Pod Insights The Binge Crimes The Crimes of Margo Freshwater | 1. The Breakout About this episode Margo Freshwater is just 18 when she tries to bail out a friend charged with armed robbery. She ends up in big trouble of her own, when she and a much older man tear across the South like Bonnie and Clyde, shooting first and asking questions later.
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Transcript 6,007 words · 10 speakers
0:01 Speaker 00 The wilderness can hide a lot, but it can't hide the truth forever. I'm Delia DiAmber, host of Park Predators. And every week, I investigate true crime cases hidden in national parks, forests, and beaches. I follow every lead, every clue, and every overlooked detail. Because even when a trail seems to disappear, the truth has a way of resurfacing. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.
0:28 Speaker 01 Listen to all episodes of The Crimes of Margo Freshwater ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit Subscribe at the top of the page. Or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.
0:56 Speaker 01 It looked like any other evening at the Tennessee prison for women on the northeast outskirts of Nashville.
1:02 Speaker 02 It was a fall night, October 4th, 1970.
1:06 Speaker 01 A line of inmates was heading across the yard, under the watch of a single guard. But for weeks, two women in that line had been imagining the moment when routine might crack open. Tonight, they sensed it.
1:22 Speaker 02 We had gone to the church, and we were headed back. And there was about 20 of us in the group. And there was this older guard gentleman.
1:32 Speaker 01 They figured in an all-out sprint, they'd be able to beat this guy. They were young after all.
1:38 Speaker 02 And Faye and I were about in the middle of the group. She said, "Go."
1:44 Speaker 01 Go. The two of them peeled away from the line, cutting through the herd like a sudden current.
1:50 Speaker 02 I took my jacket off and threw it over the barbed wire, and I was up and over the fence without any problems. Now, she was a lot taller, so I didn't think she would have a problem, and she got hung up on it.
2:04 Speaker 01 The guard called out, but the echo disappeared almost instantly, swallowed by adrenaline.
2:10 Speaker 02 I was nervous. I just kept telling her, you know, "Come on." So she got off the fence, and we started running.
2:18 Speaker 01 Floodlights swept across the ground, catching only dust and falling leaves.
2:23 Speaker 02 As we're running through the woods, we could hear the dogs.
2:30 Speaker 02 And we come across this creek.
2:34 Speaker 02 And we waited through the creek for quite a while.
2:41 Speaker 01 The creek ran shallow and black, cutting a thin silver line through the woods. They were wearing blue prison dresses with jeans underneath. The denim clung, soaked and heavy. The cold settled deep into their bones.
2:54 Speaker 02 And then we got back up on the grass and she started sprinkling pepper around.
3:00 Speaker 01 Fay had pocketed a pepper shaker from the cafeteria earlier that day, tucking it into her uniform like contraband.
3:07 Speaker 02 I said, "What's the pepper for?" And she said, "So when the dogs come after us, we'll sprinkle the pepper and that'll throw them off." Then we took off running more and we came to the highway. We ran down the middle of the highway, hoping that would throw off our scent.
3:28 Speaker 01 The two women kept moving, steady rhythm. No words between them, just breath and the sounds of pursuit fading behind.
3:38 Speaker 02 And then there was this house and it had some shrubs beside it. I said, "Let's get on the other side of the shrub. Scoot in as close as you can underneath." So we scooted in and I said, "Keep your face away from the road and cover up your hands so nothing's showing."
4:00 Speaker 01 They pressed their bodies into damp earth. Guards on foot fanned out across the dark. Beams of light swept wildly through the trees as their voices closed in.
4:11 Speaker 02 And the whole time I'm praying, while their flashlights are going over the top of us and we can hear them talking.
4:22 Speaker 02 That seemed like an eternity. And I prayed so hard, "Please, Lord, don't let them find us." And they stopped right there along the road, not more than 50 feet from us.
4:37 Speaker 01 They waited and waited and waited.
4:42 Speaker 02 Finally, they said, "We don't know where they went." And they left.
4:49 Speaker 01 At last, there was silence.
