.640
No, absolutely. The week that she died, she learned that

563
00:29:14.680 --> 00:29:17.759
she was being promoted at Impory Estate, which would mean

564
00:29:17.839 --> 00:29:20.599
extra classes to teach in the fall. It was a

565
00:29:20.640 --> 00:29:23.599
recognition of everything she had been working toward, but it

566
00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:26.799
may have exacerbated the tensions in the marriage, we don't

567
00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:30.799
know for sure. On July fourteenth, two days before her death,

568
00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:33.880
she was at the student union with colleagues, having coffee

569
00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:37.519
and cinnamon rolls. Her friends found her talkative and warm,

570
00:29:37.559 --> 00:29:40.440
full of energy, telling anyone who would listen about a

571
00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:43.160
convention trip that she and Tom had just taken to

572
00:29:43.200 --> 00:29:47.799
Saint Louis. She was people would remember her usual upbeat self.

573
00:29:48.279 --> 00:29:50.759
That was the last time that most of them saw her.

574
00:29:51.440 --> 00:29:55.240
The evening of Saturday, July sixteenth, nineteen eighty three had

575
00:29:55.279 --> 00:29:58.680
been a good one by all appearances. Sandy and Tom

576
00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:01.680
are going to celebrate her motion at work, Sandy picked

577
00:30:01.759 --> 00:30:04.200
up hamburgers and brought them to the church, where she

578
00:30:04.279 --> 00:30:07.039
and Tom ate them before heading out to see Return

579
00:30:07.119 --> 00:30:10.079
of the Jedi. After the movie, they swung back home

580
00:30:10.119 --> 00:30:13.480
at around nine thirty p m. Where Sandy ran inside twice,

581
00:30:13.880 --> 00:30:16.119
once for a bottle of wine and then again for

582
00:30:16.240 --> 00:30:19.319
a bottle of bourbon. She told the babysitter they'd be

583
00:30:19.400 --> 00:30:22.200
back in about an hour. Then she and Tom drove

584
00:30:22.319 --> 00:30:24.359
the three blocks to the church and had a few

585
00:30:24.440 --> 00:30:28.359
drinks together. What happened after that is unclear, as The

586
00:30:28.400 --> 00:30:31.920
only account we have is what Tom later told police,

587
00:30:32.319 --> 00:30:35.240
but we'll talk about that later. What we do know

588
00:30:35.359 --> 00:30:38.240
is that Tom called the security office at Sandy's workplace,

589
00:30:38.359 --> 00:30:42.960
Emporia State University, at one ten a m. On Sunday morning.

590
00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:46.839
He told the security officer that Sandy, a graduate student

591
00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:49.480
in the math department, had left the church over two

592
00:30:49.519 --> 00:30:52.519
hours earlier to pick up a computer textbook at the

593
00:30:52.559 --> 00:30:56.759
science building and she hadn't returned. Campus security checked and

594
00:30:56.839 --> 00:31:00.759
found no sign of Sandy or her car. Tom also

595
00:31:00.759 --> 00:31:03.000
made at least three calls to the police late that

596
00:31:03.079 --> 00:31:06.480
evening and early the next morning to report his wife missing.

597
00:31:07.119 --> 00:31:10.000
The exact time of those calls is not clear, but

598
00:31:10.079 --> 00:31:13.359
it seems that he made at least one call before midnight,

599
00:31:13.680 --> 00:31:17.599
another around three am, and then a last call at

600
00:31:17.599 --> 00:31:20.759
eight thirty am. He made one other call that night

601
00:31:20.839 --> 00:31:24.119
to his home, where their fourteen year old babysitter answered.

602
00:31:24.519 --> 00:31:27.920
The babysitter would later say this call took place around

603
00:31:27.960 --> 00:31:28.720
one am.

604
00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:31.160
So the timing of all these phone calls would later

605
00:31:31.240 --> 00:31:35.240
become a contentious issue because it seemed that Tom had

606
00:31:35.279 --> 00:31:38.480
called the police before calling home to check with the

607
00:31:38.519 --> 00:31:42.759
babysitter if Sandy was there, huh, and the question would

608
00:31:42.799 --> 00:31:45.480
be why would a husband call the police before checking

609
00:31:45.519 --> 00:31:48.160
to see if Sandy had gone home unless he knew

610
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:51.839
with certainty that Sandy hadn't gone home. Now. Tom would

611
00:31:51.880 --> 00:31:54.960
later claim that the babysitter must have been mistaken, that

612
00:31:55.039 --> 00:31:57.200
perhaps she was woken up by the phone call and

613
00:31:57.319 --> 00:32:00.000
wasn't clear on the time, and he claimed that, of course,

614
00:32:00.039 --> 00:32:02.279
as he called home before calling the police.

615
00:32:02.680 --> 00:32:06.079
After speaking with the police around eight thirty am on Sunday,

616
00:32:06.279 --> 00:32:08.799
Tom called the church elders to let them know that

617
00:32:08.839 --> 00:32:11.559
Sandy was missing and that he would be unable to

618
00:32:11.559 --> 00:32:14.680
give the sermon that morning. Sandy was found around nine

619
00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:18.640
o'clock Sunday morning by some canoeists. She was floating face

620
00:32:18.720 --> 00:32:21.519
down in a foot deep eddy on the Cottonwood River,

621
00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:24.680
just in front of a white nineteen seventy eight Pougeot

622
00:32:24.839 --> 00:32:27.839
station wagon that lay on its back and the shallows

623
00:32:28.039 --> 00:32:31.599
beneath the wooden planks of the Rocky Ford Bridge. The

624
00:32:31.599 --> 00:32:35.160
bridge sat atop a sixty five foot embankment at the

625
00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:37.400
end of a road that, as one local put it,

626
00:32:37.720 --> 00:32:41.440
went from nowhere to nowhere. It was about five miles

627
00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:45.519
southeast of downtown Emporia, not a main road into town,

628
00:32:46.079 --> 00:32:49.240
not a road anyone would find themselves on by accident.

629
00:32:49.519 --> 00:32:52.319
I'll put we'll post pictures of this bridge in our

630
00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:55.160
social media, but this is very much a country road

631
00:32:55.240 --> 00:32:58.000
like this bridge is. I think it's a one lane bridge,

632
00:32:58.039 --> 00:33:00.559
like it's out there in the middle of nowhere.

633
00:33:00.640 --> 00:33:04.160
Okay. John Rule had spent fourteen years with the Kansas

634
00:33:04.240 --> 00:33:08.359
Highway Patrol. He had worked more than seven hundred accident scenes,

635
00:33:08.599 --> 00:33:11.039
but he had never seen anything quite like this one.

636
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:14.039
The gravel on the road leading to the bridge was wrong.

637
00:33:14.440 --> 00:33:17.079
There was no skid marks, no torn up surface that

638
00:33:17.119 --> 00:33:20.480
would suggest a driver fighting to control a car going

639
00:33:20.519 --> 00:33:23.079
off the road. The brush at the edge of the

640
00:33:23.119 --> 00:33:27.000
embankment was light. Whatever had gone through, it had gone

641
00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:29.680
through it deliberately aimed just to the right of the

642
00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:33.359
bridge's south approach, through a narrow gap down the bank,

643
00:33:33.640 --> 00:33:36.079
and the car was sitting almost directly at the base

644
00:33:36.119 --> 00:33:39.359
of the embankment. A car traveling at any real speed

645
00:33:39.400 --> 00:33:43.319
would have carried farther out into the river. Rule estimated

646
00:33:43.359 --> 00:33:46.039
that it had been moving about ten miles an hour.

