Pod Insights The Binge Crimes The Crimes of Margo Freshwater | 4. Born to Run About this episode With a new identity, Tonya begins to believe her past is buried for good. But when her story makes it to primetime TV, a swaggering young special agent starts closing in.
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0:30 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 Colonial Hills in the 1950s felt like every town in USA. Small Cape Cod homes, each with its own patch of clipped lawns, stood side by side like siblings in matching outfits. This suburb of Columbus was one of those places where people believed they were building something, not just houses, but lives. And to the extent that a baby could know there was a great big world beyond it, little Margo Freshwater seemed determined to explore that great big world.
1:24 Speaker 02 When I was 18 months, my mom had me out in the backyard, and she forgot something inside. She ran inside to get it.
1:33 Speaker 01 She stepped back out, expecting to see her daughter still inside the fenced yard.
1:38 Speaker 02 And I was gone.
1:40 Speaker 01 Just vanished. No gate open, no tracks in the mud, Houdini in diapers.
1:47 Speaker 02 She hunted everywhere, and all the neighbors were looking for me.
1:52 Speaker 01 Every backyard was checked, every corner scanned, until the search party spilled out to the boundary where homes end and danger begins.
2:02 Speaker 02 The houses on Indianola Avenue, the back of their houses faced the railroad tracks.
2:08 Speaker 01 At one of those houses, a neighbor stepped out to take out the trash.
2:12 Speaker 02 And as she turned around to go back in the door, something caught her eye. And she turned around, looked, and she saw this child on the railroad tracks and a train coming.
2:26 Speaker 02 So she ran and she grabbed me off the tracks.
2:30 Speaker 01 This was Margot's first great escape.
2:33 Speaker 02 I've always believed that everyone has a purpose on this world. And it's, once that purpose has been fulfilled, that's when we move on.
2:42 Speaker 01 Stepping into trouble and surviving it would become her signature. The trait that shaped every turn to come. From Sony Music Entertainment and Glass Podcasts, this is The Crimes of Margo Freshwater. I'm Cooper Mall, episode four, Born to Run.
3:13 Speaker 01 Greg Kosta spent 10 years chasing Margo Freshwater, trying to stitch together the three decades she lived in hiding.
3:21 Speaker 01 He had scraps, paperwork, old applications, secondhand memories. Pieces of a life, but never the full picture. Yet he kept looking. And finally, the trail led him right up to her front door. And up until now, you've mostly heard about that search. You're probably wondering what Tanya was doing all those years. I was too. Before we get to that, I think we need to sit with what makes Tanya's story unusual. In most people's lives, 30 years go by collecting the small, ordinary moments that make up a life. You fall in love, you have kids, you struggle with bills, you change jobs, you suffer losses, you celebrate the wins.
4:06 Speaker 01 It is the slow, uneven rhythm of becoming a person. Tanya lived all that too, but she lived it with the secret that sat right behind her rib cage. She lived three decades of milestones, knowing her past could find her at any second. To survive it, Tanya ended up making a set of principles for herself. Some rules to live by. She never wrote them down, but her rules were etched into how she moved through the world.
4:35 Speaker 01 When we last left Margot, she jumped on a train in Baltimore, narrowly missing the FBI, who'd just caught up with Fay Copeland, the woman she escaped with. The train took her as far north as it could go, a notch in the Rust Belt, Akron, Ohio. She arrived with nothing but a couple of bags and the hope that the next stranger might be safe to trust. That woman she barely knew from selling encyclopedias, the one Tanya shared her plan to get back to Ohio with, made good on her offer. She'd arranged for her parents to meet Margot at the station.
5:10 Speaker 02 That was the first time I'd ever had an Arby's because they asked me if I'd eaten and I said no. So they stopped at an Arby's and got me a roast beef sandwich.
5:19 Speaker 01 Warm food, a full stomach, it was the closest she had come to comfort in months. Almost as soon as she got to Akron, she moved west to Ashland, where there were more opportunities to earn a living. But starting over required more than just money. Margot needed a past no one could trace, a future built clean. I'm a really ambitious chick, but this sounds like an impossible to-do list to me.
5:45 Speaker 02 Back in those days, things were a lot different. So I wasn't going to steal someone's identity. I was going to create an identity.
5:57 Speaker 01 That's the first rule she made for herself. A clean life starts with a clean page, complete with a new name, of course.