4:53 Speaker 02 After we know they're gone for sure, we get up and we take off the uniforms and we have on our street clothes.
5:01 Speaker 01 Then headlights broke the dark.
5:03 Speaker 02 And Faye flags down the truck driver.
5:06 Speaker 01 He pumped the brakes as dust kicked up around them. Faye didn't hesitate.
5:11 Speaker 02 And she gives him a story. She told him that we were sisters. And we were out there because my boyfriend was acting up.
5:23 Speaker 01 Believable enough, the trucker bought it.
5:26 Speaker 02 She says, "We're gonna go to my relatives in Maryland. The truck driver took us to a truck dump and found another truck driver that was headed that way."
5:37 Speaker 01 And just like that, two women vanished from the Tennessee prison for women and into the night. One of them, just 22 years old, would stay gone for more than 30 years.
5:52 Speaker 01 Outfoxing federal agents, leaving behind any trace of who she used to be, people considered her so dangerous, they wanted her behind bars for 99 years. But she rewrote the script. Her name is Margo Freshwater. Or it used to be, anyway.
6:14 Speaker 01 From Sony Music Entertainment and Glass Podcasts, this is The Crimes of Margo Freshwater. I'm Cooper Mall. Episode one, The Breakout.
6:32 Speaker 01 When everything feels stacked against you, have you ever just wanted to disappear? To slip out of your circumstances and find a clean slate? I think we all have, at some point, imagined what it would be like to walk away from our lives entirely, to break free. When Margo Freshwater escaped, the war in Vietnam was raging. The battle for civil rights continued on the streets and in the courts. And in Ohio, the National Guard had opened fire on college students, killing four. It was a time when so many people were searching for a way out, imagining different futures. It was an era marked by unrest and defiance. Everyone wanted change. And Margot chose her own version of it.
7:17 Speaker 01 Only her rebellion began with a prison break.
7:22 Speaker 01 I've met a lot of people who've heard of Margo Freshwater in some way. Like me, they'd seen her mugshot. A black and white close-up of a teenage girl in a striped crew neck, blond eyebrows plucked to a faint line, a cold, dead stare. Her mouth clamped like it's locked and she threw away the key. Richard Knudsen first heard of Margot in 1971. He's retired from the FBI now, but back then, he was a newly minted agent.
7:50 Speaker 03 She had dropped out of high school and she had had some problem juvenile-type situations for a while. Kind of like a wild child, you might say.
8:00 Speaker 01 By the time she escaped the Tennessee prison for women, Margot had already learned how to survive by impulse. The only parent she'd ever known was her mother. And she kicked Margot out of their home in Columbus, Ohio, when Margot was 18. By then, she'd gotten pregnant out of wedlock. And well, her mother wasn't having any of it. So she showed Margot the door. Margot was a fallen girl, a Betty Rizzo, you might say. The gal with the short, dark hair and grease who had a pregnancy scare. Except Margot had been pregnant, given birth, given up her baby. All of it. When Margot was out of luck, a friend, a guy named Al Schlereth, was one of the only people to stick by her.
8:44 Speaker 01 He took her to appointments, put her up in an apartment, made sure she was eating well. So when Al got locked up in Memphis on an armed robbery charge in October of 1966, Margot wanted to show up for him in turn. But she had no idea how helping a friend would derail her life... forever.
9:04 Speaker 01 So she headed nearly 600 miles south to find someone who could help Al get out of jail.
9:09 Speaker 03 In the course of that journey, she got hooked up with Glenn Nash, who was, I'll call him a jailhouse-type lawyer.
9:16 Speaker 01 Glenn Nash was 38. He had the air of a man who had made something of himself. But Margot was just 18. She had no idea how precarious this guy's situation really was. Four years before this, the local bar association in Chattanooga started disbarment proceedings against him. They said he was camping out in hospital emergency rooms, hustling accident victims for legal business the moment they came through the door. Jailhouse lawyer seems generous. Sounds a lot more like an ambulance chaser to me.
