Murder and Mimosas Podcast
A true crime podcast with a focus on lesser known crimes and the background of those who commit these heinous acts. Each case is told with a bit of southern sass, but with tons of in depth research and respect for those lost. Join this mom and daughter duo as they sip their mimosas while diving into tragic cases. New episodes every Saturday, just in time for brunch (and a mimosa of your own)!
Murder and Mimosas Podcast
Premonitions Ignored: The Tragic Camp Scott Girl Scout Murders
What if unsettling premonitions and ignored warnings could have saved lives? In this chilling episode, we recount the tragic night of June 12, 1977, at Camp Scott in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where three young Girl Scouts, Lori Farmer, Denise Milner, and Michelle Gousset, met a devastating fate. From their first evening filled with excitement dampened by heavy rain to the unsettling discovery made by camp counselor Carla Wilhite, we set the stage for the horror that was to come.
Join us as we explore the chaos and confusion that ensued in the immediate aftermath of the murders. Hear firsthand accounts, like that of camper Maggie, who recalls the tense evacuation to Tulsa. We delve into the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation's crime scene investigation, revealing critical clues such as a modified flashlight and duct tape, and discuss the eerie premonitions that were dismissed as mere campfire tales. Discover how the counselors’ attempts to keep the girls calm amidst the lurking danger ultimately led to a surreal and tragic climax.
The search for the Camp Scott killer uncovers a series of ignored warnings and mysterious occurrences. We dissect the haunting story of Gene Leroy Hart, from his criminal history and controversial sentence to his daring prison escapes and final capture. Through interviews and meticulous research, we unravel the connections and missed opportunities that could have prevented this tragedy. Tune in for a poignant reflection on this dark chapter in true crime history, and learn how the ripples of that night continue to impact lives today.
Sources:
https://lynnlipinski.me/the-oklahoma-girl-scout-murders/
https://www.johnjdwyer.com/post/girl-scouts
https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-girl-scout-murders-suspect-gene-leroy-hart/39871694
https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/gene-leroy-hart-dna-connected-1977-girl-scout-murders-oklahoma
https://www.hulu.com/watch/eb78e6e3-a86c-4e6e-ad6a-abca047741c8?utm_source=shared_link
https://nation.foxnews.com/the-girl-scout-murders-nation
https://thecrimewire.com/true-crime/1977-Girl-Scouts-Murders-Police-Hope-DNA-Will-Identify-Killer
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DarkCast Network. Welcome to the dark side of podcasting.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Murder and Mimosas a true crime podcast brought to you by a mother and daughter duo.
Speaker 2:Bringing you murder stories with a mimosa in hand. With a mimosa in hand, murder Mimosas is a true crime podcast, meaning we talk about adult matters such as murder, sexual assaults and other horrendous crimes. Listener discretion is advised. We do tell our stories with the victims and the victims families in mind. However, some information is more verifiable than others. However, you can find all of our information linked in the show notes. Welcome to Murder and Mimosas. I'm Danica and I'm Shannon.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're anything like us, we like to send our kids to summer camp. I remember going as a kid my son's only four, but he wanted to go to summer camp this summer. Didn as a kid, my son's only four, but he wanted to go to summer camp this summer. Didn't understand why he couldn't go. And we want them to make new friends or see the old friends they make previous summers. They get that little bit of independence and some different life experiences, and I'm sure that that is how all of these parents felt when they sent their girls off on Sunday, june 12th of 1977. All the girls that are going to Camp Scott for Girl Scout camp are packed up, ready to go. Some are overjoyed for the experience. Of course, some are apprehensive about camp and being away from home, but they're all ready to go.
Speaker 2:The girls going to camp were to be dropped off at the Girl Scout headquarters in Tulsa, oklahoma. They would then load a bus and head off to Camp Scott, which had been around since 1928. The camp was over 410 wooded acres. It was equipped with housing for 230 campers, 30 counselors and 10 counselors in training, which may sound like a lot of campers, but it really wasn't crowded or anything. The camps were in 10 different units carved out of these beautiful expansive woods. They were all named after Indian tribes. The last unit that you would come to is the Kiowa unit on the edge of camp. Now, while there are a lot of girls on this bus, they don't all stay together. There are seven units or camps in a basically like U-shape type thing, and the counselor's unit or cabin, however you want to call it, is the very first one, the units, as they're called. There are wood platforms roughly two feet off the ground and you, of course, have the steps to walk up to get into it, and then it's this canvas tent that has three or four cots inside.
