Blanche Taylor Moore, The Oldest Woman on Death Row (Part 1)

When the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation opened an investigation and Blanche was charged with the attempted murder, the arrest came as a shock to those who knew her. How was it possible that someone they all knew as “a sweet, Christian lady”—was an attempted murderer? And if she had been cunning enough to hide that side of herself from her community, what else had she been hiding?

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Terry Cottle died by suicide, but his heart lived on, transplanted into Sonny Graham. Years later, Sonny died the exact same way, same heart, same fate. But that wasn't the strangest connection between them. Sonny also married Terry's widow. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff, this is Heart, an Apple original podcast produced by Plan B and Blanchard House. New episodes are available Mondays and Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  I'm Elena.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  And this is Morbid.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  This is Morbid. Honey, it's morbid post-Radio City.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  It is.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  We had a fucking blast.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  We did. It was amazing meeting you guys afterwards. It was so much fun.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  It was so much fun. Yeah, meeting everybody afterwards was, you guys made me feel like Harry Styles.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  That's exactly what I felt like.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, we were like the Beatles or something.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  It was so much fun.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  And my parents got to come.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Ma and Papa had the best time.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  They did. They had, they were beaming.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  Seeing Ma in New York, Ma hadn't been to New York City in like decades.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  And had like the best time. We got to like do a really fun dinner afterwards with all of our friends, like my cup is full to the brim right now.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  It truly is.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  But it's time to get back.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm happy to get back to normalcy a little bit.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  We spent so much time planning that live show. I think the last weeks of our lives were spent just like going over every single detail.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  To get it all perfect and now.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  And there was just like the production, everything. It was a bigger, it's such a big venue that it was such a bigger production.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Mara production. I just have to shout them out.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  They were amazing.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Marcus and Sophie specifically, jeez.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Truly.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Not cheese.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Jeez.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  Truly. They were the sweetest people I think I've ever met in my life and like took such good care of us, took such good care of the stage and like just so much went into that.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  So thank you to everybody who made that happen and thank you to everybody who showed up to support us. It really means a lot to us.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  You guys rule.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  You do. But now it's time to get back to like our, our normal day to day, our regular morbid schedule.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  We're back, we're home.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Mercury is in Gatorade and we saw something that said, or I should say.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  It wants you to slow down.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  I should say Mercury is retrograde. I have to stop saying in retrograde as a student of astrology.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  It's retrograde.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Because that's just saying Mercury is in backwards.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's in backwards, you know?

• 2:37Speaker 00

  But it's just, it's just backward.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  It's in backwards right now. And it, and it said, according to Eliza Kelly, who I trust.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Trust in Eliza Kelly. She said, it wants you to slow down. And I said, I'm going to take that to heart, babe, because I'm like a missile right now and I, I need to slow down.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  Frankly, I'd like to slow down.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Truly.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Mama's tired.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Truly.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Mama is tired.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  I'm exhausted.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  And my asthma is flaring up again.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  My asthma.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  My asthma and the humidity. It said flare up.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Flare up.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Give that bitch some mucus in her throat and a cough.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  That's what it said.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  No, I don't know.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  You sounded like Donald Trump.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Oh. I've never been more insulted in my life. Wow.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  It sounded like it.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yucky.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  It did.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Well, how do we move away from that?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Any, any way.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Anything else? Do you want me to, should we just get right into the story? I actually, we probably should because I do have a long one today.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's go.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  And I know like Jeffrey has his timer out, so.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we're starting.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Here we go. All right. So I have a two parter. This is obviously part one. Welcome. So we're going to be talking about Blanche Taylor Moore. And Blanche Taylor Moore is spoiler alert, just to really start you off to, to know what you're getting into, the oldest woman on death row in the United States.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  That's what we're getting into. Okay.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  That's where we're headed.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Before she headed to death row, she was born on February 17th, 1933, in Concord, North Carolina. She was the fifth of seven children born to Parker P D Kaiser and his wife Flawny.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  I'm obsessed with that name.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Okay, Flawny.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Okay, Flawny flaunted.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  All right.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Now, technically, PD, the dad, was a mill worker, but his real passion was preaching the gospel.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Preaching the gospel. PD proudly fell into the category of primitive preachers, which was kind of a group of untrained, definitely unpaid Baptist preachers, who traveled around to rural locations like campgrounds to preach, which only makes me think of True Detective, season one.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Like, what a... Like tent revivals.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  What an iconic season of television.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  True Detective is so good. I love season one.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Truly.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Now, according to author Jim Schutz, who we will link in the show notes and who we have used before, a great author, PD preached an intense, monotonous sing-song, literal interpretation of the Bible.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  I don't really know exactly what that means.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  It's a lot.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  It's a lot.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  It's a lot, but, you know.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  It felt like a lot.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  He always seemed to find a way to make money, which was a good thing, you know?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Hey, all right.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  He was working, or he got donations.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Always be closing.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  But he rarely used that money on his own family. The work of raising children and paying the bills basically just fell completely on Flawny, who worked full-time to just make do, basically.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Basically just to keep a, uh, I almost just said a head over their roofs, a roof over their heads. Now, of the forty or so dollars a week that she made, she always gave half of that to her husband, who, according to Schutz, never made any secret of the fact that he was spending it all on young girls.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that wasn't awesome.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  That was terrible.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Now, in nineteen forty-two, when Blanche was only nine years old, the family moved to Burlington. Burlington did offer better job prospects, but the real reason for the move was probably because PD couldn't manage to stay employed for very long, and he kind of just ran out of options for employment and conquered. Now, despite his own proclivity for sex workers and gambling and drinking and generally not spending time with his own young family, he was very, very strict on his own children when he was around. And he had, I don't even want to call them high standards, because it's

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Like impossible standards?

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Impossible standards. The family didn't have much flowing in, so the girls were usually dressed in tattered rags and hand me downs essentially, but he would routinely inspect their outfits to make sure that they were quote unquote sufficiently modest.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Which is also like, babe, you're the biggest hypocrite ever.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta make sure.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  You just have to be sure that everybody's modest, even though you're clearly not.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Modesty is the most important thing, so important.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Fuck off. Now, the high standards didn't just end with what the kids looked like, what they were wearing, their appearances. They also were completely forbidden from participating in any after school activities.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  That's so fucked up. That actually pisses me off.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Truly.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Like a lot. Like, what good does that do?