9:50 Speaker 01 Everyone's met a guy like this. Short in stature, big in bravado, 5'7", wiry build, brown hair, blue eyes. Nash was intense, a heavy drinker, someone who could flip from polite to volatile in a heartbeat.
10:08 Speaker 01 Before he could get disbarred, Nash quietly skipped town.
10:12 Speaker 04 So as crazy as this sounds, you could get disciplined in one city and just go set up shop in another city and practice law.
10:19 Speaker 01 That's attorney Stephen Ross Johnson. If anyone knows Tennessee law, it's him. He's been the president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, and he's a professor at the State's College of Law. He knows the lore of Margo Freshwater and Glenn Nash better than most anybody.
10:36 Speaker 04 He goes to Memphis, he opens a law firm, he ran a karate dojo at night.
10:42 Speaker 01 He opened an office downtown, but couldn't keep up with the rent. When the landlord finally locked him out, Nash moved his files into his karate school. His wife, Ann, who he'd married, divorced, and then married again, helped him run karate classes at night. By that point, the chaos in his personal life was catching up to the chaos in his work. The FBI and local police were investigating him in connection with a post office burglary, and he was fighting a contempt of court charge handed down by a Tennessee judge. These were the signs of a man sliding toward ruin. And as he fell, Margot would fall with him.
11:22 Speaker 03 Here's an 18-year-old girl coming down to Tennessee to try to help her boyfriend and gets hooked up with an attorney who turns out to be a nutcase.
11:35 Speaker 01 What Margot didn't know when she walked into Nash's makeshift office was that her friend Al had made his own kind of deal behind bars, one that would hand her life over to a stranger.
11:46 Speaker 04 He struck a deal with Glenn Nash. "I don't have any money to pay you, but I've got an 18-year-old friend, Margot, in Columbus."
11:53 Speaker 01 Perhaps she could foot the bill? Not sure why Al would think Margot, who bounced around between babysitting and waiting tables, could afford to retain her. But she had one thing Al didn't have: the ability to hold a job. And by the time she got down there, Nash already had one teed up for her.
12:11 Speaker 04 Margot comes down from Ohio, and Nash already has a place for her to live, set up with another family.
12:20 Speaker 01 He introduced her to James and Edna Cuneo, a local couple who needed a babysitter, and the money she earned would go to Al's defense. She told the Cuneo she'd stick around until Al's trial in January. But over those few weeks, her connection with Nash started to evolve. Little did Margot anticipate that this arrangement would come with some unexpected strings.
12:45 Speaker 01 "I don't know about you, but if my mom caught wind I was hanging around some older guy hundreds of miles away in order to help a friend get out of jail, she'd personally come down and drag my ass home." But Margot didn't have a family like that. At this moment in her life, Al had been the only person looking out for her. That is, until Glenn Nash came along.
13:08 Speaker 03 And the two of them, incredibly enough, struck up some kind of a relationship.
13:14 Speaker 01 Nash was dropping by the Cuneo's place constantly to spend time with Margot. Before long, Margot was spending less time with the kid she was babysitting and more time with Nash. She was also spending a lot of time at Nash's karate dojo law office, and within a few weeks, they were sleeping together, too.
13:33 Speaker 01 Just weeks after Margo moved in, the Cunios had had enough. They kicked Margo out of the house, but let her keep babysitting. Margo found a small boarding room on Peabody Avenue, not far from downtown Memphis. And Nash followed her there, too. He paid her rent, telling her landlady he was her uncle. Maybe Margo was just putting up with Glenn Nash, or maybe she'd fallen for him. It was hard to tell. But what was true was she was counting on Nash's help to get Al out of jail. If she caused a rift, she would lose the one roof over her head, and Al would lose his lawyer. They'd both be screwed.
14:14 Speaker 01 From the moment Nash became Al's lawyer, boundaries and ethics were out the window. He had taken up with his client's girlfriend. He was becoming obsessed with Margo, and she was relying on him to come through for Al. It didn't take long for things to come to a head. Margo was desperate and lonely. Nash was volatile, controlling, and often drunk. Only one month after Margo met Glenn Nash, everything imploded.