647
00:33:46.359 --> 00:33:48.559
When we talk about this narrow gap, that the car

648
00:33:48.640 --> 00:33:51.119
must have gone through like the bridge had like railings

649
00:33:51.119 --> 00:33:53.880
along the side of it, and right before you reached

650
00:33:53.880 --> 00:33:57.079
the bridge there were like concrete abutments there, and so

651
00:33:57.119 --> 00:34:00.480
there it really was a pretty narrow gap the car.

652
00:34:00.799 --> 00:34:03.400
The only way the car could have gone over the embankment.

653
00:34:02.960 --> 00:34:05.720
Was through that gap, So it seems like someone had

654
00:34:05.720 --> 00:34:08.960
pushed the car through the gap exactly. The driver's door

655
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:11.440
had been torn off and lay on the bank seven

656
00:34:11.480 --> 00:34:15.000
feet from the car, close enough to suggest the same

657
00:34:15.079 --> 00:34:18.400
slow speed, but Sandy was in front of the car,

658
00:34:18.480 --> 00:34:21.559
and that didn't make sense. Rule began to examine the

659
00:34:21.599 --> 00:34:25.199
scene more carefully. Dry droplets of blood made a trail

660
00:34:25.280 --> 00:34:28.519
back up the embankment. Twenty two feet from the car.

661
00:34:28.719 --> 00:34:31.880
He found blood smeared on a tree branch five feet

662
00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:36.119
off the ground. More blood dotted the leaves nearby. Just

663
00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:39.480
west of the bridge, he found a woman's watch a crystal,

664
00:34:39.599 --> 00:34:42.480
its crystal smashed, but it was in the wrong place.

665
00:34:43.079 --> 00:34:46.480
Objects thrown from a moving car generally travel in the

666
00:34:46.519 --> 00:34:50.440
same direction as the car. This watch was behind it

667
00:34:50.559 --> 00:34:53.519
and off to the west. Then they went up to

668
00:34:53.519 --> 00:34:57.000
the bridge itself. Near the south end. Investigators found a

669
00:34:57.039 --> 00:35:00.800
spot of blood roughly four inches across. They followed it

670
00:35:00.840 --> 00:35:04.280
to the iron railing. Right below the railing was the

671
00:35:04.360 --> 00:35:07.800
tree where Rule had found the blood. Sandy's watch seemed

672
00:35:07.840 --> 00:35:10.920
to be directly below the bridge at that point, as

673
00:35:10.920 --> 00:35:13.480
if it had fallen through the gaps between the planks

674
00:35:13.519 --> 00:35:16.519
of the bridge. Rule stood there and looked at what

675
00:35:16.599 --> 00:35:20.280
he was seeing. To him, it appeared that Sanderbird had

676
00:35:20.320 --> 00:35:23.400
been beaten on the bridge and then thrown over the railing.

677
00:35:23.960 --> 00:35:26.519
He told his supervisors that he didn't think the death

678
00:35:26.679 --> 00:35:27.440
was an accident.

679
00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:31.199
So this scene truly didn't add up, like having you know,

680
00:35:31.719 --> 00:35:34.159
at the bottom of the embankment he found blood up

681
00:35:34.199 --> 00:35:37.000
in a tree, like ye five feet six feet off

682
00:35:37.079 --> 00:35:38.679
the ground, which is bizarre.

683
00:35:38.920 --> 00:35:42.599
It's crazy that they found the blood on the tree, Yeah.

684
00:35:42.199 --> 00:35:45.559
But even stranger, like on the bridge itself. So before

685
00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:48.599
the car, the car went off the embankment, before it

686
00:35:48.679 --> 00:35:51.079
went over, before it had even gone over the bridge,

687
00:35:51.159 --> 00:35:54.800
so they found blood on the bridge itself, and that

688
00:35:54.960 --> 00:35:56.920
was right above where the blood was on the tree.

689
00:35:56.960 --> 00:36:00.039
So it seemed kind of obvious that, you know, some

690
00:36:00.199 --> 00:36:02.400
had happened at the top of the bridge, and then

691
00:36:02.599 --> 00:36:05.320
she had probably been thrown over the side of the bridge.

692
00:36:05.599 --> 00:36:08.559
It seems obvious in hindsight, but of course at the time,

693
00:36:08.719 --> 00:36:10.760
you know, I think the default was sort of like,

694
00:36:11.119 --> 00:36:12.239
it's probably an accident.

695
00:36:13.280 --> 00:36:16.719
The autopsy on Monday confirmed the violence the scene had suggested.

696
00:36:17.199 --> 00:36:22.039
Five ribs on Sandy's left side were broken the fifth, sixth, tenth, eleventh,

697
00:36:22.039 --> 00:36:24.920
and twelfth. She had cuts on her upper right arm

698
00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:29.039
and her left forearm, her forehead, and her cheek. Bruises

699
00:36:29.079 --> 00:36:32.760
in various stages of purpling marked her right forearm. She

700
00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:35.880
had bled to death from her ruptured kidney. There was

701
00:36:35.880 --> 00:36:38.360
no water in her lungs, although she had been found

702
00:36:38.440 --> 00:36:41.239
face down in the water. That meant that she was

703
00:36:41.280 --> 00:36:45.280
almost certainly dead before she got there. The interior of

704
00:36:45.320 --> 00:36:48.679
the car contained no blood and no hair, nothing to

705
00:36:48.800 --> 00:36:51.960
suggest a person had been thrown around inside it during

706
00:36:51.960 --> 00:36:56.519
a crash. The driver's seat was pushed well back. Sandrabird

707
00:36:56.679 --> 00:36:59.920
was five feet one inches, and her friends all said

708
00:37:00.119 --> 00:37:03.639
the same thing. She never drove without first buckling her

709
00:37:03.679 --> 00:37:06.920
seat belt. A test of her blood later showed that

710
00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:08.000
she was sober.

711
00:37:08.239 --> 00:37:10.559
I think they found traces of alcohol in her blood,

712
00:37:10.559 --> 00:37:13.440
but nowhere near enough that she would have been intoxicated.

713
00:37:14.119 --> 00:37:16.000
We'll be back after a break.

714
00:37:23.280 --> 00:37:26.599
Around noon On Sunday, an Emporia police officer and a

715
00:37:26.599 --> 00:37:29.360
state trooper came to the bird House and told Tom

716
00:37:29.480 --> 00:37:32.440
that Sandy had been found. Her car had gone off

717
00:37:32.480 --> 00:37:34.960
the road near the Rocky Ford Bridge, they said, and

718
00:37:35.079 --> 00:37:39.119
crashed into the Cottonwood River south of town. Tom's response

719
00:37:39.280 --> 00:37:41.880
was immediate, what was she doing out there? We never

720
00:37:41.960 --> 00:37:45.079
go out there. Then he added where is it? Which

721
00:37:45.079 --> 00:37:47.119
I thought was kind of an interesting response that his

722
00:37:47.199 --> 00:37:49.079
first thing is what is she doing out there?

723
00:37:49.159 --> 00:37:50.480
We don't go there. Where is it?

724
00:37:50.599 --> 00:37:54.280
Yeah, a little bit odd. Tom gave investigators his account

725
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:57.280
of the evening. He and Sandy had eaten Hamburgers at

726
00:37:57.280 --> 00:37:59.679
the church, then gone to see Return of the Jedi.