Speaker 2:Now, camp Kiowa had 27 girls assigned and three counselors. The counselors were Carla Wilhite, who was 23, dee Elder, who is 20, and Susan Emery, who's 18. And before the girls arrive they go through this week-long camp conference to train to be counselors. And not to mention, many of these counselors were previous Girl Scouts who had been to the camp and didn't need a ton of training. They kind of knew the ins and outs so they went through their training. They're ready for the girls.
Speaker 2:Once they arrive, the girls are all shown around, they eat around six o'clock and then afterwards, just for some fun and get to know you type of stuff, they sing some songs while fingers crossed and hoping the rain will let up, because it was a massive downpour and, despite singing, probably rain, rain go away. It did not. They all finally make a run for it to head to their units for the night. In Unit 7, about 150 feet from the counselor's unit, are three little girls Lori Farmer, who's 8, denise Milner, who's ten, and Michelle Gousset, who's nine. The girls change out of their wet clothes into some dry ones. They settle into bed to write letters to home.
Speaker 1:Dear Mom, I don't like camp. It's awful the first day at brain. I have three new friends Glenda, lori and Michelle. Michelle and Lori are my roommates. Mom, I don't want to stay at camp for two weeks. I want to come home and see Kathleen and everybody. You love me. Child Dignity Smell her Dear Mommy and Daddy. And Misty and Jolie and Chad and Kaylee. We are just getting ready to go to bed. It's 745. We are in the beginning of a storm, having a lot of fun. I met two new friends, michelle Gousset and Dennis Milner. I'm sharing a tip with them. It started raining on our way back from dinner. We are sleeping in call Didn't wait to arrive. We were all ridingries now because there's hardly anything else to do with love for Lori.
Speaker 2:Now, that day she had told her mother that she didn't want to go to camp. Her mother encouraged her to go and said if you hate it or you're truly homesick, call me and I will come get you, which I get.
Speaker 3:Sometimes, as a parent, you kind of push your child out of their comfort zone so they'll try new things and they're not, you know, held back by their fears that is true, because you did remember go to summer camp, but you did not want to go to honor camp, which I didn't make you, because you at least went to summer camp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't like summer camp and my dad worked there. He still didn't like summer camp camp. Yeah, I didn't like summer camp and my dad worked there. Yeah, still didn't like summer camp. That was not my thing. So I get how she feels, yes, but you know she got to go there, she got to meet new people.
Speaker 2:That morning about six o'clock, camp counselor carla got up to be one of the first in the staff shower because I mean, she wants the hot water before it runs out. Leaving her unit, something on the path catches her eye and when she gets a bit closer she notices a girl, amongst other things, by the tree and her mind just can't think properly as she's trying to make sense of this. You know it's early, she just woke up, this isn't normal. So her mind's racing, throwing questions at her. Did she get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and an animal chased her into a tree? Of course that sounds a little odd now, but at the time she's not thinking of foul play, she's thinking an accident of some kind. So she takes off running to the staff unit waking up all of the others and she runs screaming for them to get help because they have a body on the trail. Carla says they have to go to each tent and start counting the girls.
Speaker 2:They return back and Dee informs them that tent seven is empty. Carla tells them to keep the girls in the tents as she runs to get help. She first runs to the nurse's quarters, which is about 300 yards away, and she's frantically beating on the door until the nurse opens up and Carla informs her that they have a body down in their unit. The nurse jumps into her car and heads towards the unit. Carla then keeps running. She proceeds next door to the director's cabin and wakes up Barbara Day as well as Barbara's husband, richard. She tells them what was found and they rush to the camp area. Richard gets out of the car and the nurse, marianne, has already assessed the situation and she knows that the girl is dead. Richard tells Barbara to go call for help and she calls the highway patrol. They then notice two other sleeping bags on the ground with something in each of them. Richard reaches down and fills each one and realizes quickly that there are bodies in each of the sleeping bags.
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Speaker 2:And the bodies are of two little girls, who are also dead.