6:05 Speaker 02 And so I had picked the name Tanya Lynn Myers.
6:09 Speaker 01 She chose a name plain enough to blend in, but still feel like hers.
6:14 Speaker 02 It was just totally random because I wanted to go by Tony as a nickname. And so it was just Tony with an A on the end. Tanya. And so I applied for a social security card through the mail and filled out the application and everything.
6:31 Speaker 01 In 1970, this was shockingly easy to do. That application was all she needed to get a social security number. And with the new identity, came a new birthday.
6:42 Speaker 02 And I put that my birth date was 5/23/53. And I picked that date because my older brother's birthday was May 22. So I figured that would make it easy for me to remember and I would make myself five years younger.
7:00 Speaker 01 Don't act like you wouldn't be tempted to do the same. With the drop of an application in a mailbox, Margo Freshwater was gone. Tanya Lynn Myers had taken her place.
7:13 Speaker 02 I applied for a job at Good Shepherd Nursing Home, and I got a job in the housekeeping department.
7:21 Speaker 01 A normal job, the beginning of a normal life. Tanya tried to work hard and keep her head down. Still, she couldn't avoid the world forever. One night, the woman she lived with suggested they go out for a drink. Nothing crazy, just a little fun.
7:37 Speaker 02 So I went with her, and I got a Coke, and this guy came up to me and introduced himself.
7:44 Speaker 01 His name was Phil Zimmerman, a blue collar guy who shuffled between handiwork and construction jobs.
7:51 Speaker 02 I found him annoying.
7:52 Speaker 01 He was not her type.
7:54 Speaker 02 He was only like a year older than I, but he was balding and he was heavyset.
8:01 Speaker 01 He was not the plan.
8:03 Speaker 02 But he was a real nice guy. I really wasn't interested in having any relationships with anyone, but he kept pursuing me.
8:13 Speaker 01 And Tanya tried to protect the tiny bit of stability she had built. Relationships meant risk. Attachment meant vulnerability. Still, Tanya caved. They went on a few dates, and the guy she once found annoying, he grew on her. Before they took their relationship to the next level, there was something she had to tell him.
8:34 Speaker 02 So we were talking one night, and I told him, I said, "Well, you're nice, I like you, but I can't get into a relationship, I'm pregnant."
8:47 Speaker 01 Okay, hold up. Pregnant? How? And by who?
8:53 Speaker 02 I'd only been with the one person, and that was to get the train ticket.
8:57 Speaker 01 She'd just gotten out of lockup after all. She'd only spent one night with a man, Faye's brother, whose offer to get Tanya out of Baltimore came with strings.
9:07 Speaker 02 I didn't want anyone to know because I was afraid that Faye's brother might find out I was pregnant and then come and try to take the baby. And I wasn't going to lose another baby.
9:21 Speaker 01 Her predicament didn't seem to deter Phil in the slightest. He was already a father from his previous marriage.
9:27 Speaker 02 He kept coming around and as the time went, he told me that he would be the father to my child.
9:38 Speaker 01 On July 5, 1971, Tanya and Phil welcomed a junior.
9:43 Speaker 02 And Phil put his name on Phil's birth certificate.
9:48 Speaker 01 Phil Zimmerman, Tanya's first son she got to keep, also Faye Copeland's nephew, biological nephew, anyway.
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10:59 Speaker 01 By now, not even a year after escaping prison, Tanya was a working mom in the suburbs. Except the guy she's hitched her wagon to isn't exactly who she thought he was. Phil was part of the picture now, whether by love or necessity. At first, he seemed like a decent guy with potential. But potential didn't pay bills or raise children.
11:22 Speaker 02 Phil was a nice guy, but he was a child in a man's body. He could not accept responsibility. And he was in and out of jail for non-support.
11:35 Speaker 01 Tanya was trying to lay low, but her husband kept landing himself in jail, kept getting on the radar of the very people Tanya wanted to avoid. It didn't take long to realize he was already failing at fatherhood elsewhere. Yet he was the one helping keep a roof over their heads. And it was about to become even harder not to have to rely on him.
11:55 Speaker 02 Although we were using precautions, I got pregnant again.
12:00 Speaker 01 Another child meant more to protect, while the man beside her seemed determined to avoid adulthood at all costs.
12:07 Speaker 02 He said, "We need to talk." And I said, "About what?" And he said, "About the baby you're carrying. You need to get an abortion." And I said, "No.