727
00:38:00.280 --> 00:38:02.599
After the movie, they had stopped at home, where Sandy

728
00:38:02.639 --> 00:38:05.719
had grabbed some wine and some bourbon. They drove the

729
00:38:05.760 --> 00:38:08.320
three blocks to the church and had drinks, and then

730
00:38:08.440 --> 00:38:11.400
went on to a private club for more. They left

731
00:38:11.400 --> 00:38:15.000
the club around ten forty five. Sandy then dropped Tom

732
00:38:15.039 --> 00:38:17.480
at the church so he could fine tune his sermon

733
00:38:17.559 --> 00:38:20.440
for the next morning, while she headed to the university

734
00:38:20.480 --> 00:38:23.559
to work on her computer project and pick up some things.

735
00:38:23.960 --> 00:38:25.639
How much had they been sounds like they had been

736
00:38:25.719 --> 00:38:27.199
drinking a fair amount here.

737
00:38:27.400 --> 00:38:29.679
Well, we don't really know how much they had been drinking.

738
00:38:29.719 --> 00:38:33.599
We'd know that Sandy's blood alcohol level was very low,

739
00:38:33.679 --> 00:38:37.559
so she was definitely not intoxicated. And again the challenge

740
00:38:37.599 --> 00:38:39.760
here is we have Tom's account of the evening and

741
00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:42.519
we don't have any other accounts of what happened between

742
00:38:43.039 --> 00:38:45.119
the time that. You know, the last thing we can

743
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:47.960
verify is that she stopped at home. The babysitter saw

744
00:38:47.960 --> 00:38:50.559
her come in, pick up some booze, go out to

745
00:38:50.599 --> 00:38:52.599
the car. But after that we just don't know.

746
00:38:53.079 --> 00:38:56.599
So the babysitter saw her grab both wine and bourbon. Yes,

747
00:38:57.000 --> 00:38:58.960
and then you said they went to a private club

748
00:38:59.000 --> 00:38:59.599
to drink some.

749
00:38:59.519 --> 00:39:01.039
Well, they went to the Yeah, they went to the

750
00:39:01.119 --> 00:39:03.920
church first, apparently according to Tom, had a couple of

751
00:39:03.960 --> 00:39:07.599
drinks there. Then according to Tom, and this account would

752
00:39:07.679 --> 00:39:10.559
change later, but he said, according to him that they

753
00:39:10.599 --> 00:39:12.239
went to a private club and had a couple of

754
00:39:12.280 --> 00:39:16.239
drinks later later that private club disappeared from his story.

755
00:39:16.960 --> 00:39:19.119
Okay, it just seems odd that they would be drinking

756
00:39:19.239 --> 00:39:21.159
and then they would both be like, well, I'm gonna

757
00:39:21.199 --> 00:39:24.239
go work on my sermon and yeah, going to go yeah.

758
00:39:24.039 --> 00:39:27.760
Yeah, it seems odd. To me that like working that late,

759
00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:29.840
But I guess that was I think that was fairly

760
00:39:29.880 --> 00:39:32.039
normal for them, you know, to go the key would

761
00:39:32.039 --> 00:39:34.239
be at the church working late, and she would go

762
00:39:34.320 --> 00:39:36.880
to the university late and do some work, So I

763
00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:40.840
think that was not abnormal. But yeah, having drinks before then,

764
00:39:41.320 --> 00:39:43.159
unless you know, maybe they had one drink or whatever.

765
00:39:43.199 --> 00:39:46.320
And then I guess in nineteen eighty three people didn't

766
00:39:46.400 --> 00:39:49.519
work from home as much. It might be an odd observation,

767
00:39:49.880 --> 00:39:54.719
but yeah, I mean we exclusively work from home. But yeah, interesting.

768
00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:58.320
So, continuing Tom's account to the police, he then said

769
00:39:58.360 --> 00:39:59.280
he went for a run.

770
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:02.159
It does after you have bourbon and y.

771
00:40:02.639 --> 00:40:05.960
Yeah, at eleven fifteen pm, sometime between eleven fifteen and

772
00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:07.960
eleven forty five. He said he went for a run

773
00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:11.280
of about two and a half miles. When Sandy hadn't

774
00:40:11.320 --> 00:40:14.639
returned by midnight, he drove by the university but didn't

775
00:40:14.639 --> 00:40:18.519
see her car there. He then began making calls the babysitter,

776
00:40:18.639 --> 00:40:22.599
the university, the police, the hospital. Whatever. He said to

777
00:40:22.639 --> 00:40:25.199
the officers, they found him very convincing.

778
00:40:25.760 --> 00:40:29.000
But you said they lived three blocks from their house

779
00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:31.159
and he didn't go to the like, wouldn't you just

780
00:40:31.280 --> 00:40:32.760
walk home and look for me.

781
00:40:33.199 --> 00:40:35.400
Yeah, that's a really good point too. Why not stop

782
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:37.719
and check on your home to see if she showed

783
00:40:37.800 --> 00:40:41.760
up there. Later that afternoon, neighbors came by to offer

784
00:40:41.800 --> 00:40:45.760
their condolences. Some were surprised when Lorna Anderson met them

785
00:40:45.800 --> 00:40:48.719
at the door with a smile. Tom was on the couch,

786
00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:52.519
slouched and nearly catatonic, telling anyone who sat with him

787
00:40:52.519 --> 00:40:56.199
that he couldn't believe it. This wasn't happening. Over the

788
00:40:56.239 --> 00:40:59.519
next few days, highway patrolman John Rule kept turning the

789
00:40:59.519 --> 00:41:02.440
scene over her in his mind. The blood on the bridge,

790
00:41:02.599 --> 00:41:06.440
the watch, the seat position, the slow speed, the road

791
00:41:06.440 --> 00:41:10.840
that went nowhere. Despite Rule's concerns, the county coroner ruled

792
00:41:10.840 --> 00:41:13.880
the death an accident a few days later. I guess

793
00:41:13.920 --> 00:41:16.280
John Rule actually took the coroner out to the scene

794
00:41:16.400 --> 00:41:19.719
and they looked at it together, and so Rule was like, yeah,

795
00:41:19.719 --> 00:41:22.199
this is going to make sense to him. But the

796
00:41:22.239 --> 00:41:26.239
coroner just couldn't be bothered apparently to rule it anything

797
00:41:26.239 --> 00:41:27.079
other than an accident.

798
00:41:27.119 --> 00:41:31.079
That's so frustrating because just the seat being pushed back.

799
00:41:30.960 --> 00:41:33.840
M yeah, that alone is alone. And the fact that

800
00:41:33.880 --> 00:41:36.440
she always wore her seat belt, according to all of

801
00:41:36.440 --> 00:41:38.360
her friends. So and you know, I don't know if

802
00:41:38.360 --> 00:41:42.400
they didn't investigate that, but yeah, Rule would later say

803
00:41:42.440 --> 00:41:45.760
he lay awake nights feeling guilty about the investigation and

804
00:41:45.920 --> 00:41:48.360
angry that he hadn't been able to get anyone else

805
00:41:48.400 --> 00:41:51.199
to share his doubts. Nobody wanted to believe it was

806
00:41:51.199 --> 00:41:54.239
a homicide, Rule recalled, hell. I didn't want to believe

807
00:41:54.280 --> 00:41:56.760
it myself. I was sure she didn't die in a

808
00:41:56.800 --> 00:41:59.920
traffic wreck, but I didn't have the training to prove otherwise.