Speaker 3:I'm still kind of confused about Highway Patrol like 9-1-1 or the police. I mean I know it's 1977, but that just seems a little odd in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, unless they had some kind of connection with someone on Highway Patrol and knew they'd get there quickly. I'm not sure the counselors decide that they need to get the girls out of there before they start to realize something's wrong and they start to panic. So the last thing you want is 200 and something campers who are all panicked. So pretty soon the place is covered in police officers, the media starts setting up camp outside the gate. Now I get what the counselors wanted to do, but this part seems completely asinine to me. They take the girls off in the woods and sing songs the woods where a killer, where killers may be, because they have no idea, they know that these girls didn't die of natural causes and zip themselves up in a tent, in a sleeping bag, right.
Speaker 3:This is something out of a horror movie Go out into the woods.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I do get it they wanted the girls out of the situation.
Speaker 3:I'm going to take them away, but I don't know that I'm going to try to take them in the woods. Maybe let's all go up to the mess hall or whatever, but not into the woods, right?
Speaker 2:In fact we questioned one of the campers, Maggie, that was in the Kiowa unit that night.
Speaker 4:I'd never been to camp. In fact I'd barely been away from my family at this point. My sister was there as well, but she was in a different unit than I. The counselors never tucked on us after we all went to bed. That night it was storming and they probably didn't think we'd be coming out of our tents during a thunderstorm. They were also only teens and early 20s themselves. The morning after the murders we heard sirens, which were probably from the ambulance that came in. We didn't know what had happened and just assumed someone had gotten injured, but none of us ever suspected someone was killed. We were brought to the mess hall that morning for breakfast. Then all 200 of us hiked down to the river. While we were hanging out there, the counselors and others went around collecting our things from our tents and putting them in buses to take them back to Tulsa. We never went back to camp. They loaded us on buses directly from the river and drove back to Tulsa.
Speaker 2:So the police get there and examine the crime scene. There are multiple agencies coming in, but the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation are the lead on the case Now by the girls' bodies. They find a red flashlight. It's one of those big boxy, square type ones that take those humongous batteries. But there's also a green bag taped around the light with a duct tape and then, like a small hole, made into the bag.
Speaker 3:So like where maybe just like the tiniest amount of light can be shown through. Is that the reasoning, or what?
Speaker 2:you're saying yeah, so it gives, like, the person, just enough light to see right in front of them, but it's not a really bright light, so if you looked out into the woods you probably wouldn't see them if you're from a distance.
Speaker 3:There's also a roll of duct tape left and a nylon rope, so the girls that are murdered, I mean who calls their families?
Speaker 2:So I know that the executive director called Lori's dad at work. He was a doctor and he went home and told his wife.
Speaker 3:Now I assume that she called the rest, since she called one, but I can't say for sure, it seems like maybe you would let the police do that, but at the same time they were in your care, so yeah, I don't know who really should have been in charge of that.
Speaker 2:Maybe the police told her that she could make the calls, or maybe she just decided to. I don't know. Either way, I wouldn't want to be making she just decided to.
Speaker 3:I don't know. Either way I I wouldn't want to be making the call and I don't even know that that's something you do over the phone.
Speaker 2:I mean that I've never been in that situation, so I can't say and I get it like I don't know where these families live, because the kids loaded up in tulsa and then came here. I don't know how far it would take to get to three different families homes and you may want to give them ads up before it's the news.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's true, the phone may have been the most efficient way. Now there were crime scene photos taken right away and of course they bagged and tagged lots of stuff. But the massive amount of people just camping, there is a lot. Amount of people just camping, there is a lot. And then you have all of these officers and they're all, like, from different agencies, like we said. So they're not necessarily on the same page and it's hard to tell how well the scene was preserved, but I feel like, personally, that they did a decent job. They did find a fingerprint on the flashlight, but it was pretty smudged and they were not able to get a clean print.
Speaker 2:Now, before we dive more into what all the OSBI found, let's talk about things leading up to this night. So on June 8, so on June 8, 77, at the pre-camp counselors thing, the training counselors noticed that a axe or like a hatchet was missing. The day after that, on the 9th, carla is sleeping in the staff house alone and she hears like scratching on the screen but like also, you're in the woods, yeah, an animal, that could be something rubbing up of, it could be lots of. Yeah, that could be anything. And then two days later, on the 11th. They come back to their tents and they're in disarray, like it's clear that someone has been there. One girl had a box of donuts and the box was missing. They find the empty box outside with like a small notebook papers in there, and the first one said kill, kill, kill. There were others that said god or had things written on them, and the last said that they were on a mission to kill three girls.