12:21 Speaker 02 That's not gonna happen. This is your child. Why would you want me to get an abortion?" He said, "Because I just can't handle the responsibility."
12:32 Speaker 01 Tanya read Phil the riot act.
12:34 Speaker 02 And I said, "Okay. Well, let me put it to you this way. I hope you stick around, but if you don't, that's okay. Because I'm having this child. I'm not giving it up. So with or without you, I'm having this baby."
12:52 Speaker 01 It seemed likely that she could end up a single mother. So Tanya started to get ready to run, again. And if she was going to be hauling two kids around, she needed to be able to drive.
13:04 Speaker 02 I didn't have a driver's license. All I had was my social security card. And I went to the BMV to take my test.
13:14 Speaker 01 A simple task for most people. For Tanya, it was another test of whether the life she built could withstand scrutiny.
13:23 Speaker 02 And I saw on the wall posted what documents you had to have. And I thought, what am I going to do? Because all I've got is a social security card. I don't have a birth certificate. When I got up to the desk, I gave her my social security card. And she said, well, I need your birth certificate too. And I said, oh, I didn't realize I had to have my birth certificate. I guess I can go back home and get it. And she stopped and she said, no, that's okay. Don't worry about that.
13:59 Speaker 01 But Tanya wasn't in the clear just yet.
14:01 Speaker 02 When she asked me for my birth date, I blurted out my real birth date instead of the birth date that I put on my social security card.
14:13 Speaker 01 She knew she fucked up, but it looked weirder if she tried to fix it. So she did what she'd been doing the whole time, crossed her heart and rolled with it.
14:23 Speaker 02 So that was that.
14:25 Speaker 01 Tanya's in the driver's seat now, with one less thing to depend on Phil for once the baby comes. Just a year and change after she welcomed Phil Jr. into the world.
14:35 Speaker 02 The nurse came over and she said, what did you want? I said, a little girl. And she said, what do you think you got? I said, a little boy. And she put her in my arms and she said, you got your little girl.
14:47 Speaker 01 Her name, Angela.
14:51 Speaker 01 Tanya pushed forward alone, even with Phil still technically in the house. His loyalty wandered as easily as his attention did. He ran off with another woman, leaving Tanya, Phil Jr., and Angela behind.
15:05 Speaker 02 I didn't want anything to do with him after that. Took my wedding band off and threw it out in the yard and decided that was it.
15:14 Speaker 01 In her guide to disappearing, this is the chapter where the safety net vanishes. No partner to blend in behind, no ready-made family to make her look ordinary.
15:26 Speaker 01 I was raised by a single mom, so I can picture what those years after Phil looked like. The grind of odd jobs, the long hours, the constant moving to wherever the next chance at stability popped up. Most single moms barely have time to shampoo their hair, let alone stop and take stock of how precarious everything feels.
15:47 Speaker 01 Tanya eventually landed steady work as a plant secretary at a plastics factory on the other side of Ohio. She packed up the kids and moved. And that's when she met Joe Hudkins, the man who would become her second husband. He was your classic tall, dark, and handsome, real easy on the eyes. And unlike Phil, had steady work as a truck driver and three children he was absolutely devoted to.
16:13 Speaker 02 Time moved on. We continued to see each other. And he had said he was thinking that he would like to be with me for the rest of his life. So one evening, he asked me to go for a ride and he took me to a spot where he used to fish. He said it was his favorite spot. It was along the river and it was quiet and it was serene and just beautiful. And he proposed to me. And I accepted. We ended up getting married October 29th of 1977.
16:49 Speaker 01 They got a bigger spot to accommodate their blended family of seven and made room for one more. Tanya was pregnant again.
16:57 Speaker 02 Joe asked me, he said, "Well, what are we gonna name him?" And I said, "Well, we're gonna name him what you wanted to name him, Timothy Allen."
17:08 Speaker 01 Life with Joe had become something Tanya once thought was out of reach. A real marriage. Kids underfoot. Jobs that kept the lights on.
17:19 Speaker 01 One afternoon, Jo and Tanya met up at Woolworth's on her lunch break. She worked next door at JCPenney selling insurance.
17:26 Speaker 02 While we were sitting there talking, we were sitting on stools and I was facing him. I saw this woman, and when she got closer, I could see that it was my aunt.
