The Pastor's Dark Secrets - Emporia, Kansas

Summary

Podcast Summary: Small Town Murder – "The Pastor's Dark Secrets - Emporia, Kansas"

Podcast: Small Town Murder
Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Episode Title: The Pastor’s Dark Secrets – Emporia, Kansas
Date: August 13, 2026
Duration: ~3 hours
Theme:
A deep-dive into a tangled web of murder, affairs, and church scandal in Emporia, Kansas, centering on the 1983-84 murders of Sandy Byrd and Marty Anderson. The hosts deliver meticulous research, local color, and biting comedic commentary on the crimes, police failings, and the astonishing aftermath.

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1. Episode Overview

This episode unpacks the notorious Emporia, Kansas case, where affairs, murder-for-hire plots, and shocking betrayals devastated families and a parish. Through humor and exhaustive research, James and Jimmie guide listeners through the twisted saga of Pastor Tom Byrd, his wife Sandy, their friends Marty and Lorna Anderson, and the homicidal conspiracy that shook the town.

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2. Emporia, Kansas: Setting the Scene

• Town Background:
  • Founded 1857, named after ancient Carthage (06:03).
  • Population: ~24,000 at the time, with a notable college student segment.
  • Reputation: "A great place to live"...but there are murmurs of corruption and drama (9:06–11:34).
  • Cost of living & real estate: "Like living in 1996," with homes under $140,000 and rents around $570 (13:48–14:56).
• Town Events:
  • Tornadoes, a mass shooting at Cavalry Baptist (1974, 1988, respectively), and classic heartland hobbies (17:30–18:48).
• Crime Rate:
  • Violent crime is low–on paper. Property crime on par with national averages due to the college presence (19:00).

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3. The Murders: A Double Tragedy

Initial Murders

• Marty Anderson’s Murder (Nov 4, 1983)

  • Marty and wife Lorna with their four daughters pull over on a remote highway when Lorna claims to be sick. She leaves the van and supposedly loses the keys (20:00).
  • Marty exits to help. Suddenly, a masked gunman appears, demands his wallet, and (after Marty complies) shoots him multiple times, including execution style. Lorna is shoved into a ditch and the gunman flees.
  • The story is suspicious: remote crime scene, “random” highway mugging, kids as witnesses (22:24–23:56).
  • Lorna calls the insurance company within 12 hours, asking when her payout is coming. (25:08)
  • Insurance: $270,000, a massive sum in 1983.

• Sandy Byrd’s “Accident” (July 16-17, 1983)

  • Sandy, wife of local pastor Tom Byrd, leaves for work late at night after dinner/drinks with Tom (89:05–90:15).
  • Next morning, her car is found submerged under the Rocky Ford Bridge, her body face down nearby.
  • Initial ruling: accident. But evidence points elsewhere: broken bones, bruises, no seatbelt (she was a stickler for safety), blood on the bridge and tree, contradictory positions of car/body (95:53–104:53).
  • The scene: “Not a typical accident,” says veteran highway cop John Rule (94:53).

Notable Evidence and Oddities

• Lorna’s immediate call to insurance.
• Contradictory stories from Tom about Sandy’s whereabouts.
• The scene’s forensics: blood trail on bridge/trees, car’s slow roll into river, Sandy’s missing seatbelt, injuries inconsistent with accident.
• Lorna’s reputation: affairs, instability, psychiatric hospitalizations.

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4. The Cast: Sinners in the Choir

Tom Byrd (Pastor):

• Energetic, charismatic, expansion-minded Lutheran minister (29:57–42:25).
• Married “bubbly” and highly intelligent Sandy, father of three.
• Deeply invested in growing the church as a social hub—sports, daycare, couples clubs, etc.

Sandy Byrd:

• Math professor, pursuing her doctorate, described as “meticulous and energetic.”
• Died in the bridge incident, initially ruled accidental.

Lorna Anderson (Secretary):

• Attractive, “friendly,” notorious in town for serial affairs (most notably on her husband), psychological hospitalizations (57:00–64:41).
• Known to have slept with over 60 men in town (!), including Tom Byrd (119:44–120:18).
• After Marty’s murder, immediately chases his insurance money.

Marty Anderson:

• Hospital technologist, Army reservist, religiously intense.
• Victim in staged highway “robbery.”

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5. Secrets, Affairs, and Murder Plots

• Tom & Lorna’s Affair:
  • Grows from innocent church collaboration (she’s hired as secretary, early '83) into passionate, visible romance (86:02–121:18).
  • Caught sneaking away for motel trysts, leaving love letters ("I love you. I am confident of the future…", 120:56).
• Murder-for-hire Plots:
  • Multiple plans hatched by Tom & Lorna to kill their spouses:
    • Drug Marty, stage a car accident.
    • If that fails, just shoot him.
    • Seek help from local lovers, including the Carter brothers (Darryl & Dan)—as described by Darryl under police wire (123:48–128:23; 134:18–136:56).
    • Notable quote, Tom:

      "I'm a man of God, and I'm going to kill Martin Anderson." (126:53)

  • Lorna pays $5000 (from Sandy’s insurance) to Dan Carter’s boss, who passes it to a Mississippi hitman—who takes the money and vanishes (129:11–130:34).
  • Ultimately, they settle on doing it themselves: the staged masked mugging and fatal shooting.

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6. Aftermath: Trials, Community, and Ghost Stories

• Investigations:
  • Police and Kansas Bureau of Investigation uncover affair, murder plots, and the web of accomplices via love letters, confessions, and a recovered murder weapon (the father’s .22; 155:18).
  • The turning point: exhumed Sandy’s body, revealing wound patterns only possible from a beating and being thrown from a bridge, not an auto accident (142:35–144:15).
  • Lorna eventually flips, giving up Tom and recounting, in disturbing detail, how Tom struck Sandy with a tire iron and kicked her from the bridge as she clung on (146:08).

Trial Outcomes:

• Tom Byrd:

  • Found guilty of soliciting Marty’s murder (149:33, sentenced to 2–7 years).
  • Later convicted of murdering Sandy Byrd (153:07), sentenced to life (parole eligible after 15 years).
  • Acquitted at trial for Marty’s actual murder due to relying solely on Lorna’s untrustworthy testimony (165:36–165:53).
  • Paroled in 2004; goes on to become a marriage counselor (169:18).
    • Quote: “I mean, I got a solution for how you could end your marriage, but that’s just me…” (169:20)

• Lorna Anderson:

  • Multiple convictions (solicitation, then 2nd degree murder), sentenced up to life, released in 2007. Immediately remarries more than once, becomes a nonprofit CEO (170:29).
  • Known locally in legend as “the lady of the town” (83:00).

• Community response: Tom’s congregation bails him out and rallies around him even after his arrest (138:45), local rumors run wild, and the bridge becomes known as “Bird Bridge” with a thriving ghost lore (170:48).

Notable Quotes and Excerpts

• "You can get the poor old ladies [churchgoers]…they’ll be dead in five years.” – James (40:48)
• “He just worked all the time. Apparently. 65 hour work week… try running three goddamn podcasts!” – James (45:09)
• “That's how you do it. You make fun of a murderer. That's fun. That's easy to do.” – James, addressing the show’s comedic ethos (04:14)
• “She spirals down to her knees real good, is what she does.” – James, on Tom’s justification for “helping” Lorna (87:36)
• “Who would suspect that a small town minister who married his childhood sweetheart would be capable of murder twice?” – Sandy’s mother (166:08)

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7. Memorable/Comedic Moments

• Affair Count: The hosts marvel at Lorna's 60+ local conquests (119:44–120:18).
• Medical Technologist?: “What even is that?” – The banter spins into confusion and jokes about 1970s hospital tech (53:06).
• Home Economics & Practical Math: Lamentations about high school math, and learning to balance a checkbook instead of calculus (32:27–33:11).
• Funeral Officiant Irony: Tom delivers both his wife’s and Marty’s funerals, after conspiring in their deaths (27:01, 117:14).
• Bird Bridge Ghost Lore: The murder site is now a haunt for teens and ghost hunters; spooky urban legends abound (170:48).
• Quote on Local Real Estate: “It’s like you're basically living in 1996. If you go to Kansas, it feels like it’s about 25 years behind.” (13:54)
• Listener Shout-outs: Multiple comedy bits on names, gratitude bits, and tangents near end (175:35+)

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8. Key Timestamps & Segments

• 05:10 – Geography and history of Emporia
• 19:55 – Marty Anderson’s murder
• 25:41 – Lorna’s insurance call, raising suspicions
• 27:01 – Introduction of Tom and Sandy Byrd
• 42:25 – Church’s transformation into community hub
• 57:00 – Lorna’s affairs and reputation detailed
• 74:52–75:18 – Lorna brags about her affair with Tom (“he’s good in bed for a minister”)
• 90:15–99:06 – Discovery and autopsy of Sandy Byrd
• 119:44 – Investigators find over 60 local men slept with Lorna
• 123:16 – Darryl Carter, murder plot solicitation, and “man of God” line
• 146:08 – Lorna’s account of Sandy’s death: tire iron, bridge, brutal murder
• 149:33 – Tom convicted for solicitation; 153:07 – Found guilty in Sandy’s murder trial
• 165:52 – Tom acquitted of Marty’s murder; only evidence was Lorna’s testimony
• 170:48 – “Bird Bridge” ghost stories; community legacy

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9. Legacy and Cultural Footprint

• The case inspired a CBS miniseries, Murder Ordained (1987), featuring John Goodman and Kathy Bates. Tom Byrd, still claiming innocence, criticized the adaptation (157:38).
• The Rocky Ford Bridge became a local legend, dubbed “Bird Bridge,” and is part of a cycling route and ghost story circuit (170:48).
• Both Lorna and Tom remarried, resumed public lives, and remain sources of morbid fascination both locally and for true crime aficionados.

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10. Final Takeaway

What begins as a typical small town murder unfolds into an almost Shakespearean tale of lust, greed, betrayal, and folly—underscored by the darkest sort of gallows humor. The hosts highlight the human failings behind the criminal acts and deliver a sobering reminder that even the most respectable community figures can harbor unimaginable secrets.

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For those who haven’t listened:
This episode is a master class in long-form comedic true crime, deftly balancing humor, empathy, and an unflinching look at the darkness beneath small-town America’s surface.

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Notable Quote for the Road:

"I'm a man of God, and I'm going to kill Martin Anderson."
— Tom Byrd, murder-plotting pastor (126:53)

Transcript

[A]

This week in Emporia, Kansas. A twisted tale of multiple vicious murders, affairs and relationships between good small town church folk rocks the community and leaves everybody wondering, could this really have happened? Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello everybody and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay. Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petregallo. I'm here with my co host.

[B]

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

[A]

Thank you so much for joining us today on another Absolutely. This is a twisted wild craze. This is a nutty case. I've had this on the docket since about 2018. And it's just every time I looked at it I'm like, that's too complicated. I can't get into all that. Meanwhile we get into serial killers. But for some reason this case, I'm like, it's just so complicated, very daunting. This week we're like, we're doing it. I don't care. So we're gonna get into this. It's crazy stuff. Before we get into that though, head over to shut upandgivemerder.com get your tickets for live shows. I'm telling you, you wanna go to a live show. They are so much fun. It is a comedy show and you get a murder story as as a bonus in this hilarious comedy show with all the pictures and everything and you get to see everything involved in this.

[B]

You won't be able to believe it.

[A]

You won't be able to believe it. September 18th, Milwaukee. Only a few tickets left for that. I don't even know if there's any together at this point. So check it out at the paps. Next night though, State Theater in Minneapolis. Tickets available for that on September 19th. Get your tickets. October 3rd, Dallas. October 16th 17th, San Jose. Sacramento. November 13th 14th, Tarrytown in Boston. Get your tickets right now. Shut up and givememurder.com Listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports, which got some murdery stuff going on there. And you don't have to like sports, just check it out, we promise. And then your stupid opinions, which has just been hilarious. I've loved hearing people's complete ridiculous opinions on everything. It's amazing.

[B]

Find out what's at Home Depot you didn't know existed.

[A]

You'll find out, trust me. They'll tell you all about it. They'll complain about it. So do that. Get yourself Patreon people. Patreon P A T R e o n patreon.com Patrick Just like the name of that other show we do. That is where you get all the bonus material. All you have to be is $5 a month or above and you get, I mean so much. First of all, you're going to subscribe immediately. You're going to get almost 400 back bonus episodes to binge that you've never heard before. Then new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder. And how much of that do they get? Every Jimmy, how much?

[B]

I suppose they could have it all.

[A]

They get all of it. That's right. Every goddamn drop of it. So check that out. In addition to that you get so much more. And then you get new ones every other week. This week, which you're going for. Crime and sports, you get one crime in sports, one small town murder and you get them all. This week, crime and sports, we're doing old timey articles again, which is kind of the favorite on Patreon. It's Prisoner Dating Game. It's old timey articles also. Anything disaster wise. They love that, sir. Small town murder. Love. After Lockup Revisited Part 2.

[B]

Fuck yes.

[A]

We're gonna talk a little bit more about season six, get into season seven, find out about Moomoo and his plans for a throuple cause it's amazing. Check that out. Patreon.com crimeinspect he's so hope. He's so hopeful. He thinks it'll work. And in addition to that, you get everything we put out. Crime and sports, your stupid opinions, both small town murders all ad free as well. All the shows we put out ad free. And on top of all of that, if that wasn't enough, you get a shout out at the end of the show too. So you get it all. So do it. Patreon.com crimendsports do it. Do it. Now that said, disclaimer time is a comedy show people. Everybody, it's a comedy show. We are comedians. People are going to die. Unfortunately we don't want them to die, but they're already dead. So we should talk about something. So yeah, there's plenty to talk about here. See what we do is you go how do murder and comedy go together? Pretty easy. See what you do is we never make fun of the victims or the victims families.

[B]

Why is that?

[A]

Because we're assholes.

[B]

But.

[A]

But we're not scumbags. It's pretty simple. Very easy. There's plenty of stuff to make fun of here. You don't have to make fun of some murder victim. You make fun of a murderer. That's fun. That's easy to do. You do that. Maybe Some small town police force lets a murderer go free for years so they can kill again. Let's make fun of that. And we make fun of towns because we're all from somewhere that deserves to be made fun of. Who cares? It's all in good fun. But that's what you need to get into there. But that's it. That's all. That's all you have to worry about. People get too into it. Don't worry about it. It's just good fun. And also murder. So we're gonna do it tastefully. That's how you do it there. So that said, I think it's time everybody to sit back, clear the lungs, arms to the sky, and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Let's go on a trip, shall we? May as well go into Kansas this week. Emporia, Kansas? Yeah, Emporia, like Empire Emporia, like that. Emporia Kansas Emporium.

[B]

But.

[A]

But in Pore. Yeah, Eastern Kansas. This is about an hour to Topeka, if you want to go there for some reason. About an hour.

[B]

Is that the capital?

[A]

Yes. Of Kansas? It is, as a matter of fact. About an hour 40 to Kansas City. So, yeah, it's not that far. It's in Lyon county. Area code 620. So there's that history here. Okay. It's located on an upland prairie, apparently. According to their website, it was founded in 1857. They got its name from. You know where they got Emporia from?

[B]

From an emporium that was nearby.

[A]

From ancient. Close. Ancient Carthage, which is very close.

[B]

What?

[A]

Ancient Carthage, which is. I'm almost positive, North Africa. I think it's like Tunisia now, if I'm remembering that from Reading 20 years ago. But yeah, it was a place known in history as a prosperous center of commerce.

[B]

So they were like, is that where Carthage was?

[A]

We're doing this Carthage? Yeah. Carthage is the. That's where they got it from.

[B]

I get that. I didn't know geographically where Carthage landed.

[A]

Yeah, I don't. Like I said, I'm not an expert on shit like this, but I think like 20 years ago, I read it's North Africa, I believe where Tunisia is now. But I could be completely wrong. I'm not gonna.

[B]

I thought you were gonna say 20 years ago.

[A]

That's where it was. It was there 20 years ago. So that 1864 Union Pacific Railway came through here and incorporated into all these other railways. And they got land grants to build from Fort Riley to Emporia to build railroads here. The road eventually reached Emporia in 1869, becoming the first railroad here. And then it was pretty boring for about 100 years because it's Kansas. Nothing really happened. It was shit, pretty dull. And then on June 8, 1974, they got some excitement. Not good excitement, but excitement. An F4 tornado struck in Pori. Hey. Hey. Killing six people, injuring 200 and causing $25 million in 1974 Kansas money.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

I mean think about how much corn or wheat or whatever the hell had to be lost to have $25 million in damages back then.

[B]

I guess you don't have to turn the land over this year.

[A]

Well, it's all turned.

[B]

It's been turned.

[A]

The corn's now where the soy was and the soy's where the corn was. So it's already done. We already switched them.

[B]

It feels turnt right.

[A]

It's turn back and forth. In 1988, March 6, an armed gunman walked into the Cavalry Baptist Church during services and opened fire.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

29 year old guy had no particular target. Just decided to shoot some people and killed one and injured four others.

[B]

I'm so tired of that.

[A]

That's just ridiculous. Yeah. Reviews. I don't know why you'd. I don't get it. Obviously we're not at our last, you know, notch of our tether here. So. You know what I mean?

[B]

I don't fucking.

[A]

It's so much easier to just stay home and watch tv. That's the problem. It's so much easier. We found a show where it's just people like tripping over animals and shit on their ring doorbells. Just watch that. It's so mindless. Who cares? Your brain will. You won't even think about that shit anymore.

[B]

The new TED lasso will make you cry. You'll get into your fields and you don't need to shoot people.

[A]

Yeah. Widow's Bay is interesting Severance. Very interesting. You'll really get hooked on it. I want so bad Pluribus waiting for next season. It's going to be great. Reviews of this town. Five stars. Emporia is a great place to live, grow up and work in. Oh boy. Perfect.

[B]

Live.

[A]

Yeah, live. A diverse community of people, jobs and food. A large community of agriculture influence, but also urban feel. No one else has seen it.

[B]

Real urban.

[A]

There's nothing urban about this. Many community events to bring everyone together makes for a great living experience. Here's three stars. Okay, now bear with me because the words are not in the right order or something. Here. Feels like someone had a stroke four seconds before they wrote this. I always me to further my education, to help me succeed in life. Got me. There are many things for people to do in this small town such as bowling, roller skating, college sporting events and many more. You know, small town stuff.

[B]

Three children's events and many more.

[A]

Many more. Here is two stars. I love a weather complaint. These are my favorite. The weather here is very infrequent. No. Inconsistent.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Sometimes we have no weather. Sometimes I go outside and remember, like on a cartoon when they would show the guy drawing like a. You know, like roadrunner's going in. It's just a blank sheet of paper, it's all white with like sketches. That's what it looks like. Apparently it's very infrequent.

[B]

Infrequent.

[A]

Infrequent. What's no leather feel like?

[B]

I want to know.

[A]

Suspended in animation. Just float. One day it'll be sunny and in the high 50s. And the next day there's a blizzard. You know, Weather. Fucking weather.

[B]

High 50s. And then that's so cold.

[A]

Who cares? And then finally, one star. Emporia's government is corrupt. And corrupt is capitalized with two exclamation points. So they mean it. Whoever wrote this review must be. I don't know what review they're discussing because it's not a response to another review. They are responding to a review that happened and we don't know which one. Whoever wrote this review must be on the city or county commissioner's payroll. Law enforcement profile. Citizens who are economically challenged.