• 7:13Speaker 00

  They couldn't socialize with their friends. They couldn't join a club, nothing like that. They had to come

• 7:18Speaker 01

  That makes me sad.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Right home from school and probably pray.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  That, that's fucked up.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Now, when Blanche reached her early teens, she was finally given enough freedom to get a job in one of the local shops downtown, probably because they needed more money and less about like her happiness.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  But more time outside of the house also meant that she was able to socialize a little bit. And when she was about fifteen or sixteen, she started dating a boy named James Taylor. No, it's not that one.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Thank you. I said of Tanglewood.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Not of, not of Tanglewood fame, not of, not sweet baby James.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Not sweet baby James.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  I fuck so heavy with that James Taylor though.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  James Taylor? Like our James Taylor? Like collectively all of our James Taylor?

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  He is the most soothing

• 8:00Speaker 01

  He does.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Voice. He's the voice of a generation. He is. He's actually, I feel he's the voice of many generations.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  I think he is too. You hear a James Taylor song, like a specific one that like you just

• 8:11Speaker 00

  You just hear that beginning guitar.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  It does.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Like that old, to be honest, my nervous system has been a little alight lately.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  I'm gonna listen to a James Taylor song and I bet I'm gonna feel right as rain.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  You probably should, and I think you will.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  I will.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Period.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Thank you for that.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  You bet. So she met James Taylor, not V, but A, A. James Taylor. In a lot of ways, James and Blanche did seem like a really good fit for each other. In public, he was a good Christian boy. He doted on his mama. He did well in school. But in private, he loved a crass joke and a cold beer. So he had two sides to him.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Within a few weeks of starting their relationship, James introduced Blanche to his family, which was kind of a revelation for her. Cause she knew most people came from stable and happy homes, but she had never seen one up close or experienced one.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  That's so sad.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  It is really sad, but the cool thing was that in the beginning of their relationship, she kind of like enmeshed in this family and they loved her.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  And they supported her and she like got her cup filled that way.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Now, by that time, she had actually quit school and was just always looking for a good reason not to be home at her house. So she spent a lot of time at the Taylor house and apparently her and James's mom, Isla, were very close. When it came to James's relationship with Blanche, I told you the good things about him. But it was also hard not to see the similarities between her boyfriend, James and her father. James wasn't dismissive. He wasn't controlling, not in the way that her dad was, but he was a drinker and he did love to gamble. And he was also at times, according to Schutz, sentimental, childish, and given to eruptions of a violent temper.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  That's not great.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  He had very good facets of his personality.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  But he had flaws.

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  And a lot of flaws.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Some real flaws.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  As we all do, but he really needed to figure out how to rein those in.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. When your, when your flaws start to, you know.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Becoming violent.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  And when they start like messing with someone else, like affecting someone else.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Those are flaws you gotta take care of.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  That's the thing.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  You know?

• 10:19Speaker 00

  So not long after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, James was drafted and he was sent to the Pacific to serve in the army. He returned a year later to Burlington. He proposed to Blanche and they got married on May 29th, 1952. At the same time, he found work restoring and refinishing fine furniture, which I feel like would be such a fun job.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  I love furniture videos on TikTok.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like that would be very like fulfilling.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, and like cathartic at the same time, too. He was really, really good at the job, but the income was modest. It really was barely enough to cover the bills of two people. So when Blanche gave birth to their daughter in nineteen fifty-three, the family really started to struggle financially, but never went to shy away from hard work. Soon after her daughter was born, Blanche got a job as a checkout clerk at the local Kroger grocery store, and she was an immediate hit with all of the customers.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  A former coworker Brenda Green told a reporter in nineteen eighty-nine, she was always pleasant, always outgoing to the customers. And she wasn't just a hit with the customers, she was really popular with the men who came into the store. She had a way about her.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Her name's Blanche.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  I know. It's just, you know, comes with the territory.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  It does.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  A author she'd said, men lined up behind her register just so they could look at her. She sang to each one in her busy little chittering bird voice, always with some expression of concern for their personal affairs.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  So she was a little bit of a flirt.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, she was kind of, she was digging it.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  She was, yeah, she was doing her thing.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I know nothing about this case, by the way, so.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Well, she's the oldest woman on death row, so.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  So there's that.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Just, like I said, keep that, keep that with you.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  So at that time, the roles for Kroger employees were strictly segregated. Women filled the customer service jobs in the front of the store. Men worked the management, the stockroom, butcher roles in the back.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Now, given the hierarchy, the highest that a female employee at Kroger could generally expect to make, like the highest position, was head cashier.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  It was kind of like a front-end manager position. They were like responsible for supervising the cashiers and the bag boys, just keeping everything in check. We've seen them.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Now, that was the job.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  We love them.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  We've seen them, we love them, yeah. That was the job that Blanche was really determined to get, and when she set her mind to something, she did usually achieve it. Now, I said that, the customers loved her. Coworkers, not so much.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  E.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Outwardly, she seemed to get along with people pretty fine, you know?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  But a lot of her coworkers didn't like the way that she played obvious office politics.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  And they saw that she was very clearly intent on climbing the ladder to get that head cashier position.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Which like, that's bound to happen.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  It is bound to happen.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Kind of like corporate or, you know, any retail environment.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Well, and people are all vying for the same job, so that it kind of creates like a.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  It's competitive.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Not a great environment.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  But that wasn't just it. Some of the cashiers suspected that Blanche was stealing from the company.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that's not good.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  According to shoots, Blanche had a penchant for using loner registers and for moving around using other checkers drawers, rather than following the safe and share procedures designed so that each cashier would check out on a register that was entirely her own responsibility for each shift.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Eek.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  She just kind of floated amongst them.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Now, despite the rumors of her embezzling small sums of money, by 1959, Blanche did work her way up at Kroger and she got that head cashier position.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, she got it.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  And the promotion couldn't have come at a better time because just a few months after she moved up, she gave birth to the couple's second daughter. So the extra income was an asset.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Oh, hey.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  You know, it seemed things were going pretty good for Blanche in 1959.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Seems like it.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. But her personal life was starting to unravel a bit. That same year, her mother, Flawny, filed for divorce from PD citing her husband's abandonment as the reason.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  PD Kaiser had basically left his wife and children a few years earlier to, quote, "find himself a younger woman."