809
00:42:00.519 --> 00:42:03.280
As details about the scene began to leak out, the

810
00:42:03.320 --> 00:42:06.800
community started to form its own theories. Some people at

811
00:42:06.800 --> 00:42:09.480
the university thought that she must have been mugged in

812
00:42:09.519 --> 00:42:13.440
a parking lot, kidnapped, murdered, and then forced over the embankment.

813
00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:17.599
The seat belt details circulated. Sandy always wore one, so

814
00:42:17.880 --> 00:42:20.599
how had she been thrown from the car, But no

815
00:42:20.639 --> 00:42:24.079
one seemed to suspect tom. He was a grieving pastor,

816
00:42:24.239 --> 00:42:26.639
a father of three, a man who had just lost

817
00:42:26.679 --> 00:42:30.880
his wife. No one, that is, except Marty Anderson. A

818
00:42:30.920 --> 00:42:34.639
few days after Sandy's death, one of Marty's coworkers mentioned

819
00:42:34.679 --> 00:42:38.320
how sad the accident was. Marty cut him off. He said,

820
00:42:38.519 --> 00:42:40.960
you don't believe that, do you. Tom Byrd did it.

821
00:42:41.360 --> 00:42:44.039
He seemed to be the only one in Emporia willing

822
00:42:44.079 --> 00:42:47.519
to say it out loud. A few nights after Sandy's death,

823
00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:51.159
Marty and Lorna were at a party together. Lorna seemed

824
00:42:51.199 --> 00:42:54.679
forlorn She told people there that she knew Sandy had

825
00:42:54.719 --> 00:42:58.079
struggled with mental health problems and that she wasn't surprised

826
00:42:58.079 --> 00:43:01.639
that Sandy had died by suicide. The room went quiet.

827
00:43:01.960 --> 00:43:05.119
It wasn't anything that Tom had suggested as a possibility

828
00:43:05.159 --> 00:43:08.960
to the authorities. I don't think anyone thought that Sandy

829
00:43:09.079 --> 00:43:11.840
was suicidal, So it seemed like Lorna was just throwing

830
00:43:12.159 --> 00:43:14.800
this out there as a theory just to get people thinking.

831
00:43:15.559 --> 00:43:19.280
Sandy was buried in her hometown in Arkansas. Tom presided

832
00:43:19.360 --> 00:43:23.599
at the service. Ten days after Sandy's death, Pastor Calso

833
00:43:23.840 --> 00:43:27.920
spotted Tom riding in Lorna Anderson's van on the Kansas Turnpike.

834
00:43:28.360 --> 00:43:30.320
He thought it was a bit soon for Tom to

835
00:43:30.360 --> 00:43:33.719
be seen with another woman, and later confronted him about it.

836
00:43:34.199 --> 00:43:36.800
Tom said that he had been counseling Lorna about her

837
00:43:36.840 --> 00:43:41.199
marriage problems. The church elders got involved, and Lorna offered

838
00:43:41.199 --> 00:43:44.840
her resignation, but Marty called several of the elders and

839
00:43:44.920 --> 00:43:48.719
insisted his wife should keep her job. The elders declined

840
00:43:48.760 --> 00:43:51.400
her resignation, but asked her to cut back her hours.

841
00:43:51.760 --> 00:43:54.079
She had been spending nearly every day at the church

842
00:43:54.280 --> 00:43:57.320
despite only being paid for half a day. So this

843
00:43:57.400 --> 00:43:59.800
is kind of interesting that Marty was the one to

844
00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:02.559
call and vouch for his wife and say she shouldn't

845
00:44:02.559 --> 00:44:05.079
lose her job, even though he must have known by

846
00:44:05.119 --> 00:44:08.679
this time that Laura was having an affair with Tom Bird.

847
00:44:08.840 --> 00:44:11.400
Well, it's a financial concerns too, right.

848
00:44:11.199 --> 00:44:12.360
I think that's exactly right.

849
00:44:12.679 --> 00:44:14.800
If you guys could see how many times I roll

850
00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:18.239
my eyes during a case, you'd probably be shocked. Maybe

851
00:44:18.280 --> 00:44:20.480
it wouldn't be Maybe you're rolling your eyes right along.

852
00:44:20.599 --> 00:44:24.039
I bet a lot of people are. The congregation purchased

853
00:44:24.079 --> 00:44:26.639
a computer and donated it to the church as a

854
00:44:26.679 --> 00:44:30.199
memorial to Sandy. Tom and Laurna took to sitting side

855
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:32.960
by side trying to figure out how to use it together.

856
00:44:33.559 --> 00:44:36.400
I find this detailed funny because this is nineteen eighty

857
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:41.239
three and computers were really very basic this point, and

858
00:44:41.320 --> 00:44:44.000
so just the idea of like the church, you.

859
00:44:43.960 --> 00:44:46.480
Know, but that's your memorial because.

860
00:44:46.280 --> 00:44:50.000
She was you know, she was majoring in computer mathematics.

861
00:44:50.360 --> 00:44:51.760
It was sort of a tribute to her. But I

862
00:44:51.800 --> 00:44:55.440
can only imagine that Tom and Laurna were really baffled

863
00:44:55.480 --> 00:44:58.800
at trying to make heads or tails of it. In September,

864
00:44:58.840 --> 00:45:02.719
a church member named Sharon Meyer confronted Tom directly about

865
00:45:02.719 --> 00:45:05.960
how close he and Lorna had become. Tom told her

866
00:45:05.960 --> 00:45:08.239
that after the death of his wife and the strain

867
00:45:08.280 --> 00:45:11.760
of raising three children alone, Lorna gave him strength.

868
00:45:12.400 --> 00:45:16.000
Tom and Sandy's kids are all under ten correct, yes,

869
00:45:16.880 --> 00:45:18.840
and he's leaning on Lurna for strength.

870
00:45:19.000 --> 00:45:19.880
Oh gosh.

871
00:45:20.760 --> 00:45:24.320
Sandy's death might have officially remained just a tragic accident,

872
00:45:24.440 --> 00:45:28.039
but three and a half months later everything changed. On

873
00:45:28.079 --> 00:45:30.920
the morning of Friday, November fourth, nineteen eighty three, the

874
00:45:30.960 --> 00:45:34.599
Anderson family, Marty, Lorna, and their four daughters, ranging in

875
00:45:34.719 --> 00:45:36.920
age from two and a half to eight years old,

876
00:45:37.239 --> 00:45:41.400
piled into their green Ford van and headed north. Marty

877
00:45:41.440 --> 00:45:43.639
had the day off. He told coworkers that he was

878
00:45:43.679 --> 00:45:46.480
taking the family up to Fort Riley to pick up

879
00:45:46.519 --> 00:45:50.320
some uniform clothing he needed a camouflage uniform for his

880
00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:53.239
reserve duties, and they were going to do a little shopping.

881
00:45:53.800 --> 00:45:56.280
All six of them made a day of it. They

882
00:45:56.320 --> 00:45:59.559
browsed the base, stopped at a discount store in Manhattan,

883
00:45:59.639 --> 00:46:04.000
Kansas for diapers. Considered a picnic before the November cold

884
00:46:04.199 --> 00:46:07.320
talked them out of it and aided a McDonald's instead.