[B]

Okay. Yeah.

[A]

The broke, poor people. Yes. That's if you look at people who get fucked with by the. It's poor people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You wanna go pull over a Rolls Royce and deal with that guy and his lawyers and everything. You see an 87 Camry with a rusted out wheel well, you go, I can do whatever I want to that guy. Probably. I would think.

[B]

I'll bet he's speeding and he'll have to pay it.

[A]

That's right. I sincerely believe Emporia and Lyon county judicial system is the poster child for organized, AKA the Blue Mafia. He hates the cops in this town. People in this town. 24,000, 220. It's gone down a bit since the murder happened.

[B]

It's a good size for a little town.

[A]

Decent size. It's pretty decent here. Women. 52.2% are women, which is a lot for a bigger population. That's skewing big time. And that's because there's also colleges here. So more women enroll in college in general. And there you go. The median age is 29, which is telling you there's a lot of 20 year olds here. Family in this town only 44.7% married, and that is from the college. Everyone else is married with kids, except for the college people. We have 21% are single with children, which is higher than the national average. Race in this town, 64.4% white, 2.7% black, 2.5% Asian, 26.8% Hispanic.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Farming community. Yeah, here we go. 42.4% of the people are religious, which is less than I would expect in Kansas, but no, they're there. And the highest one out of everything, I assume it's actually a tie. We have a tie between Catholic and Methodist.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yes. I assume the Catholics are probably the 26.8% Hispanic. And then.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And then the rest. You got your Lutherans, your Methodists and that kind of thing. 0.0% Jewish, though. Unemployment pretty low under the average. Median household income here, unfortunately, also pretty low and under the average, which again, you got to factor college students into that. College kids and farmers who make college kids make nothing. So average. Our median household income here, 46,642, which is very low. Almost 25 grand below the national average. Cost of living here, 100 being regular average here. It's 74.6 percentage high for. Seems like it. The housing is really low, though.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Median home cost here, $137,700.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So the income, 46,000. Home cost, 137,000. It's like you're basically living in 1996. Essentially you live in the late 90s, which that makes sense because if you go to Kansas, it feels like it's about 25 years behind the rest of the country. So it makes sense. Even their prices are back there. You can just go there and pretend you're in the 90s. It's wonderful. That said, I think we need to find out how you could live here and where you could live. For all the people convinced they can't live anywhere else, we have for them the Emporia Kansas real estate report. All right. Average two bedroom rental here. You ready for this? This is. I think I paid this in 1997 for a place.

[B]

$870.

[A]

$570,000.

[B]

What?

[A]

I think I lived at Bell Ridge for that. In Phoenix, in a terrible area.

[B]

570.

[A]

570.

[B]

I haven't paid that. My God, I think I was paying 760 in 1997.

[A]

Yeah. I lived in at Belridge, which sucked when that's why it was five something. So Copper Palms. I remember that one is. I do know where that is.

[B]

It's a piece of shit.

[A]

House number one. Three bedroom, one bath, 1076 square feet it from the outside. The porch is kind of a little dipping in the middle there. There is some fucked up carpet in every goddamn room. A lot of wood paneling. But it's built in 1910 and it's $54,900. So plenty to fix up. Just had a price cut of five grand as well. Here's a three bedroom, two bath, 1311 square feet. It's a nice little blue house with a nice front porch. Big old porch and it's a nice house. Inside the flooring it's got looks like probably original wood floors. It was built in 1920. Like they look, but they're cool. You could do something with that. Tiles kind of look like it's from 1995.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Who cares though? Three bedroom, two bath, 1311 square feet. $109,000.

[B]

Unbelievable.

[A]

That's incredible. And then finally you want to stretch out. Corn has been good to you. Wheat has really paved the way for you. We have a four bedroom, six bath, T bowl for each and every b hole, everybody. 4,016 square feet. Big old house, lots of garage, lots of stuff. It looks great. It's only on 0.6 acres. Not a ton of land, but not bad. 739,000 bucks for that.

[B]

That's marvelous.

[A]

And that just had a $40,000 price cut. Yeah. In a place where people, you know, in a desirable area. Try finding that for 700 something thousand dollars. So there you go. Things to do. Oh, there's lots of them. We have the Lyon County Fair and Carnival and Rodeo. Yeah, it's all included in that. And the rodeo and rodeo. Enjoy classic fair fun with carnival rides, food, rodeos, tractor pulls, demolition derby, 4H events. And of course, more obviously, Fantastic. We have peewee and ranch rodeos. There's a barbecue competition, which. Okay, we got. I'll judge. Let's do it. CPRA rodeo. We got mutton busting, everybody. It's back. Mutton busting. Then they said buck, rumble and roll, which I think is some sort of livestock event. An antique tractor pull. Okay. Old tractors.

[B]

The old tractors.

[A]

A demolition derby for the tractors that don't do very well, I assume. Yeah, that's what. Fuck these tractors. A farm bureau kids tractor pull. Sounds dangerous. Sounds like kids driving tractors. Or tractors pulling kids I'm not sure.

[B]

Paddle, tractor.

[A]

E very dangerous. And then there's a truck and tractor pull. So if you want to see anything pulled by a tractor, this is your day. You get over here, you got a

[B]

hitch on it, bring it out, you're

[A]

going to see it all. And there's also, of course, the swine and poultry showings. The Sunday Sundays will be playing. That is Sunday like the day and Sunday like the ice cream. Sunday Sundays will be playing. There's also. What is this? Argonomy, forestry, wildlife, something. A woodworking course. And of course the mutton bustin rock rumble, buck rumble and roll will close out the evening because you can't follow that. Oh, that's.

[B]

Yeah, that's when get their asses kicked. Let's go.

[A]

Forget about it. There's also the Halfway to Everywhere music festival, which I assume because it's right in the middle of the country, but then they changed it and now it's called the Halfway to Halfway music fest. Which sounds like you're almost ready to get help for your alcoholism. Almost. You're halfway to the halfway house, buddy. You can almost do sounds.

[B]

Halfway to halfway. That's a quarter of the way.

[A]

That's a quarter of the way, babe. But yeah, there's that too. That said, I think it's time here. Oh, well. Crime rate. Forgot about that crime rate in this town. What we are interested in here, property crime, right at average. So right there, which you wouldn't expect in a small town in Kansas, but the college will make it like that because people piss in the streets and break windows and teenage boys fight. And that's behavior. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime, the heavy stuff. It's a little more than half the average, but about half the average. Not much. Yeah, so not too much here. So that's kind of how you get with a lot of these small college towns. A lot of property. Yeah, dumb shit happens, but little more. It's halfway. So that said, let's talk about some murder. What do you say, everybody? Let's do this. We have a wild one here. Okay, let's start Friday, November 4, 1983.

[B]

Few days after Halloween.

[A]

Few days after Halloween, the kids are still got piles of candy. I hope it's nighttime. And in a van is Marty and Lorna Anderson. Okay, Marty and Lorna. And we'll get way into more about them later. Now Marty and Lorna are driving a van and they have all four of their daughters in the car with them.

[B]

Oh, God damn it.

[A]

Poor Marty. Van full of kids. Lorna's driving, too. Yeah, so they're returning from Fort Riley or the Fort Riley area near Junction City, apparently. So they're on a very dark stretch of highway. This is these. In this area, there's no street lights. This is highway through nowhere. I mean, it's pitch black out there. It's Highway 177 in Geary County. Now, Lorna, who's driving, Marty's wife, says that she feels ill and thinks she has food poisoning or something. She's like, I gotta pull over. I am not feeling good. And when the driver's gonna throw up, you do need to pull over. You can't do that while you're driving. So she pulls over, gets out of the van, and walks kind of few steps into a nearby field to be sick. Basically, I'll go throw up in the wheat and then get back into this shit here. So Marty and the four girls are in the van. When she comes back, she tells Marty. She's like, yeah. He goes, are you okay? And she's like, yeah, I'm okay. But I don't know what I was doing. I had him in my hand and I threw up and I just lost control of my body or something. But I dropped the keys. I dropped the keys to the van in the field.

[B]

They might be sitting in your puke.

[A]

If not, they're sitting in a field in the pitch black in the middle of nowhere. So where the hell. That's rough.

[B]

And I can't move the car to position the headlights.

[A]

Nope. So if you don't have a little glove compartment, flashlight, you're in deep shit right now. So she said, can you help me find him? I can't find the keys. So if you'd like to go home, we need to find the keys. So Marty says, God damn it. Gets out of the car and, you know, he's like, why'd you take him out of the goddamn ignition? Why would you take him out of the. Okay, fine.

[B]

Why'd you shut it off?

[A]

Why'd you shut it off? It's November 4th. Keep the heat on. Go. You know what I mean? So either way, that's what she did. And so he gets out to search the roadside with her. And as he gets around the van and gets into the field and kind of goes, okay, where's the area? Out of nowhere, a masked man appears.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

You know how these fields are lurking with masked, you know, robbers and muggers? It's like Times Square in the 70s. I mean, you're gonna get rolled if you're walking around a wheat field at night.

[B]

They grow with the grain.

[A]

Yeah, that's how it works. Dude with a mask on. So this guy pops up out of nowhere and demands Marty's wallet. He's mugging him in a fucking field in the middle of nowhere. Which unexpected, I would say, to say the least. Marty hands his wallet over. Okay, you got that? You have a gun? Sure, yeah. It's yours. Now. The man ends up shooting him anyway. Just opening fire with.22 caliber bullets, peppering his body with shots.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Including at least one in the head, execution style. So when he went down. But let me make sure and put one in his head.

[B]

And the girls are in the car?

[A]

Yeah, the girls are 10ft away in the van. Watching this out of the van window. Whatever. You could see out of van window in the dark. But she saw muzzle flashes. I bet that she saw flashes. Now Lorna said that she thinks that this gunman. She said the gunman heard a car coming after this. There's another car on the highway. So he shoved her into a ditch, just threw her down, like shoved her, pushed her, and then grabbed Marty's wallet and ran. So that was that. Disappears into the wheat field into the night, which is. The cops are like armed robbers in a wheat field. The fuck are you talking about?

[B]

It's a wild. Yeah, the only reason gets sick. Imagine betting on people pulling over in

[A]

a middle of nowhere stretch. I mean, maybe they'll pull over here, maybe 50 miles down the road. I'm betting on right here. It makes no sense that someone would be waiting for that. So the cops are very, very, very suspicious of this whole thing. They're like, this is. Somebody had to have it out for them. Or this doesn't seem random. Like a random robbery, especially. That seems ridiculous. Then the next morning, November 5th, 1983. This is pre noon. We're talking 10:00am here. People still have bacon, egg and cheese on their breath here. Lorna is already on the phone with the insurance agent to ask how much money she's getting and how fast she can get the life insurance settlement. Which is strange. The agent is so unsettled by this because it's so not normal just to tip everybody out there if your spouse dies. Especially under weird, suspicious circumstances. Not like they had cancer for 10 years or something. Give it like two days. Just give it after the funeral. Give it a week. Don't call within 12 hours to do the funeral.

[B]

Well, you're gonna get that, but you're

[A]

Gonna need the money for a defense attorney if you call too soon. That's the problem. You can't call too soon. You got to give it some time.

[B]

You're going to need bail money.

[A]

You're going to need a lot. So the agent's so unsettled, he calls the Geary County Sheriff's Department to go. I don't know. Not for nothing, but I would look into this lady, because this. We never get people calling, literally the next morning about, when's my insurance? When do I get paid? This guy's barely dead for. They haven't even done an autopsy on him yet. She's already going, where's my money?

[B]

Term life. My husband's been murdered. I had nothing to do with it.

[A]

Could you send me a check right now? You know I'm innocent. So this is about $270,000.

[B]

Okay. That is a lot.

[A]

Especially in 1983. That's a shitload of money. That's a couple million. You know what I mean? That's a lot.

[B]

Yeah. Why? What's he so important for?

[A]

So. Well, he's got a good job, and we'll find out all about him. Now, they do the funeral, and the funeral is officiated by their pastor or minister or whatever you want to call it. The leader of the church they go to, it's a guy named Tom Bird. And he is the guy. He's the pastor and a good friend of theirs, and he officiates the funeral service. Okay, now a little bit about the Byrds to find out how they know the Andersons and how this all connects to itself. Now, Tom Byrd, like we said, the minister of the church, he has a wife named Sandra Lee. Sandra Lee Byrd. She was Sandra Lee Stringer. I'm sorry. Sandra Lee Stringer. And now she's Sandra Lee Byrd. She is Sandy. She goes by. She's born June 5, 1950, here. She grew up in Dallas. Or she's born in Dallas, but grew up mostly in Arkansas.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

Which might be the closest hospital to fucking Arkansas. It might be in Dallas for all we know. Because whenever we do Dallas for a show, which we'll be at, by the way, on October 3rd in Dallas, whenever we do that, we get a shitload of people from Arkansas come out to it. Yeah, they come to that. Nashville. Yeah. People from Arkansas expect that no one's coming there. So they know I gotta go to another state if I wanna see stuff. That's fine.

[B]

They went and got the comedy club James.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[B]

Little Rock.

[A]

That's terrific. That Just reminds me of the 30 Rock episode where they go to. Where they go down to get someone from real America. And it's isn't Jeff Dunham calling Liz Lemon a skank and shit. And then they realize that it's probably

[B]

how he really feels.

[A]

Oh, yeah. They go to the Chuckle Hut. So Sandy is 5 foot 1, short brown hair, you know, got a lot of laugh and a lot of personality. My kind of chick if, you know, if you've ever met my wife. Five foot one, dark hair and quite a bit of energy. So that's what I'm into. Yeah, I like that. She's the high school valedictorian as well. Real smart girl and real smart, sharp kid for Arkansas. I mean, valedictorian in Arkansas. Yeah. She was a solid B student. I mean, straight across the boards. No, I'm just kidding. Sandy was good stuff. She has a high school boyfriend named Thomas Paul Bird. Tom Bird. He's the guy who become the minister.

[B]

Tom Bird's been a man since high school.

[A]

Tom Bird since high school. He was a jock. He was a big jock in high school, which I don't think he played. He was like a track guy, which the track guys weren't like, popular. Jock.

[B]

Jock. I just run.

[A]

That wasn't it. You had to tackle somebody or like shoot a ball or hit something or that's when you were considered a jock.

[B]

Running doesn't take hand eye coordination.

[A]

No, it's just. Especially the distance running that he does. It just takes a sick mind, I feel.

[B]

It just takes masochism.

[A]

Yeah. To go, I'm gonna run 10 miles. It's a sick thought. That's sick. Unless, like, a leopard is chasing you. Why are you running 10 miles for? What?

[B]

How did you do that? Dear sophomore.

[A]

I don't like it. So he's born 1950 as well. Tom Bird, he's the jock. He's the son of a Lutheran minister, which is a big deal. And he will become a minister because of that. He ran distance. He got an actual scholarship here to the University of Arkansas Razorbacks there. He runs that much to run distance running? Yeah. So he competes there. He'll end up getting two graduate degrees in theology as well. In theology and divinity, some of it at the Lutheran Seminary in Springfield, Illinois.

[B]

So divine he's got a degree about it.

[A]

I'm a divine son of a bitch. He's also. Everybody says he's very magnetic. He's got a big personality. He can draw people in from. One of the people said. And this is from an A And E special. Tom was the type of person that he could draw people in and make friends with them real easy. People liked him, and he seemed genuinely interested in you, which is what everybody says about very good politicians. They always say that they can walk into a room and make the people he talks to or she talks to feel important.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that sort of thing. And that they were interested in your shit, too. Yeah, exactly. Bill Clinton was very good at that. I don't care. It's not political. Whatever you think of Bill Clinton, right or left, everybody said the same thing. He was very good at making people think he was interested. I don't know if he was or not, but they thought he was, and that's fine.

[B]

Yeah. The executive vice president at the company I worked for, there was 3,000 employees. The man knew everybody's name.

[A]

Yeah. That's a sickness. That's disturbing.

[B]

That's wild. I don't know how you can do that.

[A]

I don't know why you'd want to do that. I get that.

[B]

It's nice because I was a monster.

[A]

Yeah. It's always on his desk going, jesus, this guy again.

[B]

Thought we fired you.

[A]

Yeah, you're back. So they describe him as just kind of an innovative path. He's a young guy with energy, too. He's only young guy in his 20s and 30s.

[B]

He's got ideas and shit.

[A]

Absolutely. He did play football, but running distance track was what he got the scholarship for. So he played football in high school. She ends up going to Rice University in Houston.

[B]

Right?

[A]

No, Rice is everybody. They have a football team. Yeah. Oh, right. Unless they really suck, I assume it's everybody. So she goes off to Rice and then transfers to the University of Arkansas for her sophomore year because she missed Tom Sue. Oh, boy. So in college, Sandy earns a master's degree in mathematics. Oh, yeah. That made both of us go, oh, God. That made my asshole pucker. Like, oh, that sounds horrible. Imagine having to do that. Imagine if someone says, you have to get a master's degree in mathematics. I just hang myself. I'd be like, there's no way I'm doing that. I can't do that. No way.

[B]

I used to be really good at it, and I have since very evidently and clearly lost everything I knew.

[A]

You're talking about, like, seventh grade, though. This is. We're talking about.

[B]

We're talking about 30 years ago. Yeah.

[A]

We're talking about junior high. I'm talking about this broad went to a college and got a master's degree in mathematics. That's a whole different shit. Yeah.

[B]

It's so weird to say 30 years ago, right?

[A]

Jimmy's like, once they started bringing in letters and shit, I was out. But before that long, divide like a bastard, don't even fucking talk.

[B]

Well, I did algebra and geometry and like advanced stuff of that, but. But when they started doing calculus, I chose the opposite path of consumer math, James, where they taught you how to balance a check, addition and subtraction.

[A]

I remember that class where they were like, hey, the dumb debit and the credit column. Yeah.

[B]

The morons that need three credits to graduate. They're like, we'll let you do this.

[A]

This is fine. Here, you can pass this, right? I hope so. Practical shit. August 21, 1971, Sandy and Tom get married in Little Rock. Sandy's mother said that she never wanted her to marry him, but when she did, I took him to be mine. So it wasn't really into the marriage. But once she married him, then he's part of the family, basically. She feared that Sandy was marrying too young and would not reach her potential because she is going to be going for a doctorate in computer math. This is in the 70s, late 70s. This is a new field. This is a big deal, this computer math and all that kind of shit. Sandy's mom said, I always thought he was dull, which is the opposite of what everyone else thinks, which is funny. So he can turn it on and off is what that says to me. Sandy was bubbly. She had a cute personality. She was adorable then. So they're going to end up having three kids, by the way, over the course of the late 70s through the very early 1980s. They have three kids. In 1982, Tom and Sandy move from Arkansas to Emporia, Kansas. This is to take over a church called Faith Lutheran, which was a daughter congregation of the Missouri Synod Synod. S Y N O D. I don't know, some Lutheran congregation. So this is kind of a startup church spun off an established church. Think baby Billy in the Sears. We over there, we in that Sears. Think that that's over there in that Sears. Now that's kind of what he's doing, spinning off this church and opening it. And this is his. This is his shot, man.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

This is like you want to be a pastor and a hot shit pastor, you got to open up a church, make it hot, and then you can do anything you want from there. You're gold.

[B]

You can grow this spin off bigger than Cheers.

[A]

Totally. You can do it. It'll become Frasier and be huge. So before that they had their three children. Like we said, they lived in West Memphis, Arkansas for about two years, which is an awful place.

