The Poet | 5. Breaking Point

Finally, the police figure out who The Poet is. But now they have to prove it. As this case turns from terrifying to baffling, Wichita police need to get to the bottom of the question: Why Ruth? Want the full story? Binge every episode of The Poet ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. The Poet is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone. This is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced government sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, "This is what I believe," while your neighbor

• 0:44Speaker 00

  says, "I believe something completely different." And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Listen to every episode of The Poet ad-free right now when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else, get exclusive bonus episodes, and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap Subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Before we get started, I wanted to let you know, this episode deals with mentions of self-harm and suicide.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Occam's razor. It's the problem-solving principle that if you cut away all the complicated explanations for something, you'll be left with one simple answer. And that's usually the truth.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Wichita's police chief, Richard Lemunyan, had taken all 14 case binders home for the long weekend, pored through the evidence, read the reports. He looked over every suspect, and one by one, he ruled them out, until there was only one possibility left.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Maybe it was the anger he felt from the poet threatening his wife. Or maybe it was because he had intentionally held himself at an arm's length from the case, that he could see more clearly. But there it was, the answer that had been evading his police force for three long years. He had arrived at the simplest solution, and he was pretty sure he was right.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, he comes back Monday morning, and he schedules a meeting for 16 officers.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  That's Gene Stone, the journalist and author who later wrote a book on Ruth's case.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  The 16 officers all gather in the basement of the courthouse. Lemunyan walks his staff through his evidence.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Clue number one: the abduction. After Ruth's kidnapping, police went to investigate the area by the river where she escaped her captors. She said they'd taken her sweater and shoes and followed her when she ran. The police found her sweater and her shoes there, but only one set of footprints.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Clue number two: the house. It seemed impossible that the police had spent that much time surveilling the house and gotten nothing.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Ruth lived on a dead end, and yet nobody ever saw anybody going near their house.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Gene Stone again.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  And then eventually, they put a recording camera in the backyard, and when they did, the poet never appeared in that backyard again.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Only the Finleys and the police knew about the camera's existence. Clue number three: the classifieds.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Ed had been putting classified ads in the paper to try to lure the poet out, and there were always responses to it. But when the Finleys went on vacation, there were no responses.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  For Lemunyan, the footprints, the camera, the classifieds, it all adds up to one conclusion.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  And he sits down, and he just says right out there?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  We know who the poet is.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  The poet is a Finley. It's Ed or Ruth. Or it's both of them.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Newmetric Media, I'm Rachel Brown, and this is The Poet.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Episode five: Breaking Point.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Lemunyan's theory drops on his officers like a bomb. There are so many unanswered questions. Could this couple have been pulling the wool over everyone's eyes for three years? Even with officers stationed inside their house?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Their fury is palpable.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  I was really, really angry. All the time that I had spent, all the time that the other detectives had spent, and it just had been for nothing.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Richard Vinro had spent years of his life on this case, working overtime, dissecting poems, even going undercover to try to find this monster.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  I felt like I was just manipulated. I thought that, you know, it was a game that was being played.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Mike McKenna, too, was furious.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  So much manpower, so much time, so much energy of everybody. You work on these cases, you put your heart and soul into them, trying to help these people, just to be hoodwinked.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  He'd been raising his concerns, but no one had listened to him. This was vindication, but it wasn't sweet. They'd wasted so much time.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  People don't always think about, while all this police manpower is expended, were there cases that did not get solved because those detectives were busy?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  All this while the Wichita PD had been trying to solve real homicides, real crimes, not to mention Catch BTK. But for the man who was first in charge of this case, the idea that Ruth or Ed were just playing with the cops inflicted a different kind of pain.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Drowatzky is crushed and thinking that Lemunyan is crazy?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Lieutenant Bernie Drowatzky and his wife were friends with the Finleys. They had dinners together, went to the same church. To him, there's just no way this kind, normal couple had spent the last three years setting up a cat and mouse game with the cops. For what? Just to mess with him?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  But Gene Stone says Drowatzky sees a silver lining here. Lemunyan is committing even more resources to this case, which means they're going to get to the bottom of it, once and for all.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Drowatzky now believed that this was a good thing, because they felt that this meant that the extra work meant that they would actually catch the poet and prove that Ruth wasn't the poet, and they would actually catch the real person.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Lemunyan later tells Cake TV that he ordered Ruth and Ed be put under round-the-clock surveillance, this time without their knowledge.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  And so, at the conclusion of the meeting, I announced that I would take over personal control of the case, and that effective immediately, there would be a 24-hour surveillance on Ruth and Ed.