17:37 Speaker 01 No fucking way. Leona. You remember her from Agent Costas's adoption ruse. Tanya should have made an excuse to get out of there. If Leona recognized her in front of Jo, the whole facade could collapse. Leona had visited her in prison barely a decade earlier. Plenty recent enough to spot her. And if she did, who's to say she wouldn't call the police? But instead, Tanya did something curious. Nostalgic even.
18:07 Speaker 02 She had just kept walking, and then she went down the stationary aisle. So I excused myself from Jo. I said, "I need to go over here for a minute." And I stood at the end of the aisle, which was probably maybe, oh, 15, 20 feet. She glanced up, but she didn't recognize me. So I walked down the aisle, and I casually brushed her shoulder like I bumped her by mistake. And I stopped and we're looking face to face, and I said, "Oh, I'm sorry."
18:45 Speaker 01 Tanya was really playing with fire here. What was her plan if Leona recognized her? She didn't have one. It probably broke her heart that her aunt didn't know who she was. No one imagines this part of disappearing. It isn't just avoiding police or changing your name. It's walking past someone who once loved you and acting like you never met.
19:08 Speaker 02 I wanted so much to say, so much more, but I knew I couldn't. So I just said, "Sorry" again, and then walked on. I would have wrapped my arms around her and told her how much I loved her and missed her.
19:25 Speaker 01 Moments like this stayed with her. They reminded her how thin the membrane was between the life she built and the one she left behind.
19:33 Speaker 02 I just needed to connect with my past.
19:38 Speaker 01 As fully committed as she was to the life of Tanya, it's like sometimes she'd get homesick for Margot. And fragments of Margot's past were woven into Tanya's present, blurring the line between who she had been and who she became. Take when Joe asked Tanya about her family.
19:56 Speaker 02 I said, "Well, as far as I know, I don't have any family left." I said, "My mom wanted me to go to college," which was true, she wanted me to go to college. And I said, "I wasn't ready to go to college, and so I wanted to go out on my own at the age of 18. And she told me if I left, don't bother coming back." And he said, "Well, don't you want to try to find them?" And I said, "No, not at this point." And he accepted that. And it wasn't hard to tell that story because so much of it was true. I just put a lot of the truth into the background that I would give.
20:38 Speaker 01 She told Joe what she needed to. Not the truth, but the lie she needed him to believe, that maybe even she needed to believe. There's a part of Tanya's life, Margot's really, that sits in a black box. Opening it is the hardest part of telling her story because inside that box is everything she learned to use to survive long before she stepped into a courtroom or scaled a prison fence. When she was a child, she grew up with an alcoholic father who she repeatedly witnessed abuse her mom. At 15, she was date raped and pressured into getting an abortion. It set her up for the life she had now as Tanya, the mother of seven.
21:21 Speaker 01 Margot had given up the baby she got pregnant with at 17. That was the son that got her kicked out of her mother's house. All of this had taught her that when things got bad, she needed to get out fast. It's almost like she'd been on the run long before she became a fugitive. But Tanya's life rarely paused to let her process anything. It just kept coming. And the next turn had nothing to do with her past and everything to do with her future with Joe.
21:51 Speaker 02 One day, he was complaining he had a pain in his hip.
21:56 Speaker 01 It was a malignant tumor. Joe was terminal. It could be two years, 10 years, but there was no getting out of this alive. The cancer spread fast, and the fateful day came in less than a year. Tanya remembers when she got the call from the hospital on May 18, 1988.
22:17 Speaker 02 I ran through the halls and got upstairs and I said, "Joe, I'm here." I said, "It's okay. I'm here now. Everything's gonna be okay."
22:32 Speaker 02 I said, "You can go now."
22:35 Speaker 02 And he took his last breath and he was gone.
22:43 Speaker 01 With Joe, she had a real home. And after he died, she once more had to go on the move.
22:50 Speaker 02 I just had to keep going.
22:54 Speaker 01 By the 90s, Tanya's days of odd jobs were behind her. She was a career woman now, selling insurance for MetLife, which brought her to Columbus, not just a bigger city, but the city she grew up in. There was no man in the picture.
23:10 Speaker 02 I chose not to have anyone permanently in my life until my children were grown.
23:19 Speaker 01 And as they grew up, Tanya held on to a private promise, one she whispered every night when the house was finally still.
23:28 Speaker 02 I would always pray to God, "Please, don't let anything happen that I get caught until at least Tim is 22 years old, because then I knew they could make it on their own."