[B]

You don't want that.

[A]

You don't want that. He maintained a dual ministry in West Memphis and forest City while Mrs. Byrd here, Sandy taught math at Memphis State University. So they're doing a lot here. Now the church he went to in late 81, the Messiah Lutheran Church, they needed to build a new church to accommodate growth or divide and form a new congregation. So that's when they decided dividend new congregation, let this guy run it. So that's how it worked. So they needed somebody who can do this. They needed an energetic, magnetic pastor who could had the energy to both build and recruit and organize. And there's a lot consist. This isn't just show up every week, do your sermon, talk to people and go home. This is.

[B]

It's got to be.

[A]

You're building a business, essentially. Not essentially, you are building a business. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't care what the tax status of it. It's a goddamn business. If people show up in the door and leave with less money than they came, that's a fucking business, period.

[B]

If it weren't a business, they would not be worried about their congregation shrinking or growing.

[A]

No. They'd be like, well, whoever's here, they're here to hear the word and that's all that matters.

[B]

That's all that matters.

[A]

That's all that matters. Sandy also has an opportunity with the Emporia move. She's not usually the pastor's wives, especially in this area. Mild, just kind of reflecting in the glory of what their husband's doing, basically. And that's it, especially back then. Whereas she wasn't like that. She's not a behind the scenes type of person. She's got a personality and she's got a brain too, as we know. She's got a bachelor's, a master's, wherever she is. She's always teaching classes. She's having a career also, you know what I mean? And when she's working too. She has a daughter and two sons, but never stopped going. She'd have the kid go back to work, that type of thing. Here, Emporia State University she gets hired at to come here and she could teach math and also she could take her doctorate courses to get her doctorate. Great, which is smart. Now Tom said, we were excited that there was an opportunity for her to teach math and take courses and work on her master's degree in computer math. So that was really the deciding factor in us coming to Emporia was they both wanted to be there. Her family called her a perpetual student and teacher, is the way they put it. Someone who's very, very, really into math and really liking it and has a lot of enthusiasm for it and likes to show people and teach them and learn something. I don't have at all for math. I don't care. Housework and cooking and things like that were not her big. She didn't give a shit about that, didn't care. She did run church activities, raised the kids, she taught, she went to school. She did a lot at the same time. But people said dishes would collect in the sink, dust bunnies around the furniture, that kind of shit. She once told a neighbor, when I start cleaning, it's either because I'm moving or because my mom and dad are coming. Those are the only two times that's it. Otherwise, shit's a mess. With three little kids. Whoa, that's a lot.

[B]

That's dirty.

[A]

And Tom sucked at yard work and didn't like to do it. Basically, he let the yard grow to shin height before he'd mow it.

[B]

They're living in squalor.

[A]

They're living in. They're so busy. They're just like, don't have time for that. Living in squalor.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Another thing. She's very meticulous, Sandy, about a lot of things. Everything. The way she eats, the way she does her math, the way she does things. Seatbelt is a big deal to her. And this is 83. Before there was like, seatbelt laws.

[B]

Nobody gave a shit.

[A]

Yeah, and nobody cared. She was an early seatbelt adapter of everybody. I'm not moving till everyone has their seatbelt on.

[B]

Buckle up.

[A]

Buckle up, everybody.

[B]

Carr doesn't even give a shit at that point.

[A]

No beeping. There will be no beeping. Reminder. Cops let you cruise right by. It wasn't a law. I don't know about in Kansas, but I know in New York it was like 87. They made that law.

[B]

Well, it was after the adaption of shoulder harnesses because, like, the shoulder strap. Because if it was just lap belt, they fucking can't tell.

[A]

No, no. And the shoulder thing, I mean, that was around in the 70s. The shoulder thing, was it? Yeah, they had those in the 70s.

[B]

Yeah. I guess 70s cars had them.

[A]

Yeah, they had that. So anyway, even no matter what, she always put her seatbelt on. Everyone else had to, too. So the church grows, and it grows pretty fast. It's not bad. They bought a Blonde brick church from an assembly of God congregation and new part of Town. About 65 members are the ones they're starting out with. They're about kind of young professionals, basically is what they're going for. Because those are people that can be there for a long time. And if they have money, they can keep giving you money too. That's good. I mean, you can get the poor old ladies and everything. I mean, they're gonna be there, but they don't give you shit. They give you two nickels out of their change purse and they're gonna be dead in five years. So that's not the right.

[B]

That's the main point is that's a dying breed. You better get them while you can.

[A]

Well, it's the same thing as a restaurant. No restaurant goes, okay, we're gonna open up, we're gonna cater to the 75 plus crowd, really get them hooked on it. And then that's not what people do. They go, I want 29 year old people here with like a couple of kids who'll keep coming back for another 20 years. That's what you're looking for. One of the parishioners said they were ready for someone like Tom to come and whip them up and say, let's go. Yeah, let's build this church. So in about a year, the Faith Lutheran Church added a daycare program, softball and volleyball teams, Bible studies. They have a preschool. Tom coaches, he plays in the leagues, he counsels people, he teaches things. He's also on the Optimist Club. He's in the Optimist Club, like for

[B]

eyes or for like.

[A]

No, like optometrist club. Yeah. It just seems like basically a bunch of guys that play sports together, like old guys that play sports. I think it has something to do with the church. I'm not sure.

[B]

Got some hope involved in it.

[A]

A little bit of hope here. Hope that we can hit this jumper. So the church, because they play like a basketball team and a softball team. So the church fills up with people your regular standard brand Lutherans, but also other people who stop in, who aren't even Lutheran. Some of them just because they keep hearing about this great new preacher that's worth checking out.

[B]

Oh, we got some rumors.

[A]

This is Tom Bird. Boy, he really spits the word up there. And you gotta.

[B]

Bird's got the word.

[A]

Bird is the word, my friend. And it's happening. So, yeah, that's everybody stopping in. Now Sandy, she's also real busy. She's taking courses and teaching courses. She's a math Instructor. One of her colleagues here, a math instructor at Emporia State, said she was very intelligent, very energetic and on the go all the time. She did what a minister's wife had to do. She took care of the kids. She'd get one thing done and move right on to the next. They also said she really didn't have time for friendships with people. If you were friends with her, it was a quick. It just doesn't have time for it. She's got so much shit going on she has to prioritize where she puts her time.

[B]

I got dust bunnies, I don't got time for friends.

[A]

One person said in a couple of minutes you'd better talk to her and say what you want because she's going to be moving on. She's just busy. It's one of those things. The boss comes into the office and is walking through. Everybody's got, I got buh, buh, buh, buck, they're busy. He's going to go get on a helicopter now. So Tom's a big leader though. He's being a huge leader. This is, by the way, one of the more kind of religiously conservative and kind of docturn is a big deal here in the religious. The rigorous dogma of the whole thing. The real hardcore here as far as Lutheranism, get their shades of Lutheranism and this is toward one side where they're a little more hardcore about it. But this is the system Tom trained in now they expected, I guess the church was supposed to. Tom's church is thinking, well the main church is going to also help us here while we're going, they're going to help us grow because this is. We're a satellite of them. But in October 82, the new church broke from the old church. So he breaks from them and says, never mind.

[B]

He chose that.

[A]

Yeah. He said, we don't need you because we have all these people. We've built all this with no help from you. So what the hell do we need you for? By the fall of 83, which is down the road, membership had tripled by then.

[B]

We're kicking your ass. We don't need you.

[A]

Exactly. Don't need you. And Tom is the reason why. One of the church's elders said Tom could communicate with people. He could preach the word of God. He was an excellent teacher, a superior motivator and a virtually tireless worker. He just worked all the time. Apparently. He's got a 65 hour work week. He says it's 10 hours in administrative training, 10 hours in preparing and giving a sermon. 10 hours in outreach, 15 hours of teaching and 20 hours of counseling.

[B]

That is so much, so many hours.

[A]

That's how he broke down. Shit. That's a. You're a pussy. Try running a fucking goddamn. Try running three goddamn podcasts that you have to fucking do all the research for. Do that, motherfuckers. Hey, Tom, let's see if we give you a murder podcast that's three goddamn hours long and then another one that's an hour fucking 10 every week. And see how you break those hours down.

[B]

Yeah, see if he puts out a single fucking song over the next five years.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Putting out shit. So Tom taught a Bible class each Sunday. He taught teenagers also. Sometimes the birds together. Taught a class on family living. They formed a couples club and arranged potluck dinners. So they're really making the church branch out into social shit because if you can tie people in socially where all their friends are there now they have to keep coming to church because they won't have any friends if they don't. So often after a sermon, Tom would invite the congregation to hang out and stay and just chit chat for a while there. He would say, quote, sandy and I want to fellowship with you. We want to fellowship with you. Which sounds gross. That sounds like it's sticky. Yeah, let's get. Let's fellowship, the three of us. Me and my wife want to really fellowship all over you right now. It doesn't sound right.

[B]

Just you leave your.

[A]

Just you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or just her. One of the two. So new members keep coming and coming and coming. One church member said he seemed interested in everybody. He was warm and giving and unafraid to show emotion or hug. He often said he was as interested in the well being of those who weren't in church as the ones who were. Which is kind of what the point. I thought the point of Christianity was, but to care more about the people that aren't there. Not more, but at least as much as about everybody. I think that's what I always thought, but I don't know. He was just a regular kind of guy that had as many problems as the next guy. But he knew we were all loved and we were all forgiven. So he also. They said he was fun with the kids. He would have water gun fights with the youth group or arranging a mud football game for everybody. We're all gonna play a mud football game. And then he showed up to play in a tuxedo to be funny. That kind of shit. That's kind of funny. That Is kind of funny, I gotta say.

[B]

That's a good guy.

[A]

That's fun. Yeah, that is fun. Getting all muddy, getting up and then adjusting your bow tie would be pretty hilarious. While you have mud all over it

[B]

in a wedding dress might be funnier.

[A]

That could be great. That could be great.

[B]

Just elegant.

[A]

Although, so much easier to tackle with the train, you know what I mean? You just grab a whole. It's like dudes with the long dreads, they just grab them and pull them down by them. It's the same thing. So spring and summer. 83. There's some problems, or spring, I should say, problems with this. With Tom and Sandy, it's not about normal things, too. It's not about, oh, we don't have enough money, or your mother's always here or any shit like that. He's upset that Sandy's so ambitious. He's like, isn't it enough for you to just reflect my glory?

[B]

What? Calm down and stop trying to be so goddamn success.

[A]

Listen, listen. It's enough for the moon to just reflect the light off the sun. It doesn't need to be its own light source. So what the fuck? Why can't you be the moon?

[B]

It sits around being white and reflective

[A]

and in goddamn awe of me. Also. Sit and really be in awe of me. Really sit and go, wow, that Tom do that about four or five times a day. That's what I'd like. It's weird.

[B]

And if I'm not around, that thing disappears. So I'd like you to do the same.

[A]

Yeah. Tom wanted a more traditional pastor's wife. One that cares about the church and taking care of the home and all that. Meanwhile, she's a doctoral student who teaches math, so it's not that person. Friends would hear Tom complain that Sandy never has any time for him. And friends of Sandy heard Sandy say that she feared that Tom didn't love her anymore because she's always. She's not around where he wants her to be. So they're having just insecurities, I think, the two of them. Which sounds like they could just weird because they do tons of counseling where they counsel other marriages. You'd think they'd go, hey, we need to sit down and figure out time for each other. And that would be.

[B]

I mean, how dare you, when you can't figure your own shit out?

[A]

Exactly. Yeah. That seems to be pretty typical, though. Yeah, well, people that go into mental health tend to be people who've had mental health problems, or at least enough of an issue to get them to look into it, to find out more. Their family. Their mother was schizophrenic or something. That's kind of how a lot of people go into it. So I guess that would make sense.

[B]

I mean. Yeah. I had a therapist once that professed to me during a man. He professed to me in the session that he used to have a whacking addiction.

[A]

Like a sexual addiction?

[B]

Yeah, where he. Compulsive pornography was everything. And he wanted to know about my pornography habits. And I was like, this will be our last session.

[A]

Hey, not as bad as yours. That's the answer. How are you with pornography? Not that fucking bad. Anyway, so my mom.

[B]

I've never missed an appointment for it, I'll tell you that. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. I don't.

[B]

It's never a day. But let me tell you about this time I was raped. I think that's the bigger issue that

[A]

might be relevant here. More relevant, if I go into a goddamn drink and they start telling me about their problems, even for two seconds, it's over. I am paying, you asshole. Yeah, that's what friends do, a back and forth. Oh, I'll let them talk about their shit because I talked about my shit. This is not a. I'm paying you. This is a one way relationship you tell me about.

[B]

My friends and an insurance company are paying.

[A]

This is a selfish endeavor is what this is. And I'm fine with that. That I'm being. I don't need to hear about your shit.

[B]

No, don't upload this on me.

[A]

Fuck no. So the thing is, Sandy wants to know if Tom's bored. She tells more than one friend she was afraid Tom didn't love her anymore and that he'd grown distant and that all he does is hang out at that church and he spends too much time with his secretary and it's just awful. His secretary, by the way, is a woman named Lorna Anderson. Remember her? Yeah, the sick one from the van in the beginning. That's the church secretary, Lorna Anderson. She is Lorna Slater Anderson. Slater's her maiden name there. And then she'll also have some more names we'll talk about. She's born in 1953ish here, grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas, which we also did an episode on. She met Marty Anderson while he was training as a medical tech and she was at Hutchinson Community College. They got married in 1973. They had four daughters. The youngest were twins. The youngest two were twins.

[B]

He had two and got two more.

[A]

Got two more. He's like, shit, I thought we were having three. So by 83, the kids were. The twins were two. The middle kid was. Don't know, and the oldest kid was 8. Those are the kids in the van while he's being shot in a field right outside the window. Marty is Martin Kenneth Anderson, born December 8, 1948. He is from Wellington, Kansas, which is a small town outside of Wichita. He graduated from high school there and went to Southwestern College and trained as a medical technologist.

[B]

What even is that?

[A]

I don't know. I've never heard of that before. I've never heard of a medical technologist. But again, I guess that's the guy

[B]

that knows how to work all the shit, right?

[A]

I guess. But this is also in the late 60s, so jobs in the medical field are completely different than they are now. I mean, who knows?

[B]

That's the guy that knows how to use the machine that has that thing that goes up and down.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The thing is, I assume it does something with air.

[A]

So two weeks after graduation in June 1970, he has a biology degree from Southwestern College. He gets married. This is before Lorna. He marries a woman from Scott City. They separate seven months later, and his divorce is final in April of 1972. He just said they were incompatible. Now, when he. At that point, he was just emotionally shot. His brother, his younger brother Steve said he was emotionally wiped out by that. He ends up getting involved with some fundamentalist religious group at this point, which, when you mix early 70s with broken inside, you can go. There's so many places you could end up in a cult, in a commune. You could be a fucking Hare Krishna. There were so many places.

[B]

Isn't Westboro from Kansas?

[A]

Westboro, Arkansas? I think it is.

[B]

Oh, it is Arkansas.

[A]

I think it's Arkansas, yeah. The Westboro Baptist cunts there. So he gets involved with that. Marty turned into a fucking religious zealot after that. His brother said he didn't mind telling others they were condemned and going to the devil. He turned into one of those guys. Fun. No, that was it. No discussion. They said before that it was religion. He'd go to church or whatever, but he was a normal guy. He would swear and kept it to himself. Drink. If the guys were watching a football game, he'd have a couple of beers, stuff like that. But after that, they said all of that was gone. And this was like hardcore rolling in the aisle, speaking in tongues, fucking group, which. I mean, that's insane, but that's the type of thing he was doing Now, Lorna. Then he meets Lorna, who was Lorna Slater at the time. And Steve, his younger brother, says, I thought she was a winner. I thought and still think she was the best thing that ever happened to Marty Anderson at that time. She pulled him out of all of this. She's a hot blonde. That's all it takes, by the way, for a guy. It's funny, a guy can be rolling in the fucking aisles, speaking in fucking tongues, telling people they're going to a devil. If a hot blonde walks in and shows a little bit of cleavage, he's like, so can it. I put. Buy you a drink? Fucking. Our brains are not wired to withstand that. You know what I mean?

[B]

It's not so bad after all.

[A]

Not so bad. Especially in your 20s. It's just not wired to fight that. We can't resist it. She was sweet, she's loving. She's also slender and pretty attractive. She's not like drop dead gorgeous, but she's an attractive blonde chick here. She was 20 at the time, too. So they get married in June of 1973. Marty's 24, she's 20. He's a big guy, too. 6 2. A stocky big guy. He was distrustful at first, but she won him over. Marty's brother said, in very simple terms, she was one of the very important stabilizing factors in bringing him back to being a normal guy.

[B]

What did that ex wife do, man?

[A]

Wow. What did this woman's vagina do? It must be magic, for Christ's sake. There's that, too.

[B]

That pushed him that way.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Needed this one to bring him back.

[A]

She broke his ass, man. Holy shit. So they had their first of four daughters at that point, pretty early on. And he loves his kids. Marty's super into his kids. And now Lorna, as much as she's a sweetheart and as much as she is really into Marty and all that kind of thing, she's also got a. I don't know if I want to use the word. I'm just. Reputation is the best way to put it. She's got a bit of a rep around town and around for what? Everywhere? Well, for being very friendly. A very friendly young lady.

[B]

She's a little sweetly slutty, a little bit.

[A]

Now, again, she's 20 and we're talking late 60s, into the early 70s.

[B]

Yeah. Free love.

[A]

This is not abnormal. This is.

[B]

And it takes a while for it to get to Kansas.

[A]

Well, that's the thing. Yeah. It takes a long time to get there. Like we said, this is actually fast sex. Got there quicker than music would or fashion, you know what I mean?

[B]

Pussy travels fast.

[A]

Pussy moves is really what I've heard, and I've been told it's the lubricant

[B]

that pushes pussy move.

[A]

God damn it. So that's how they are going here. She's got a bit of a reputation, but like I said back then, free love mixed with the pill just came out. So women are feeling their empowerment. Oats. And they're like, well, guys go fuck around and go fuck around, too. So Lorna takes advantage of that once they move to Emporia, I guess. There's a bunch of players on Marty's hospital softball team here.

[B]

She's doing this after marriage.

[A]

Oh, way after marriage, too. She has a rep going in, but he thinks I'm getting married, so that'll calm right down. But her rep continues. In 1977, it was their first summer in Emporia, and Lorna, basically, this is what the Kansas City Star, the way they put it, it wasn't long before Lorna had become the post game prize. She didn't always go to the winner. She just went to whomever was interested.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

They're just the softball team. Passes around his wife like a fucking. Like a goddamn joint. This is crazy. Wow. One of the players said it got to be a standing joke. Which one of us that night was Lorna going to hit on? Many of these were men that Marty worked with.

[B]

Okay, so she hit on them or she's actually fucking them.

[A]

If they're open to it.

[B]

If they're willing. Wow.

[A]

Yeah, if they're into it. One of them said, quote, I think, oh, this is that guy's wife. Vicki said, I think the fact that she hit on the men bothered the men more than it did the wives and girlfriends. Now this Vicky said she took to watching Lorna at parties out of curiosity. Really? She said you'd watch her work the room. Out of curiosity. She said it was almost like Lorna was trying to compensate for something. But I think the fact that she felt attractive to men made her feel good. Yeah. I think you just broke down her psychology. Pretty classic there. Yeah. She's a typewriter.