14:43 Speaker 03 And they take off on a killing spree and kill three people.
14:51 Speaker 01 It was a cool December night in Memphis, 1966. Streetlights pulled yellow on the pavement, and the city was settling into its quiet rhythm. Around 6 o'clock, Margo was at the Cunios' house on Peabody, doing her usual babysitting shift. Glenn Nash was there, too. That night, he was drinking. Mrs. Cunio noticed it right away: the smell, the slur, the heaviness in his movements. When she told him to knock it off, Nash didn't put up a fight. When it was time to clock out, Margo gathered her things and left the house. She walked home alone in the dim streetlight glow, probably thinking she'd seen the last of Nash for the night.
15:36 Speaker 01 But just a few minutes later, he showed up at her door, and the two of them left together in a white Ford Fairlane.
15:46 Speaker 01 They drove off into the Memphis night. No clear destination, just headlights cutting through the dark.
15:53 Speaker 04 Nash said he needed alcohol and he goes into the liquor store.
15:58 Speaker 01 Square D Liquor, an unremarkable bodega. You can kind of picture this place in your head. Your town definitely has one. Inside, the air smelled of stale beer and linoleum cleaner. A radio murmured behind the counter.
16:14 Speaker 04 The proprietor of the liquor store was Hillman Robbins, Sr. Hillman Robbins is waiting on customers as they come in.
16:22 Speaker 01 Hillman was 60 years old, a soft-spoken Memphian. The liquor store job was just a favor, a temporary side gig, helping out his friend who owned the place. Hillman filled in a few nights a week, usually working the 6 to 11 shift.
16:40 Speaker 01 When Nash stumbled in, Robbins nodded hello, polite and unsuspecting. Margot waited a bit in the car, but Nash was taking too long. So she went in to join him, and that's when...
16:54 Speaker 04 Nash pulls a gun on him.
16:56 Speaker 01 In seconds, this sleepy liquor store was the scene of a stick-up.
17:00 Speaker 04 He tells Hillman Robbins to get into the back of the store. There's a little back room. He shoves Hillman Robbins against the wall.
17:07 Speaker 01 The bell over the door jingled, a new customer. Nash leaned close to Margot, his voice low enough only she could hear.
17:16 Speaker 04 He tells Margot to go back there and tells Margot, "You get out there and you wait on that man."
17:22 Speaker 01 Behind the counter, Margot kept her hands steady, pretending everything was fine, like this customer hadn't walked into the middle of a robbery.
17:31 Speaker 05 She was conducting herself like she was working there, handling customers, handling money. She was giving out liquor.
17:38 Speaker 01 That's Judge John Campbell, a former deputy DA in Shelby County, where this crime all went down.
17:45 Speaker 05 She did not let anybody think there was anything wrong.
17:48 Speaker 01 This was Margot's chance to get out, but she stayed.
17:53 Speaker 04 She then comes to the back and Glenn Nash kicks the back door open. As she's going out the back door, pop, pop.
18:04 Speaker 01 Nash and Margot beelined toward his white Ford Fairlane, idling in the alley as a pool of blood formed around Hillman's body. They tore off into the night. They had stolen $616.85. Hardly worth a man's life.
18:26 Speaker 01 I got the Memphis PD offense report from that night. It's classified as a criminal homicide. Defendant: unknown. Here's what went down when they arrived on the scene. A car hop that was working nearby had nipped into D Square Liquor for a bottle of gin, but nobody answered when he pounded on the counter. Then, from somewhere behind a door in the back, a gurgle broke the silence. The strained gagging jolted him. Something was clearly wrong. He picked up the phone and called for help. Minutes later, the first patrol car pulled up outside. The neon sign was still glowing, the door unlocked, lights on inside, but the place was empty.
19:10 Speaker 01 Officers called out to no answer. Then one of them pushed through the narrow hallway to the back room. That's where they found Hillman Robbins Sr. on the floor. His hands bound with seagrass rope, his body still. He'd been shot several times. Close range. Execution style.