885
00:46:07.800 --> 00:46:11.239
They were headed back south towards Emporia before six o'clock,

886
00:46:11.599 --> 00:46:14.320
Laura at the wheel, the girls in the back. The

887
00:46:14.440 --> 00:46:18.239
route home was Kansas Highway one seventy seven, a two

888
00:46:18.320 --> 00:46:22.920
lane road that cuts through the Flint Hills, long rolling grassland,

889
00:46:23.239 --> 00:46:25.760
mostly empty, the kind of road where you can go

890
00:46:25.840 --> 00:46:29.880
miles without seeing another car. Around five miles south of

891
00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:33.400
I seventy, Lorna eased the van onto a small lip

892
00:46:33.440 --> 00:46:37.199
of asphalt on the roadside and stopped. To the west.

893
00:46:37.280 --> 00:46:40.079
A big hill blocked what was left of the evening light.

894
00:46:40.800 --> 00:46:44.960
What happened next, according to Lorna, began with a strawberry Sunday.

895
00:46:45.519 --> 00:46:48.000
She told investigators that she'd eaten one of her daughter's

896
00:46:48.079 --> 00:46:51.440
Sundays at McDonald's, a problem given that she was allergic

897
00:46:51.519 --> 00:46:54.920
to strawberries. Her stomach had turned so bad that she

898
00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:57.719
had to pull over and run run out onto a

899
00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:00.840
field to throw up. Somewhere in the process, she lost

900
00:47:00.840 --> 00:47:03.679
the keys and Marty got out to help her. Look.

901
00:47:04.079 --> 00:47:05.880
She'd gone back to the van to search for a

902
00:47:05.920 --> 00:47:09.199
spare set when she heard a man's voice demanding a wallet.

903
00:47:09.800 --> 00:47:13.519
I turned around, she told investigators, and Marty was getting

904
00:47:13.559 --> 00:47:17.840
his wallet out and the man started shooting. He went crazy.

905
00:47:18.079 --> 00:47:21.559
He just shot and shot, she said. The gunman forced

906
00:47:21.559 --> 00:47:24.000
her to the ground as a car passed, pressed the

907
00:47:24.039 --> 00:47:27.719
pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. It just clicked.

908
00:47:28.079 --> 00:47:31.320
Then the man ran. The only good news, she said,

909
00:47:31.440 --> 00:47:33.880
was that the shooting had happened out of sight of

910
00:47:33.920 --> 00:47:38.559
the children. That's convenient. Lorna flagged down a passing bus

911
00:47:38.840 --> 00:47:41.039
high school football fans on their way to a game,

912
00:47:41.400 --> 00:47:44.480
and someone went to a nearby farmhouse to call the police.

913
00:47:44.880 --> 00:47:48.400
The football fans, not knowing any better, wandered the scene freely,

914
00:47:48.599 --> 00:47:53.599
leaving fingerprints on everything they touched. Investigators would spend considerable

915
00:47:53.639 --> 00:47:57.679
time later sorting through them all. Marty Anderson was found

916
00:47:57.679 --> 00:48:00.960
in a field sixty feet from the highway. He had

917
00:48:00.960 --> 00:48:03.440
been shot three times in the top of his head

918
00:48:03.920 --> 00:48:07.679
with a twenty two caliber weapon. Investigators believed he must

919
00:48:07.679 --> 00:48:10.599
have been on his knees when he was shot. When

920
00:48:10.639 --> 00:48:14.400
investigators arrived, Lorna was hysterical. It seemed like the reaction

921
00:48:14.559 --> 00:48:18.280
you would expect. She was taken to the hospital in Manhattan,

922
00:48:18.480 --> 00:48:21.920
where she spent the night. Around noon the day after

923
00:48:21.960 --> 00:48:25.280
the shooting, roughly eighteen hours after her husband had been

924
00:48:25.360 --> 00:48:28.119
killed at the side of a Kansas highway, Lorna called

925
00:48:28.119 --> 00:48:31.119
her insurance agent to ask how quickly the claims when

926
00:48:31.159 --> 00:48:34.840
Marty's life insurance could be processed. Her agent was so

927
00:48:34.960 --> 00:48:37.639
taken aback by the timing that he called a supervisor

928
00:48:37.679 --> 00:48:41.440
for advice. Then on Monday, the supervisor called the Geary

929
00:48:41.519 --> 00:48:46.679
County Police Department to share their concerns. Investigators already had

930
00:48:46.719 --> 00:48:50.039
many questions of their own. Robbers, they noted, did not

931
00:48:50.159 --> 00:48:53.320
typically stake out Kansas cornfields on the chance that someone

932
00:48:53.400 --> 00:48:56.360
might pull off the road. Tom Bird had been in

933
00:48:56.440 --> 00:48:59.239
Topeka the evening of the shooting. He arrived at the

934
00:48:59.280 --> 00:49:01.559
Manhattan house, but all the next morning with a friend.

935
00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:04.960
One of the first people to reach Lorna. He delivered

936
00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.039
the eulogy at Marty's funeral. The message Tom delivered struck

937
00:49:09.079 --> 00:49:12.920
at least one attendee is unusual. Essentially, he used the

938
00:49:12.960 --> 00:49:16.239
eulogy to make an appeal not to waste energy being

939
00:49:16.360 --> 00:49:20.320
angry at whoever had done this. The Christian thing Tom

940
00:49:20.360 --> 00:49:22.840
told them Mortars was to try to forgive.

941
00:49:23.480 --> 00:49:26.519
I'm afraid that's where we're going to end Part one.

942
00:49:27.000 --> 00:49:29.440
Tom is real busy given those eulogies, isn't he.

943
00:49:29.719 --> 00:49:32.440
Yeah, he sure is. So what do you make of

944
00:49:32.679 --> 00:49:35.360
the scene of Marty's murder, like in the middle of

945
00:49:35.440 --> 00:49:37.599
a Kansas cornfield, Laura.

946
00:49:37.360 --> 00:49:40.280
Out of the side of their children. Yeah, it seems

947
00:49:40.280 --> 00:49:41.559
pretty unlikely, doesn't it.

948
00:49:41.840 --> 00:49:46.519
Yeah, very unlikely. And Lorna eating her daughter's strawberry Sunday

949
00:49:46.559 --> 00:49:48.039
even though she's allergic to strawberry.

950
00:49:48.079 --> 00:49:48.920
It makes no sense.

951
00:49:49.119 --> 00:49:52.000
I mean, I think sometimes people are, you know, say

952
00:49:52.039 --> 00:49:55.119
they're willing to even though something's going to make them sick.

953
00:49:55.119 --> 00:49:56.760
They really are craving.

954
00:49:56.400 --> 00:50:00.280
It, right, But oh it's an intolerance, not an actual yeah,

955
00:50:00.360 --> 00:50:01.199
plactic allergy.

956
00:50:01.360 --> 00:50:01.519
Right.

957
00:50:01.599 --> 00:50:04.039
Could be the children you said they were like two

958
00:50:04.079 --> 00:50:07.079
and a half to eight, Yeah, they couldn't see what happened.

959
00:50:07.079 --> 00:50:08.159
They weren't eyewitnesses.

960
00:50:08.280 --> 00:50:10.440
That was what Lorna said. I mean, whether we can

961
00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:12.840
believe Lorna or not, but it seems they were probably

962
00:50:12.880 --> 00:50:14.119
still in the car.

963
00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:16.039
When but at a minimum, they would have heard the

964
00:50:16.039 --> 00:50:19.559
gunshots because she said that they shot and shot and shot, So.