[B]

She's a lady from Boogie Nights.

[A]

Yeah. You'd hear all this and he'd go, where's your dad? What happened? You know what I mean? What happened? I mean, something happened.

[B]

I told you, you're ugly.

[A]

Yep. Was he not around? Did he do, like, something happened, obviously, here. So now he becomes Marty becomes chief medical technologist at Newman Memorial Hospital. He's also an army reservist. He's a board member of the Optimist Club and known as a big practical joker, by the way. Also. Oh, which sounds fun. What he does is he'll, like. He'll have, like, a guy come over the house and then have his wife hit on him. And then he, like, pops out of a garbage can, and he's like, ha, ha, Gotcha. And she's like, you know, got her shirt half off. Get that out of your mouth right now.

[B]

Spit that out.

[A]

So, come on. Slaps, dicks. You know how many dicks I've had to slap out of her mouth? It's ridiculous. When Marty arrived at Newman Memorial County Hospital in 76, he's the newly appointed chief medical technician, and he said the lab was a fucking shithole. It was understaffed and shittily equipped. So he added staff, bought new equipment, got the administration to give him what he needed and all that kind of thing. Yeah, he got to kind of build this program up here. He's a good, stable job, and he needs that. He needs stability. Basically, after what happened with that first wife. He wants no ups and downs. He just kind of wants stability because that. That broke him. He likes a stable home life and, you know, all that kind of thing. Big guy, like we said. Humorous, though sometimes. They said his practical jokes went a little too far. That was another thing. Just a little too far. No, real. You know, it kind of hurt people's feelings sometimes, but a little too long. Yeah, he just thought it was funny. But he was also in the army, and in the army, going too far is kind of. That's what you do. Guys just go too far. That's the whole point. The farther you go, the crazier the practical joke is, you know, until somebody

[B]

gets shot in the foot and everybody's laughing.

[A]

Yeah. And that's how they would laugh. I saw this video of this guy. He gets on, like. This guy's got a motorcycle, and it's like a mini bike, but it's not a mini mini. It's like a mid mini. And he's like, I could pop a wheelie on this thing. And the guy, his friend's like, you can't do it. Doesn't have enough power to pop a wheelie. I don't think. I don't think you can do a wheelie. Just don't do it. And these guys are like, 19. And this guy goes, I could. I couldn't. Just to see what kind of power he has. He's standing off of it. He hits the throttle and stands straight up. And then he chases after it, tries to get on it and immediately crashes into a wooden fence where he flies through the fence and is completely off the screen. He is through a fence into the woods. Over here. His friends go, now, are you okay? None of that unless he's dead. We'll keep laughing is basically what guys do. That's what's fun about being a guy. So Marty, when he would be at the hospital, they said sometimes he'd be a little too army sergeant, where he would kind of keep things a little too regimented and a little too deep of a voice with people sometimes. Now, the optimist club. That is how Tom and Marty first crossed paths. Tom Byrd and Marty Church, softball, optimist basketball, things like that. So that's how they cross paths and that's how this all happened. Now Marty and Lorna have their own problems. Lorna told people that Marty could be cruel to her. She said that he drank and was at times violent toward the children. Now, she doesn't say this till later, and there's possibly a good reason for it. No one knows if this is true. The children never describe abuse. Obviously the two year olds wouldn't describe anything, but the eight year old would know of abuse. And they never said there was any abuse when asked about it.

[B]

And nobody witnessed it.

[A]

Absolutely. A lot of people both related to them and just people they know think that she completely is full of shit. Basically. They have a lot of things going on here. Lorna, in the late 70s and early 80s, entered psychiatric wards in Emporia or Wichita hospitals multiple times. 3 times.

[B]

Checked in herself.

[A]

Checked in? Yeah, was checked in. I don't know who put her there, but was checked in. She never stayed more than a week. And we don't know what kind of therapy she got, but three different times she felt it necessary to go check herself into the hospital. Or she was put in the hospital by I don't know who.

[B]

So a week is a good stay.

[A]

A week is a decently long stay. Now, Lorna hits on everyone and that does not stop.

[B]

No.

[A]

The one guy, David, from the softball team said that he remembers sitting outside on the Anderson steps with another ballplayer from the team. So it was Lorna and these two guys. He said Lorna sat down between them and said, if you guys were gonna have an affair, how would you go about it? She didn't mean with each other, by the way, which is my first thought was, well, if I was gonna cornhole Dave, here's How I'd start. Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Don't get me wrong now. I mean, Dave's an attractive man and all, but, you know, how do you

[B]

let him know that you want to taste it?

[A]

Yeah. And he said sometimes she made her moves with Marty in plain sight. He said at a party one night. This is a different David. A colleague of Marty's and another softball player said Marty was so smashed, he was dropping beer bottles in the trash compactor and getting off on hearing the crunch.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

He's gonna have problems with that later. I hope not a garbage disposal. That's the trash compactor.

[B]

The trash compactor, yeah.

[A]

It looks like a dishwasher. Yeah.

[B]

I don't like how they said getting off, but all right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He's like doing that in a friend's house. Or is it his own?

[A]

I think it's his own house. I think it's his own house. Yeah.

[B]

Still fucked up. Yeah, that's a problem.

[A]

They said across the kitchen, Lorna started pawing another partier. And then Lorna and the guy she was pawing on left and came back 20 minutes later. That's not good. That's not great. She hit on Marty's friends from high school. Old friends. Guy named Larry. Larry remembers watching Marty and Lorna at class reunions. Early on. They seemed to be getting along. This is great because at a class reunion, you only see snapshots.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You don't have to see the every day. It's like if you gain a weight, you don't realize it. If you're gaining it every day, but then someone hasn't seen you in six months, they go, what the fuck happened to you? Jesus.

[B]

Or 20 years.

[A]

Or 20 years. She said. They seemed to be getting worse as it went on. This person said, at the 10 year reunion, I noticed a little tension and almost some indifference on Marty's part. And at the 15 year reunion, I could sense a lot of tension. It wasn't indifference on his part. It seemed more like frustration. So now it's growing.

[B]

Marty knew about to go to your high school reunion.

[A]

I've never even thought about going to a high school reunion.

[B]

For what?

[A]

For what?

[B]

Why?

[A]

Fuck them all. Fuck every single one of them. Marty knew about all this shit, by the way. He knew about Lorna and how she was. And he didn't really talk about it with a lot of people. But one friend said that Marty confided in him that Marty once found his wife and some other guy in the bathroom of their own home. She was in the tub and he was just sitting next to her, talking. She's a kid. Yeah, she's in the fucking tub. You walk into the bathroom and your wife's tits are hanging out. Bubble bath bathing. And there's just some dudes sitting on the toilet chatting with her. That's going to be uncomfortable. And Marty just turned around and left the house rather than going, hey, scumbag. He's like William H. Macy in fucking Boogie Nights, you know what I mean? He's just like, oh, there she goes again. It's what's going on.

[B]

Me, myself and Irene just getting fucked over at every turn.

[A]

Everything. So a childhood friend here, that Larry guy, said a couple of times he mentioned to me where he had heard some things, that she was involved with someone else. But he didn't want to believe it. I think Marty so much wanted to build a good family that he shut out what he didn't want to see. Yeah, Jesus. So 81 is when they had the twins, like we said. When he learned that she was going to have twins, he was very excited. He was walking around showing everybody the sonogram, going, look at my twins. Hey, I got twins. Problem is he wasn't always so sure they were his twins. That's the issue.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

Yeah, that's what's not great. Lorna, one of the guys Lorna talked to and knew Lorna well said that Lorna tended to have steady side guys that she would see on a regular basis. Most of the time it was businessmen from late 20s to early 40s. So she really doesn't have a big type.

[B]

That's Wenda.

[A]

The only thing that a lot of them have. Yeah, right. The only thing a lot of them have in common is a lot of them are associated with her husband. That's the main thing that they have have in common.

[B]

Know him?

[A]

Yeah. This one guy said she had her standards mostly she wanted good looking guys. I just got the impression that she wanted to feel needed to feel loved by someone because she wasn't getting any love at home. That's one of the guys she was banging. Yeah, I don't know if that's it. I don't think, I don't think you. Anyone could love her enough to make her not do this. That's the thing. Loving her more isn't going to help.

[B]

All day, all day. It doesn't matter. She needs to be told by somebody

[A]

else in a minute exactly what more people. Sure he likes me, but what about other people? Does everyone like me?

[B]

What about the rest of them?

[A]

What about everybody else.

[B]

A billion people on this planet are

[A]

all the dicks hard. Unless they are, then I'm not doing my job. It seems like what she's doing. So summer of 1982, Denise Cohen, she moves into the Anderson home to help Lorna care for the children. Livin Nashville while Marty was away for a month at a reserve summer camp. Oh, Christ, imagine what Lorna is going to be doing. Wow. Lorna's boyfriend at the time was at the house frequently and sometimes even stayed the night. The balls to have an affair. Stay the night. Wow. They said that he would try to sneak out early in the mornings, but that one of the mornings, one of the daughters walked into her mother's bedroom before he left.

[B]

Why would you stay the night?

[A]

You're gonna sleep over, get the fuck in your car and go.

[B]

So gross.

[A]

In someone else's house with their kids there and shit. Why would you want to. This guy's a scumbag.

[B]

You've got your ass where that guy sleeps. Come on, man.

[A]

Don't want that shit. Now, Denise said, quote, I told her I thought it was bad for the kids what she was doing. And, quote, she didn't care. She's like, yeah, but it's very good for me. When Marty returned from camp, Denise said that she just told him he'd have to move downstairs and that she didn't want him in her bedroom anymore. So he moved downstairs. Denise said. I asked her one day, why don't you just divorce him? And she said, I couldn't do it. I couldn't take care of them myself. Meaning four kids.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Now, Marty told his friends around this time that he didn't love Lorna anymore, but he couldn't afford to leave. He said he didn't have the money to maintain two households, and he feared how little he would see his daughters as well. Yeah. So they stayed together. Neither of them want to be in this marriage, but they stay together anyway. One time they had one of the kind of last gasp efforts of being a family was they tried to become active in church. Maybe we'll go to church and that'll get us going. They joined a new and growing congregation, Faith Lutheran, with their minister, Tom Byrd. That's how they get in here. The bird is the word, and he is here. So. January 1983. Lorna here meets with her friend. Jan is a woman she confides in a lot. Jan Meade. They had drinks one day at the Ramada Inn. Meet me at the Ramada Inn for some drinks. Not something anyone has said in 30 years. I guess Jan hired Lorna for an American Heart association fund drive, and that's how they got together.

[B]

Women used to do that a lot in the late 80s, and I mean through the mid-80s, too, where they just go to happy hour for drinks after a week. And it's not near as common anymore, is it?

[A]

No. Now they go to each other's houses and drink copious amounts of white wine. That's what they do now. They figured out it's cheaper to drink at home and wouldn't get bothered less by creepy guys. Coco's, the diner, had a full bar. God damn. That's what I love about east coast diners.

[B]

Full bar.

[A]

It's just hilarious to walk in and go see all these liquor bottles. Coco's is a weird place to go drink.

[B]

And Caro's was that one. I think so.

[A]

I don't know. Coco's is the one.

[B]

Coco's was the one, though. That was her thing.

[A]

Coco's is where, like, old people go to eat a hamburger and a piece of pie. And a piece of pie. It's like Village Inn or something. It's a weird place to have to get drunk all the time.

[B]

Bizarre.

[A]

So Jan said their conversation drifted from work to men. And Jan said, she told me she was sleeping with her hairdresser and that she no longer. And that she never really loved her husband, is the way she put it. Never even really loved Tom.

[B]

What was a straight hairdresser to seduce?

[A]

Straight hairdresser. A lot of straight hairdressers back then. My family's full of them.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Yeah, it happens a lot and. Cause, I mean, it was one of those things where you go, everybody's always gonna need a haircut.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and you do it. So in the time it took for, like, from January to February. Now she's not into the hairdresser anymore. Here Lorna isn't. Now she tells Jan, I'm not in love with my hairdresser anymore. That's over. What I am in love with is my pastor.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Tom Bird. She said that she and Tom were taking little trips to Topeka and Wichita to spend afternoons in motel rooms together. Yeah, this is a great fucking lying quote for a minister. He's really good in bed for a minister. I mean, he's not like an NFL, you know, outside linebacker. That's obviously much better. But for a minister, Not a bad light.

[B]

He's not really throwing long strokes, but they're consistent. Yeah.

[A]

No. And he obviously won't go down on me because vaginas are scary. And the Lord said, no, but other

[B]

than that, he knows because he doesn't have a lot of depth. He grinds the pelvis, and that's the thing.

[A]

He gets in as much as he can and really works the outside.

[B]

Really works.

[A]

Yeah, just get circular motion. That's how it works there. So that's fucking crazy. So now Jan gets roped into this. One day in March 1983, she called the home, Lorna's home, expecting to talk to Lorna. And Marty picked up the phone, and Jan said, can I talk to Lorna? It's Jan. And Marty said, well, Lorna is in Wichita meeting with you, isn't she? So Jan scrambled to cover him. Oh, well, yeah, we were supposed to get the. I thought that. And then, yeah, I'm here and I'm waiting on her. Yeah. Had to figure something out. The next day, Lorna called Jan back and said, sorry about that, but I need an excuse because me and a friend spent the afternoon in a motel. Good Lord. She told Jan that she was afraid, by the way, that one of her daughters had seen her kissing Tom. So she was scared that the daughter was going to spill it to Marty. April 19, 1983. Lorna arrives late for a meeting with Jan. All right. Jan brought her coffee and tried to be consoling. And Lorna complained that her home life was worse than ever and that her love for Tom was just so deep, she couldn't take it anymore. She said, I know that sounds really terrible, but sometimes I just wish that something would happen to Marty and Tom's wife so we could just spend the rest of our lives together.

[B]

This person.

[A]

How many others, Lady Crisscross. You know what I mean? You could also do that with paperwork. That's the other thing that could work.

[B]

Yeah, There is something that could happen to them. They could be served. That's it.

[A]

And then it's a little uncomfortable for a while, and everybody scrambles for rent for a minute, and then it's fine. After a few years, you'll figure it out. So four days after that, Lorna was home talking on the phone, unaware that her new babysitter, Esther Aldreti, had come up from the basement and was standing behind her, politely waiting for her to finish so she could get paid for the day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Esther overhears Lorna say that she couldn't. Wow. Couldn't wait for Marty to die so she could spend his money. Not even so I could be with somebody else so I can spend his money. That's gross. That same month, Lorna, crying, makeup all over her, ran through a hall at Newman Memorial at the hospital and ran into one of Marty's, David Workman, one of his work friends that we talked about. He noticed bruises around her eye and cheek and said, did you get in a car wreck? And she said, no, Marty's been beating me.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Okay. Then they went to her van in the parking lot and talked for about an hour. And as David said, I was probably the only person in the lab that would talk to her at that time because of how shitty she's been to Marty. She asked this guy if people had heard about her affair with Danny Carter. And we'll get into that. Her former hairdresser, this guy said, I said, yes. Everybody knew. It's a small town.

[B]

Yeah, we've heard.

[A]

You can't be in this town and fuck a bunch of people and not have everybody know about it. You just can't do that.

[B]

We all get our hair cut by him. He's been telling us all.

[A]

Yeah, and he's really excited about it, too. Like he. In real animation. So the Andersons were. He said, everyone talks about it all the time. You're fucking around. So they said. This guy said we had to get our daily dose of Anderson's. Like, we had to get our dose of General Hospital. The soap opera. It was the ongoing human, live soap opera. They could watch this mess going on. So she said to him, well, if Marty doesn't stop beating me, he's gonna get a dose of his own medicine. She tells this guy who works with Marty that Danny, the guy I'm banging, and his brother Darryl were gonna beat Marty up if he didn't stop. She said if Marty doesn't stop, they are going to drug Marty, then run him off the road, or they'll even shoot him. I'm not sure yet. Okay, so this David Workman said, half of me didn't believe it, the other half wasn't sure. And so he just calmed her down and kind of shifted the conversation, and he got out of the van and drove away. And they never talked about it again.

[B]

Find out after these messages.

[A]

We'll be right back. So financial issues here. The couple is relying almost exclusively on Marty's salary from the hospital and money from the Army Reserves. Basically, as a reserve captain, he's earning about $4,000 a year, so not much from the reserves. And his hospital pays about $33,000, which isn't terrible in the early 80s.

[B]

You can live on that sub 40, but he's doing fine.

[A]

Not bad, but it's not enough, especially with four kids and twin daughters and all that kind of thing. So payments were about $800 a month on their house at the time, which is expensive for back then. And they had the Ford van for all the kids. That was $252 a month.

[B]

Oh, Jesus.

[A]

So that's $10.50 right there, just in house and car payment.

[B]

That's before we have a sandwich.

[A]

That's before a goddamn thing, A diaper, a fucking, a Cheerio, a Teddy Graham. Any of it is purchased 80s van.

[B]

Imagine the gas that thing drinks.

[A]

Oh, it's guzzling. So they had to borrow money from family. They decided to cut up their credit cards. They took out a loan from the bank. They would write checks even if their account was overdrawn. In May of 83, they overdrew their checking account 20 times. 20 times. Each overdraft is 10 bucks, by the way. So $200 just in overdraft fees. They couldn't afford the shit they were buying. There's also other people who don't exactly love Lorna here. One woman who worked with Marty said that everybody was always comforting Lorna. And she used the word. Put some stank on the word comfort. Like they were like.

[B]

Like she doesn't need it.

[A]

Like they were concubines for the Japanese fucking military or something. Like comfort women. Like, that's almost like the way she put it. Yeah. They said that there were women in Emporia who would not go to any parties at the Andersons might be at because they were afraid that Lorna would come after their husbands.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

If Lorna was around, you kept your husband tight. Because she'll go blow him out in the parking lot. And you better watch out.

[B]

Imagine. Imagine being so.

[A]

No, Nope.

[B]

I just mean, like, the lack of trust, it also takes two. Do you know what I mean?

[A]

I can deal with that.

[B]

A woman coming onto somebody if he doesn't give a shit about that. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. But these wives are like, he's only human. His dick isn't gonna suck itself. Which is a crazy thought because, yeah, he doesn't have to go with her, but they're afraid. They're afraid. Yeah. I believe my husband's an okay guy, but she's coming on to him. I don't know.

[B]

Who knows? Everybody's had their dick sucked by her. Maybe she's that good.

[A]

Maybe she's amazing. And also, who knows what kind of confidence these are, like fucking Kansas farm women. So who knows if they're like they're feeling a little less than or something like that. So another here, Esther the babysitter, said that she described being sent to the basement with the kids while men came and went upstairs. Yeah, what, like a parade of them. She said a lot of different men would come into her home. She would send the kids and myself into the basement. And I didn't think anything about it because I thought it was normal. You know, I'm the babysitter. This is like a teenage babysitter. By the way, another woman in Emporia, a grown up, said she had several boyfriends, as I understand and I can't condemn a person, but she was kind of a lady of the town. And then said, can I say that? Is that all right to say in an interview, a lady of the town? She put it as, as euphemistically as possible for a human being to put it. And she's like, is that okay to say?

[B]

So hard not to call her a whore.

[A]

Yeah, I was either going to call her the lady of the town or the best dick sucker around. I couldn't tell which one. But is this. That's the better way.

[B]

Lady of the town.