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  They've embarrassed his department, made them look like fools. He is done playing nice. Before they roll out, Lemunyan swears them to secrecy, threatening, if one word of this leaks to the media, they're all fired.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Surveillance begins. Officers are pulled in from Vice and Narcotics to cover shifts. There's a ground crew stationed in cars in the Finley's cul-de-sac. There's an aerial surveillance team, a police helicopter is on standby, ready to tail them from overhead. The Wichita police threw everything at the case, desperate to prove the Finleys were behind the poet.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  They set up a command center, which was a van parked at the Eastgate Shopping Center, which is not very far from where Ruth lives. And from then on, every time Ruth leaves the house, she's being monitored by at least one police car and one police helicopter.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  One morning, the Finleys get into their Oldsmobile and pull out of their driveway. The ground surveillance team has eyes on them and follows them at a distance out of their sleepy neighborhood. Aerial surveillance joins in from overhead.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  They track them as they head towards the East Gate Shopping Mall. But somehow, in just a few blocks, ground surveillance loses the Oldsmobile. Maybe Ruth went to work? The cops call her office. She's taken the day off. Suddenly, they're concerned. Did this middle-aged couple just shake off their police tail and make a break for it?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  One of the detectives says, "They're getting away, they're getting away." And this frantic chase. And then they realized, oh no, they just went away for a day or so. They were not trying to escape, they were just having a day for themselves.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  The Finleys were just traveling to Topeka on a regular work trip for Ed. Ruth had tagged along to keep him company.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  To the ground crew, it seems like the day has been a total letdown. But a few hours later, someone on aerial surveillance in the helicopter happens to mention he'd never lost sight of the Finleys that morning.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Not only that, but he saw their Oldsmobile pull up to a mailbox by the East Gate Mall and drop off some letters.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  This is a revelation. When Mike Hill hears this, he immediately bolts. He calls the postal inspector, who meets him at the mail drop. This could be it.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  They open the mailbox. Inside, they find five letters bunched together at the top. A personal letter and two bills from the Finleys, and two other envelopes. One addressed to Cake TV and one to Ruth Smock Finley, both in the poet's familiar handwriting. This is the smoking gun they've been waiting for. But because they didn't have eyes on the mailbox for a few hours, they couldn't rule out the possibility that someone else had posted the two letters from the poet. They needed ironclad evidence. They had to keep going.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Weeks in, the officers tailing the Finleys pick up on a new energy. The couple seems on edge, maybe even suspicious. One officer notes the Finleys are often driving around town really slowly, as though they were on the lookout for someone following them. A few others say they see the Finleys clearly checking their surroundings for surveillance. They even note a car visiting the Finleys late one night. And when they check the ownership, it belongs to an attorney. Are the Finleys on to them?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Ruth seemed to have picked up on some kind of shift, because in the middle of the surveillance, she reaches out to Fred Mann.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Ruth called me out of the blue and said, "What's going on? Do you know what's going on with the case?" And I was honest about it. I said, "No, I don't know." She said, "Are they still interested?" Because Mike, I'm talking Mike Hill, he's been really distant to me. He was cold and he doesn't seem too interested anymore. So I could honestly tell her, "No, I think they're still interested." That was not a lie. And me telling her, "No, I didn't know what was going on," that was not a lie either, technically.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  During this time, Ruth's mental health was deteriorating. Her headaches and stomach aches were nonstop. And now, she was cut out of her own investigation even further, and not getting any answers from the police.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Ruth is feeling distraught. So between the attention she doesn't want, the stabbing, the fact that there might be somebody out there getting her, she's extremely unhappy. And she has no recourse at all. And so she's terrified.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  She starts making a plan to put an end to her suffering once and for all. First, she collects small bills in her purse. Ed is with her all the time, so there isn't a moment in the day where she can run to the bank to make a larger withdrawal. Dollar by dollar, she is saving up. Her plan is to take a bus to Oklahoma City. There, she would find a bridge and end her life.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Then, two weeks into the surveillance, Mike Hill gets a call. An officer tells him that Ruth's boss at the phone company has found some evidence they need to see. Hill heads down to the office.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  Joe Horvath, her boss, saw the trash cellar and he looked through it. Lo and behold, there was a carbon paper that had a poet layer on it.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Along with the carbon paper with the poet's handwriting, they also found a book of prose and poetry, and a snatch of red bandana tied in a knot. Hill collects the evidence and adds it to the growing pile. That same afternoon, Hill has a meeting to update some of the surveillance team. As they're wrapping up their chat, officers who had been keeping watch run in and tell them the Finleys are on the move. And they're right around the corner.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Hill rushes out to his car and pulls out of the lot and immediately sees the Finleys' Oldsmobile stopped across the street. For a moment, he panics. They're gonna see him and know something's up.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  But they're not looking at him. They're at a mailbox.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Ed is driving, he stops at the shopping center. Ruth leans in and mails some letters. Couldn't be a more normal day, except for the fact that the moment they drive off, the police swoop in.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  This is exactly the moment Mike Hill has been waiting for for weeks. Years, really. He and his officers whip out their cameras and take photos as Ruth deposits a bunch of letters into the mail slot.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  As soon as the Finleys drive off, Mike Hill and his men pull up to the mailbox and park.