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Oh, excuse you.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  And he also didn't contribute a dime to the support of their children since he left them. And now, even though all of that is true, that he was just a prick, at the time, going through a divorce would have been a pretty shameful experience, which is silly, but it just was. And sharing the details of her failed marriage in such a public forum wouldn't just be embarrassing, but humiliating, not just for Flawny, but also for the children like Blanche, even like the adult children. Now luckily, the judge was sympathetic and ordered PD to pay $25 a week in child support, which was dropped then to $10 a week the following year. And to everyone's surprise, though, he did pay the support. Huh. Yeah. So.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  That is interesting. I didn't see that coming.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  At least he paid it, you know, the bare minimum. But the public dissolution of her parents' marriage, which became then a big source of gossip in a small town, was a kind of a, a source of shame for Blanche. And on top of that, things in her own marriage weren't really going very well. After the birth of her second baby, she wasn't really interested in being with James romantically. And since getting married, in her view, he had changed quite a bit physically. And she just wasn't feeling very attracted to him.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  In addition, the gambling and the drinking that when he was younger made him seem wild and fun and carefree, now made him seem irresponsible and reckless and probably reminded her of her father.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, even though he knew he was being judged, it didn't really seem like he gave a shit at this time. James kept drinking, he kept gambling. And he also had picked up a new hobby since he got back from Korea and just spent a lot of his weekends editing tape recordings of sermons from the Glen Hope Baptist Church so that the tapes could be sent overseas for missionary work. Which is like, cool, like, you know, you're getting a little extra cash by doing that, but you're also spending all your time away from your family by

• 16:20Speaker 01

  That's the thing.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  working, gambling and drinking.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like one, a couple of those things could go.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  You know?

• 16:25Speaker 00

  Like work, for sure. Keep that up.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Gambling and drinking.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  If it's affecting you negatively, you gotta stop.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Maybe cut that back.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Cut it back.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Now, so by 1962, the distance between James and Blanche had become so evident that even strangers would have felt the tension between them. It wasn't just a lack of physical intimacy or the fact that he was just never home. But Blanche also found other ways to spend her time in the absence of her husband.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  That year, she started an affair with her boss, Raymond Reed.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  And she barely tried to hide it, not only from her husband, but like, from anyone.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, she doesn't give a fuck.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  She really didn't give a single fuck.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Doesn't shock me.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  One theme of this story that you'll find is that Blanche does not give a fuck.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Fucks are nowhere to be found.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  No, her fuck basket is barren. And that sounded a lot worse than I meant for her too, but you can leave it in. So before long, the tension over Blanche's obvious affair escalated to verbal abuse and occasion- occasionally physical abuse from her husband. Like the night that James and Blanche argued over her relationship and he just started flinging spoonfuls of chocolate pudding at her.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  In a mean way. I know that sounds silly.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  It does, but it's like-

• 17:35Speaker 00

  But it's mean.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  When you really think of that, I want you to picture that.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Weird.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  They're trying, like, they're having a serious conversation.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, that's fucked up.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Flinging pudding at her.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Also-

• 17:45Speaker 00

  So childish.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  He was quite childish.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Now-

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Despite their troubles and Blanche's ongoing affair, which she didn't give a fuck about, they kind of tried to keep up appearances as a happy couple, even though it was blatantly obvious to everyone that Blanche was having an affair.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  But in the early 1960s, James did decide to slow his drinking and he cut off all contact with his gambling circle. And he joined a church and found new friends there. Now, Blanche continued to work at Kroger, and she also filled a lot of her free time by selling Tupperware, which was such a thing.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  My god, Tupperware parties?

• 18:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was like a real thing.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  I've always heard of them, but-

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Just buy Tupperware.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  I kind of want to go to a Tupperware party because one thing about me is I make people food and then I lose my Tupperware.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  That's the thing. When, when I think of Tupperware parties, I'm like, not a bad idea, because I can always use more Tupperware.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Should we start Tupperware parties again?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Maybe we should have a Tupperware party.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Maybe we should have a Tupperware party. Do you feel like the word Tupperware is losing all meaning?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Tupperware.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Say Tupperware again.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Tupperware.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  I want to say it again. Tupperware.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Just one more time.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  So, yeah, we should have those parties again.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I think so, too.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  So she just randomly started doing that. And it seemed like she was a powerhouse salesperson, because she routinely filled her nights with those parties and other events. But what James thought was his wife's satisfying side job was in fact a cover story that allowed her to keep her nights free to spend with her boss Raymond, who she was sleeping with, and other men in town who she was also sleeping with.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Fuck Blanche.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. She kind of seemed to have a growing obsession with sex.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  And it was obvious to anybody who spent any time with her. At work, she was relentlessly flirty, not just with her boss Raymond, but with any man she found attractive. And she found a lot of men attractive. According to Schutz, this is wild. She might be mid-sentence talking about Jesus in the Bible, and she would stop and mutter to a coworker, "Man, I'd like to see the dick on that guy."

• 19:50Speaker 01

  At no part of that did I know where it was going.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  But then we got there.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  At no part of that, even at the end.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  She said.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  What the fuck?

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Imagine.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  I've never had someone say that to me.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Or in my presence.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  I don't think I have.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  No, I've never heard somebody say that.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Man, I'd love to see the dick on that guy. What do you say? It's very Samantha Jones, I guess.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  It is very Samantha Jones. I feel like you just have to be like, okay.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Woo wee, Blanche.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  I bet, I bet.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  That's like, what are you, neat?

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Go for it.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Hope that works out for you.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Period.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Hey. Honestly, period to me is like the best response.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Cause you have to put an end on that sentence.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Period.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Period, Blanche.

• 20:46Speaker 02

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• 21:04Speaker 02

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• 22:28Speaker 05

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• 22:36Speaker 00

  So she grew more promiscuous, more reckless. And as she was doing that, James actually seemed to finally grow into adulthood.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Oh, look at this.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  His drinking and gambling was pretty much under control at that point. And he actually started spending more time with his kids. And at this point in time, found that he genuinely loved being a father.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Wow. Took him a minute.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Kinda did a 180 here.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Took him a minute, but at least he got there. Exactly. Now, when he wasn't doting on his daughters, he could easily be found spoiling his nieces and nephews, especially his sister Dot's children because their father had died a few years earlier in a drowning accident.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Oh, geez.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  So he was really trying to fill that role, too. The happier James became, though, the more frustrated and disgruntled Blanche became.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Which shouldn't be the case.

• 23:24Speaker 00

  No, when your husband's succeeding, like, you're supposed to be really happy about that and vice versa.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Your husband or wife or partner is thriving. That should make you feel like, oh, hell, yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, part of marriage is celebrating each other's wins.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  But no matter the circumstances, she criticized his every move. She constantly commented on his appearance, which included a lot of fat shaming.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Which is, like, really shitty.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  That's mean.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  And if she wasn't complaining about how much money he was spending on his hobbies or on the kids, she was criticizing him, like I said, for how much weight that he had put on since they got married.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  That's just mean, man.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Which I'd like to point out, sometimes is a sign of happiness.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  It's true comfortability.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Exactly. Now, at the same time, James's family, who had once been very kind and welcoming to Blanche, remember?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  But they're probably like, what the fuck?