[A]

Lady of the town? No. God no. So Marty, by the way, while all this is going on, is really taking a liking to Tom Bird, inviting him to play basketball on Thursday nights and eventually sponsoring Bird into the Flint Hills Optimist Club. It's a social club. It seems like they played volleyball and softball together through the spring and summer of 83. Sometimes after softball, Tom would come by Marty's house for a post game beer some Sundays. Tom conducted confirmation classes at the Andersons homes even. And they were studying to become members even when they were, you know, they're just, you know, it's all happening basically here.

[B]

At large.

[A]

Yeah, at large. So Now Lorna Early, 83, how she ended up working for the church is they needed money as we know, so she took a part time job as a church secretary there with Tom as her boss. She was busy and the church was so busy that they needed the secretary. It's about 15 hours a week, small job, but yeah, here she is. Lorna Anderson's going to do it. We figure that Lorna and Tom probably met at a softball game first summer of 82, we're thinking because they played in the leagues together. And then they must have met again when Lorna enrolled her daughter in the preschool that the church offered. But apparently their relationship of any kind didn't really happen. Until Lorna was hired in 83 as the church secretary. That's when it happened. All right, so there's rumors all over town, boy. Holy shit.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God. Everyone's paying attention to Tom. And it doesn't take long before people start going, she's a little blonde secretary he's got is always right next to him. That is just.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

And they'll give each other a little elbow and that's it. One here, a senior pastor at the Mother Church or the sister church of theirs took Tom aside for a word, about to tell him what people are saying, you know, hey, people are saying, just to let you know, you know, make it look like you're not so close to it.

[B]

People are talking. Boy, are they talking.

[A]

Absolutely. And they said, so are the ministers. Everybody's talking. At one point, they discussed with him, maybe Lorna should just resign to keep this out of everybody's mouth. And in the end, they said, okay, we'll make a compromise. Lorna can keep her job, but only be at the church during working hours. Don't have her hanging around there and doing all that just when she's working and leaving, and that's fine. And Tom assured the church there's nothing improper going on, that Lorna had a troubled marriage. And he said, a tendency to, quote, spiral down. She's in a bad marriage. She has a tendency to spiral out. And he said, I'm the shepherd. This is what a shepherd's supposed to do to get him back into the flock here. So help and mentor her with my penis.

[B]

So I take down my zipper and help her. Give her a nice landing place.

[A]

She spirals down to her knees real good is what she. She does.

[B]

God damn.

[A]

March 83. Lorna is telling Jan Mead, her friend there, that she and Tom were involved. She used Jan as an alibi, like we said, saying that, you know, I'm going on business to see Jan. And really she's meeting Tom. She said that he's pretty good in bed for a minister and all that shit. And also telling her that, you know, I wish something would happen to my husband and his wife so we could just be together. Friday, July 15, 1983. Sandy gets a promotion at the college.

[B]

Great.

[A]

And she celebrates. She's very happy. They're going to go out that weekend and celebrate her and Tom. She's excited about it. So the next day, Saturday, July 16, 1983, she has word of her promotion. She's going to have more classes, more time in front of Students. And this is exactly what she's looking for in her career. Career. So they go out to dinner and a movie. They get home around 9:30, which means they must have been eating at 5 o'. Clock. How old are these people? So the babysitter's there around 9:30. When they get home, it's the teenage babysitter and she's getting ready to leave. Sandy says, can you stay a little bit longer? Stick around, Stick around. And she says, I guess so. Sandy grabs a bottle of wine and a bottle of bourbon from the house and tells the sitter, we'll be back by 10:30. And then they get in the car and drive off with the liquor.

[B]

We just need an hour.

[A]

Just need an hour to really tie one on and get fucking in the car. We're gonna do shots. Yeah. So now Tom, this is what he says happened from there. They went back to the church and made a drink. Then they went to a private club where they had two more drinks each. Maybe it was the Optimist club, I'm not sure. They left the club around 10:45 and returned to the church where Sandy drops Tom off. And he said she told him that she was going to drive to her office at Emporia State to work, saying she'd only be gone like 45 minutes to an hour. She had a couple of things she had to do and straighten out at 11 o' clock at night after drinking on a Saturday night, by the way. So he says between 11:15 and 11:45, he went jogging, as one does. Now, this story, he does jog five miles a day at least because he's a college distance runner and he's never stopped doing that. So he's always running. So that's not abnormal. It is abnormal to go for a run at 11:15 on a Saturday night after you've been drinking after a day.

[B]

Drinking.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. He said he jogged about 2.6 miles because they knew the route he went. Okay. Sandy wasn't back by midnight, so he drove past the university and didn't find her, didn't see her car, so he started making calls. Now, his calls are in a real weird order of how you do this. Okay, now you are, Tom. You went home, the babysitter's there with the kids. She went off to work. You're at the church, you drive past the university, you don't see her car. There's. Who's the. What's the first place you call home? Home. Is she home yet? See if she answers the phone or if the babysitter's still there. He calls the police first. Oh, before he even tries to find out where the fuck Sandy is, he calls the police. Then that's around midnight. Then an hour later, 1am he calls the babysitter to ask whether Sandy had come home or not.

[B]

What did he do in the interim?

[A]

Sat in the parking lot, that's what I'm saying. And there's an hour of I called the cops and maybe she's home now.

[B]

I'll call.

[A]

It's weird. Very, very fucking strange. So the next morning, 7-17-83. Sunday morning. Big day for everybody here for the church.

[B]

It's a big day.

[A]

Yeah, it's a.

[B]

More people, for Christ's sake.

[A]

This is payday today. People are going to church. But there's a couple who's not going to church that day. They're instead going canoeing, which sounds more fun, going to the Cottonwood river to go canoeing. They approach the launch area near the Rocky Ford bridge, which is a narrow wooden decked iron bridge built in the 1890s. You would not go over this for all the fucking money in the world. If we were driving somewhere and had to pass this, we would be going around 40 fucking miles to get around this bridge if we had to.

[B]

I don't care how long it takes.

[A]

Wood.

[B]

I'm not crossing that in a vehicle.

[A]

Wood, not a bridge. A wood fucking bridge. It's an iron bridge too, but it's narrow and it's creepy looking too.

[B]

It's 130 years old.

[A]

Yeah, I mean at the time it was not even 100 years old, spring chicken. It was only like 90 at the time. So it sits on a gravel road about 8 miles southeast of town at the bottom of an S curve made of two hard 90 degree turns. So there's a lot going on there. So the canoers here, they are canoeists. I don't know which one is correct. Before they can put the boat in the water, they see a couple things making them pause. One is a station wagon, a Peugeot by the way.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

78 Peugeot overturned and partly submerged in the river.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

Which isn't. That's not where that goes.

[B]

No.

[A]

So then they see in the shallows just downstream, the body of what looks like a woman floating face down in the shallows.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

Again, not good. So this is a guy named Brian Fletcher, one of the canoe people. He spots this body here. It's a single lane steel bridge under it. And he drives to the trailer of Mark Gibbons, a friend of his nearby because no one has a cell phone and they call police. The officer comes and they discover that it's Sandy laying out there. That's Sandy's car and that's Sandy floating. So an officer comes to tell Tom Sandy's been found. They don't say where, they say because he called last night saying my wife's missing. They said, we found your wife. Okay, that's it. That's all he's been told. He said, what was she doing out there? We never go out there.

[B]

Where?

[A]

Where sir? Exactly out there. And they're like, we haven't told you where there was. We didn't even say where we found her. So that's an odd reaction. He say that that's very strange. So where she was found here, one of the cops is a guy, a highway patrolman named John Rule. And he's been in the whole police force for about 14 years. And highway patrol guys do a lot of car accident investigations. They do a lot of that shit. He's had over 700 that he's investigated.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Very experienced guy every day. And he said he's never seen anything like this accident before in 700, which is a bad sign.

[B]

Why?

[A]

Well, he said it didn't seem like an accident. He said there's the car. It's a white 78 Peugeot station wagon. It's beached on its back in the shallows where the low and rushing Cottonwood river passes under the Rocky Ford bridge. And then in a foot deep eddy in front of the car is the body of Sandy. So it's very strange. And Sandy should have, apparently she should have been in church this day and all that, but instead she's face down in a river and it's a little bit odd. So he sees some things he doesn't like here, a couple of things he doesn't like. First of all, gravel. There's some gravel things he doesn't like. He couldn't understand the gravel. He said it wasn't all torn up or tracked with the skid marks of a driver struggling to corolle a careening car. If your car's going into the river, you're trying to stop it.

[B]

Generally you're trying to steer away

[A]

from water.

[B]

Yeah. The road will certainly show marks of you trying to not hit the water.

[A]

Most people try not to drive into a body of water. Just a normal thing here. They said what looked like the driver had neither lost control nor struggled. It looked like the driver had safely negotiated the two sharp curves back up the road a little bit and deliberately aimed the car just to the right of the south approach of the. The bridge and shot precisely through a narrow gap in the brush. Tumbling 65ft to the river bottom. He said, that's what it looked like to me. Because they missed the bridge, it looks like pretty much. And went off.

[B]

And it's very hard to miss the bridge and not stop the vehicle because of all the shit that's in the way. The obstacles.

[A]

Exactly. Something else, too. The car looked like it had tumbled down the embankment. They said a car with speed would have shot through the light brush and landed further out in the river. If you've ever seen a Dukes of Hazzard episode, you'll understand. Cars fly through the air while the Dixie horn plays in the background. And Roscoe P. Coltrane gets very angry on the other side and goes, oh. You know, that's what we do.

[B]

That's how Smokey. Yeah, that's how Smokey loses the Bandit.

[A]

That's it, man. You gotta jump. So they said that was weird. And they said this was just at the bottom of the embankment. The driver's door had been ripped off and is laying on the bank seven feet from the car.

[B]

Fuck.

[A]

They said the door was so close, that rule, this officer said told him that the car wasn't moving fast. Maybe less than 10 miles an hour. But that didn't explain the body. If the door was behind the car, why is the body in front of the car?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Things that fall out of things that are very heavy and moving tend to not move faster than them and end up in front of them. Physics wise. So it didn't make sense. They said. Or at least on the same side. Why was she in front? Shouldn't she have been on the side? Why is she in front of the car? Also, the seat. The driver's seat of the station wagon was pushed far back. Like someone over six feet would be sitting in it. She's five one, Remember we talked about. That's weird. They said her feet wouldn't even have reached the pedals from the seat position. If you know someone that's five one, they drive on top of the fucking dashboard. When Sarah has her car, if I go to get in it, I can't even get in the seat in the position it's in. I have to put it all the way back before I can even literally get into it. It would crack the wheel, would impale me.

[B]

3 inches shorter than me. When she drives anywhere and I go get in that driver's seat, I blast my fucking knees on the steering wheel. Oh, yeah, it's only three inches.

[A]

When you're a kid, though, you're also uncomfortable. So you're close and like, I gotta be on top of this. Because you don't. You're not confident in your skills. You don't sit back like, yeah, I'm just driving. That's. You're like, oh, God, don't crash.

[B]

Yeah, I put my fucking foot on the deck. I hate when people do that. But I could. I mean, I sit back so far, yeah.

[A]

Who knows? So also, there's blood that he finds in the car, which is odd. Well, let's talk about it. Dry droplets of red brown blood made a trail back up the embankment. Oh, she was bleeding.

[B]

Like she got off the road and just started leaking.

[A]

Yeah. While flying through the air. Yeah, she just leaked all the way down while somehow being outside of a car that she was in. Right now, he follows the blood trail. 22ft from the car. He finds blood smeared on a tree branch. This is just like old fashioned detective work here. There's a blood trail. Follow it, here's more blood. This is about 5ft above the ground. Blood smeared on a tree branch. More blood is found spattered or even splattered on this one. I don't know if it's official. Spatter here. More blood on tree leaves around there. Just west of the tree under the bridge, this rule guy found a lady's watch, a smashed lady's watch. And that was odd also because objects flying from a car tend to go in the same direction of the car. Again, pesky physics playing a part here. And the watch was considerably behind and west of the automobile, so that made no sense.

[B]

That would take an act of force pushing it that way.

[A]

So think about the whole scene and how it's set up. Now, at this point, bridge coming, you'd have to negotiate turns to get to the bridge. The side of the bridge shot off the embankment, not shot off far enough to end up in the river.

[B]

Right. You hit your face on a tree on the way in.

[A]

Obviously, as the driver's door is torn off. Would that be maybe somebody trying to get out of the car before it goes into the river? Like, I'll just bail, maybe. But the tree branch is five feet up, so they'd have to be standing up the water. The door.

[B]

Yeah, the body in front of the car. There was an event, and then the person was stuffed in the car, unconscious and slowly driven off this cliff.

[A]

How'd she end up in front of the car then?

[B]

Excellent questions.

[A]

That's the thing. Even in that, even in a nefarious scenario, how the fuck did she end up in the front of the car? How did that happen?

[B]

Unless she's beaten and thrown off the bridge and then somebody drove the car behind her.

[A]

That he's trying to figure out. He said, how the hell did the blood get on the tree? Well away from where it seemed that the driver had tumbled from the car. Right straight above was the railing of the iron bridge. And so they went up to the bridge. Maybe there's something up there. Now, the blood is type A, which is the same blood type as Sandra and a shitload of other people though that's the problem. No DNA back then. There's no explanation of how Sandra's blood could be located on the west side of the tree. If her injury had resulted from being ejected from the vehicle as it traveled east of the tree from the road into the creek. It just didn't make any sense. So they also found near the south end of the bridge. When they went up there, There was a 4 inch diameter pool of what appeared to be blood on the bridge. They followed it to the railing where they found more blood. And right below that was the tree with the blood on it. So they're thinking this came from us, not from.

[B]

It rained.

[A]

Yeah, it rained. So they just kept. They stayed, they looked. This Rule guy was really the only guy looking into any of this shit. Nobody else. Everyone just went whoop, that's a bad accident. And that's as far as they wanted to get into it. He's the only guy telling people, I'm not sure about this. And they're going, ash, you're fine. Everyone's ignoring him. He said, that's not a typical. None of this is typical of an accident is what Rule said. He couldn't be for sure or know for sure what happened, but it looked as if someone had beaten and thrown someone over the railing. Specifically Sandy Byrd. So he went back to his office and told his supervisors he didn't think Sandy's bird was an accident. Sandy Byrd's death was an accident. And they said, yeah, it was. Don't worry about it. You're spending too much time on this. Now, there's other evidence too here that she'd been standing on the bridge in the area where the blood was found. There was also evidence that at 9:30pm she stopped by the home, talked to the babysitter, picked up the wine and bourbon. We got the wristwatch under the bridge. Also the planks on the bridge. Above the body had 1 to 3 inch gaps between the planks. As if this bridge couldn't get more terrifying.

[B]

Right? It's not even together.

[A]

No. They found two red plastic cups in the entrance to a field just to the south of the bridge which were similar to the ones found underneath the bridge.

[B]

Two of them.

[A]

Two of them. Bourbon, wine. Now you also. This is probably a place teenagers would come drink too. So you don't know. The other thing that they find is they kept returning to one single solitary detail. Sandy was not wearing a seatbelt. Couldn't have been.

[B]

She loves seat belts.

[A]

Loves seatbelts. Seatbelts. And they're like. When they said that later on, her family, all of her friends was like what now? Impossible. One reporter said Sandy Bird always wore a seatbelt. It's a habit and you don't just break that habit. So she didn't have on a seatbelt and that was unusual. She was thrown from the car and that shouldn't have happened. Now we get into the autopsy here. There's an autopsy that shows that Sandy's 5th, 6th, 10th, 11th and 12th. Left ribs were broken, all on the left side. That's a lot. Her left wrist was broken. She had cuts on her upper right arm, left forearm, the left side of her forehead and her left cheek, which these sound like defensive wounds if I'm.

[B]

Yeah. Defending from a right handed person or. I mean that is the side of the vehicle that you're being thrown from.

[A]

But there's also bruises in various stages of purpling marked on her right forearm as well. Oh yeah. So the finding was that she had bled to death from a ruptured kidney. That's the impact kidney.

[B]

Oh my God. She died of blunt force.

[A]

That's horrifying. Horrifying.

[B]

Fuck.

[A]

No. Water was sucked into her lungs. So she hit the fucking water dead. Which are you gonna die in the air on the way down? Don't think so.

[B]

That kidney would have to bleed out quick in seconds.

[A]

You rupture an organ, you're in trouble. You better get your shit together. Especially a kidney.

[B]

Second. That's a lot of blood.

[A]

I don't know. You're asking the wrong guy. I know that Carthage is Tunisia. That's about all I know.

[B]

I just found out.

[A]

I'm lost otherwise. Yeah, another. I am not a doctor. I don't know, but I don't think

[B]

that you would die in seconds if

[A]

your heart ruptures, obviously. Yeah, sure. I mean people have like ruptured spleens and shit like that, but your Spleen isn't as important as your kidney, you know what I mean? Your kidney is doing functions all the time and you need it.

[B]

But you also got two of them.

[A]

You got two of them, but I mean, if one explodes and it's a lot of blood in there too, it's internal bleeding. So she's face down in the water with no water in her lungs. So rule says she's got to be dead before she ever touched the water. So this is crazy. Dr. Juan Gabriel performed the autopsy and determined that she had died as a result of an automobile accident. When her car. That's the final ruling. When her car missed the bridge and proceeded down an embankment into the river. The doctor noted that her most serious injury was a transacted kidney. Transacted, which he stated was the kind of injury people receive commonly in motor vehicle accidents. Based on force. Yeah. So he found food in her stomach and concluded she died within roughly three hours of her last meal. Dinner was around seven. That puts her time of death around ten. Now this around ten. And even by Tom's telling, Tom was with her at 10 o', clock, right? That's when they were having a drink or whatever. The jog Tom describes happens more than an hour after they think she's dead. Okay? Now time of death is really hard to pin down. That's the other thing too, because nobody's systems are the same. It's a good ballpark, but you can't say you said 10 and it was 11. And that's not enough to go on. That's not enough evidence because the doctor could be wrong on the time of death, but it doesn't look good. It's another suspicious thing that day rule. The officer, the highway patrolman went to the bridge with a different. With the county coroner says, let me take you and show you. This is what happens, by the way. A lot of times this is how murders are decided. Whether it's a murder or not is. You'll have a detective arguing with a coroner going, let me show you why it is or it isn't a murder. In the homicide book, there's this case where this guy came in. His head was fucking mangled. He had skull fractures, he looked brutalized. I mean, horrifying. And the guy ruled it a homicide. And they said it's not a fucking homicide. They had to take him to the scene to show him what happened. The guy died in his bathroom. And where he fucking died, he was wedged so the door wouldn't open. So the bruising was his wife Trying to open the door while he was wedged in between a fucking. And she didn't know it, she couldn't see it, and she was just trying to open. So he goes when you see he was caught between the door and the toilet and kept getting nailed. That's why that is. He didn't die. It's natural causes, so they have to show them and sometimes it's to sway them that it's a homicide. And this doctor said, I don't think so. It's an accident.

[B]

Still insisted.