23:42 Speaker 01 The fear of getting caught never really disappeared, like a ringing in her ear that simply sat off to the side while real life demanded her attention. And no one questioned the woman she presented to the world because she gave them no reason to. Her past was invisible to everyone but herself. She didn't tell any of her kids the truth. Not a single friend, no one. If you saw her then, you'd never know this woman had been on the run for nearly three decades. Her kids left home and carved their own lives, and Tanya found new ways to fill her time. In April 1999, she broke her ankle on the ice outside her office. Recovery left her restless and up late.
24:25 Speaker 02 It was 2:30 in the morning and I woke up and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I turned the TV on and there was this ribbon going across the bottom of the show. And it was talking about tele personals. And so I thought, well, that looks like something I can do because I was bored.
24:45 Speaker 01 She set up a profile where men could leave her voicemails. If she was interested, she'd call back. This is a lot more involved than a swipe left or right.
24:53 Speaker 02 I would get messages and then I would call the person. And I'd write down their name and we would talk off and on, depending upon whether they were interesting or not. I only ended up meeting three because Daryl was my fourth.
25:13 Speaker 01 Daryl McCarter, a long-haul trucker. I'm noticing a pattern here. Their connection felt familiar in a way she hadn't expected.
25:22 Speaker 02 I remember looking into his eyes and I was looking into Joe's eyes.
25:30 Speaker 01 Slowly, Tanya let herself become someone who could fall in love again. Dates turned into partnership, partnership into marriage, and then they went into business together. A company called RWI Logistics leased them as a team. Trucking became more than work. It was proof that by the turn of the century, Tanya had become someone no one would ever connect to the girl once known as Margo Freshwater. She was a mother to grown children, a grandmother, a long-haul trucker, a widow who rebuilt, remarried, and kept moving. Her life had been completely transformed, and except for her location on a map, nothing in it pointed back to her old identity. Nothing at all.
26:15 Speaker 01 Were you noticing the world around you changing and thinking to yourself, "People might be able to find me"? Like, were you thinking that at all?
26:23 Speaker 02 No, it didn't cross my mind.
26:26 Speaker 01 Which is why she never imagined that on an ordinary night in Columbus, a certain special agent had finally caught up.
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27:38 Speaker 01 Special Agents Greg Costas and Greg Elliott had eyes on the apartment. No sirens, no backup, no drama. Just one unmarked car on a quiet Columbus street, and a whole lot of hoping this wasn't another dead end. Costas had been carrying this case for years, but now that he was sitting 20 yards from her front door, he wasn't exactly feeling heroic. More like nauseous.
28:04 Speaker 05 I was a bit of a mess because I thought, look, I've got a whole surveillance team out here. I've got the elected prosecutor working on a search warrant on a Sunday.
28:15 Speaker 01 And with the arrival of Greg Elliott from Tennessee, it was now a multi-state operation.
28:21 Speaker 05 This dude next to me literally got on fucking TBI's plane and flew his own ass here to Columbus, Ohio. And I don't even know who's in that apartment. Finally, the door opens. And here comes a man and a woman. And I'm like, okay, I could breathe a little bit of sigh of relief. Because like, I don't know if that woman is Margo Freshwater. But at least I know that the woman who we think is Margo Freshwater is here.
28:54 Speaker 01 The minute they saw Tanya walk out that front door, everything kicked into high gear.
28:59 Speaker 06 This was an exciting case for everybody involved. So everybody was kind of on edge.
29:03 Speaker 01 Wherever she went, they went. Simple as that.
29:07 Speaker 05 Her and Daryl come out and they get in the car. They were just running errands. And they went to Jolly Pirate Donuts and had breakfast and got the car washed and they went to Kroger.
29:19 Speaker 01 Every turn, every lane change, every stop was a chance to lose her. They were running blind. No warrant in hand and no confirmation this woman was really Tanya. The couple's next move would determine how much time the Gregs had left.
29:34 Speaker 05 They leave Kroger and they drive to Main Street in Columbus. And there's this big shopping plaza. But boom, lo and behold, there's the rig.
29:49 Speaker 01 The Gregs were officially on the clock.
29:51 Speaker 05 And they're putting groceries in the truck. And I'm like, shit, they're getting ready to take another road trip.
29:58 Speaker 01 And truckers don't just go for a drive. They disappear for long stretches at a time. Hundreds of miles from where you last saw them. This was a nightmare scenario.