• 24:11Speaker 00

  That's the thing. They started to grow cold and distant around there because it wasn't any secret that she was cheating on him.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so not only is she cheating, but she's also bullying him while he's being a good dad.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  And humiliating him when he's made these like

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Life changes.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  These life changes that it seemed like she wanted him to make.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  That's the thing. Not everybody makes those changes or grows like that.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  And here's the thing, like, sometimes it is too late for you, for you to make it up to another person.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, for them to want to be along for the ride with you going through these changes, and that's okay.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  That's okay, but you just get divorced.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't bully them. Like, you just, you say, okay, it's so cool that you're doing this, but I'm, it's past the point of being repaired.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  I'm glad you made those changes, but

• 24:56Speaker 01

  But you're gonna make them without me.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  It's too far gone, and I hope you keep it up.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  So, yeah, his family was just like, you know what, um, we really don't like you anymore.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't blame them.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  So by the mid 60s, her world was rapidly changing, and it doesn't really sound like for the better. For somebody who craved and seemed to require control to feel a sense of stability at at least one point, the ongoing upset at home was becoming unbearable for her. So in September of 1966, Blanche experienced one of the more defining moments of her life, when her father, P D., passed away.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  This is interesting. And that's all I can say. It's allegedly pretty interesting.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  According to the coroner, the cause of death was a heart attack brought on by chronic emphysema. The death didn't come as a big surprise to really anybody who knew him, because P D. had been a pretty much a lifelong smoker, and he had always been pretty reckless when it came to his health. Uh, and he also led a kind of nomadic existence. He just moved from one town to another. So there wasn't a real consistent record of his healthcare to speak of.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  I think that, you know. Raised some eyebrows later.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  Now, if anybody had been paying close attention to his symptoms just before his death, the cause of death might have been diagnosed as something altogether different. He entered the hospital the day before he died complaining of chest and stomach pains, and he was admitted and moved to a room. Over the course of the next thirty hours or so, though, he experienced a range of symptoms, most of which were internal, that included paralysis in the limbs, painful irritation of the nose and throat, aggressive bloating, and a burning sensation in his hands and feet, among other things.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  What?

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Also, if somebody had been at his bedside when he died, or immediately after, they maybe would have noticed a strong scent of garlic on his breath.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Despite the fact that he hadn't been eating garlic.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  And I don't know if you guys know this, but um, all of those signs are prominent telltale signs of arsenic poisoning.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Oh. Our old friend arsenic.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, the problem was PD checked into a large, busy city hospital where he was obviously attended to, but it was periodically by nurses and doctors. There was nobody there who was consistently monitoring his symptoms. And even if they had suspected that his death wasn't natural, by the time of the autopsy, arsenic would have passed out of his system entirely.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  So even if the coroner had suspected arsenic poisoning, they might not have found any evidence of that to put in a toxicology report.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Now, weirdly, Blanche didn't really seem moved by her father's death.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Um, you know, maybe that could have provided some insight to people in her life.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Be something that you would at least be like, huh.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  You know?

• 27:52Speaker 00

  But you know. Who's to say they had a tough relationship?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  They did. That's the thing. They had a very complicated relationship.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  So I see both sides.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  And it's not like he was a warm, fuzzy.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Um, and didn't allow them to have any kind of real life as they were growing up. So that could just be distance emotionally in that way.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  And she also had a lot going on at home.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  While PD was writhing in pain in the hospital, Blanche's marriage was rapidly deteriorating. By the late sixties, the once private arguments between Blanche and James started to spill over into public spaces and their neighbors became accustomed to not only hearing, but seeing the couple scream at each other in the front yard or driveway. In one particularly bad incident in nineteen sixty-nine, neighbors watched in horror as they got into a shoving match one Sunday on their way to church.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  And what started as a verbal agreement quickly escalated to James trying to shove Blanche into the car. She immediately got out of the car and slammed the door behind her, but her coat was caught in the door when it shut. And he started backing down the driveway, so she was pulled to the ground and dragged down the driveway on her knees until James finally stopped the car.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  We were rooting for you.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  We were rooting.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  We were all rooting for you. How dare you?

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  What?

• 29:18Speaker 00

  And on your way to church.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  On your way to church.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Are you going to confession too?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  You're gonna sit in that pew and act like everything's fine?

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Fuck, that is crazy.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  It is crazy.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Now, James had always been a pretty easily excitable man, you know, he had gambled and drank in the past.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  He got harried really quickly, but with all the tension in his marriage and the changing state of the world around them, the stress of life was starting to take a toll on him physically. And one afternoon in nineteen seventy, as he was driving into downtown Burlington, he was stopped by a police roadblock and told he couldn't go in the direction he was going because there was an active shooting situation.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Now, obviously, he immediately turned the car around and drove home, but the situation caused him such incredible anxiety that by the time he got home, he was shaking and sweating profusely. And then that turned into vomiting and violent diarrhea.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  What?

• 30:15Speaker 00

  So he finally went to see his doctor and was informed that he had had a fairly serious heart attack.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  And unless he wanted to experience another one, he needed to make some major changes in his life.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  So the health scare marked a major turning point in his life. About six months later, Blanche came to her own major turning point, too, when Raymond Reed and his wife finally divorced. That's her boss that she was having an affair with. James was still doing his best to raise their kids and, you know, avoid his blood pressure spiking.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Jesus Christ.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  And Blanche was spending almost all of her free time with Raymond, explaining to anyone who cared that she was just trying to help him out because he didn't have a wife anymore.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Just trying to stand in as his wife.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  But at that point, they had been carrying on a pretty public affair for almost 10 years.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  So people were like, are you guys serious?

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Are you for real?

• 31:07Speaker 00

  That's the thing.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Be so serious right now.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  The increased attention really didn't seem that unusual to anybody, not even to James. He fully knew that they were continuing their affair. Now, maybe it was because he was so accustomed to his wife's infidelity, or maybe he was just trying to not have another heart attack. But whatever the case, he really never expressed any disappointment in Blanche. After they went through that really big period of arguing and then it just seemed like they were like, okay, we'll live together and we'll be married, but like, I fucking hate you and you know I do, so let's not even talk about it.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  That's really sad. What a sad existence.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  And sad for their kids.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's sad for everybody.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. So they just carried on as usual. He worked a lot, took care of the bills. She, you know, had a grand old time at Kroger.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  But all of that came to an end in the fall of 1973. One day in late September of that year, James started experiencing symptoms of what he thought was the flu. He was getting bad headaches, his glands were swollen, and he was becoming violently ill. When the symptoms finally got so bad that he couldn't manage them anymore, he went to see a doctor. But by then, things had escalated significantly. In addition to all the earlier flu-like symptoms, he now had painful blisters on his hands and feet. His hair was falling out in clumps.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  What?