19:30 Speaker 05 There were two guns that were used, a .22 and a .38. The .22 was something that a woman would have.
19:36 Speaker 01 In other words, it looked like Margot had shot Hillman Robbins, not just her older boyfriend.
19:50 Speaker 01 Over the next 12 days, Margot and Nash never stayed in one place too long.
19:55 Speaker 05 They were almost like a Bonnie and Clyde situation.
19:58 Speaker 01 Bonnie and Clyde were Depression-era outlaws turned legends. A couple of kids from Texas who robbed banks, outran the cops, and went out in a storm of gunfire on a back road in Louisiana. When Bonnie and Clyde hit movie screens in 1967, it turned them into icons. Stylish, fearless, and in love, standing up to a world they couldn't beat. Even now, their names still mean rebellion, passion, and the thrill of running when you know you probably won't make it far. And when the film became a cultural touchstone, observers quickly pointed out the similarities between the story and the case that was unfolding in the South. For a moment, Margot and Nash seemed to fit that same mold:
20:41 Speaker 01 wild, reckless, and on the run, feeding a story that was already starting to sound like legend.
20:51 Speaker 01 They left Memphis the night Hillman Robbins Sr. was killed and headed east. First stop: Nashville, where they holed up for the night, laying low, drinking bourbon, and plotting their next move. From there, it was a zigzag trail across the South: Atlanta, Georgia, then Titusville, Florida. They stayed in cheap motels under fake names, nothing that stuck. On December 18th, 12 days after Hillman Robbins Sr. was gunned down in cold blood, they stopped at a convenience store north of Fort Lauderdale in a small town called Oakland Park. What happened next followed the same rhythm as Memphis. Nash and Margot walked into a convenience store and pulled the trigger again,
21:36 Speaker 01 this time on Esther Bouye, a 45-year-old clerk working the night shift. She was shot twice, both bullets through the back. This wasn't self-defense. This was cold-blooded murder, a murder with no witnesses.
21:56 Speaker 01 This was officially a spree: two people committing random acts of violence. To what end? Was survival the reason? Did robbery keep gas in the car and food in their mouths? If violence worked once, maybe the fear of doing it again began to fade. Each stop on the map demanded a new way to stay ahead. And the cost kept rising.
22:24 Speaker 01 By late December, the road brought them back to Tennessee. On the 26th, they checked into the Rip Van Winkle Motel in Millington, just outside of Memphis. The two were hungry, restless, and out of money. They'd abandoned the car on Highway 51 North. The two introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Nash from West Memphis. They paid with a bad check and took a room for the night. Little did they know, while the phony Mr. and Mrs. slept soundly after a rampaging two weeks, the police found their getaway car. It was locked, out of gas, a Georgia plate bolted at the back. Inside, maps of convenience stores around Fort Lauderdale, boxes of 22 and 38 caliber ammo,
23:08 Speaker 01 and a dark gray checkered sport coat. The same kind witnesses said the man who killed Hillman Robbins Sr. had been wearing that night. Police had found the vehicle they were looking for, but the fugitives were nowhere to be found.
23:23 Speaker 01 Come morning, December 27th, after a night where they slept more soundly than they should have, they called a taxi in Millington. The driver, C.C. Surat, was 54, a family man wrapping up his shift. Margot and Nash were his last customers, said they were headed to Mississippi. The cab hummed across the state line, the headlights washed over the bare winter trees, the road empty for miles. Then, two flashes lit the inside of the car.
23:53 Speaker 05 And they wound up killing the Mississippi cab driver.
23:57 Speaker 01 Another execution-style killing, to the back of the head, while Surat was still in the driver's seat. Their body count, now three.
24:08 Speaker 01 They fled the scene, came up with fake names, John and Sue Williams from Newark. And the two were back in the wind.