Speaker 3:Say what? This is creepy as heck. I mean, and this gives me chills Is this analyzed for fingerprints at all?
Speaker 2:So the note was given to the director, barbara Day, and, as many campers do, ghost stories are generally told around the campfire. That's a pastime. You know spooky stories when it's dark, to like try and scare your friends. So she thought maybe this was left as like a prank to scare others, to try to make their stories more believable, if you will. And of course in retrospect this seems like it should have been taken more seriously. But at the time she doesn't think this is real. It just seems like a maybe a little morbid prank, but a prank. But but overall the thing is the notes were thrown away because she thought it was a prank and nothing more.
Speaker 3:I mean I get that at first, when you said like the tents were in disarray and you mentioned a donut box, I'm thinking raccoons, but I mean what they have could have been so telling. But I get at the time that you don't think anything like this is going to happen. So you do think it's just a prank and it's no big deal.
Speaker 2:Right. So around that time there was also talk of things missing from the staff, but it wasn't reported. Then, the night of the murders, there was a counselor housed in the Comanche unit that was walking to the latrine when she noticed a dim light off in the distance.
Speaker 3:When you say distance, like how far.
Speaker 2:I don't have like an exact measurement of distance, but she says in the woods that no one should be in the woods for any reason. So it doesn't really matter the distance. There shouldn't be anyone there, Right? So she shines her flashlight in the direction of that dim light and the light that she was seeing goes out. Of course she finds it odd and she turns her light off to see if she can see the light again. And after about a minute or so of her light being off, the other light reappears. Her light being off, the other light reappears. So she turns her light back on and shines it in that direction and that dim light disappears again. Now this is a young girl and she's not really sure if her mind is playing tricks on her or there's someone really out there. But she decides that it's best to just run back to the safety of her unit and that's what she does.
Speaker 2:Now in the quapaw unit, counselors hear this terrifying scream from a camper and they go to check it out. A camper was walking from her tent to the latrine and someone grabbed her raincoat. Another girl claimed that she dropped her towel on her way to the tent and when she bent down to pick it up. Her flashlight lit up a man's leg wearing khaki pants. Now these counselors are thinking that this could be a lot of different things. Sure, it could be true, but it's a stormy night. These girls could just have overactive imaginations. You know, they're away from home. It could be lots of things, but they really think it's probably just fear of walking out in the dark, in the rain and being away from home. Just their imaginations.
Speaker 2:Now Carla and Dee were awakened by an odd noise that night. Carla said she's not 100% sure how to describe it. It wasn't really a growl or a moan, but something kind of between the two. Now the two went out to investigate. Carla walked toward the service road by the camp. She shined her light in the direction of the noise and when she did, the noise stopped. They decided it had to be an animal of some sort and went back to bed, Although they could still hear the noise.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I get that You're surrounded by like thick forest. There are tons of animals and noises and things you just can't explain out there.
Speaker 2:Right, and if it is an animal and I don't know what animal it is, I'm not trying to go investigate and get mauled by some forest creature. True Now, when OSPI agent Mike Wilkerson arrived at the scene, he was greeted by agent Carrie Thurman, district Attorney Sid Wise, mays County Sheriff Pete Weaver, the County Medical Examiner and a Highway Patrol officer. Like I said, many agencies had their hands in this. He asked what they have there and was informed that they have one little girl who was lying partially naked. Who was lying partially naked. Her hands were bound with duct tape behind her back and she had been beaten in an elastic bandage pulled over her eyes to blindfold her. This little girl was Denise.
Speaker 2:Under the tree, the two other girls appeared to be stuffed in sleeping bags. He asked the medical examiner if he had looked in the sleeping bags and, to his surprise, he asked the medical examiner if he had looked in the sleeping bags and, to his surprise, no one had yet to look in them. And this is about 10 in the morning. At this point Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3:How has no one done this? I mean, we aren't investigators, but we're nosy, and not even that. You need to know what the heck is in the bags.