[A]

Yup. No one questioned the decision really, except for Rule this guy. Police officers, they took their photographs and measurements and, you know, all of that. They said there was no evidence that the car was out of control or made any kind of braking or sliding action. But the doctor concluded that her death was caused by loss of blood or hemorrhage due to internal injuries caused by blunt trauma. In his judgment, her death resulted approximately 30 minutes to an hour after the injuries occurred. Then she'd have fucking water in her lungs now, wouldn't she? There's no satisfactory explanation as to why there's no water found in her lungs, even though she was found underwater and was supposedly alive for 30 minutes to an hour. Doesn't make sense. So. Yeah. Now, the babysitter later described Tom coming home that night. She said he was in a shirt and tie, not jogging attire.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Tom's answer was, well, I changed into this shirt after the run and it wasn't a tie. I was in a polo shirt. And so the 14, she's just a 14 year old babysitter. She's confused.

[B]

She doesn't remember, she can't identify a tie.

[A]

What does she know about men's fashion? Nothing. You know, Come on. So Sandy's family, by the way, they're not in Kansas, they're in Arkansas. Her mother, Jane. Jane Stringer. Grismer is her name. Now she's got a stepfather named Jerry Grismer. They live in Little Rock and they seem like very nice people. By the way, when Sandy died, the Grismers were given the accident story and they were like, I mean, they have no doubt, no reason to question it. Your daughter was in a car accident and died. You go, oh God, that's terrible.

[B]

Apart from the seatbelt thing, but okay.

[A]

And they don't know that though.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

They don't know any of this. That's the other thing, Jane. The mom had been convinced from the start that it was a little suspicious, but it wasn't a big deal. Her and her Husband would later hire an attorney. But they said publicly, we do know, we fully support Tom. We believe that tomorrow had nothing to do with anything, obviously. And it was a horrible accident

[B]

in a car. Accident. You think they died in the car? You rarely jump to the conclusion they were thrown out and violently dead.

[A]

And deathed. Yes, violently killed. The other thing is they ask him for a copy of the autopsy report and he says, oh yeah, sure, then never gives it to them. So they really like the autopsy. That's weird. Then Tom tells people his version the next day following the discovery of Sandy's body. So the Monday after that, he discusses Sandy's death with a bunch of different people. And his versions are a bit inconsistent. He doesn't tell the same story twice. Really? He gave a statement to one person in which he said that early in the evening Sandra brought hamburgers to the church and they ate dinner there. And then she changed clothes at the church and then they went to a movie. After the movie, they went by the house and Sandra picked up a bottle of wine and bourbon. At approximately 9:30, they went to the church, fixed a drink and thereafter went to the private club where they had two more drinks each. Left the club at 10:45, went back to the church where she dropped him off. She went to her office like we said. He said, I jogged my 2.6 miles. She said she'd be gone by 45 minutes. I drove by the university, she wasn't there. I called the cops, I called the babysitter, called the personnel department at the university, all that shit. Called the hospital, they said, so basically, if we accept this, the last food she ate was about 7pm at the church. And the first autopsy found food in Sandy's stomach, which caused him to form an opinion that she had died within three hours. Would have put that in the neighborhood of 10 o'. Clock. Even his math says we ate at seven. So, okay, so who does Tom blame?

[B]

Who?

[A]

It's the state's fault. Oh, okay, the state's fault.

[B]

It's not that shitty car.

[A]

No, not that. You bought your fucking wife a French car. That's not it. They're French, right? Peugeot's like a Renault.

[B]

Are they out of Fiats, you dipshit?

[A]

They're out of Renaults that day. That's the problem. So he insists the state is liable, that there was poor signage and that's what caused the crash. And he is saying he is going to sue the state for this bridge, basically. Now, the bridge, the Rocky Ford bridge. The weird part about this bridge Is it serves no real purpose. It doesn't go anywhere. There's nothing over there to go. They said it's at the end of a gravel road southeast of town that led functionally to no destination. It's not a route anyone takes to get anywhere. Locals describe it with this. They said it's not a main road coming into Emporia. The road goes from nowhere to nowhere. It's just that they put a bridge across this river because. Why not? Because it's a river, and we should probably get a bridge across it. So they were like, this makes no sense. What was she doing alone? Apparently, if he says he wasn't there near midnight on a Saturday at the creepy bridge. So a newsman covered it this way and said, what's a preacher's wife doing out here in the middle of the night alone? Is there something going on here? We need to know about what's going

[B]

on, or is it any of your fucking business? Maybe she's cheating.

[A]

That's the other thing. We don't know. Then who's she cheating with? Because we really got to talk to that guy. Rumors are huge again. They fly fast and furious. These fucking rumors that Tom is sleeping with his secretary and Sandy's accident wasn't an accident because it's Tom because she wants to fuck the secretary. And Lorna also wanted her husband dead. They've heard there's insurance money. Tom has insurance on Sandy, and. Oh, boy. And it's a whole plot, and it's a big deal. I mean, every. The problem is all of these rumors turn out to a lot of. There's a lot of truth to a lot of these rumors is the problem in terms of money stuff and things like that. Now, at the hospital, Sandy's colleagues from Emporia State were asking each other, this is really a fucking. What do you think? You know what I mean? What do you think? Marty Anderson's coworkers at the hospital were literally saying, tom Bird did it. He totally did it. They were, like, convinced of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah. Now, a friend of Lorna's later on said, this is great. When asked about Lorna in this whole situation, quote, my impression has always been probably that she's a little bit on the Looney Tunes side, which is a very nice church lady. Way to put. She's a fucking whack job. It's just great.

[B]

I pay Le Pew.

[A]

Yeah, Tabby Le Pew. Now, the other thing is, the town does not want any of these rumors to be true because that kind of makes them look Bad.

[B]

Makes this whole place look like shit.

[A]

Yeah, basically. One longtime person from the area said that people just didn't believe it. They said the idea that we don't have these types of people here was a very prominent feeling. It's not someone from here. We don't have that kind of person here. We have nice people in important.

[B]

Those kind of people.

[A]

Those kind of people. Late July through October 1983. Still a traffic accident. Ruled as a traffic accident. Tom's now a single father of three and is even closer to Lorna than he was before. People are saying that now they're seen nearly every day together all the time

[B]

around the hospital, married. And he's still alive at this point.

[A]

Marty's. Well, alive till November. So around the hospital Marty works at, the nurses are gossiping about it and all that kind of thing. And he says people, they were talking about, well, maybe it's an accident. And they said he rolled his chair out into the hallway and said. You don't believe that, do you? Tom Bird did it and then rolled his chair back in. That's Marty.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. And this is the guy that he's friends with and all that. So then Friday, November 4th is the Highway 177 killing of Marty, where they pull over, she says she's sick. Guy pops out of the fucking cornfield with a gun and a mask and robs him and shoots him. And then the next morning, she's on the phone trying to get 270 grand. And then Tom fucking Bird is the guy doing the funeral. Okay, now. Now that's that all. When I said in the beginning, it sounded like, oh, yeah, they're pastor, did the funeral. It's a little more weird than that, Right? So then Sandy's family finds out about Marty's death. That's a big deal.

[B]

Okay. Yeah.

[A]

Now they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a second here.

[B]

The people in Arkansas found out.

[A]

Yeah. Sandy's family finds out about it, and they're like, that's weird. So, yeah. Sandy had confided in her mother the fears about Tom and Lorna before she died. And now they're like the same lady, the same guy whose wife Sandy thought the husband was having an affair with. Now her husband's dead and his wife is dead. This is suspicious.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So now they started getting a little bit different. They hire a lawyer. They discover that the Emporia Police, Kansas City Highway Patrol, and the Kansas City Bureau of Investigation are all now after this death. Now, all circling back to Sandy's death as well. They said, yeah, we want this. And they said at that point, they again asked for Sandy's autopsy report, but Tom wouldn't give it to them. Okay, Tom. Now, if I'm Tom at this point, first thing I'm doing is distancing myself from Lorna, at least publicly.

[B]

This has gotten way out of hand,

[A]

Way out of hand. Do you see why I was like, oh, Christ, this is gonna be a pain in the ass to put together. This is so much shit to figure out people's lives.

[B]

It's out of hand.

[A]

It's out of hand. So if your time, though, you're going to publicly try to inch away from

[B]

her, you certainly got to just go to God and get away. Just do your job. No.

[A]

He becomes her spokesperson for the press. I'm speaking through my pastor. He says that the masked gunman looked scared is what he says in the press when he's defending Lorna now. People were like, hey, you weren't there.

[B]

How would you.

[A]

And B. Yeah. Even if she told you, pitch black wearing a ski mask. Pitch black outside wearing a ski mask. How could you see anybody was scared under that? So that's an odd thing. So the police go, eh, let's look into some shit here. We'll look into Lorna a bit here. So they do when they look into Lorna trying to find extramarital affairs to see if there was motivation. They found, just Locally, more than 60 men who acknowledged having sexual relationships with Lorna just locally. So since they lived here, women fucked

[B]

60 men in a town of less than 20,000 at the time.

[A]

Like 28,000 people. She fucked 60 guys under her husband's nose and a small town. Wow, this is disturbing. I mean, that doesn't mean she's banging Tom necessarily, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But then they found witnesses who hear Tom and Lorna use pet names for each other.

[B]

What?

[A]

There's some greeting cards that we'll find that we'll talk about in a little bit here that were recovered from her bedroom, signed by Tom. And one said, I love you. I am confident of the future. And that makes the present okay.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

There were. They took work conferences, which was just the two of them going and fucking. They would hold hands. If they were out in another town, they would, you know, act like they were together. Yeah. People who were around them who didn't know the whole story were like. They have a real electricity between them, those two. Yeah, it's really good.

[B]

Beautiful relationship.

[A]

Yeah, it's fucking wild. Now, the letters. We're Going to talk about, and we'll get in more detail about how they found him. But basically, in these letters, they kept saying how they couldn't wait to be together. And they kept using the phrase after Friday night. After Friday night, which is when Friday night is when Marty was killed. After this Friday night. After Friday night, they were all signed Tom. So the police's theory, basically, at some point in the spring of 83, they decided, let's kill our spouses. Basically, that's what they're thinking. Divorce is expensive and Tom would owe child support and Marty's going to try to get custody and the divorce would not, you know, divorce isn't going to pay out a life insurance policy.

[B]

There's seven kids to think about here.

[A]

Seven? Yeah, seven, by the way. All under the age of 10. We can't divorce seven very small children.

[B]

That seven children will destroy their lives. We have to move. Murder their parents.

[A]

That'll be much better for them. That's what's happening right now.

[B]

Holy shit.

[A]

So Lorna wanted Marty's insurance money. Tom would probably want his wife gone and didn't want to be poor. He'd take the money too. So why not? Here's what they're thinking now. People start coming forward with things here.

[B]

Stories.

[A]

Well, you remember Daryl Carter, because they're looking for guys she. She went out with. So Daryl Carter is one of the guys she went out with. He is a local building contractor. His brother is Dan. He is a welder who does hair on the side.

[B]

What?

[A]

I've never. Okay, I've never heard of anybody pulling their shit off their face and then being like, you know, they're big black mask thing, pulling that off and then be like, so what do we want here? What are we doing? Bangs? A perm. What do we got going on? What's happening?

[B]

You have blisters on your forearms.

[A]

Have you ever met anyone who goes, I'm a welder. I do a little woman's hair in the evening. I've never heard that once.

[B]

Do a few highlights at night.

[A]

You know, nothing crazy. So Dan is that brother Danny. So there's Danny and Daryl, which of course is confusing. But both of them, by the way, had fucked Lorna. That's the thing they really have in common besides blood, is they are both real brothers and Eskimo brothers at the same time.

[B]

Unbelievable.

[A]

They've nailed it.

[B]

They have come out of and gone in the same vaginas.

[A]

The same ones, yeah. Dan had cut her hair at a Commercial street street salon in 1981. And then drifted into a brief affair. And then Darryl had his own history. So in May 1983, Lorna asked Darryl to meet her at the church. This is after Sandy obviously had gone. He came or. No, no, it's before. I'm sorry. He came not knowing what it was about. This is before Sandy is killed. Okay. He got there and Lorna was there, and so's the minister. So he's like. It's weird for the chick I'm banging, who's married to invite me to church and then have a minister be there.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I thought she wanted to get dirty in a pew or something. You know what I mean? Some real filthy shit.

[B]

But in the confessional? Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So out of. Does Lutherans have confessionals?

[B]

I don't know. I just assume there's a booth somewhere that you can be quiet in.

[A]

I mean, you can. It's. It could be a confessional booth. People, apparently, they're really horny. It's a jack booth, if you want it to be.

[B]

I don't know, maybe it's one of those churches that has a screaming room.

[A]

Yeah, it's like a gemstones prayer pod. You can go in and whack it. So the two of them then laid out for this guy two different plans to kill Marty. This is the original thing they're talking about. Okay. Now, the first plan was Tom's plan. He told Darryl that he'd been out on a country gravel road south of Emporia, and there's a bridge over the river, he said, maybe 15ft down to the water. And if a person were drugged or drunk, that person could very easily miss the curve in the road and go over. All right, this is how he's saying we should kill Marty.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Mind you. So the plan is drug Marty, take him to that bridge, put him in a car, send the car off the embankment into the river so it looks like an accident. Now, Darryl's job, they don't need Darryl for that. But Daryl's job would be to wait nearby and drive Tom back into town afterwards, where Lorna would always would have been home the whole time with a rock solid alibi watching four kids.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So that's plan one. We could do that.

[B]

Or.

[A]

Here's another one. You know, this is Tom and Lorna said this one's a little cruder, but this could also work. We could stage a robbery and just shoot Marty. Yeah, but these are his two ideas of how to kill people. Yeah, they said if we shoot him, we don't even need your help. But you know, that's. That's option two. So according to Daryl, at some point in this conversation, Tom said this line. This is fucking amazing. Amazing is what he said. Incredible. He said, so who's going to do it then? If you don't need me, then why are you telling me about it? 1. Then who's going to kill Marty? And Tom said, I'm a man of God, and I'm going to kill Martin Anderson.

[B]

What does that mean?

[A]

I don't know. That's the craziest statement anyone's ever made, is it not? I'm a man of God, so I'm going to murder my girlfriend's husband. Okay?

[B]

I read the Bible in Cain just did it. So I'm gonna fuck it. I mean, do it.

[A]

Yeah, do it. Darryl said, I don't want any part of this. Basically, he said that the meeting, you know, he said, that's not what he said at the time, though. He said, oh, I need to think about it and. Which is, let me get out of here right now. As he was leaving, Tom said, if anyone asks you why you'd been at the church tonight, say that it was to talk about the youth group selling fireworks at your fireworks stand.

[B]

Go ahead and lie.

[A]

So go ahead and lie to us and go ahead and lie to whoever. So a few days later, Tom shows up at Darryl's job site to press him for an answer, because he had just said, I don't know. So Darryl asked, why didn't you just get a divorce? Both of you? What are you talking about here? And Tom said, well, Lorna doesn't want a divorce. She wants life insurance money. That's why. And he said, I love Lorna. Yeah, he said, I love Lorna. I want to help her. And he said that I'll be the one presiding over the funeral, so I'll be close to her and no one would ever suspect me because I'm a minister, so I can get away with it, Basically. Darryl finally called two days later and said, I can't do this. I want nothing to do with it. So then plan B also.

[B]

He's the hardest motherfucker in Kansas. How about that?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That is a scary human being.

[A]

Very scary, dude. He's a fucking sociopath. It's crazy. I'm a man of God. I'll kill him.

[B]

I'll get it.

[A]

That means I won't get in trouble because they won't figure it out. So, Late summer of 83, Plan B. Enter Dan Carter. The other brother, Lorne is fucked. Okay, yeah, he's the welder beautician, Dan. During this arrangement, okay, Lorna gave Dan Carter $5,000 to get Marty killed. By the way. $5,000 came from Sandy Bird's life insurance settlement. Tom paid it, by the way.

[B]

That is so gross.

[A]

So gross. Dan passed the money up to his supervisor at the Wolf Creek Nuclear Plant, a guy named Gregory Curry. And then Gregory Curry passed that along to a third man down in Mississippi. So essentially, Dan didn't say, I'll do it. He said, I'll find someone to do it for $5,000. He went to his boss at work, which is. Imagine going to your boss and go, I need a hitman. You know anybody? And then the hitman said, I actually do know a guy. Or the boss said, I do know a guy. Some dude in Mississippi.

[B]

Imagine subcontracting something out and making zero money.

[A]

Nothing. Not a goddamn thing to middle this shit.

[B]

Subcontracting, murder and getting.

[A]

It's not like drugs, where you could pinch a little or something. People could steal a little. There's nothing to pinch. What are you going to do?

[B]

He gave you five grand and you paid five grand.

[A]

You did. And he just wants to do that now. The other thing that's crazy is because the guy in Mississippi says, yeah, I'll do it. Gets the money, and then just doesn't do a goddamn thing. Says, I'm not afraid of you people. And who you gonna call?

[B]

He's a real contractor. Cause that's what contractors do.

[A]

Yes, I got your money now what?

[B]

Yeah, you paid up front. I am not showing up to plumb this job.

[A]

A welder has to do the job. A contractor, they don't. So plan C. Now, since plan B isn't gonna work because they're out five grand now, so they were like, okay, plan C, let's do plan C. Which is gonna be what already happened. So now people keep coming forward, and remember the highway patrolman rule. That guy, he's just waiting because he believes that this was definitely not an accident. But it's still an accident, officially. So that's what's going on. Then Martin Anderson gets shot to death. That's when he's like, okay, come on, guys. Seriously. Holy shit. This is clearly not fucking an accident. So that's bad. So by the end of the month, people are telling cops everything. Now about Lorna and about how she tried to hire someone. The Carters both come forward and say, she tried to hire us because they don't want to get in trouble.

[B]

Yeah, and you'd love to blame These cops for the stupidity, really, and just the turning a blind eye. But this happened 40 years later in Mesa, Arizona.

[A]

It happens all the time.

[B]

Same fucking thing.

[A]

Traffic accidents are real. Traffic accidents are like fire. They're real tough. Weird things can happen. Fire is the. When a homicide detective sees a fire, they're like, fuck, there's a case I'm not gonna fucking solve. Because there's just. Even if you have proof of arson, that's not proof of this, it's not proof of that. It's really difficult to prove who did it unless someone saw someone lighting a fire. It's hard to prove who lit a fire. Someone who died in the fire could have lit the fire.

[B]

If that lady hadn't killed her fucking kids, she may have been able to kill countless other adults.

[A]

Oh, tons.

[B]

The only reason Lori Vallow got caught is because they were minors. And people. Those are accountable. You're accountable.

[A]

People look for them. Yeah, yeah. People look for minors. That's the problem. Yeah, they'll look. Totally. So this is the big talk here. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation called Trooper Rule, and he said, yeah, this is exactly what I think. I think that Pastor Bird here had connived to arrange to kill Marty, and I think he had something to do with his wife's death. I think all these things are happening, happening. So November 23, 1983, Lorna is arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder against her husband. Okay, okay. December 1, 1983. Tom contacts a woman named Jennifer Peterson, who lives a few doors down and happens to be Daryl Carter's girlfriend. Plan A guy, Daryl Carter. Tom says he needs to talk to Darryl. Jennifer offers to have Darryl call him. And Tom says, no, no phones, which isn't suspicious at all. So Darryl hears about this, knows exactly what the fuck's going on, and goes right to the cops because, again, I'm not involved in this shit. So 12-10-83, the cops convince Darryl to meet with Tom and wear a wire. Go ahead and meet with him. Do what he wants you to do, but wear this wire. This is. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is coordinating all this. He meets Tom in a parking lot, and they want to talk in Tom's car because they said that you're less likely to be murdered in his car. Someone's less likely to murder you in their own car, basically, which, if you've ever seen a mob movie. Yeah, then you got to get rid of the car. It's a mess. You want to murder them in their car? It's a mess. Yeah.