965
00:50:19.719 --> 00:50:21.679
Yeah, he was like sixty feet away from the car.

966
00:50:21.719 --> 00:50:23.760
But yes, I'm sure they would have heard the gunshots.

967
00:50:24.079 --> 00:50:26.400
The trauma of that will stay with them forever.

968
00:50:26.880 --> 00:50:30.880
Yeah, absolutely, So few things I wanted to discuss. One

969
00:50:31.280 --> 00:50:34.079
we talked a little bit about this, but Marty's reaction

970
00:50:34.719 --> 00:50:37.360
to finding Lorna's lover sitting on the edge of the

971
00:50:37.400 --> 00:50:40.880
bathtub and he just turned around and walked out, And

972
00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:43.199
I wonder, like, why do you think someone would allow

973
00:50:43.280 --> 00:50:46.840
himself to be so humiliated like that in their own home.

974
00:50:47.559 --> 00:50:50.000
Was Marty having affairs too, Not that we.

975
00:50:50.039 --> 00:50:52.960
Know of, but it's certainly possible. I don't think Marty

976
00:50:53.079 --> 00:50:56.280
was an angel. There was the one allegation that he

977
00:50:56.360 --> 00:50:58.199
had been violent with her. We don't know if that

978
00:50:58.280 --> 00:51:01.360
was true or not, but Laura did have bruises one

979
00:51:01.400 --> 00:51:04.679
time that she told a coworker of Marty's that he

980
00:51:04.719 --> 00:51:05.719
had inflicted on her.

981
00:51:06.079 --> 00:51:08.719
I mean, a lot of people stay together for financial reasons,

982
00:51:08.840 --> 00:51:11.920
we know that, and they think that they're doing right

983
00:51:11.960 --> 00:51:12.800
by their children.

984
00:51:13.000 --> 00:51:15.000
But yeah, it seems like that was the case. But

985
00:51:15.039 --> 00:51:17.400
it's just so hard to imagine coming home, even in

986
00:51:17.440 --> 00:51:21.679
that sick situation, coming home and finding you know, your

987
00:51:21.920 --> 00:51:25.039
wife in the bathtub and her boyfriend right there. It

988
00:51:25.079 --> 00:51:27.159
just seems like I don't know how you could look

989
00:51:27.199 --> 00:51:27.599
past that.

990
00:51:28.199 --> 00:51:30.679
But like I said, maybe Marty was having an affair too,

991
00:51:30.719 --> 00:51:32.159
and that's why he cared a little less.

992
00:51:32.280 --> 00:51:33.000
Yeah, that could be.

993
00:51:33.280 --> 00:51:35.440
I have a question for you. So, the night that

994
00:51:35.519 --> 00:51:38.880
c Andy died, was the church investigated at all? Was

995
00:51:38.920 --> 00:51:42.000
there any blood there? Because you're thinking that maybe she

996
00:51:42.119 --> 00:51:44.440
was killed prior to her car was pushed off.

997
00:51:44.800 --> 00:51:47.480
I don't believe the church was investigator at all because

998
00:51:47.480 --> 00:51:49.800
I think they ruled it an accident pretty quickly. But

999
00:51:50.239 --> 00:51:52.599
I don't believe that she was killed at the church.

1000
00:51:52.639 --> 00:51:55.159
I believe she was killed on the bridge, Like I

1001
00:51:55.199 --> 00:51:57.239
think that was the theory. Is that, yeah, because there

1002
00:51:57.320 --> 00:51:59.639
was a Yeah, there was some sort of violent episode

1003
00:51:59.639 --> 00:52:01.599
at the time of the bridge, and then she was

1004
00:52:01.639 --> 00:52:04.559
thrown over the side of the bridge. I do find

1005
00:52:04.599 --> 00:52:08.159
it interesting that Marty told a coworker that he thought

1006
00:52:08.199 --> 00:52:11.840
Tom Byrd did it when Sandy died, and he was

1007
00:52:12.079 --> 00:52:15.639
I think the only one. I think everybody really loved Tom.

1008
00:52:15.880 --> 00:52:18.599
He was like this charismatic pastor as we've talked about,

1009
00:52:18.639 --> 00:52:21.199
and a man of God, and so no one wanted

1010
00:52:21.199 --> 00:52:23.199
to believe that he could have had anything to do

1011
00:52:23.280 --> 00:52:26.159
with this. But it is interesting that Marty seemed to

1012
00:52:26.199 --> 00:52:26.920
think otherwise.

1013
00:52:27.480 --> 00:52:31.480
Well, in my opinion, a charismatic pastor is almost always guilty.

1014
00:52:31.960 --> 00:52:35.880
We've had a lot of cases involving that recently in

1015
00:52:35.920 --> 00:52:36.440
the news.

1016
00:52:36.519 --> 00:52:39.719
It seems like every week there's a new pastor of

1017
00:52:39.760 --> 00:52:44.280
a megachurch that is arrested for Jesseley. Seems like it's

1018
00:52:44.599 --> 00:52:49.000
pornography charges. It's really disturbing. Do you think that the

1019
00:52:49.039 --> 00:52:53.159
police didn't look at Tom so closely because he was

1020
00:52:53.159 --> 00:52:55.599
a pastor? Do you think that was like they were like, oh,

1021
00:52:55.840 --> 00:52:57.400
had to have been an accident.

1022
00:52:57.159 --> 00:53:00.159
Might do it. But it seems like it was more

1023
00:53:00.239 --> 00:53:03.960
just that they saw a car, you know, down an embankment,

1024
00:53:04.000 --> 00:53:07.239
and we're just sort of defaulted too. Yeah, must a

1025
00:53:07.440 --> 00:53:10.639
dumb Yeah. No, I mean, well, the police officer in

1026
00:53:10.760 --> 00:53:12.880
charge thought it wasn't an accident. It was really the

1027
00:53:12.920 --> 00:53:16.559
coroner who ruled it an accident. But yeah, I don't

1028
00:53:16.639 --> 00:53:18.960
know why. It just seems so obvious in hindsight that

1029
00:53:19.039 --> 00:53:22.679
it wasn't an accident, but they just didn't go there.

1030
00:53:22.960 --> 00:53:25.039
In nineteen eighties were a simpler time.

1031
00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:27.760
I guess. So, yeah, let's talk about the call that

1032
00:53:27.920 --> 00:53:31.840
Lorna made to her insurance agent less than twenty four

1033
00:53:31.880 --> 00:53:35.159
hours after her husband is shot and brutally killed.

1034
00:53:35.400 --> 00:53:39.199
Okay, but if you're living paycheck to paycheck and you

1035
00:53:39.320 --> 00:53:42.760
know that there is, you know, a nice insurance policy there,

1036
00:53:43.199 --> 00:53:45.760
how much time do you have to wait? Seems like

1037
00:53:45.800 --> 00:53:48.679
we always question, oh, they called within twenty four hours.

1038
00:53:48.840 --> 00:53:51.480
I honestly don't think that's that a regular Yeah.

1039
00:53:51.599 --> 00:53:53.719
No, I actually agree with you. I think that's a

1040
00:53:53.760 --> 00:53:57.519
really good point. And I think when somebody does die suddenly,

1041
00:53:58.199 --> 00:54:00.559
you're left in a situation where you're like, well, what

1042
00:54:01.079 --> 00:54:02.840
do I need to do? Like what am I supposed

1043
00:54:02.880 --> 00:54:05.159
to do right now? And part of you may default

1044
00:54:05.239 --> 00:54:07.559
to like I just need to take care of business

1045
00:54:07.639 --> 00:54:08.239
type things.