24:20 Speaker 01 After the cab driver CC Surratt's body was discovered by police, witnesses said they spotted a man and woman running across a field and hopping into a truck on Highway 61. Police tracked down the trucker, a guy named Robert Thornton, who said he'd picked them up and dropped them in Clarksville. From there, it looked like they were heading south. By late afternoon, the Mississippi Highway Patrol confirmed sightings of the pair in Clarksville, and word went out to local police. Officers started checking the trailways in Greyhound stations, figuring the fugitives were traveling by bus. The Greyhound manager told them the next one from Clarksville was due at 7:25 p.m.
25:00 Speaker 04 Finally, they were apprehended in DeSoto County, Mississippi, which is just one county south of Memphis.
25:08 Speaker 01 Bonnie and Clyde were officially busted at a Greyhound station. There was no fight and no chase, only the sharp click of handcuffs and the flash of police lights outside as they were led into the cool Mississippi night. At the station, officers opened Nash's briefcase. Inside, wrapped in a pair of underwear, was a .38 caliber Italian revolver. It was loaded with four live rounds and one spent shell under the hammer. The pair were booked into the DeSoto County Jail, a narrow hallway of concrete cells and metal doors. The ballistics were clear enough. The .38 caliber rounds pulled from Nash's car
25:51 Speaker 01 matched the ones that tore through Robbins and Surratt's bodies. In Florida, the evidence pointed in the same direction. Nash's fingerprints were lifted from a shopping cart inside the Oakland Park convenience store, and hand-drawn maps of Florida were later found in his abandoned car. But there was a big problem in all these states putting Nash on trial.
26:12 Speaker 05 During the process, Glenn Nash was found to be insane and was committed.
26:19 Speaker 01 Within months, every jurisdiction that wanted to charge him hit the same wall. I got ahold of a psychological evaluation. The consensus? A diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. In Nash's case, doctors at the state hospital in Whitfield said he was in a deep psychotic state, paranoid, and convinced the world was out to get him. They described him as having wild delusions, part fear, part ego, believing he was both being persecuted and somehow important enough to be a target.
26:53 Speaker 01 Remember how Nash had been under investigation in Tennessee for unethical law practice? It turns out Nash believed Hillman, Robin Sr. and Esther Bouyer were spies for the Memphis Bar Association. And the cab driver, C.C. Surat, Nash was convinced was a hired gunman attempting to kill him, and that he had shot him in self-defense. All of that was enough for a judge to find Nash incompetent to defend himself. And Glenn Nash was sent to the Memphis State Hospital at Whitfield.
27:25 Speaker 04 All the while, Margot had to go to trial.
27:28 Speaker 01 Glenn Nash would never face a jury for any of the killings. Margot faced more than one.
27:36 Speaker 04 She was tried twice in Mississippi for the murder of the cab driver, Mr. Surat.
27:43 Speaker 01 There she was facing one count of accessory after the fact. So they didn't think Margot shot anyone, but helped Nash get away. The trials took place in Hernando, one in 1967, the other in 68, in the same small Mississippi town where she'd been locked up. She told the jury that Nash was the gunman, that she feared he'd kill her too, that she hadn't pulled the trigger in any of the murders.
28:09 Speaker 04 And there was a mistrial both times.
28:11 Speaker 01 Mississippi decided not to try her again.
28:15 Speaker 01 Then there was Florida.
28:16 Speaker 05 Glenn Nash couldn't be tried if he was found to be insane. They decided not to just pursue the case against her.
28:24 Speaker 01 Investigators couldn't prove Margot had been inside when the clerk was shot, so she was left off the charge sheet.
28:34 Speaker 01 For Nash, the verdict was madness. For Margot, it was limbo. And after nearly two years sitting in the DeSoto County Jail...
28:43 Speaker 04 Margot was then extradited to Memphis, just to cross the state line, and put to trial.
28:51 Speaker 01 Somebody had to go down for these senseless murders. And it wasn't going to be the lawyer who'd been declared legally insane. Instead, the young woman. What are the odds that she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Three times.
29:07 Speaker 04 And it was a death penalty case.
29:10 Speaker 01 All eyes were on Margo Freshwater.