Speaker 2:Also, my thing is like what if they were living like they were still alive? You wouldn't know. You haven't opened the bag to like, check for vitals to see if there's any signs of life. I think we definitely check would have checked the bags, but I feel like we would. Maybe they're just shell-shocked. Seeing a defenseless little girl bound like that is something you probably never unsee. But the ME is informed to check the bags right away. The first bag he opened was a little girl with blonde hair and bloody pajamas, and the next bag was opened to find a brown-haired little girl who was also covered in blood. She was bound with rope and tied into a fetal position. They also noted that the girl had to be carried over to the trees because there were no drag marks anywhere.
Speaker 3:I wonder what the significance is in that. I mean, why carry them out of their tents and just leave them there?
Speaker 2:I'm not really sure and to this this day I don't think anyone has like a real good theory on why that is. What they would find while examining the girls would be three pieces of hair in the tape that bound denise's hands. It was collected as evidence. Denise's official cause of death was strangulation and she had been sexually assaulted. Michelle's cause of death was a blow to the head and Lori's cause of death was also a blow to the head and she too had been sexually assaulted. The platform that the tent was on was picked up and taken to the crime lab. Two different shoe prints were in the blood.
Speaker 3:One turned out to be of the girls and the other was a waffle stomper print, do you?
Speaker 2:know what that is. I'm assuming a waffle shape. Yeah, so it's a waffle shape and it's supposed to be something that you would find on like a military type boot. Oh okay, there were no suspects at the time and all the staff were questioned extensively. Some were even polygraphed, but this led to nothing. They did find and analyze was the hair I mentioned was in the tape used to bound Denise. It was microscopically tested by OSBI chemist Ann Reed. She compared these four hairs that were taken from tent seven. Three of the four hairs were microscopically similar. From the hair found on Denise's wrist, all the hair shows to be from a monogloid characteristics, which means that they could have been Native American descent.
Speaker 3:Native American descent. It's 1977, and this just means that the hairs were analyzed under a microscope and compared to see if the hairs match or, in this case, find the origin or the person. But from my understanding at this time, that's pretty much all they can do. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Right, that is correct. And remember this is Oklahoma, it's a densely populated area of Native Americans, so also remember, like all the kids, the staff and police officials have come into this crime scene at some point, so this doesn't even mean it's the killer's hair on the temp floor. So 10 days after discovering the bodies, bodies, they have this massive manhunt for whoever may have done this wait why 10 days?
Speaker 3:I mean they could be long gone by now. I never really found out why.
Speaker 2:But I gotta have two thoughts on this. A, why would you wait that long? But also, it's hard to have a manhunt when you don't know who you're hunting. You know, yeah that's true.
Speaker 2:So the only thing I can assume is like they're focusing their efforts on the crime scene and talking to staff and maybe trying to narrow things down, because this manhunt included about 500 to 600 men. This is officers and men who just volunteered. They had helicopters overhead, they brought in tracking dogs. This is Oklahoma and, from what I could gather, the area had bluffs and caves too. In one cave they found four small burnt fires that they felt were indicative of a native tribal ritual, glasses that were missing from the camp, duct tape and, oddly enough, pictures that were torn up, and once the police pieced them back together, they circulated the pictures to the media, asking if they knew who the women were and, surprisingly and luckily, they got the information back fairly quickly. The photographer that took them was a jailer that moonlighted as a photographer and he had enlisted the help of Gene Leveroy Hart to develop the pictures. Gene was housed at the prison he worked at.
Speaker 3:So he should have been pretty easy to track down then, if he's sitting in prison. But I'm not sure how this would be connected to him unless he had been paroled already.
Speaker 2:You know it would be really easy to track him down if he were sitting in prison where he was supposed to be. However, he actually escaped from the Mays County Jail twice, while sent there from prison for a hearing. County Jail twice, while sent there from prison for a hearing, the last time being in 1973, and he was still at large when this all occurred, in 1977. So what'd this guy go to prison for? So 11 years earlier, in 1966, there were two pregnant teen women out having a girls' night at the Fonda Light Club, which is where you bring your own bottle of booze and they, like, serve it up for you I've never heard of anything like this before in my life, but I'm hoping that the drinks are pretty cheap, since you bring them yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, kathy is a 19 year old who's six months pregnant, newly divorced and already has a toddler, and Margie, who's four months pregnant, newly married and fighting with her husband, and that night they brought a pint of vodka in around 9 30. They spend the night drinking and having fun yes, while pregnant and then head out to the car While sitting in the parking lot of the bar deciding. You know what their next move is, what they're gonna do now, which at this point it's like two in the morning. The driver, kathy, started her car and Gene opened the door and said I think I'll go with you and then proceeded to pull a gun. He told Kathy to go into the bar and wait 15 minutes or he would kill her.