• 32:28Speaker 00

  And his face was beginning to swell. The doctors had actually never seen anything like this, but they were like, it's not related to your heart, that's for sure.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, some shit is going on.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  So the doctor ordered a myriad of tests to rule out various illnesses and hopefully find the cause in the case of what the fuck was going on here. But after several tests, James was worried about the cost of the treatment and asked that no more tests be conducted. Which is like really sad.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz it's like something is obviously going wrong.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, on the night of October 2nd, Blanche had just cooked dinner and set the table, but James told her his throat was hurting too much to eat, so he skipped dinner. But rather than let her husband go without dinner entirely, Blanche, being the sweetie bo beady that she is,

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Oh no.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  brought him some ice cream and convinced him to at least have some of it. It might make his throat feel better, you know?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  I'm scared.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  Now unfortunately, within the hour after having said ice cream, James was writhing in tremendous pain on the couple's bed, which then escalated to, I'm so sorry, violent projectile vomiting.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Oh no.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  And he said, the feeling that something was inside of him trying to claw its way out.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  What the fuck?

• 33:43Speaker 00

  Rather than call for an ambulance, Blanche sent her daughter away, telling the girl she'd arrange for a doctor in the morning. And then she made up the couch and she went to sleep on it.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  What?

• 33:56Speaker 00

  While her husband lay upstairs projectile vomiting with the feeling that somebody was trying to claw its way out of him.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  That is horrifying.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  I'm sure you will be shocked to hear this, but the next morning when Blanche went to the bedroom to check on James, she found him on his side, his hands twisted like claws, and his face a bluish purple color.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Under the circumstances, I think almost fucking anybody would call for some sort of help.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  Emergency services, police, what have you.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Dead to me.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  Blanche just calmly informed her daughter that her father was dead and then went to call her other daughter, who I think maybe was at a sleepover or something, and informed her of the same thing. In fact, Blanche called nearly every single one of James's relatives.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  To tell them that their loved one was dead. And also, she called the man she'd been having an affair with for 10 years, Raymond Reed, to tell him also that her husband was dead and to please come over. And then finally, she called an ambulance and reported the death.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  I can't even picture this. Like, this is.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Next level.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  This is mayhem.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Why would you call, what's like a male mistress? Just a mister?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Your paramour, maybe?

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Paramour? Why would you call your sidemen's over?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Your side piece?

• 35:25Speaker 00

  To your house when like, your husband just died?

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  And why would you call his whole family instead of emergency services? And why would you call your daughter? And just tell them calmly, daddy's dead? Why?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  I... I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what to say.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  His death was listed a heart attack? Which made sense, given his medical history. But like P D Kaiser's death one, uh, years earlier, no one considered the events and the symptoms that led up to the 45-year-old supposed heart attack.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Or the fact that those symptoms would not have been caused by heart failure.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  So for a short time after James's death, which just happened and life moved on, apparently.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, apparently.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Blanche played the role of a grieving widow, but really in no time, things got back to normal. Her daughter Cindy said in 1989, "Mom never expected to spend the rest of her life by herself. She said she had too much to offer."

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  She was just like, "Yeah, I don't give a shit."

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Blanche and Raymond continued to see each other, but they would only visit each other at their respective homes so as to not contribute to any gossip, even though they'd literally been together for like 15 years.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, like, really?

• 36:46Speaker 00

  But, other than the living arrangements, they were very much a couple in every sense. And thinking back on that time, uh, Blanche's daughter Vanessa had fond memories. She said Raymond was a very good man. He was very good to us.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  I mean, that's good.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  So for a little bit, the arrangement seemed to suit everybody just fine. They could carry on their affair while Blanche still had enough space to continue building her own identity, independent of men in her life, for like four seconds. But her relationship with Reed wasn't the only bad habit that she carried on after her husband died abruptly. She also kept up her scheme of petty theft from the registers on the store.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  She's still at that?

• 37:23Speaker 00

  She's been at that.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  God damn.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Uh, people started to notice the missing money and people already had in the past, but more and more people were beginning to notice.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  And finally, in 1976, a bag of cash went missing from the store.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  As the person responsible for the register when the money went missing, Blanche was immediately suspected of the theft and she was actually even questioned by the police and a private investigator that Kroger hired.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  But they couldn't find any evidence and so there was no way she could be charged with anything. But a few months later, most people in Burlington did find it pretty odd that Blanche was able to afford a down payment on a new house.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Pretty interesting.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  Even though she had the salary of a grocery store clerk.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  She's just really good at it.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  She's just thrifty.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Now, just as it had been with her now dead husband, as Blanche started to come into her own as a single woman, Raymond Reed's life became considerably more difficult.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  After he got divorced, his relationship with his wife was very bitter and it was worse than it had ever been, actually, even when they were married. So it was hard for him to keep seeing his kids on a regular basis.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Which like, maybe you should think about that before you cheat on your wife, just saying.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that would be a good advice.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  That's just how I feel.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  But then there was problems at the store. In addition to the occasionally mysteriously missing money that he probably knew his mistress was responsible for, the store wasn't making the kind of profit that it needed to remain a viable branch.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  So that meant that there were more frequent visits by the store's regional manager, Robert Hutton. Now, like Raymond, Robert, sorry, it might get confusing here.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Robert.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  Robert.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Sorry, I miss Marcus the Worm.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  We must quote Marcus the Worm at all times. Uh, Robert Hutton was very devoted to the Kroger, Kroger company, a lot like Raymond, and he loved his job. But that's where the similarities between the two of them ended. Robert Hutton, the manager, he was young, he was apparently good looking and, uh, said to be cartoonishly masculine.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  I'm just picturing Johnny Bravo.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  What is, what was the, it was in Twilight, one of the Twilight movies, something feminine, like aggressively feminine.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  That it reminds me of that cartoonishly masculine.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  It's hard to say.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, cartoonishly masculine.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Was it aggressively feminine?