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29:54 Speaker 07 Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.
30:20 Speaker 01 Two years after the killing at D Square Liquor, on February 4th, 1969, 21-year-old Margo Freshwater was brought to trial at the Criminal Court for Shelby County in Tennessee. She faced a single count of first-degree murder in the death of Hillman Robbins, Sr., the six-year-old clerk found bound and shot in the back room of the shop, and another charge for murder and perpetration of robbery. I'm not saying this was the trial of the century or anything, but there was some hype. A young woman accused of an execution-style killing alongside her mad lover? Even today, the press would eat that up.
30:55 Speaker 03 She made an attractive defendant. She got her hair fixed and her makeup on and nice clothes and stuff like that. She was pretty. And so that drew a lot of attention to her from the very first.
31:07 Speaker 04 Margo Freshwater was very much portrayed as this femme-fatale, young, pretty, blonde woman who used her sex and her sexuality to manipulate men and manipulate situations. That was the undercurrent of so much of how she was portrayed and how the case was portrayed. Bonnie and Clyde, except Clyde was, you know, schizophrenic and crazy and Bonnie was the one really running the show.
31:42 Speaker 01 The press leaned into that narrative. They thought she was in charge. She called the shots. Before the jury was even seated, Margot was called the blonde Bonnie. Twelve men would decide her fate. Not a single woman made the jury.
32:00 Speaker 01 Margot sat at the defense table beside J. Frank Hall, a seasoned Memphis defense attorney. Across from them, prosecutor Terry Lafferty, a young, hungry, and charismatic attorney eager to make his career. Hall built Margot's defense on one idea: duress. That she hadn't chosen this life on the run. That Nash, twice her age and legally insane, had forced her into it. But the law in Tennessee wasn't so forgiving. It didn't matter who pulled the trigger. If you were in on it, you were in on it all the way.
32:36 Speaker 05 Whether she shot him or not is not going to be the deciding factor. The deciding factor is if she was an accessory before the fact, even if Glenn Nash did the killing, she was an active participant.
32:49 Speaker 01 What Judge Campbell is getting at here is that presence at each crime made her an accomplice under Tennessee law. By Nash's side, she assumed equal responsibility. In the eyes of the court, that put her exactly where Nash stood: fully culpable.
33:06 Speaker 05 Even if you don't actually do the killing, if you're the lookout, if you're the getaway driver, if you're holding other people hostage while somebody else does a killing, you're guilty of the killing.
33:17 Speaker 01 And there was another sticking point. Two guns were used in the murder of Hillman Robbins, Sr., Nash's .38 and a .22, the Lady Gun.
33:28 Speaker 05 The state argued that she used the .22 to shoot the victim and Glenn Nash used the .38.
33:34 Speaker 01 To the state, Margo was more than a passenger.
33:37 Speaker 05 She had many opportunities to escape and she didn't. They basically acted like they were husband and wife for a long time.
33:44 Speaker 01 I've thought about this, too. This crime spree spanned two weeks across state lines, motel lobbies, gas stations, and crowded highways. Plenty of moments where somebody desperate to get away could have run or asked for help.
34:00 Speaker 01 As the testimony unfolded, jurors watched the young woman at the defense table.
34:05 Speaker 05 She really struck a lot of people as something out of the ordinary. And she didn't come across as someone who was just this weak, vulnerable, manipulated person.
34:16 Speaker 01 Her case rested entirely on convincing the jury that her account of that night was true.
34:22 Speaker 04 And she testified that Nash forced her into the store, that Nash made her wait on the customer, that Nash held Hillman Robbins, Sr. in the back room, told her that if she said anything or tried to escape or do anything at all, he was going to kill Mr. Robbins and kill her too, and that he forced her out the back door. She heard the pops and then he is right on her with the gun and forces her to drive away.
34:45 Speaker 01 And from that moment on, she claims she lived in fear, riding shotgun across the South, always under threat.