[B]

Called a Wolf, right?

[A]

Yeah, you gotta call the wolf. You gotta tell Karen you hit a skunk. It's a mess.

[B]

So you gotta dress in douchey clothes.

[A]

It's all of it. So Tom openly talks openly for 45 fucking minutes. 45 minutes. Carter received instructions. Talking Tom's car or talking? Yeah, talking Tom's car. The thinking was, people don't shoot in their own cars. Also get him to admit that he'd been involved in the murder. Solicitations. Now, Carter said he didn't pay attention to instructions, though he and Byrd sat in his pickup. Carter's pickup, not in Byrd's. Carter did not ask Byrd a single direct question. He never mentioned the plot he told police that had been hatched at the church. He just sat there. Carter opened things up by saying, quote, things are a mess, aren't they? Which is really all you need to say, though. And then they chatted about Danny's troubles, about Lorna's arrest, about the cops. Tom. Bird wanted to make sure Carter understood why they had to meet at the church last spring. And that was to discuss the youth group selling fireworks, Right? Right. So they go back and forth and keeping each other's names and everything out of everything and. And talk about rumors that were ruining Bird's name at that time. The subject gets around to Marty, and Bird said, I'm not happy or sad about Marty dying. He did complain that the police are desperate to tie me to this fucking murder. Yeah. So Darryl, he asked, do you think that she had anything to do with it? Do you think that she did it or had it done? And Tom said, I'm sure she didn't do it. And Carter said, do you think she had it done? And Tom says, I know she talked about it before. I can't tell you what I think, but I think she'd tell me. And she may one of these days. So then Carter said, that was an awfully big coincidence in your wife's death and Marty's death. That's pretty much the same two plans you came to me with, right? Yeah.

[B]

How would she not know if that really happened?

[A]

That's what I mean. So Tom said, there's nothing I can do about that. I'm just trying to exist and build my life back up. As the conversation winds down, Tom says, I don't think Lorna will ever talk to me until it's all over. And I think maybe she'll talk to me, but I don't know if it's ever going to be all over.

[B]

Over.

[A]

Okay. Now for his cooperation. Dan is allowed to plead to a reduced charge and get probation for that. For hearing a solicitation of a murder and not going right to the cops for that. His supervisor, who took the money and gave it to a guy in Mississippi, also gets drawn into this and he gets a deal as well. Because the Mississippi guy they never caught, he's a moron somehow. He's a supervisor of a nuclear facility. Think about that. He's in charge of fucking atoms and protons and shit. That's terrifying. So Tom is now charged in early 84 with criminal solicitation to commit first degree murder. So is Lorna. Same charge. This is for the Marty plot. Okay, so no one's actually been charged with actually killing anyone at this point. The solicitation case is also, though, going to bring Sandy's accident way back into focus for the public and things like that. The question is, will the church say fuck this guy?

[B]

They should. Honestly.

[A]

They absolutely don't. They don't. Faith is a crazy thing, man. Church people sometimes can put faith into people, fallible human beings as well, which is mind blowing to me. That's the craziest fucking thing. They sit around going, nobody's God and nobody's God and nobody's God. But then they treat people the same way as you.

[B]

He's not arrested, though, right?

[A]

God, yeah, he's arrested. Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

No, he is arrested.

[B]

And we still have faith in him.

[A]

Absolutely. They bail him out. They raise his fucking bail. Oh, these people.

[B]

Your pastor, your minister is in jail for murder.

[A]

Certification for his. The secretary, he's banging that lady's wife. And you go, well, let's bail him out. Jesus.

[B]

Holy.

[A]

So, yeah, it's fucking crazy. There's a headline in the Wichita Eagle that says, congregation rallies around pastor. They spoke of Christian love and the presumption of innocence. They treated the charges. They basically said, it's obviously a mistake and they'll figure it out during the hearings and they'll dismiss it. This is crazy.

[B]

Obviously, he's accused of solicitation, not of the murder. So we don't think he's. We don't think he would do that. No.

[A]

On the Sunday of the week he's arrested, he is back on the fucking pulpit doing a sermon. And they're sitting there like, mm, yup, here's my money. Wow. Worshipers are, you know, filing out of the church. Were greeted by television crews and reporters. Because this is a big fucking story. It becomes a national story. At one point, the Gazette ran an editorial essentially begging for the Rumors to stop warning that innocent people are being hurt. It just turned into a mess. Imagine if they had social media back then. Holy shit. Imagine if there was some fucking Facebook group called Emporia's Moms or some horseshit. Wow, that would have been a mess. So anyway, the insurance. Marty carried the insurance policy in the neighborhood of $270,000. And Sandy Bird, her insurance was around $300,000. So between the two of them, they were looking to collect almost 600 grand, which was a crazy amount of money back then. So, yeah, there was a joint investigation that opens in August of 84. Now here, the joint investigation of this is Lyon and Geary counties to look back on Sandy as well. And the press, they join up with each other, too, as well. Press from different areas. They are trying to figure this whole thing out. They said a picture's emerging of a pastor and his lover, and they're trying to get rid of the spouses. It's real fucking gritty and grimy. One of the reporters said, I got mainly pushback from members of the church and other members of the community. They said, I'm not saying anyone tried to cover it up, but it was almost like things like this don't happen in a little town like this. People couldn't wrap their heads around something like that happening in Emporia. They refused to believe. It literally just isn't a thing here. No. And people can just not believe shit.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there's people that say fucking people didn't exist. That existed. And there's goddamn film footage of. And shit from, you know. I heard a guy saying that Babe Ruth didn't exist yesterday.

[B]

What?

[A]

A Major League baseball player was saying how Babe Ruth didn't exist.

[B]

Who said that?

[A]

An idiot, a fucking moron.

[B]

Why would he say that?

[A]

Once everybody's died who has seen something, people just go, well, it didn't happen because, I mean, no one's alive. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy. Even though there's so much footage of Babe Ruth. He's in fucking movies, for Christ's sake.

[B]

There's only, I think, two pictures of Abraham Lincoln.

[A]

Yeah, he didn't exist either. Maybe the Civil War didn't happen. There's people that say World War II didn't happen.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Didn't even. Not the Holocaust, World War II. The whole fucking war didn't happen. Well, my grandfathers are fucking liars because they told me all about it. What the hell are they doing? You know what I mean? It's crazy. So October 84, now it's time to get it on exhumation time, people. Here we go.

[B]

We're pulling him out of the ground.

[A]

We're pulling Sandy out of the ground. We know how Martin died. It's just a matter of who. Sandy. We pull her out of the ground. Second autopsy performed by Dr. William Eckert, a certified Forens forensic pathologist. In addition to the injuries noted by Dr. Gabriel, the second autopsy reveals fractures of the left shoulder blade, a laceration to the top of her head, indicating a considerable amount of impact or blunt trauma, which according to Dr. Eckert, was capable of rendering a person unconscious instantaneously. A blow to the fucking head. Also found three linear type injuries above the left wrist, which was fractured. A similar injury on the right arm above the wrist, and one in the elbow joint of the right arm. The opinion was the injuries on the back of her arms were defensive injuries. Yeah, he explained, obviously trying to ward off blows, basically. And in the doctor's opinion, the linear marks above her wrist could have been caused by an instrument such as a branch of a tree, a baseball bat, a pool cue or a tire iron.

[B]

All of which are vicious murder utensils

[A]

to attack your five foot one wife with crazy. In this doctor's opinion, the injuries to Sandra Bird's kidney could have been caused by her falling from a height in excess of 20ft. Didn't have to be a car accident. And the other thing is, they found no injuries to her body which could have been caused from an ejection from an automobile. None of the injuries match that whatsoever.

[B]

Shit.

[A]

So this turns it into a homicide?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, now remember those letters we talked about that they found? Okay.

[B]

Love you to the moon.

[A]

These were found at the bottom of Lorna's lingerie drawer. Which, by the way, is packed. It's extensive. This is the Geary County Sheriff, Bill Depish. He says as I dug down through the lingerie and some of it was pretty exotic. He comments on the exoticness of the lingerie. My wife won't wear any of that shit. I try to get her.

[B]

But what are the chances he left all of that in the drawer?

[A]

Yeah, he's like. At some point he went, you know. You just know it.

[B]

Put one in his pocket.

[A]

Shirt pocket, he said. I went clear down to the bottom of that drawer and found a couple of envelopes. And inside were letters, two love letters signed by Tom, describing how the two of them would finally be together after Friday night.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

And Martin Anderson was murdered on a Friday night. And the letters were written before that. So that doesn't look good.

[B]

Neither does Nate. Lace pocket square. With his.

[A]

Yes, David, with his police uniform. Is that a crotchet watchless lace pocket square you got there? That's a hell of a nice piece of that uniform, buddy.

[B]

That's a very nice Fredericks of Hollywood pocket square.

[A]

That's excellent right there. Boy, I'll tell you what. So late 1984, is Lorna gonna talk? Is she gonna crack?

[B]

You'd assume she would, right?

[A]

Because you know Tom's not gonna do it. But maybe, Maybe, you know, it's possible. Who knows? Well, she does. She gives police her account of Sandy's death that Tom told her.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is hearsay, mind you, but still from the one that matters. Yes. Describing a tire iron, a struggle on the bridge, and Sandy trying to hold. This is disturbing. Okay.

[B]

Tire iron.

[A]

This is fucking. This is really bad, I guess. Tom said he and Sandy drove out to Rocky Ford Bridge together. He struck her with the tire iron, which the doctor called not bad, causing the linear blunt injuries that they would find. He thought he killed her and tried to throw her over the rail. The problem was she was still alive and grabbed the side of the bridge and fucking held on. Oh, my God, she is dangling from the fucking bridge. So he kicked her over and over again until she couldn't hold on anymore and fell off and died.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

That is fucking cold blooded, dude. I'm sorry. That's ice cold, dude. Ice cold.

[B]

And she had to have died on her way down because she didn't get any water in her lungs.

[A]

No, that's the thing. I think she might have fell on the rocks before that.

[B]

God damn.

[A]

So what he did is he kicked her and then he staged it. He put her body into the car because it fell. And so he got her back into the car, aimed the car at the embankment and let it roll. Now, the forensic evidence matches up goddamn perfectly with exactly what they were talking about. So. Yeah, and then Lorna said, oh, by the way, Tom also shot Marty, so this isn't good at all. Now, the kids, everybody's kids are all a mess. Yeah, the Anderson kids are all younger than 10. And the Byrds have three kids, all younger than 10. Tom and Sandy are, I guess, parents here. Tom and Sandy are legally contesting the custody of their grandchildren, their parents. So Sandy's parents want them, Tom's parents want them. July 1984 is Tom's trial for just solicitation of murder of Marty Anderson. That's it?

[B]

Just the shot?

[A]

Just that? Yeah. Newspaper reporters Come in from everywhere, all over the place. Television, radio crews. There's those big TV trucks in the street. It's wild. The New Yorker came. Everybody, one of them said, the New Yorker said, a preacher's deadly sin, and then under it, I'm a man of God and I'm going to kill my lover's hubby. The prosecution said when she didn't come to pick him up, he didn't call home. He didn't call the school. He called the police. Why? Because he knew exactly where Sandy was floating face down in the Cottonwood River. Bitches. I added the bitches part. Also, why he was wearing a shirt and tie. They said, well, he just beaten his wife on a bridge and staged a wreck. He's gonna have dirt and blood all over his jogging clothes and he's gonna need to change out of them. And what does he have? Clean shirt and tie from dinner.

[B]

Right.

[A]

There you go. So, otherwise they don't have a whole lot more than people, you know, they have people testifying. He tried to get hire them all this type of shit. He's found guilty of conspiracy.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Or solicitation. I'm sorry, Solicitation, not conspiracy. Sentencing comes around, you, sir, may fuck off. Two to seven years. That's light. Seems a little light for trying to get someone to murder somebody.

[B]

Seven being the max, huh?

[A]

Yeah. That's what's crazy. The newspaper says, quote, emporia Waits, questions persist. Who killed Marty Anderson? If Tom Byrd really killed his wife, how did he get back from the bridge that night? In some living rooms in the city, the feelings are firm. Tom Byrd may have had something to do with his wife's death, but the state isn't going to be able to prove it. So they don't believe it. January 85, the grand jury returns with indictments charging Tom Byrd with first degree premeditated murder of his wife. That's not good. Warrant is served on him while he's in the jail or in prison.

[B]

I should say the newspapers putting given plot holes there. I mean, granted, any. Any lawyer worth their muster is gonna. Mustard is gonna be able to. Is it mustard? I don't know. Gonna be able to find that loophole, but you know what I mean. Yeah. Still, it's very strange that they're putting out an opportunity for him to get out. Giving him an out for this.

[A]

That's what's fucking crazy in the newspaper. Fucking nuts. And they're holding up Lauren and stuff because she's a witness now. So that's what they do here. July 1985 is the trial for Sandy's murder that Tom has to do now. The positions of her body and the car in their final resting places do not support the theory that Sandra Byrd had been ejected from a moving vehicle when its door was torn off. The state's expert witness testified that given the mechanics of the automobile's role, it was his opinion that Sandra's body would have been deposited on the land between the door and the final resting place of the vehicle. And that her body would not have ended up in front of the vehicle in the river. The interior of Sandra's car contained no blood or hair, which would have indicated a person banging around the car, which is what would have happened. They said the physical evidence at the scene and more complete examination of her body performed the second autopsy proved that she wasn't killed in an automobile accident, but fatal injuries as a result of being beaten and thrown off a bridge. They also bring in Charles Henderson, who's a former inmate of the Lansing State Penitentiary. Yeah, he said that he'd been in a cell right next to Tom's. And according to him, Tom visited with him about the death of his wife and indicated that he and Lorna Anderson conspired to have his own wife killed. So he also said he discussed with Henderson the amount of money that he and Lorna Anderson were going to receive from insurance companies. On redirect, Henderson said that Tom Byrd told him that he had his wife killed. So there's that. The defense does have an expert. They have Dr. Bridgens. And he concluded that Sandra Byrne had been injured when she was thrown out of the driver's side door as it went over the embankment of a speed of 15 to 20 miles an hour and rolled over. He concluded that the state's theory of how Sandra Byrd died was unlikely based on her injuries. And various other witnesses called by the defense tended to support the theory that the death was a result of an accident rather than intentional. Now the verdict comes in nine men and three women, which he was probably pretty happy with. That fucking spread.

[B]

Well, I mean, that's. That's three guilties right out of the gate.

[A]

That's what he's looking at. Ooh, we gotta. Hopefully those nine men could convince those three women how innocent I am.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They deliberate for about six hours and they find him guilty as balls. Oh, absolutely guilty of killing his wife. Sentencing comes around, you, sir, may fuck off life, but parole eligible after 15 years.

[B]

15.

[A]

So 15 to life, essentially is what he got.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Now, August of 85, Lorna pleads guilty to two counts of criminal solicitation to commit first degree murder of her husband, and begins serving her state sentence here. The problem is the way she described some of what Tom said happened or didn't happen or wanted to happen is at odds with what Darrell Carter said. So she told the court that they had planned to drug Marty and place him on some railroad tracks to be run over or to have someone drop a brick on Marty's car as he drove under a highway overpass. Not the other things that Darryl said, which was the things that actually happened. Lorna also agreed to tell authorities in Lyon county about what she knows about what happened at the Rocky Ford Bridge. That's part of her guilty plea. She has to talk about Sandra, which is a totally different case, which is very strange. They said it's an odd arrangement considering Tom Byrd is serving time for that. She's got found guilty. So she also went to Geary county, told the investigators there what she knows about what happened on that highway that night her husband was slain. And after her talk, sheriffs did some digging, but didn't find anything. They had to wait for good weather and enough money and a farmer's permission to go through his farm ponds. We'll find out why. On November 1, an investigator brought a metal detector over a pile of mud bulldozed from a pond and found a.22 caliber automatic.

[B]

He threw the gun in the pond.

[A]

That's it. Believed to be the weapon used to kill Marty. Shortly after Marty was killed, investigators searched the Anderson home for a.22, but never found it. Marty had kept a.22 that belonged to his father. The weapon in the pond is his fucking father's.22.

[B]

He killed Marty with his dad's gun.

[A]

With his dad's gun. And kicked a small woman off a bridge as she tried to hold on for her life.

[B]

Also, how else would he have gotten that gun Unless she gave it to him.

[A]

She. Exactly. Yeah. He didn't go in and get. I mean, he is over there tagging her all the time, but who knows?

[B]

She's an asshole to give him that gun.

[A]

Yeah. So during sentencing, Lorna gets you, ma' am may fuck off. Five and a half to 18 years.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

She gets. Which she is horrified. She didn't think she was gonna get anything like that.

[B]

What?

[A]

I don't know if she's never seen a murder trial, but then when the judge sentences her, they immediately come cuff her and take her to prison. That's how it works. And. And she was overheard saying that if she knew she was going to go to prison so quickly she wouldn't have worn her good clothes.

[B]

You'll get it back in.

[A]

You got 20 years or so. You'll get it back in about five and a half to 18 or seven and a half to 18. Keep your finger off also. Yeah. The same year, 1985, Lorna gets remarried.

[B]

Who to?

[A]

A guy named Randy Eldredge. Okay, so she's remarried. 1986, the Kansas Supreme Court rejects all nine of Tom Byrd's points on appeal and affirms the murder conviction. We'll talk about a couple of those points in a minute here. 1987 though, a two part CBS docudrama airs. It's like movie of the week miniseries time called Murder Ordained. You know that's coming. So made for TV movie filmed on location in Emporia to get. They got everything. The dialogue is taken directly from court documents for accuracy and the townspeople played extra roles. So it's like the Wire for fucking for this. Now Murder Ordain. Yeah. Has a 7 out of 10 on IMDb, which is a great show. Not bad for a TV movie. Wait till you hear who's in it. It's got some really big. Kathy Bates is in this fucking movie.

[B]

Get out of here.

[A]

Kathy Bates, Keith Carradine, Jo Beth Williams, who was in everything from the late 80s into the early 90s. Who would. Everybody. John Goodman's in this fucking movie. Pre Roseanne. John Goodman. Who else is this? Terry Kinney, Bruce French, Ann Curry. She looks familiar. Johnny Galecki. Yeah, Johnny Galecki, the Darlene's boyfriend and Big Bang Theory guy. That guy. He's in it too. Now. Tom didn't like the film.

[B]

Oh, he's upset.

[A]

Didn't care for it. Didn't care for it.

[B]

He was played by John Goodman. Not happy about it.

[A]

Who played Tom? Tom was played by Sandy. Terry Kinney played Tom. Sandy was played by Annabella Rice. Okay, so Tom said that the movie can't be authentic because no one involved with the movie was interviewed. And the four principal characters, no one talked to us. Two of us are dead. So how could you do make a movie? He said, this is ridiculous. If Lorna has not talked to them and I have not talked to them, where do they get those scenes? The bottom line is they're fiction. This is what he said in an interview with the Kansas City Star. He said he's innocent and blames his convictions on his association with Eldridge, who the newspaper described as lascivious. Eldridge is now that's married to her.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Lorna is Eldridge. That's what he's talking about now.

[B]

Oh, Mrs. Eldridge.