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I think it was like aggressively feminine.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  It was in, I think it was in the book.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is in the book. I think it's like Jacob's chapter.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, didn't he, he says Rosalie and um.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  And Alice.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  And Alice, right?

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just reminded me about.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Now we have cartoonishly masculine.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Robert bragged about his ability to sleep with any woman he wanted to, loved telling raunchy jokes, which like you probably shouldn't do as the manager of a store.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Probably not.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he also had a habit of sleeping around with women at various stores in his district.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Ew, what a pig.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  And really didn't make it a secret. So after careful review, he concluded that the Burlington Kroger did not stand a chance of survival. And the store ended up having to be closed. Now fortunately, he did recognize that a lot of the staff was in fact very reliable, very competent, good people. Including Blanche and Raymond. So like maybe not good people, but so they were all offered jobs at other area locations at a pay cut though. Raymond was demoted to assistant manager in Martinsville, and that was in one of the Virginia stores. And Blanche was demoted to just a regular old cashier position in Greensboro. A few months later, uh, Hutton moved Raymond to the Durham, North Carolina store and then promoted him back to manager, but Blanche stayed where she was.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Now, not surprisingly, the demotion and relocation were major disappointments for Blanche. She didn't have the power that she had over other cashiers anymore.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  And she also didn't get to spend every day with her side man. So therefore she didn't know what he was getting up to while she was away.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Who's to be sure?

• 41:18Speaker 00

  I know. Well, you know, that's the thing you have to worry about.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta be worried.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  It took some time, but by 1983, she managed to get transferred to the store that he worked at.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Oh, man, guys.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  The relocation meant at least an hour long commute each way, but apparently it was worth it to her to keep up her relationship with Raymond. And it also meant that she would be working alongside Robert Hutton, who she thought was irresistibly attractive since they had met years earlier. This bitch wants to have her cake and eat it too.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  She does.

• 41:57Speaker 05

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• 42:39Speaker 05

  That's C-O-O-P, sleepgoods.com/comedy.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Now, about the 1980s, the early 1980s, Blanche and Raymond's relationship had been going on for like 15 years or possibly more. And like her marriage before it, things had become less exciting than they once were. As he got older, Blanche didn't find Raymond to be so attractive anymore. She didn't think he was as fit as he should be. She really loves to fat shame, I just gotta say it.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  She really does.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  She does. He also had grown tired of their not-so-secret relationship and really just wanted to be together, since they could be now.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  But that wasn't fun for her. After she moved to the Greensboro store, he actually asked her to marry him, but she was like, "No."

• 43:27Speaker 01

  My god.

• 43:28Speaker 00

  And then he asked her to marry him again.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  She said no.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  And she was like, "No."

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, guy, she said no.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  And then he kept asking her to marry him, and she continued to say no.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  My god, get it together.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, she didn't just not want to marry him, but she really wasn't interested in changing their relationship at all. She was like, "We can have a clandestine affair forever and ever." Now, if she wasn't interested in marrying Raymond and committing to monogamy, it's probably because she had her sights set on Robert Hutton, now the store manager, the other one. Over the months that they've been working together, she was dropping hints indicating her interest in him, but he hadn't really picked up on anything, which was kind of crazy because he was a disgusting pig who regularly groped women that he employed.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  God.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  So I guess subtlety was something he wasn't accustomed to.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Oh, he lacked sorely.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  But despite his aggressiveness with some women at the store and his tendency to grab them without permission, he knew that his attention wasn't wanted from Blanche. He, like, he thought that she didn't want him to do that to her, I guess.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Um.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  What made him think that?

• 44:28Speaker 00

  I don't really know, to be honest with you. But eventually Blanche dropped the subtlety and got right to the point and just told him that she wanted him and she knew he wanted her.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  So I guess they got together.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  Now, by 1985, her life was spinning out of control again. She was still seeing Raymond regularly and continuing to deny his marriage proposals.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  While also carrying on a sexual relationship with her boss, Robert Hutton. And apparently balancing the two was getting a little bit difficult.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  So that January, the chaos escalated when Blanche called Raymond one day to tell him that she had come home and her house was ablaze.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  She said, hello, Raymond, I got home and it's engulfed in flames.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Hi. My house is on fire.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  He raced over to Blanche's house and when he got there, luckily by then, the firefighters had managed to put out the flames, but the damage had been done. When they went into the bedroom, fire investigators found all of Blanche's underwear and lingerie scattered about. And she claimed that there had been a pervert prowling around the house days before, and she was pretty sure that he was the one who set the fire.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Oh, excuse me.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  But weirdly, when they asked for any defining characteristics of this person that she had seen only days earlier, Blanche couldn't remember any details.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  At all.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  So her homeowner's insurance paid out a large sum.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  And she sold the house as is, which is crazy, but she managed to come out ahead. And she used the money to buy a mobile home a few miles away. But this fire is where things really started to get fucking crazier in her life. Over the course of a year, she continued her affair with Robert Hutton and her relationship with Raymond, while also having a bunch of one night stands with a bunch of other men in town.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Blanche.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  She's young and she's getting it, I guess.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  She is young and getting it. So that's one way of describing this.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  I don't know how else to say it. A few months after the fire that destroyed her, for her house, Blanche was again, sadly, the victim of another house fire.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  You know what? Some people arson just kind of follows.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  It's crazy.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Follows them around.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  It's the weirdest thing.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  You can never figure out why.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  You really can't.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  You know, sometimes fire just.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  Fire curses.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Fire follows people.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, it follows, but it's fire.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  It does, but it's fire.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Fire follows. So Raymond got to Blanche's house to pick her up for, for fucking church one afternoon. I'm sorry. It's just wild to me that this woman goes to church. But he was getting annoyed that she was taking so long, which was gonna make them late. And he didn't want to be late for church. So after she finally, no, he's, he's a righteous man.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a righteous man.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  Righteous Raymond.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Let's be real.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  So after she finally got out to the car, they had barely pulled out of the driveway when Raymond slammed on the brakes and said, Blanche, there's smoke coming out of your bedroom window. In response, she didn't look back. She just said, no, I think that's the sun reflecting on it.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, but if somebody tells me that there's smoke coming from my bedroom window, I'm gonna tell them, hey, would you mind pulling back in the driveway so I can figure out what the fuck that's about?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'd just be like, I bet it's just the sun reflecting. I'm not worried.