30:08 Speaker 06 We still didn't have a search warrant at this point. So we're still waiting and waiting and waiting.
30:12 Speaker 05 So I called Ron O'Brien, the prosecutor, and I said, where are we, bro? I said, they are loading up this truck. Like, they are getting ready to go somewhere. And he said, I'm almost done.
30:24 Speaker 01 From here, the chase moved from the parking lot to the legal arena. Kostas handed the baton to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien, who now had to put the whole case on paper and convince a judge they finally had the right woman.
30:38 Speaker 07 I drew up the search warrant and in this case, get some fingerprints from her and to temporarily detain her so that we could see as we believe that she was Margo Freshwater.
30:50 Speaker 01 But of course, it wasn't going to be that easy. A piece of paper didn't solve the biggest problem. Getting her to actually go with them. The concern was that she deny being Margo Freshwater. They didn't have hard evidence yet. And apart from their suspicions, Tanya McCarter seemed like a pretty law-abiding lady. O'Brien found a way in.
31:10 Speaker 07 I said, well, let's just get a search warrant that allows us to temporarily detain her and print her. And that if it isn't her, we'll cut her loose. And if it is, then she'll go straight to jail.
31:22 Speaker 01 Now that the legal piece was in motion, the case shifted gears. O'Brien needed a sworn affidavit. And Kostas had to leave the field and meet him to get it done.
31:32 Speaker 05 I break off the surveillance team and I go and meet the prosecutor. And then we go to the judge's house. You're walking into a judge's house Sunday morning. You know what I mean?
31:43 Speaker 01 If they were dragging him into this on a Sunday, the case had to be airtight. Court was held at a dining room table.
31:51 Speaker 05 We sat down with him and I just laid out my case. And when I laid the plastic on top of the hard copy, he's like, oh, yeah. Okay. I've had it. I've seen enough.
32:02 Speaker 01 He'd put Tanya's driver's license on top of Margot's mugshot.
32:05 Speaker 05 He picks up the pen and signs the warrant.
32:08 Speaker 01 Three decades of questions came down to one signature. But the celebration lasted about 10 seconds. Because just as they were heading out the door.
32:18 Speaker 05 I get a phone call and it's Steve Sheerhold, who was my boss at the time. And he says, they're heading to the airport. And I'm like, do not let either one of them motherfuckers get on a plane.
32:33 Speaker 01 Kostas didn't come this far to watch Margot slip into the sky.
32:38 Speaker 05 From where we were to where she was was probably a good 40-minute drive.
32:46 Speaker 01 And suddenly, it was pedal to the floor. The margin for error was almost zero. If she stepped onto a plane, the jurisdiction would blow wide open and the manhunt would sprawl across multiple states. Then a second call came in.
33:01 Speaker 05 What had happened was, there was a health club right by the airport, and they had a membership.
33:11 Speaker 01 Kostas could breathe a sigh of relief. Tanya wasn't boarding a plane. She was poolside with her family.
33:18 Speaker 05 So now, we've got my partner, he's inside, watching Daryl McCarter, Tanya Hudgens McCarter, Tim Hudgens, her son, Tim's wife, and their baby, who was an infant. And they're swimming.
33:34 Speaker 01 But eyes on the pool were only half the operation. The real machinery was waiting outside in the parking lot, already in motion.
33:43 Speaker 05 The plan was, we're gonna serve the search warrant on Tanya, and we're gonna take her to the Columbus Police Department. She's gonna be fingerprinted, then the fingerprint expert is gonna examine the fingerprints and tell us whether or not it's her.
33:58 Speaker 06 So finally, the guys get back. They've got the search warrant in hand and everything, so we just wait for her to come out. And she came walking out with all of her family and everything.
34:10 Speaker 01 Someone had to take the first step. And that job fell to Kostas's supervisor, Steven Sheerhold.
34:15 Speaker 04 I was nervous, and I was also confident, but just wanted to do it in a very low-key manner.
34:23 Speaker 01 Sheerhold positioned himself, ready for the moment they'd been waiting on.
34:27 Speaker 05 Here they all come walking out. You know, the phrase, "Your heart is beating out of your chest." Mine had burst through and was doing laps around that parking lot.
34:39 Speaker 01 Then, they finally closed the distance.
34:42 Speaker 05 He says, "Are you Tanya Hudgens McCarter?"