• 16:17Speaker 06

  We can't touch the mailbox. Only people could do that are the postal inspectors.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  As they wait for the postal inspector, they park their ghost car in front of the mailbox and lift the hood, pretending they're having engine trouble. They have to make sure no other letters come in and spoil their evidence. They need Ruth's letters to be at the top.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  While they wait, the Finley's car passes again, returning from the mall. The cops watch the Finleys slow down and take a long, hard look at their car parked beside the postbox.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Finally, the postal inspector arrives.

• 16:58Speaker 06

  When they got there, they opened up the mailbox.

• 17:02Speaker 06

  Lo and behold, there was a poet layer right on top.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  And that's really that moment, just that one moment. Cracked the case for good. Now they had the proof. And so, at this point, they knew.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced, government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, "This is what I believe,"

• 18:14Speaker 00

  while your neighbor says, "I believe something completely different." And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  The cops had a photo of Ruth mailing the letters, and they'd flown around the country tracking down the bills Ruth had mailed to Kansas and Iowa. They had their proof. But now, they had to see what Ed and Ruth would say when confronted with the evidence. Cops gave journalist Fred Mann unprecedented access to the end of the years-long saga.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  So they said, OK, here's the deal. We're going to bring Ed in, and we're going to bring Ruth in, and we'll let you come in, and we'll pipe the sound into an office, and you can sit there, and you can record the interviews. So wow, this was it.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Ed was called down to the station to deliver the newest letter. Ed arrives, expecting to simply drop off the letter and maybe check in on leads. But instead, he's escorted into a room where Captain Hill is already stationed, and Hill starts asking him questions, going back long before the poet case started up.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Tell me about life as a child. I mean, that's how far back they went. What were you like as a kid? Where did you live? You know, where did you meet Ruth? And Ed was excited. Ed was happy. He said, we're getting into it now. And in the morning, he's like, all right, we're going someplace with this.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Finally, Hill was engaging with him. Ed had been kept out of the loop for months. But then Hill's tone changes. He starts walking Ed through the events of the poet case and asking different questions from the ones he'd ever asked before.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Where were you when she was abducted? And the same with the stabbing. Then they would get into these little acts of vandalism around the house. Who found the jar of pee on the front porch? Who found the Molotov cocktail? Where were you?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Ed is bewildered, but stays stoic.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  It started to turn a little bit. And they got to a point where Ed was not tracking what they were trying to get to.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Then Mike Hill gets to the point. He tells Ed the poet could have put those things on their porch, or Ed could have, or Ruth could have. Ed shuts that down. He didn't have anything to do with this. And he's adamant. Neither did Ruth. Hill pulls out the surveillance photos and watches Ed intently as he slides them across the table toward him.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  They show him photos of Ruth mailing the letters, and he is absolutely shocked.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Ed is genuinely baffled, distraught.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  All they could say was, I just couldn't believe it. I tried to think about it. I don't understand it. But here's the proof, and if they say Ruth is the poet, I have to believe them.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  For Hill, it seems like Ed is truly blindsided by this news. But he has a way of making sure that Ed is being honest, and it's time to use it. The polygraph.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  So then they ask him if he'd take a lie detector test to prove his innocence. He's thinking, I'm really nervous. I don't know what's going on. And I've heard that lie detector tests aren't always right. What if it says I do know about Ruth? They're handy, thinks, but if I say I won't take one, then they'll think I'm guilty. So he agrees to take the test.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  They head to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, where Ed is hooked up to the polygraph.