1046
00:54:08.360 --> 00:54:12.440
Well, as you're making funeral arrangements, they will ask you too,

1047
00:54:13.000 --> 00:54:16.960
oh did this person have an insurance policy? Because sometimes

1048
00:54:17.239 --> 00:54:17.960
they might.

1049
00:54:17.840 --> 00:54:19.280
Pay out for the funeral itself.

1050
00:54:19.400 --> 00:54:22.880
Exactly. Yeah, but if something happens to you, I will

1051
00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:27.199
definitely wait a respectable two weeks before I call the insurance.

1052
00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:30.480
That's probably the right move. I'll be sure to come

1053
00:54:30.519 --> 00:54:39.920
back for part two. I have a new business proposition

1054
00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:40.239
for you.

1055
00:54:40.400 --> 00:54:41.480
Okay, can't wait to hear it.

1056
00:54:41.599 --> 00:54:44.559
Remember a few weeks ago we went and looked at

1057
00:54:44.559 --> 00:54:48.320
the Mystery hill. Oh yeah, yeah, roadside attraction, which is

1058
00:54:48.360 --> 00:54:49.119
about half hours.

1059
00:54:49.199 --> 00:54:51.559
Someone from someone bought it. So now I'm sad.

1060
00:54:51.519 --> 00:54:53.519
Someone did buy it. We went and looked at it,

1061
00:54:53.559 --> 00:54:55.760
and we thought it was pretty entertaining, but probably not

1062
00:54:56.199 --> 00:54:57.199
the best business.

1063
00:54:56.880 --> 00:54:59.000
Idea, probably not the billion dollar money maker that we

1064
00:54:59.039 --> 00:54:59.400
wanted it to.

1065
00:55:00.079 --> 00:55:04.239
Now, as you know, another odd roadside attraction has come

1066
00:55:04.320 --> 00:55:06.079
up for sale, and this one's only odd.

1067
00:55:06.159 --> 00:55:07.599
It's pretty cool.

1068
00:55:07.800 --> 00:55:09.960
It is pretty cool, but it's also odd. And it's

1069
00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:11.639
only like five ten minutes.

1070
00:55:11.400 --> 00:55:14.360
From very close to us. People would be surprised how

1071
00:55:14.400 --> 00:55:15.760
close we lived to Hell.

1072
00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:19.119
Yeah, this is Hell, Michigan is for sale. Which Hell,

1073
00:55:19.280 --> 00:55:21.320
that's the name of the It's not really it.

1074
00:55:21.320 --> 00:55:21.960
It's a hamlet.

1075
00:55:22.079 --> 00:55:25.840
It's yeah, it's like a hamlet. It's an unincorporated community officially,

1076
00:55:25.880 --> 00:55:29.079
but it's known as Hell, Michigan. And when I was

1077
00:55:29.119 --> 00:55:31.559
a kid, we we would come camping out in this

1078
00:55:31.920 --> 00:55:34.840
part of the state, and we would always stop by Hell,

1079
00:55:35.039 --> 00:55:37.719
Michigan because it was like you grew up, I grew

1080
00:55:37.800 --> 00:55:40.159
up like north of Detroit, like about hour a little

1081
00:55:40.199 --> 00:55:42.800
over an hour away from ann Arbor, and so when

1082
00:55:42.800 --> 00:55:45.000
we would go, we would go camping a lot, and

1083
00:55:45.360 --> 00:55:47.960
it felt like we were going, you know, really far away,

1084
00:55:48.000 --> 00:55:49.800
but it was really only maybe an hour or two

1085
00:55:49.800 --> 00:55:52.000
from home. But we would love stopping at Hell, Michigan

1086
00:55:52.039 --> 00:55:53.719
because it was just this quirky place and we were

1087
00:55:53.760 --> 00:55:55.800
little kids. It was like, oh, you know, we giggle

1088
00:55:55.840 --> 00:55:58.320
about it being called Hell and they had like a

1089
00:55:58.360 --> 00:56:02.719
weird little gift shop there and ice cream shops streamers. Yeah,

1090
00:56:02.920 --> 00:56:06.159
so it's it's for sale. Hell Michigan is for sale

1091
00:56:06.199 --> 00:56:09.360
for six hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. It's a

1092
00:56:09.400 --> 00:56:12.519
seven acre property. There's a souvenir shop and ice cream

1093
00:56:12.559 --> 00:56:16.440
parlor and uh a little mini there's a mini golf course,

1094
00:56:16.480 --> 00:56:19.760
there's a wedding chapel. They have all sorts of business

1095
00:56:19.760 --> 00:56:24.199
opportunities and Hell, yeah, we totally should. You can send

1096
00:56:24.199 --> 00:56:27.400
mail from there's a post office and when you send

1097
00:56:27.400 --> 00:56:30.800
mail from there, they singe every piece of mail with fire,

1098
00:56:30.920 --> 00:56:33.519
so it looks like it's coming from Hell.

1099
00:56:33.719 --> 00:56:36.840
Yeah, I feel like we should maybe pull our money

1100
00:56:36.840 --> 00:56:40.360
with our listeners and we can. That seems like a

1101
00:56:40.360 --> 00:56:41.559
fair price to me for that.

1102
00:56:41.800 --> 00:56:45.000
It does, but I'm guessing so the real estate, the

1103
00:56:45.039 --> 00:56:48.639
listing says that it has been profitable, but I'm guessing

1104
00:56:48.639 --> 00:56:51.880
it's like barely profitable. I can't I can't imagine they

1105
00:56:51.880 --> 00:56:53.239
make a lot of money because it's kind of in

1106
00:56:53.320 --> 00:56:56.880
the middle of nowhere. But it is a cute little area.

1107
00:56:56.920 --> 00:57:00.000
To do more with it. We could open an escape

1108
00:57:00.159 --> 00:57:02.440
room and I don't know, we could do all sorts

1109
00:57:02.480 --> 00:57:04.840
of stuff. We could have karaoke in Hell, and.

1110
00:57:06.039 --> 00:57:07.920
I think there's a lot that you could do with it.

1111
00:57:08.360 --> 00:57:11.199
You could, like today the current owner of Hell, like,

1112
00:57:11.280 --> 00:57:13.840
you can pay to be mayor of for the day

1113
00:57:14.280 --> 00:57:17.599
of Hell. You can grab a drink, there's a there's

1114
00:57:17.599 --> 00:57:20.760
a saloon. The Hell Saloon is right there too. They

1115
00:57:20.760 --> 00:57:22.920
have a place, it's called the Scattering Yard, where you

1116
00:57:22.960 --> 00:57:25.840
can scatter the remains of someone that you love or

1117
00:57:25.880 --> 00:57:27.920
that you didn't love. So much to say that I

1118
00:57:28.119 --> 00:57:30.480
scattered my loved ones remains in Hell.

1119
00:57:30.679 --> 00:57:31.159
Oh wow.

1120
00:57:31.320 --> 00:57:33.519
Yeah, And there's also a lot of beautiful nature there.