34:45 Speaker 06 She just got this distant deer-in-the-headlight look, and she didn't say anything. She just stared at us. And it was just like she was staring right through us.
34:55 Speaker 05 Steve says we are with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and we have been conducting an investigation alongside the Tennessee Bureau Investigation, and we actually have reason to believe that you're not Tanya Hudgens-McCarter, but that you are, in fact, Margo Freshwater, who is a fugitive.
35:13 Speaker 06 And I knew right then, we were about 99, 98% sure that this was the right person. But when I got that right there, it was like, she just realized, this is, this is it. They finally called up to me.
35:25 Speaker 01 Now, this is when it turns into kind of a shit show. Picture it, an unsuspecting family in a parking lot, and suddenly officers are closing in, telling their mother and wife she isn't who she says she is, that she's an escaped convict who's been running since the 70s.
35:41 Speaker 05 Keep in mind, we're in the parking lot. Everybody's looking around like, what in the hell is going on? She has no emotion, like stoic, like there was no color in her face, but no emotion. So now you're getting the, Daryl is like, you know, what, what are you talking about? That's my wife. And the kid's going, that's my mom.
36:02 Speaker 04 They were upset. Who in the heck are you to come in here with policemen and police cruisers and detectives and accuse my mom or my wife of murder? They felt we had lost our minds.
36:18 Speaker 01 The anger hit hard, but it didn't change what had to happen next.
36:23 Speaker 05 So we told her, we have a warrant for your fingerprints. And she says, fine, are you going to take him here? And we're said, no, we are going to take you down to the Columbus Police Department, where they will be taken. So at that point, she turns and she started walking toward Daryl. And I remember like stopping her, saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And she looked at me and said, I just want to say goodbye. So she hugged him, whispered something in his ear, and his face went white.
37:03 Speaker 04 And she hugged her son, and her back was to me, the son was facing me.
37:11 Speaker 01 And she whispered something into his ear and he burst into tears. Up until then, the family had no idea she'd been someone else all along.
37:24 Speaker 05 We handcuffed her, we're walking her to the cruiser and she looks at Daryl and says, "Call the attorney." I still couldn't relax yet, but that's when I thought it's gotta be her.
37:37 Speaker 01 But surrender was only the beginning. The real confirmation still had to happen.
37:44 Speaker 05 So we took her down to Columbus Police Headquarters and she got fingerprinted.
37:48 Speaker 01 And everyone at the station wanted a front row seat to watch the analyst compare the prints.
37:53 Speaker 05 She's sitting down and she's using one of those eyeglass things, you know, where they go back and forth. And everybody was hovering around her. Finally, everybody was like, can you just, just give her some room? Everybody back up.
38:06 Speaker 01 But Costas, he was VIP. For him, this wasn't just procedure. This was the culmination of a hunt he'd carried for years, finally playing out right in front of him. And then, in an instant, all those years of grind, doubt and obsession came to a head.
38:26 Speaker 05 She looked right at me and said, "It's her." My knees buckled.
38:32 Speaker 01 This was real. Margot was real.
38:36 Speaker 05 I opened this case in 1993 and Margo Freshwater was a ghost. She was a fictional character. It goes from chasing a ghost, which what I did for all those years, to fuck. I actually caught the woman. I couldn't believe it. I, I, I couldn't fucking believe it.
38:58 Speaker 01 For Costas, this moment closed the loop. The ghost he'd chased had turned undeniably human. But for Tanya, this was only the beginning. Every mile she put between herself and the woman she once was began collapsing inward. The path she tucked so far away was now clawing back into the light, ready to demand answers.
39:29 Speaker 01 Next time on The Crimes of Margo Freshwater, Tanya reveals she was never the Bonnie to Glenn Nash's Clyde. In fact, that night at the liquor store in Tennessee, she tried to set Hillman Robbins free.
39:43 Speaker 02 I bent down and I was trying to untie Mr. Robbins. And Nash came back and caught me and slammed me up against the wall.
39:52 Speaker 01 That ended any hope of escape.
39:54 Speaker 02 Then he told me to step out the back door. I got about a foot out the door and I heard some noises. I realized were gunshots.
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40:44 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 Kristen Melchiori. Our lawyer is Michael Belkin. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rasek, and Carrie Hartman.
41:27 Speaker 01 Please rate and review The Crimes of Margo Freshwater. It helps people find our show.
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