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  And he passes it with flying colors. So many flying colors that they're absolutely convinced that Ed had nothing to do with it.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  It really was just Ruth. As they get ready to go, Ed says, these should have been the best days of our lives. The police take Ed home, along with a search warrant for the Finley's home and trash.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  We got a little search warrant for the house, and the fruits of the crime were found. Part of a red bandana, a chief's notebook, some stamps from the same book of stamps that had been used on prior letters. But it was overwhelming that she indeed was doing this to herself.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  After searching the house, the police drive Ed back to the station. On the way, they ask Ed if he wants a hamburger. Something in this sets him off. No one has offered care or concern all day as his life unraveled, but now they're asking if he wants a burger? As if he could eat while his wife is in this situation. Instead, Ed chain smokes a pack of cigarettes, one after another, and waits. At this point, word had made its way around the department. The poet never existed. Ruth had been behind it this whole time. And they'd all fallen for her lies for years.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Ruth had totally duped them. Lieutenant Bernie Jawwatsky was devastated.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Jawwatsky, he now realized, yes, it was true. And he had no idea what to do, what to think. How could this, how could this have happened? What is going on? Has the world turned upside down? This is not the way things are supposed to be.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Jawwatsky wants to be the one to bring Ruth to the station. Maybe he wants to look her in the eyes and see what he missed. He goes to Southwestern Bell and waits for her in the lobby. When she comes down, she's surprised to see him instead of Ed. Jawwatsky asks her to accompany him to the station, saying they're going to take a look at a fresh batch of mug shots together, like they'd done a million times before. What Ruth doesn't know is that he's leading her right to her interrogation.

• 25:27Speaker 07

  You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information, and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing lowballing you. Which means, by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it. Still haven't started? Hey, better late than ever. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop, because the weather is shifting, and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile, transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com. Jawwatsky has Ruth in his car. They're going down to the station one final time. After three tough years, after cultivating close relationships with their victim, after finding out

• 26:43Speaker 01

  they'd been duped, finally, the Wichita PD had the poet. She was on her way, and they were going to get their answers.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  What Lemunyan told me, the key to the case was that he refused to meet Ruth. He compared her to some Greek mythological creature, that if you looked at her, you believed her. He said that if he had met her, he might not have been able to solve the case, and that the detectives like Jawwatsky, who he admired, he wasn't saying that they were bad detectives by any means, but that Ruth, again, you have to remember, this is a woman who was baking cookies for these detectives, who was sitting with them, discussing their issues and their problems and their families, and having tea and making them cake. They had developed what was, in any other situation, would have been close friendships.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Mike Hill was the one officer who had followed in Lemunyan's footsteps.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Mike Hill has decided that he's going to be running this interrogation, because he's the one who feels he is the most distant from Ruth. He never fell under her spell, as Lemunyan felt the others had.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Police officers we interviewed told us they hadn't fallen under Ruth's spell and had harbored suspicions of Ruth or Ed. Some had even raised these questions with leaders, only to be shut down. But there were those who had gotten close to the Finley's. Not Mike Hill.

• 28:15Speaker 06

  Ruth didn't like me to begin with because I being sand artificial. She'd bake cookies and cake and stuff because we had detectives staked out inside their house protecting her from the poet. And I had nothing.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  He had to be the one to interview Ruth. Now, armed with the case file filled with inconsistencies and his photographic proof, Hill is ready to take Ruth down. Fred Mann is listening in from another room at the police station.