• 47:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, she was like, listen, we're late. We have to get to church.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Don't worry about that.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  How crazy.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  When they returned from church later that evening.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  I bet I know.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  They entered the house to find that the place was on fire.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Oh my god, so much fire.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Can you believe it?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  More fire.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Small flames were licking around the corners of the bedroom. And Blanche exclaimed, oh damn it, must have been that pervert again.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Must have been.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Just that, that arsonist pervert.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that fiery pervert.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Not a fiery pervert. So Raymond grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen and managed to put out the remains of the flames. But again, the damage had been done and Blanche's bedroom was a mess of fire and smoke damage.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Because of the fiery pervert.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  In the closet, there was a single wax candle burning on the floor.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  That's odd.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  That's the mark of a fiery arsonist pervert.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  To Raymond's surprise, though, the insurance company paid out a second claim on the fire without any questions.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  I feel like a man took that claim, I just have to say it. So during this time, Blanche managed to get a medical note from a doctor that claimed she had intestinal problems, which had been exacerbated by the fire. So it was possible she may need to take time off from work periodically. Of course, she very much used that as an excuse to blow off work or call out whenever she felt like it.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  Which put Raymond in a difficult position every time she did it, because he was her manager. By that summer, he finally insisted that Blanche had to return to work or she had to find a different job. But rather than given, she apparently went to Robert Hutton and initiated sex with him in his office, which produced a favorable result in terms of extending her medical leave.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Every decision she makes, I just never know where it's going.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  I know that was a crazy way to tell you what happened, but like, how else was I supposed to word it?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Honestly, I don't know.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  So she didn't want to lose that job, so she got to work.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  In a different way.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  She did, she sure did.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, in case you didn't pick that up.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I picked it up.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Everything that was happening at the time, it's very abundantly massively clear that Blanche was becoming more and more reckless with every day that was passing.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  It would seem so.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  But all, like that being said, at the same time, it really didn't seem like she had a long-term strategy for anything. But at the same time, not everything she did was on impulse. One week after she and uh Hutton had sex in his office, Blanche showed up at the law office of Walker Hoy and uh Carnotl.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Walker and or Hoy and Carnotl?

• 50:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, them.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Them.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  The law.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  The office.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Of law.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  In a meeting with Douglas Hoy, one of the men.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Involved in the law. Uh, she laid on a long history of the sexual harassment that she experienced at Kroger at the hands of the district manager, Robert Hutton.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, do you remember that she did go to his office and initiate sex to keep her job? After hearing the story she told, Hoy agreed to take the case, obviously. And in January of nineteen eighty-six, she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Kroger.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  For thirteen point eight million in Superior Court.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Among other things, the suit accused Robert Hutton of four counts of battery, four counts of assault, four counts of inflicting emotional distress, and one count of invasion of privacy. The suit also alleged that executives at Kroger were aware of Hutton's sexual proclivities and failed to take any precautionary measures.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  She claimed that on one, on multiple occasions, excuse me, he had called her into his office or conference rooms and exposed himself to her.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Fondled her or made sexual advances.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Fuck that guy.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  In the most egregious of these incidents, she claimed that he approached her from behind, sorry, this is all very graphic.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  He approached her from behind while she was stocking items and grabbed her around the waist and said, are you ready for this?

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  And I'm not asking you if you're ready for this, that's what he asked her.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  That's like literally what he said.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  And she said, they're in the grocery store, please remember that.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  She said when she turned around, he was nude from the waist down.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  She said she managed to get out of his grasp and grab his pants and underwear. And then she ran out of the store, which forced him to leave wearing a shirt and a tie and a butcher's apron.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  She also alleged that he frequently threatened to fire her or transfer her to another store if she didn't acquiesce to his demands.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  I mean, that's fucked up.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Remember that Blanche is the oldest woman on death row.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Remember that.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should remember that.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  Now, given his history with women at the company, though, because he is a pig.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Not all of this is true, like all, everything that she put in her lawsuit and like, we know that.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  But he is piggy.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  But he is a pig.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Uh, so given his history with women, it really wasn't that hard for anybody to believe what Blanche had alleged. And Robert Hutton was forced to resign from his position.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  The case got held up in pre-hearing motions for the next two years. Until in late nineteen eighty seven, Kroger finally agreed to settle for two hundred and fifty thousand.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  So Blanche has a lot of money now.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Sure does.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  Now, in the spring of nineteen eighty six, one of Blanche's sisters called and asked if she would join them for Easter service at the Carolina United Church of Crast in Burlington.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Of Crast.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Her husband, uh, Blanche's sister's husband was in the hospital dying from cancer. And this was a tradition that they always looked forward to. So Blanche agreed to accompany her to the service. Now Blanche had been to that service many times in her life. I just feel like it's like, you know what I mean?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Laugh.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  I think it's Blanche and Crast.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  But here's, so she had been there a million times, but when she arrived for Easter service in nineteen eighty six, she was surprised to find that the church had been taken over by a fine new pastor.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't say?

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Reverend Dwight Moore.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Dwight, you say?

• 53:27Speaker 00

  In Dwight, yeah. In fact, Easter was to be Moore's first big celebration as the new pastor. So the stakes were very high and he was very much looking forward to this event.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Now, not long before he arrived in Burlington, before he found himself as head pastor. He had gone through a really painful divorce, which was not officially the cause for his moving, but it was almost certainly why he was reassigned.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  So he hoped the new scenery and the new community would be an opportunity to heal some of his pain. Now, for someone who had been drawn to the flair and drama of her father's fire and brimstone preaching. Blanche wasn't terribly impressed with Reverend Moore when she, when she first saw him.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Unlike the preacher she was used to from her youth, he was kind of a modern church leader who focused on the more positive aspects of Christianity.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:13Speaker 00

  And he kind of left behind like darker. Old Testament lessons that he thought were scary.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Skrur.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  Skrur. But still, there was something about him that Blanche found intriguing. He was handsome, he was friendly, he was energetic. Maybe she didn't like his preaching, but she lacked his face.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  And for his part, he couldn't help but find himself drawn to Blanche as well.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  As soon as that Easter service ended and the congregation made their way to Easter breakfast, he immediately spotted Blanche and her sister and he made his way over to their table. Now, if he had been in Burlington for more than a few weeks, the odds were that he probably would have heard a lot of rumors about Blanche.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  And while he may not have approved of that gossip, he probably would have stayed away.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  But he hadn't heard about Blanche's salacious and occasionally scandalous past.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Uh oh.

• 55:01Speaker 00

  So he saw no reason why he shouldn't reach out to her.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not?