[A]

Yeah, Mrs. Eldridge. He admitted that he and his secretary were lovers, but only their spouses were dead. He said, I rose up as a knight in shining armor and felt she was being mistreated and needed my help. I was alone, she was alone, and we had all these kids. Little did she know she would turn out to be. Little did I know she would turn out to be the Dragon herself. Now he's blaming her.

[B]

He's a hero.

[A]

Yeah, he's a hero. He said, principle wise, I don't think it's right for a movie to be broadcast while a person's appeals are pending. Well, then he wouldn't have a movie for 30 years. That's the problem. This is the first time he's speaking out and he says he wants to try to portray the other side, to portray the truth of so much that's been fictionalized. The guy who wrote the movie said, this is based on interviews with reporters who interviewed everybody. Interviews with Lorna and transcripts of the trials and newspaper articles especially. Kansas City Star did a great series on this case. It could have been a fucking book. That's. I mean, like, there's no investigative report reporting like this ever anymore. It does not exist. No reporter's gonna go, I'm gonna dive into that story and every Sunday we're gonna have another six page part of this story.

[B]

Like a serial editor would tell him, go fuck yourself. I need this covered.

[A]

He'd say, sure, but I'm not paying you for any of that. That's what he'd say. We don't have time for that. Yeah, exactly. An IMDb reviewer also agrees with Tom. Oh, they say, quote, tom Bird is innocent. He is not guilty of this crime. It was his girlfriend. The movie twisted the facts way out of line with what really happened. What happened here is a terrible tragedy for the murder victims and the victim of false imprisonment. While in prison, Tom established marriage counseling for inmates and their spouses, coordinated a fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House, led Bible studies, and helped establish a halfway house for inmate spouses. If you want to to know the true story, read the book Caged Bird by Dave Racer. Tom Bird and Dave Racer also co authored a book, in the Shadow of Joseph, which was released in 2004. The book features 27 letters from bird discussing his daily life in prison. I, by the way, did not read any of those. Two people found that helpful. Fourteen thumbs down. Eat dicks.

[B]

Also, that's a man who fucked up his parishioner's wife. I don't want him counseling inmates wives. Why is he.

[A]

Nope. Don't want you near my spouse, as a matter of fact. So Lauren is now notified in her prison cell that she faces a new charge of first degree murder, by the way, in Marty's death. They also hinted that someone else may be charged in the death. November 1998 or 1988. Lorna pleads because she doesn't want to go to trial for first degree murder. So she pleads guilty to second degree murder. She is found guilty, pleads guilty and sentenced to. You, ma', am, may fuck off. 15 years to life again. Same thing. No parole until 15 years. So Tom appeals. He's trying to get the Supreme Court to look at his shit here. He says that while in the penitentiary in 1985, remember his cellmate or whatever?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're saying that Tom told this guy that he conspired and all that kind of shit. On the motion for a new trial, they say that this one person says she was a desk clerk at the Copa Villa Motel and spoke with Henderson, the cellmate, the morning he was to testify. She testified Henderson told her he didn't know who Thomas Byrd was and had no idea why he was there. After he testified, he spoke with this lady again and told her he learned why he was there. He told her some friends in Oklahoma had left him holding the bag. He said he was there to tell what had been overheard. That his friends told him some things. The trial judge denied the motion for a new trial, stating that it was his opinion that it was unlikely there would be a different result if a new trial were granted. That's the first appeal there. There's a lot of things, too. He contends that the state speculated that he threw his wife off the bridge. That was a matter of consideration for the jury. But the state's evidence in the case indicated that it occurred. It was up to the jury to determine that point. 7th point raised by him on all of these was that the state's evidence was insufficient to permit a rational fact finder to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Sandra Byrd's death resulted from a homicide rather than an accident. So also he didn't get a change of venue. Okay, there's some interesting stats here. As far as the survey indicated that they called 306 people in Emporia that had a telephone. 97.4% of the people had heard of the case.

[B]

How do you not?

[A]

Roughly half of those believed that he killed his wife. The People were given three options. Yes, he was involved, no, he was not, or not sure. And they said that? Yeah, about half the people were pretty sure he was. They said obviously that would happen because they know their local area here. So anyway, change of venue, he doesn't get either. And the Supreme Court anyway tells him, you know what? We don't want to hear it. Keep fucking off, mister. So no one cares. So also, 1990, Tom gets married in prison again.

[B]

To who?

[A]

A woman named Terry.

[B]

Really?

[A]

That's it. Woman named Terry. 1990, Tom again. They're talking, he's gonna go back on trial now for Marty's murder. Cause before it was just solicitation. Now they're gonna try him for murder. And all the stations want this to be aired on tv. Yeah, they want this to be gavel to gavel coverage. And the judge denies it.

[B]

Really?

[A]

He denies the TV coverage. Cause that was not a member of the Pamela Smart one was the first like, like gavel to gavel trial cover. And that was like 91. So they said this. Basically the problem is this case rests solely on Lorna. Solely? Yeah, she's the only one who has any part of this. So her problem is. And the prosecution's problem is she's told 14 different versions of this shit.

[B]

Incredibly incredible.

[A]

Exactly. And that's literally all they have. And she's a co conspirator, so that makes it messy. The verdict comes back in less than an hour of deliberation and they find him not guilty. Really, all they had was Lorna.

[B]

Fuck, that's it.

[A]

They had no other evidence. So not guilty. That's it. And they said that Lorna's contradictory stories, all the jurors said was the reason why they couldn't conscience convict this man. Sandy's family is pissed off and shocked by that.

[B]

Fucking A. Yeah.

[A]

Even though it wasn't her murder trial, it was Marty's. Sandy's mom said, I was stunned. Regardless of the verdict, I think he's guilty. I felt it was so clear in the mind of the prosecution, or in my mind, the prosecution had proved their point. I'm really disappointed. But I believe in the justice system. This jury did what they thought was right. And if Tom's in jail and Tom is in jail for murdering Sandy. She said, you aren't supposed to lose a child. Mothers are meant to be buried first, not to bury their children. Who would suspect that a small town minister who married his childhood sweetheart would be capable of murder twice? Everyone that listens to this show. But other than that, I'M not sure if everyone does. Wow. They said, we have been told it was a car accident, but we couldn't understand it. Sandy was a scaredy cat. For her to be out on that strange road made us wonder. But neither did we suspect Tom. It's like we wondered why was she out there, but they weren't like, well, Tom killed her, so that's good.

[B]

And he did a pretty decent job. To where he almost got away with it.

[A]

He almost did, but the problem is that the regular medical exam, they wouldn't have exhumed her. He'd have been fine. But then when they had a specialist look at her, that's a problem. Sandy's mom also said that when Bird was arrested for soliciting the murder of Marty, she said, that's when I started coming out of tunnel vision. I started keeping records of conversations with people about Sandra's death and started checking her phone bills. It was then that she learned that Tom had placed numerous calls to Lorna Anderson from their home while staying there to attend Sandy's funeral in Little Rock.

[B]

Ew.

[A]

He was calling her from Sandy's parents fucking house.

[B]

That's disgusting.

[A]

Disgusting. Fucking ld on top of it. Remember when that was a big deal? It's a goddamn long distance call. This guy's shooting lds out at his fucking concubine. What the fuck is that about? She said she couldn't understand when during the trials, the media labeled Byrd charismatic. She said, quote, we have never seen him that way.

[B]

Zero charisma.

[A]

1990. Now, remember, Tom got married to Terry. Tom and Terry. Lorna divorces Randy Eldridge in 1990.

[B]

No longer Eldridge.

[A]

She's no longer an Eldridge now. 2000, 2001, both years. Tom becomes parole eligible, but is denied in both years 2000 and 2001, mainly because he won't admit to the fucking crime. Still.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

That's when his book Caged Bird appears, arguing at length that he was innocent. June of 2004, about 20 years since the conviction, Tom is finally paroled. Wow. He's paroled in June 2004 to live in Wyandotte county with his wife Terry, who we know about, who's a schoolteacher, by the way, who he married in prison. Yeah. He was discharged from parole supervision in 2006, completely free as a Bird.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A Tom Bird. And went on to work as what, Jimmy? A fucking marriage counselor.

[B]

Oh, my God. What?

[A]

Dude, that's like so ironically, hilariously ridiculous. Like, he must have sacked. Do I have the balls to do that? Yeah, I do. Fuck it. A marriage counselor. I mean, I got a solution for how you could end your marriage, but that's just me. You guys talk amongst yourselves. Mine's a little different.

[B]

I'm weird. You guys got two options. You could divorce or.

[A]

Wow. Then 2004, Lorna's married again. What? You know who she married? No. A guy named Terry. What are the fucking odds that both of these people would marry people named Terry? Is that the craziest part of this whole story? Terry Moore, his name is 2007. Lorna is paroled and not discharged from supervision until 2014, when she was 61 years old. Yeah, she's using the name Lorna Anderson Moore. She becomes the chief executive of a housing nonprofit in Hutchinson, Kansas, called Housing Serv. Interfaith Housing services. She's the CEO of that.

[B]

CEO?

[A]

She's running a business, housing. That's crazy. 2025. Now, very quickly, kind of their story's over, but this bridge has become a giant destination for people who want to go somewhere creepy. And like a ghost tour thing.

[B]

Huge.

[A]

This article says on humid summer nights, teenagers still drive out past the edge of Emporia down a narrow country road or county road that dissolves into farmland and dark. They park near the bridge and wait. Some swear they've seen a ghostly figure walking the rails. Others say they hear splashing, as if a car's gone into the Cottonwood river again. The stories shift and change. An apparition in white headlights that appear and vanish. But they all circle back to one Sandra Byrd. So that's. They said today, when people talk about the Byrd case, they don't mean the trials or the evidence. They mean the bridge. Teenagers drive out there at night to test their courage. Locals tell ghost stories, and its location is featured on multiple Kansas most haunted websites. That's what starred into haunted. Haunted. Yeah, they said. One person said, even when my kids were growing up, there were always stories about Bird Bridge. They call it Bird Bridge now. All the kids and everybody, they just call it Bird Bridge. But I never expected any of that. That's what they said. They said, you know, the bridge is being replaced. Huh. Somebody says it's been talked about for years, but no one ever replaces it. 2026 here. Two of the Emporia Gazette reporters who covered the case, Nancy Horst and Bobby drew a standing room crowd of more than 150 people to a library at Emporia State to talk it all through once more. The whole case. They talked about all of that. And also, it says here, popular with ghost hunters and Teens looking for a scare Rocky Ford Bridge or Bird Bridge to locals is also the centerpiece of the Murder ordained cycling route. The route is part of the Dirty Kanza promotion's iconic route challenge, classified as beginner level difficulty. However, the story behind the 13 mile route elevates the ride to something more than a casual outing. It's an iconic part of Emporia's history, reminding us that small town folks are just as fallible as our big city couch. You bet they have a bike thing that does the whole. It's the whole Tom Bird what he did thing. It's fucking crazy. So there you go, everybody that is Emporia, Kansas. And tell me that's not a fucking crazy story. God damn it.

[B]

I can't believe they.

[A]

I mean, it's too much.

[B]

Yeah, I can't believe they're out wild

[A]

and all of it. Yeah, go down the list. There's so much of it. So if you can't believe it but you want to tell us all about it, get on whatever app you're on, give us five stars. It helps so much. So whatever you're listening on, give us five stars. Netflix thumbs up means a lot. Thank you for doing that. And if you're watching on Netflix and just found the show, you're in luck. There are so many hundreds of episodes on whatever app you listen to podcasts on that you can catch up like almost 700 of them that aren't on Netflix. So get on there and check that out. Also, follow us on social media. Smalltown Murder on Instagram, Smalltown Pot on Facebook. Shut up and give me. Murder.com is where you get all of those tickets for live shows, all the merchandise. September 18th at the Pabst in Milwaukee. I'm not sure if there's any tickets left for that, so check if you want. I think there might be individual ones. I'm not positive. I don't know if we have comps to give. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. We might release more. I don't know. September 19th, Minneapolis State Theater. Get in there right goddamn now. October 3rd, Dallas, Texas. Come on, Arkansas. Come on out and see us here. October 16th, San Jose. October 17th, Sacramento. November 13th in Tarrytown. November 14th in Boston. That's our goddamn schedule. Shutupandgivemerder.com is where you get all of that. So do that right now. Patreon. You gotta get Patreon. P A T R e o n patreon.com Crying Crime in sports. Just like the name of that other show that we do, Crime in Sports, which you should be listening to. So patreon.com crimeinsports gives you everything, all the shit we're talking, all the bonus material. Anybody, $5 a month or above. You get as soon as you subscribe, about 400 back bonus episodes you've never heard before. Immediately upon subscription. New ones every other week. One Crime and Sports. One Small town murder. This week, Crime and Sports. Old timey articles again. Our favorite thing to do. Can't wait. Old newspaper articles, then Small town murder. Love. After Lockup Part 2. Find out about Moo Moo and his plan because it's fun. Can't wait for that. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all that. And you get every goddamn show we put out all ad free as well. And you get a shout out. And that's right fucking now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never, ever, ever kick us as we clung to the side of a bridge. Hit me with them right goddamn now.

[B]

This executive producer Happy hour in Conroe, Texas, and Gary Howard, Arkadelphia. Can they fucking name anything in Arkansas?

[A]

Damn, Gary.

[B]

I've got something other than trucking through some.

[A]

Yeah, that's bad. Gare Bear, we love you, bud. We don't want to see you guys get out of these horrible places, man. Please.

[B]

Arkansas is like McDonald's at this point. They put Ark in front of everything.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Peyton Meadows, Janice Hill, Jennifer Beshear. By Sheer Berkshire. I don't know. Thank you, Jennifer. Carla Clark in Arkansas. Maybe she could do it. It's her birthday. Happy birthday. She's.

[A]

Gary, help her get.

[B]

Get on some board somewhere and change the names. Arc. Shit.

[A]

It's not kids.

[B]

Claude Cavallo. Vladonna. Kochik. Vladonna, like the female Vladimir. Right. Putin.

[A]

Russian. Madonna. Vladonna.

[B]

Yeah. Diana Adams. Diana and Vladana. Christina Musto. Orphans, home life. I don't know what that means, but I hope it's a rescue of some sort. Whether it's kids or dogs or something, whatever.

[A]

Rescue them orphans.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Appreciate those people.

[B]

Other producers this week. Bradley Horn, Drew. Louby. Labi. Holly with no last name. Wanda with no last name. Jeff Brown, Jake Campbell. Nick Boswell. Anthony Moniz Munoz.

[A]

Anthony Munoz Moniz, hall of Fame offensive tackle for the Bengals.

[B]

Anthony Moniz.

[A]

Munoz is the hall of Fame offensive tackle for that.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Yeah. This isn't it.

[B]

I saw him get inducted in hall of Fame. That was fun. Raymond, Shannon. Angie with no last name. Sonica. Sonica from the Netherlands. Sonica. Like. Like the. Like Sonic's girlfriend that's going to say. Gary. Gary Gorman. Tanya. Frederick. Zach. Nay. Michelle with no last name. Kim. Christian. Connor. Schroeder. Schroeder. Amanda Fay. Julie with no last name. Hillary. Putnam. Putnam. Brandon Battle. Leslie Heisler. Colin McKenzie. Angie Pelke. Heather Morgan. Jade S. Tana. Tanya Stiles. Blair Bucholder. Woohoo with no last name. Zachariah Kittner. Joe with no last name. Lisa G. Rachel S. Todd Kaiser, Fellow member of the Dark Humor Club. Mark Savage or Savage. Or Savage. James with no last name. Nikki with no last name. Gator Girl. Cheyenne. Bo tierney. Cybil currier. Ashley criscioni. Jackson. Jackson. Cleme. Clem. Clemmie. Rebecca. Vivian deville. That's a fun name. Mayonnaise. I think that's them making fun of the way you say mayonnaise. James.

[A]

Maybe. Sorry.

[B]

Kat finley. Julie at matt bits3d. Tj reyes. Shelly with no last name. Syria. Syria. Green onyx. Okaria. Megan with no last name. Tracy scoba. Soyda palacios. Natalie england. Holden mycock. James. That's a real person.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Yeah, I'm sure that's a real person. Mitchell.

[A]

Clearly.

[B]

Dixon. How about that? Dixon after mycock. They're probably holding.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They know each other. They're probably buddies. They listen together. I'm sure.

[B]

Denise zimney. Danielle meyer. Daniel meyer. Sorry. Amos with no last name. Mindy henderson. Kaylee bailey. That's fun to say. I'm shocked that there's not more serial killers whose first and last name rhyme.

[A]

Right. Just tired of hearing it.

[B]

Yeah. Colin robertson. Casey hutchinson. David devanez. Devins. Zach bass. Mo with no last name. Blake turner. Josh radcliffe. Megan czack. Sean with no last name. The aussie moose rachel. Play sons. Play a songs. Alexis. Mike sell. Michael mike mckessel. Becca b. Timberius. Amelia bibbles. All right. Heather orozco. Melanie. Melanie fielkowski as lindsay eldridge. David peschen petione. Marcy h. Beverly potter. Petey with no last name. Tom with no last name. Christy brown. Mel faborg. Jhr aaron mcmillan. Grace z. Gina stoner. Good for you. Sarah hatham. Hot ham. Melissa simons. Becky fritz. Eliza. Eliza chauffeign. Sonia Downer.

[A]

Got that?

[B]

Leia Jones. That's probably somebody named after Star Wars. There was never a name Leia before that. Right?

[A]

I never heard that before. No, I never saw it.

[B]

Jacob o'. Keefe, J. Farr. Amy Gunter. Karen Vlad Stella. Allison Burns. Ludwig von Shit Smear. James. That's a real person.

[A]

Oh, yeah. No, I know him. I know him from a long time. We went to high school together. The Von Schifiers were very prominent around my town. They really were. They owned everything.

[B]

Ryan James, Brian Monta, you know, Montajano. Tanita Bandita. Another one. There's no way that's real.

[A]

That's a fun name, though. That's a fun one.

[B]

Ishmael Cox. Nessa and Sean Jusso Pialto Pilagio. No. Heather Johannes Karupin with no last name. Janelle Bradley. Katie Jeffers. Melanie with no last name. Rhonda with no last name. Steven Siciliano. Ashby J. Poma Ijebako Ibekeo. Oh, that's not right. Karen Stewart. Linda Liu Paige with no last name. Vincent Nadaro. Billy Cranston. Robin Watkins. Rachel Peg. Steve. Do it.

[A]

I dare you. Get him. Get him. Run, Steve, run. They're trying to peg you.

[B]

Peg Steve.

[A]

Steve running at full speed.

[B]

Damn it. That's amazing. Run.

[A]

Steve running backwards, though, so he doesn't get back.

[B]

Miguel Small. Miguel. Miguelito. Miguel Leto. Cindy Purcell. Megan Mullen. Milan Kelly. Spazzillo. Spazzillo. Wow. Darlene RCDC in 1982. Lola Delgado. Kenneth Trail. Shannon with no last name. Clayton McDaniel. And everybody named Steve that's on the run. Thank you all so much.

[A]

Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, you fucking awesome people. We appreciate the shit out of everything you do for us. Thank you for hanging with us. Thanks for your time, your money, your effort, your spreading the word. Anything you do for us, even if you just say to nobody and say to your dog, hey, these guys are pretty funny. Thanks for dudes. We appreciate that. Thanks for all that you do for us. If you want to follow us on social media, shut up and give me Murder Dog has links to everything that you could possibly want to do there. So do that. Keep coming back and seeing us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.