• 28:52Speaker 07

  Now, the mystery was, when she was finally confronted with evidence, would she deny it? Would she collapse? Would she give up right away? Would she fight it?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Just like he had with Ed's interrogation, Mike Hill starts at the beginning.

• 29:08Speaker 07

  They started from ground zero. Birth, early childhood, the attack in Fort Scott kidnapping and stabbing. As they questioned her about these poet events, Hill sort of gradually turned the questioning, torqued the questioning a little bit more to, "You could have done this, right?" Sort of a thing. "But you could have done that, right?"

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Hill drills down on some of the moments that have been running through his mind since Lemunyan's meeting. The Christmas Eve of 1979. Hill says only he and the Finley's knew an officer was supposed to arrive at 11 that night. The Finley's' phone line gets cut at 10:00 PM. Once the hidden camera was installed facing the phone lines, they were never tampered with again. Only the Finley's and the cops knew about that. There were details of the investigation they'd mentioned to the Finley's, details that would later end up in poet letters.

• 30:05Speaker 07

  Then there was more aggression. Who found the urine on the porch? Did you put that out there? He got kind of a little edgy. "No, Mike." She was appalled. "Human feces, did you put that out there?" "No." And finally, he said, "Ruth," she said, "did you write any of those poet letters?" She said, "No." "Did you mail any of those letters?" "No."

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Then Hill goes in for the kill.

• 30:31Speaker 07

  He actually says to her, "What if I called you a liar?" And she's really taken aback. But then, after she's been saying, "I didn't do this, I don't know about this, this doesn't make any sense."

• 30:43Speaker 01

  He pushes his evidence across the table.

• 30:46Speaker 07

  He shows her the photos of her mailing all of these poems. He shows her the evidence that they've collected. She has no idea what to do. She is trying to figure out, "Am I the poet? But I don't know what's going on, I don't understand."

• 31:03Speaker 02

  There once was a female who got destitute. Her mind and brain wished she could meet rebuke.

• 31:11Speaker 07

  And Ruth later said, when she looked at that photo, it was like blocks tumbling out of her head.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  The word in the news.

• 31:20Speaker 07

  Everything tumbles out of her head.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Of my flagrant ways to bruise.

• 31:26Speaker 07

  One more meeting, and this will conclude. And she just put her head down on the table, in her arms, and just started sobbing. But it was a quiet sobbing. It was not loud. I could see, you know, the tears kind of ran out of her wrists.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Hill watches her. Are those crocodile tears? Hill asks her, "Do you want to tell me about it? Do you deny it?" Ruth says simply, "No." Then Hill gets into the specifics. He asks if Ed was involved. She tells him, "Absolutely not." He asks if she really got the first phone call from a man trying to blackmail her. She says, "No." He asks her where she got the Fort Scott newspaper clipping that was mailed to her at work. She already had it. "Now, when you were walking down the street and this guy bumps into you,

• 32:36Speaker 01

  that never happened." "Yes, it did. It did," she insisted. Hill asks who the man in the sketch was, the one she described to the police psychologist, Dr. Shrogg. She tells him it looks like the guy who stopped her on the street. "The kidnapping," he asks, "how did you get up there?" She tells him, "She took the bus." He asks if she cut the phone lines. She nods. "How did she do it with her whole family in the house?" "She doesn't remember." How could she not remember? How did the knife wrapped in the red bandana get into her lobby's phone booth? Did she just go down and wrap it up and put it there? She nods.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  For some of the events, she seems foggy on the details. Her answers are unsatisfyingly short. "The urine on the front porch, how did that happen? It was poured in a bottle. That is your own urine, is that right?" "Yes." "The back porch, the Molotov cocktail, how did you do that?" "I took it out of the car with a hose." "You siphoned it out of the car." "Okay." "You put the eggs on the back door. When did you do that? Where was Ed at?" "In the shower." "Human shit on the front porch, is that yours?" "That's mine." "How did the one letter get an Oklahoma City postmark on it?"

• 34:02Speaker 01

  She says she mailed it down there, just sent it to the post office and asked them to mail it. Then Hill asks the big question. "How could you stab yourself?" She's silent. Hill and Ruth sit there for a long moment.