• 55:04Speaker 00

  About a week after the Easter service, he managed to get a hold of her address, which is a little bit sketchy. And he showed up at her house one evening, but she wasn't home.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  He returned a few days later and managed to catch her and the two sat down, chatted over coffee, gave her a little of his history, they got to know one another. Now, as religious leaders go, Dwight Moore's backstory was surprisingly atypical. After high school, he went to Duke University where he studied theology. Being educated in a traditional university, I guess, made him kind of an outlier in the Christian church. But what was more surprising was that shortly after beginning his service at his previous assignment, he started having an affair with his secretary, Eileen.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Who was also married at the time.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Eileen eventually left her husband and she and Moore made their relationship public. But it was always a well-known secret that they started seeing each other when they were both married.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  My god.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  After nearly twenty years together, their uh, their relationship eventually soured and they divorced, which proved too scandalous for the congregation, and that's why he moved.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  They said, we can't have this.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  They said, uh, uh, bleh. Now, maybe Blanche saw something of herself in Dwight Moore's story, or maybe she just liked the way he looked, who's to say?

• 56:22Speaker 01

  She liked his face.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  She did like his face. Whatever it was, the two hit it off and they started seeing each other more again, more and more. Uh, and they made sure to keep everything a secret. For more, another romantic scandal would have had him excommunicated and probably kicked out of his new congregation.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  And as for Blanche, her lawsuit against Kroger alleged that as a result of workplace harassment, she had been unable to form healthy relationships with men.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  So if the new relationship got out, that case probably would have been lost.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Now, as her interest in Dwight Moore grew, the amount of time that she had in her life for Raymond decreased, and that wasn't lost on him. In the spring of 1986, he showed up at Blanche's house unannounced, and he gave her a very expensive ring and a velvet-lined box. And he said, "Don't feel like I'm trying to pressure you. I just wanted you to have something nice for me." Now, that wasn't all Raymond gave her that day. He also handed her over two tickets and a hotel confirmation for a trip to Florida.

• 57:24Speaker 00

  Just wants to have a nice little trip with her.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Now, during their trip to Florida, they did embark on a trip to Florida.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Raymond did everything he could to endear himself to Blanche. He wanted to rekindle their once-passionate romance. He paid for everything. He complimented her. He flattered her endlessly.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Doted on her morning until night. Sounds really nice. But nothing really seemed to work. When they got back from the trip, she told her psychiatrist, "I feel really guilty when I tell Raymond not to come over. He always wants to come to my house. I gotta tell him goodbye."

• 57:56Speaker 01

  She's like, "You know what? This is kind of bullshit."

• 57:58Speaker 00

  She's like, "I do feel feelings, but like, I'm not into it."

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Well, like, I'm kind of annoyed.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  So like she had done years ago, when she was cheating on her husband, Blanche went out of her way to keep Dwight, Pastor Dwight, a secret from Raymond. But he was hearing the rumors from the cashiers at the store and from everybody else in town. And the thought of losing Blanche to another man was so incredibly stressful that eventually his body began to react to the stress.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Oh, no. You don't say.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Or so he thought.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  One afternoon in the spring of 1986, after experiencing an outbreak of some kind of painful blistering rash.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Probably out of nowhere.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  Out of nowhere, I tell you. Raymond went to his doctor, Dr. Norman Garrett, who took one look at one of those red blistered boils on his skin and diagnosed him with...

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Shingles.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Shingles is incredibly painful and incredibly disrupting, but it can be brought back under control with medication and with rest. But no matter how much Raymond rested and took the medication as he was directed, he wasn't getting any better.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  And by April, he ended up being admitted to the hospital. By that time, he was experiencing significant numbness in his arms and legs.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 59:10Speaker 00

  And a burning sensation with severe stomach discomfort.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  So for the next several months, he spent most of his time in and out of the hospital and traveling to different specialists, just trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Eventually, they diagnosed him with Guillain-Barre syndrome, Guillain-Barre, um, which is a rare immune disorder where basically your body's muscle system just starts to fail.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  The symptoms can look a lot like the symptoms of poisoning.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  But at the time, nobody had any reason to suspect that it wasn't Guillain-Barre.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  Now, in early October, only five months after his symptoms emerged, Raymond Reed died in the hospital.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  Now, according to her daughters, Blanche visited Raymond often in the hospital and seemed distraught by his death. But I'd like to highlight, visited him often in the hospital.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Was in the hospital with him.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Not only that, she, she did act publicly distraught over his death, but not so distraught that she wasted any time in delivering his safe to his kids, his sons, a few days after his, after their father had died. The safe had been in Raymond's house when he died and the boys knew that's where he kept an antique coin collection that he was saving for them.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  And, uh, there were silver bars in there too, that he collected over the years. But when they opened the safe with the key that Blanche gave them, his sons were surprised to find that the silver bars were missing, and so was the large chunk of a coin collection.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Everything was gone.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  That's so fucked up.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  It's so fucked up and so strange. How did that happen?

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  That's so fucked up when things disappear like that.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  I know, and people just die miraculously after having the strangest symptoms.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  So crazy.

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  But that, my friends, is where we're gonna end for part one.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  And in part two, we'll learn a lot more about strange symptoms and things that go missing and the woman that is behind all of it.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Blanche is really out here.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Blanche Taylor Moore is a reckless woman.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  I mean, she's the oldest woman on death row, so she, she did it.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  She did something.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  So whatever, whatever been done, she did it.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  Period.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  I can't believe she's gonna do more.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  She's gonna do more. I have a whole part two.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's, there's a pastor too.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Oh man, of course there is.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  There's, I mean, you know him, Dwight.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  I, I knew Dwight wasn't gonna get out of this.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Maybe not. Not scot-free, I imagine.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  I'll tell you in part two.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  I guess you will.

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  All right. Well, I have a fun fact for you, actually.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  I don't even know if it's my turn, but it is.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  I got a Snapple yesterday.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Oh, you did?

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

  I haven't had a Snapple in forever and I forgot that they put fun facts in the cap.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  I forgot that too.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  And my fun fact was gorillas burp when they're happy.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  And I too.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Good for gorillas.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Burp when I'm happy.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  It's awesome.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  So good for all of us.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Mikey knows that better than anyone.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  All right. Well, with all that being said, we hope you keep listening.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  And we hope you.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  Keep it.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Weird.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  So weird that you're so happy that you burp, burp, burp, burp, burp.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  Burp your world away. Yeah. Burp all your world away. But not so weird that people around you start dying with painful blisters all over their body. Cause like, that's just so strange.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  That's so weird.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  Unexplainable.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  And don't, you know, be followed by a fire perv.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Don't do that.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  That's weird.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Don't do that. A fiery perv, if you will.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  Not a fiery perv.