Speaker 2:Now I want to preface this by saying this is one of many ways in which I've found this story told. I've read other accounts as well. Passenger Marjorie began to wail and became unhinged, as, of course, I'm sure anyone would and then he changed his plan and told Kathy to stay so that Marjorie would shut up. He ordered Kathy to give him the keys and get in the back seat and, sitting there a moment, he told them to get out of the car and he walked them to his car. The gun pointed at them and demanded them both get in the trunk of his car, which I seems like it'd hardly fit one person in the trunk of your car two pregnant women, seems very difficult yeah.
Speaker 2:He eventually drove them out to a desolate gravel road and he took turns, getting them out of the trunk one at a time, raping and sodomizing them. Afterwards he pulled marjorie's legs together and bound her ankles with tape and covered her face with it as well, but she was able to see his license plate and even though her face was covered, she was able to see it from the left side. He also bound her wrist with rope and rounded, wound it around her neck and then her ankles. He then got Kathy and did the same thing and then left them there. Marjorie somehow broke free from her restraints and then proceeded to free Kathy. Of course they're terrified at this point. They crawled to the road and eventually flagged someone down. Gene's attorney convinced him to take a plea deal and he pleads guilty to one count of first-degree rape and two counts of kidnapping. He was out after only serving 28 months. In 1969, after being out a whopping three months, he was convicted of four burglaries and this time he was sentenced to more than 300 years in prison. Say what?
Speaker 3:This time really isn't fitting the crime in my opinion, especially after you had raped two women and that's all you got. But I mean kudos to putting me behind jail or behind bars for a good amount of time this time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not really sure how four burglaries equals 300 years, but rape and kidnapping gets you a little over two years like that. Math is not mathing, but right, that is insane. We're excited to announce our collaboration on a special project for domestic violence awareness month this october inspired by Rebecca's legacy, a project started by Rebecca Barsotti's mother, Angela, will be working with Moms and Mysteries and Navigating Advocacy to donate 10 bags filled with essential items to local domestic violence shelters.
Speaker 3:These bags are a way to honor Rebecca's memory and help survivors, and we invite you to join us in this important effort.
Speaker 2:I will say this has also been said that this was consensual and that there was another man involved and Jean supposedly took the fall for all of it because the women were embarrassed. I don't know that I believe that, but just giving you, the guys, the information that I found so you can make your own judgments on that one.
Speaker 3:That seems a little odd to me, but who knows?
Speaker 2:I mean you left him out on the gravel road Like that doesn't seem to be essential to me but. No.
Speaker 3:And who's taking the fall for this other guy? I don't know. It all sounds a little.
Speaker 2:That math. But whatever, that math ain't math for me. But you know, if you want to believe that version of events, that's up to you. So some thought that Gene looked good for the that this happened. He was pretty accustomed to living off the land in order to elude police and keep from getting caught. He was raised by a single mother, ella May, who had him when she was just a teenager. She ended up pregnant when she was sleeping with a married man, walter Hart. He didn't want anything to do with being a dad walther hart. He didn't want anything to do with being a dad. His wife actually had just given birth to their fourth child just two months before gene was born. Lma ended up actually having two more kids with walther before she married jesse buckskin, who was nine years older than her. She was three months pregnant with their second child, with jesse passed away, leaving her as a single mom. She ended up having three more kids after that, and they lived about a mile from camp scott.
Speaker 2:So gene was housed at the county jail for a post-conviction relief hearing on the rape and the kidnappings. He wanted to withdraw his guilty plea. Now, just two days after arriving, jean and a fellow inmate sawed the bars, like in their cells, sawed through them and escaped, as the story goes. So you know the story goes. So you know. Allegedly, ella Mae, jean's mother, had put a saw in a bible that she gave him so that he could escape. They were only on the land for 11 days before being caught, but they escaped again. This time, when they escaped, they split up.