• 34:24Speaker 07

  I mean, she's admitted she's done it, but she doesn't really remember. She has no recollection of the stabbing incident whatsoever.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  He asks, "Where did you get that knife at?" "Home." "Did you mean to hurt yourself as bad as you did?" "I don't know." This is not the reaction he expected from a scammer. Ruth looks lost, confused.

• 34:51Speaker 07

  And she's just sitting there going, "I'm a bad person, I'm a crazy person, I'm a bad person."

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Ruth is crumbling in front of his eyes. Hill softens his approach. He has his confession. Now, he needs to figure out what is going on here.

• 35:09Speaker 07

  Mike Hill finally could put his hands out to her and say, grab her by the elbow and say, "Ruth, it's okay. We're not mad. We just want to know why'd you do this."

• 35:21Speaker 01

  She doesn't respond. He asks, "Are you glad it's over?" "Yes." "How do you feel, Ruth?" "I wish I was dead." Something much bigger is going on here than Hill expected. He expected denial, anger, pushback. But Ruth is despondent. Suddenly, this doesn't feel like a criminal caught in the act. Ruth looks like a woman on the brink.

• 35:58Speaker 07

  And Hill starts being much nicer and says, "You're not crazy, you're ill. There's something wrong here, you're not a bad person."

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Hill asks, "Were you wanting to get caught?" She nods. What was going on? Could Ruth not stop the poet? Was this some sort of compulsion?

• 36:24Speaker 07

  The room in there where we're listening was sort of fraught with this, what's going to happen? One, Ruth is going to go to jail. Or two, they were going to take her and get her locked up in a mental ward of a hospital. There was no other alternative. She was not going home.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  He signs her involuntarily into a nearby mental health hospital. Whatever was going on with Ruth was a mystery for someone else to solve. Hill and his team just needed to take this evidence back and decide what they were going to do with Ruth, and if this was a criminal matter.

• 37:06Speaker 07

  So they have Ed in the waiting room next door, and Lemunyan is watching him for any signs, anything that might show guilt or anything. And Lemunyan tells me later that Ed is absolutely expressionless. The only thing that Lemunyan thinks he can see on Ed's face is depression.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Ruth falters before exiting the interview room. She says to Hill, "I can never face Ed again." "Yeah, you can, you got to. He is the nicest person I have ever known."

• 37:44Speaker 07

  So then they let Ruth out of the interview, and she rushes into Ed's arms. And he says, "We'll get through this. I love you."

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Ruth and Ed go to the hospital together, where Ruth is put on suicide watch. There, a new kind of detective takes on Ruth's case. Next time on The Finale of the Poet.

• 38:12Speaker 07

  It is detective work in this sense, finding out something that the patient doesn't even know and help them know it.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Psychologist Andrew Pickens' question isn't "who done it?" It's "why."

• 38:28Speaker 07

  Why would this woman, in this perfectly normal life, have such extraordinary terror within her that it would cause such a thing to develop? He sees the terror, but all he can be thinking about is what is causing this.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Ruth's mystery was far from over. What could cause a person's mind to fracture and torture itself? And this story was about to reach far beyond Wichita, making it all the way to the Oprah Winfrey Show. And by the end of this hour, perhaps all of us will better understand why she literally stalked herself and hear why the root of her problem is more

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Common than you may think.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone. This is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us: the freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not, and it surely isn't about having one forced government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, "This is what I believe," while your neighbor

• 40:03Speaker 00

  says, "I believe something completely different." And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  The Poet is a production of Sony Music Entertainment, Newmetric Media, and Muse Entertainment. The show is hosted by me, Rachel Brown. The series is written and produced by Pippa Johnstone and Rachel Brown. From Newmetric Media, our executive producer is Chris Kelly. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. For Muse Entertainment, our executive producer is Courtney Dobbins. Sound design and original music by Mark Angley. Nathan Howe is our story editor and associate producer. Consultant: Jean Stone. Fact-checking by Maya Alhawari and Alexis Green. Our lawyers are Daniel Henry, Garland Anthony, and Austin Wong.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Voice acting from Cassandra Sisson, Morgan Murray, and Anthony McMahon. Special thanks to Andres Lara, Patrick McConnell, Sammy Allison, Allison Haney, Emily Rassik, and the rest of the team at Sony Music Entertainment.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.