34:53 Speaker 04 And she was cross-examined vigorously by the prosecutor at trial, by Terry Lafferty. And one of the precise questions that he was hammering her with was, "You don't have anyone else who can say that's what happened. You only have your word for that."
35:13 Speaker 01 Terry Lafferty passed away in 2021, but his voice lives on tape. My hopes were at high that any of it was salvageable. The tapes had been sitting in a dusty Memphis court archive for over half a century now. But astonishingly enough, when I hit play, the courtroom came to life.
35:34 Speaker 08 They tied Mr. Hillman's hands behind his back and made him lay down on the floor. And gentlemen of the jury, also under proof that this record shows that this young girl went out and waited on a customer, and she made no attempt whatsoever to tell that customer that Mr. Nash was in the back and he had Mr. Robbins on the floor with a gun out there and was threatening to kill him, or even that a holdup was in process. And she wants you to believe, gentlemen of the jury, that she's in fear of her life at that time.
36:08 Speaker 01 The defense rested without calling another witness. Outside, reporters filed their copy before the press is closed, the words already taking shape in tomorrow's paper: A frightened teenager or a willing partner? February 7, 1969, the Aaronside Judge Arthur Fackwin's courtroom was electric. The jury had spent just three days listening to testimony, poring over photos of the Square D Liquor Store, and hearing Margo Freshwater describe a night that had destroyed her life. And the state wasn't just asking for conviction, they were out for blood.
36:48 Speaker 09 All right, gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict in the case of State of Tennessee versus Margo Freshwater? We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the first count.
37:03 Speaker 01 Judge Fackwin then delivered her fate.
37:05 Speaker 09 Margo Freshwater, please stand.
37:09 Speaker 09 She'll be delivered to the ward of the State Penitentiary in Nashville. They'll be confined for a period of 99 years.
37:16 Speaker 01 Margot sobbed as the deputies led her away. Outside, the verdict echoed through Memphis.
37:23 Speaker 03 There's a very attractive young girl having to do 99 years. And the shooter, they put him in a private mental institution. Just the facts of this were extraordinary.
37:35 Speaker 01 And for Margo Freshwater, unacceptable. She had to do something to change the hand she'd been dealt. And soon, she would. She'd escape. What came next was legend. A manhunt that spanned states, decades, and generations of law enforcement, who all thought they knew who Margo Freshwater really was. And a revelation that proved no one really knew who they were chasing.
38:06 Speaker 01 For decades, everything known about Margo Freshwater came from prosecutors, defense attorneys, police reports, and the news. Over time, she became the kind of criminal that people talk about. The girl who climbed a fence and became infamous. More rumor than person. Other people defined her story, her motives, her fear, her guilt. If this was a woman who vanished for half a lifetime, I needed to understand how. I needed to hear from Margot herself. So I went looking for her.
38:43 Speaker 02 My name's Tanya. I was formerly Margo Freshwater.
38:49 Speaker 02 No one has really confronted me. And if they did, I would just say, "Well, you need to hear what the real story is before you are so quick to judgment."
39:05 Speaker 02 And leave it at that.
39:11 Speaker 01 The Crimes of Margo Freshwater is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Glass Podcasts. It was hosted and reported by me, Cooper Mall. Maura Walls is our story editor. Our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis, Jonathan Hirsch, Nancy Glass, Ben Fetterman, and Andrea Gunning. Sound design and editing by Anna McLean. Mixed and mastered by Matt Del Vecchio. Our theme music was composed by Oliver Baines. We use music from MIB and Epidemic Sound. Our production managers are Sammy Allison and Kristin Melchiori. Our lawyer is Michael Belkin. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rasek, and Carrie
39:52 Speaker 01 Hartman. Please rate and review The Crimes of Margo Freshwater. It helps people find our show.
40:12 Speaker 00 The wilderness can hide a lot, but it can't hide the truth forever. I'm Delia D'Ambrera, host of Park Predators. And every week, I investigate true crime cases hidden in national parks, forests, and beaches. I follow every lead, every clue, and every overlooked detail. Because even when a trail seems to disappear, the truth has a way of resurfacing. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.
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