Speaker 2:The other inmate was apprehended fairly quickly, but Gene not so much. They actually didn't find him and apprehend him until April 6th of 1978, after they got help from an informant. He was being housed by a man people refer to as Medicine man, sam Piggin. This cabin is about 45 miles away from the camp. The police surround the cabin and Gene comes out without issue.
Speaker 2:While some thought it could be Gene, there's also many that thought that the sheriff just wanted to pin this on him, that the sheriff just wanted to pin this on him, because he kind of made the sheriff look like an idiot, because he escaped not once but twice, and the second time he went a good while before being apprehended. So it kind of makes it look like a bumbling police sheriff. You know, right, there were rumors that Gene was spotted out all over town at times, like at the football games, and the townspeople love to give the sheriff like a hard time when they would see him just kind of giving him, you know, a tease, asking if he had seen Gene lately which I'm sure just boiled his blood like right.
Speaker 3:I mean I can see how the sheriff could want him for this. I mean that's gonna be pretty embarrassing to have him escape twice and just be at large for that amount of time so yeah, it's definitely a possibility that the sheriff really just wanted gene to be the fall guy.
Speaker 2:Also, this all kinds of turns things into a race war. As we said, this is Oklahoma. There's a lot of Native Americans in the area and they felt like Gene was being railroaded. He had lots of supporters. In fact they raised funds for Gene's defense like a GoFundMe before there was a GoFundMe. Gene was Native American and most people you know were Native American in that area. They felt like they were gunning for him just because of his race and because he'd make the sheriff look bad.
Speaker 2:Garvin Isaacs is one of his attorneys and this would be his first ever murder trial. He also enlists the help of Gary Pichelin. One of the things he did, which I didn't even know was allowed to, was he had Gene hold a press conference towards the end of the trial. Now, all the questions had to be submitted before the press conference and the end of the trial. Now, all the questions had to be submitted before the press conference and approved by the attorneys and there could not be any questions asked about the Girl Scouts. Garvin later stated he wanted to humanize Jean to the media and to the public.
Speaker 3:I have not seen this approach that I recall ever, but I mean I guess it sounds like a great idea. I really didn't know you could do that either.
Speaker 2:I mean, I guess if you already kind of have people on your side, it's not a bad thing to do to do that. But it also seems very biased that you couldn't ask questions about the Girl Scout murders and they could only ask pre-approved questions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know why not just ask the questions you want yourself? That's pretty much what you're doing, so so the prosecution.
Speaker 2:They really felt like they had this slam dunk case like easy peasy, lemon squeezy that was my teacher, oh Lordy Even though all their evidence is pretty circumstantial. You know there have been tons of cases, one with just that.
Speaker 3:Right, this is true. Sometimes you don't need anything but a jury that is easily influenced, like the West Memphis Three case.
Speaker 2:Yes, so the defense begins poking holes into their case and supplies a new suspect, William.
Speaker 3:Stevens, so that some other dude did it defense.
Speaker 2:Right, it's pretty common. But they also had answers for everything they hit them with and the verdict comes back not guilty.
Speaker 3:Wow. So no matter what they may find in the future, they can't come back and retry him because of double jeopardy right.
Speaker 2:So this isn't strike one, this is, they're out. Yeah, so of course he escaped from prison and although he was acquitted of those murders, he still has to serve time for the robberies. And so he does go to prison, just not for the girl scout murders. Oddly enough, just three months after he returns to prison he's dead. What people are up in arms about this, and I mean that's fair. They're saying that this was a conspiracy, he was poisoned or foul play was involved. There's lots of different theories. Now he did have an autopsy done and it is said to be a heart attack, which my first thought is like he's a little young for a heart attack. Yeah, but apparently his brother also died of heart issues, so it seems like it's something that runs in the family. Could possibly be that. However, people aren't necessarily buying it. The defense even decides to hire their own doctor to do an autopsy, and that doctor actually comes to the same conclusion. So I guess he did die of a heart attack um, it still sounds a little suspicious.
Speaker 3:I mean he's very young, but I mean it does happen all the time. I mean look at the guy that you went to prom with, that you know, died so young.
Speaker 2:So it can happen. So there is a massive turnout for Gene. Thousands of people turned out for his funeral. Thousands of people turned out for his funeral.
Speaker 3:However, despite his death, the rumors and the investigation into the Girl Scout murders continues. We always recommend more bubbly and less OJ Cheers.
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