1121
00:57:33.360 --> 00:57:36.920
Too, So yeah, well, the problem with the place out

1122
00:57:36.960 --> 00:57:39.440
in Irish Hills that we talked about and Hell, Michigan,

1123
00:57:39.719 --> 00:57:43.119
they are very off the beaten totally, and because of

1124
00:57:43.159 --> 00:57:45.800
our highway system, you know, a lot of these roads

1125
00:57:45.840 --> 00:57:48.760
that people used to travel, they don't travel so much anymore.

1126
00:57:48.760 --> 00:57:51.239
So I think that's why these you know, kitschy little

1127
00:57:51.239 --> 00:57:53.320
spots have at time.

1128
00:57:53.679 --> 00:57:56.679
Yeah, yeah, for sure. The guy that owns Hell today,

1129
00:57:56.840 --> 00:57:58.559
I guess he's just getting older and he wants to

1130
00:57:58.599 --> 00:58:00.280
sell it. But he's like a Vietnam vet and it

1131
00:58:00.280 --> 00:58:02.920
seems like a really great guy. He just came back

1132
00:58:02.920 --> 00:58:05.400
from Vietnam and bought Hell, and so that's what he's

1133
00:58:05.440 --> 00:58:06.079
been doing for.

1134
00:58:06.360 --> 00:58:09.400
Well, who incorporated it or you said it's unincorporated, but

1135
00:58:09.480 --> 00:58:10.440
who made Hell?

1136
00:58:10.760 --> 00:58:13.840
It was originally a sawmill town because it's like on

1137
00:58:13.880 --> 00:58:16.519
this river and there's a lot of trees around and

1138
00:58:16.559 --> 00:58:18.559
it used to be a sawmill. And there's a lot

1139
00:58:18.559 --> 00:58:21.239
of theories about how Hell got its name, Like one

1140
00:58:21.480 --> 00:58:23.639
was that the guy who founded it, someone asked him

1141
00:58:23.639 --> 00:58:25.360
and he's like, I don't care. You can call it

1142
00:58:25.360 --> 00:58:29.079
Hell for all I care. But there's other other rumors

1143
00:58:29.119 --> 00:58:30.840
as well, So we don't know for sure. But you

1144
00:58:30.880 --> 00:58:35.559
know the Hell ice cream Parlor was Screamers is what

1145
00:58:35.599 --> 00:58:38.480
it's called, but it's also affectionately known as the Crematorium.

1146
00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:41.320
But you know someone famous worked there, right.

1147
00:58:41.400 --> 00:58:46.760
Well famous relatively famous. Yes, yes, it was Eric from Survivor,

1148
00:58:46.800 --> 00:58:49.360
who has played a couple of seasons of Survivor. We've

1149
00:58:49.639 --> 00:58:53.559
we've watched every season of Survivor and so yeah, for us,

1150
00:58:53.639 --> 00:58:55.320
it was like, yeah, he's a real celebrity.

1151
00:58:55.480 --> 00:58:57.360
You worked in Hell as a young man at the

1152
00:58:57.400 --> 00:58:58.159
ice cream parlor.

1153
00:58:58.280 --> 00:58:59.119
I think he lived there.

1154
00:58:59.320 --> 00:59:00.840
Yeah, we think it moved.

1155
00:59:00.880 --> 00:59:02.679
But we used to go to Hell to go to

1156
00:59:02.760 --> 00:59:06.599
the Terrified Forest, which is like a haunted, haunted forest.

1157
00:59:07.039 --> 00:59:09.360
I think they moved, pinky now, but that was always

1158
00:59:09.360 --> 00:59:09.760
fun to go.

1159
00:59:09.960 --> 00:59:11.960
Yeah, that's true. There's so much to do and how

1160
00:59:12.000 --> 00:59:13.679
so many opportunities. Let us know if you think we

1161
00:59:13.719 --> 00:59:15.280
should buy Hell, or if you want to pitch in

1162
00:59:15.320 --> 00:59:16.719
with us, we could all we could all go in.

1163
00:59:16.960 --> 00:59:20.480
Definitely need some gofund me money. Although speaking of GoFundMe,

1164
00:59:20.760 --> 00:59:23.519
this is so funny, but whatever, kind listeners. I'm not

1165
00:59:23.519 --> 00:59:26.079
sure if it was a Spotify comment, but they said, hey,

1166
00:59:26.159 --> 00:59:28.360
you guys, we should start a GoFundMe for rich and

1167
00:59:28.440 --> 00:59:34.079
Tina's new refiggerator, which is so kind. But I mean,

1168
00:59:34.360 --> 00:59:37.760
someday we'll buy a new refrigerator. It's not really, it's

1169
00:59:37.800 --> 00:59:40.639
not completely a financial decision. Part of it is just

1170
00:59:41.159 --> 00:59:43.880
I don't know, we really I think I'm getting closer today.

1171
00:59:43.880 --> 00:59:45.400
When I was doing the ice cubes, I was like,

1172
00:59:45.719 --> 00:59:48.559
we're so ridiculous that we have not bought a new

1173
00:59:48.599 --> 00:59:49.840
free refrigerator.

1174
00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:51.079
Yeah, it is very.

1175
00:59:51.239 --> 00:59:53.880
Maybe maybe this weekend we'll go look. But it's also

1176
00:59:53.920 --> 00:59:56.599
hard to find one that fits in the exact same spot.

1177
00:59:56.480 --> 00:59:58.719
I know, and goes with your other appliances too, right,

1178
00:59:58.760 --> 01:00:01.679
because as we would have to replace everything.

1179
01:00:01.760 --> 01:00:04.000
And I did tell you about how I'm over stainless steel,

1180
01:00:04.000 --> 01:00:07.079
even though people said stainless steel today is different than

1181
01:00:07.559 --> 01:00:09.559
you know. I mean, our appliances are what they're probably

1182
01:00:09.599 --> 01:00:11.199
ten I think our house is ten years old now,

1183
01:00:11.239 --> 01:00:12.039
so I want to go.

1184
01:00:12.039 --> 01:00:14.280
With appliances like they used to be and you know,

1185
01:00:14.559 --> 01:00:17.239
back in the day. Yeah again that kind of I

1186
01:00:17.239 --> 01:00:19.039
don't know what the material was that is on the

1187
01:00:19.079 --> 01:00:21.960
outside of those older refrigerators.

1188
01:00:21.239 --> 01:00:23.519
But yeah, we're not going to do that.

1189
01:00:24.880 --> 01:00:27.880
You never let me make any big decisions. I wonder

1190
01:00:27.920 --> 01:00:29.960
why a right well, we have to go because I've

1191
01:00:29.960 --> 01:00:31.599
got to eat more of those bisc.

1192
01:00:31.400 --> 01:00:36.239
Cough twenty minutes to chew it. But they were delicious.

1193
01:00:36.360 --> 01:00:36.840
Yeah.

1194
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Well, we are so grateful that you're here. Every listen, follow, review,

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01:00:40.440 --> 01:00:43.519
and share helps us keep this show growing and reminds

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01:00:43.599 --> 01:00:46.360
us how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community.

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If you'd like to reach out, we're on social media,

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or you can email us at Lovemrykill at gmail dot com, or.

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You can go to our website, Lovemarykill dot com.

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Or you can find us on YouTube. And if you

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want even more love Mary Kill, head over to patreon

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dot com slash love Mary Kill. For just five dollars

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a month, you got early ad free access and a

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monthly bonus.

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Episode until next time.

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01:01:08.960 --> 01:01:11.480
Don't kill a husband, Don't kill your wife, don't kill

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your roseband. Yeah,