Episode 627: The Murder of Carol Thompson

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Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.

And I'm Elena.

And this is Morbid. This is Morbid.
And it's before Thanksgiving, but for you guys, it's after Thanksgiving, I think. Isn't that weird? So we have not given thanks yet.
Thank you. But because you have, I hope you had fun.
Yes. And I hope you ate all kinds of yummy food.
Oh, scrum diddly umptious. I'm salivating just thinking of our food that we're going to eat.
And we're thankful for you. Yeah, we love you.
We'll be thankful for you. Thank you for being our listeners.
Yeah. We'll stay thankful for you.
It'll be a whole thing. It's going to be a whole thing, guys.
It's so beautiful. You know what I'm thankful for? Sushi.
There you go. I just had some.
Good for you, man. And you had a strawberry hostess cupcake.
I did. Have you guys tried those? I didn't know know they existed she broke it out and it's me her and mikey in the pod lab today and she said we can split this into three and i said no need no need to do so you can split that in half and mikey took the journey with me you did that's cute wasn't bad it was just one of those things that you're like all right yeah okay i felt like it wouldn't mix well with my sushi and dumplings probably not i was like i like, I think I'll try that at a later date, if ever.
That's a great, I think you should try it because I think you might be pleasantly surprised. Okay.
But not with sushi. Right now I'm in a place of those Little Debbie brownie Christmas tree things, cakes.
Oh, yeah. Like not, I don't, I'm actually not a big fan.
Don't you say it. I'm not.
Of the vanilla? Of the Christmas tree cakes. I don't like too much frosting.
And the middle is sometimes too much for me. And I fear that you're going to throw something at me.
I like the brownie better. Doesn't John also? Yeah.
And both of you can get the fuck out of here with your shenanigans. That just means more for you.
It sure does. My kids like the vanilla ones with me.
You know what? I don't dislike them. Like, I'll eat one every now and again.
I'm horrified. But if I had to pick, like, on a deserted island, like, you can only have one brownies all the way.
I hate that.

I'd also pick brownies over cake.

I hate that so much.

Like in general.

Wow.

Yeah.

This is like, I'm feeling so betrayed lately from my, the people I love the most, what

they love and what they don't love.

Why?

What else happened?

Because you just said that.

And then John, we were finishing up Follow the House of Usher. Oh, TV show.
The other night, Mike Flanagan. I want to watch that.
And he was like, yeah, I'm not really into this. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? And he wasn't into Midnight Mass either.
And he was like, and then he said the words. And Mike Flanagan, if you're listening.
He didn't mean it. Mike Flanagan if you're listening.
You have a fan in this house.

It's me.

Not John.

But John was like yeah I don't know if I really like Mike Flanagan's stuff.

And I was like I don't know how to accept that.

Did you say I don't know who you even are?

I'm just not sure how you watch two things with Kate in it.

Yeah.

That is made by Mike Flanagan. You said two things with Kate? Kate Siegel.
Kate, okay. His wife, who's in both of them.
Okay. Who's a phenomenal actress.
Okay. She's just chef's kiss.
And tell me you're not really into them. I don't understand that way of living.
Yeah. We're going to try again because I refuse to accept it, so think i'm too forced to watch fall down semester again you know what though i feel like that would be akin to drew turning to me and telling me that he didn't like bravo all of a sudden and i'd kick him out of our house it's rough and then you sit here and you tell me i didn't say you do not appreciate no no no the vanilla christmas tree you at one point you said i don't really like them.
You said those words. I hurt you.
Yeah, you quoted me correctly the second time around. No, I shouldn't say I don't really like them.
I just don't prefer them. My preference is the brownies, you know? Write in.
What's your preference? We'll do a social media poll. Oh, Lord.
Alina's like, no. like no i'm like no i'll lose america's sweetheart will win the brownie crusade that's fine more for me like you said exactly like you said like i said like i said it i said it all right well i think that was an unhinged enough intro i do want to see it was fall of fall of the house of usher fall of the house of usher i highly recommend it guys if you haven't watched it.
I'll wait to watch it with you. It's a banger of a miniseries.
It's only eight episodes. Oh, that's not bad.
Mike Flanagan's brilliant. And so is his wife.
I'm willing to try his stuff. I don't think I've ever seen any of Mike Flanagan's stuff.
I think you would dig it. I really do.
I feel like we usually have, I wouldn't say similar tastes because you don't like the things that I love. But I feel like you, TV show wise, I'm saying.
He just has a way. And the atmosphere that he creates in his shows and movies, I think you will appreciate in a big way.
I've seen the trailer of Fall of the House of Usher. I always feel like I'm going to say it wrong.
And I liked the trailer. I was intrigued.
I think you'd be into it. But I don't think Drew would like it.
And that's tough because we watch TV together. And right now, if you're a Bravo head, oh, my God, all the shows are on, honey.
Oh, man. All of them.
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills just came back. First episode.
Absolutely obsessed. A banger.
I do not condone smoking unless your name is Dorique Hemsleyit have you seen the picture of her lighting up a virginia slim and just driving around no she's like going through a divorce and it gets outed and she's getting chased by paparazzi and she just lights up a virginia slim and everybody knew that dorit smoked like she's been caught by paparazzi before but she's never done it on the show and she she just had such a fuck it moment yeah she doesn't give a shit it was iconic it was the smoke heard around the world there you go don't smoke it kills it does so anyway i think i said that was chaotic enough of an intro but then i made it more chaotic i love that well now we're going to get on to the case this case is absolutely bonkers from start to finish oh i'm excited yeah i will let you know like right off the top right off the top of this uh it's very brutal in the beginning but here it's called morbid it is so this is the murder of carol thompson and it all started on the morning of march 6th 1963 ruth nelson was just sitting in her living room in her saint Paul, Minnesota home. She was catching up on the morning news and she heard what sounded like somebody lightly knocking on her front door.
So she went to the door and she peered through the small window and she couldn't see anybody, but she decided that she should just open the door to be sure. And when she opened the door, she saw that lying at the foot of the steps was her neighbor 34 year old carol thompson who lived just a couple houses down temperatures that morning were freezing but carol was only wearing a light robe she had no shoes on and the upper part of her body from her head to her chest was absolutely drenched in blood and carol looked up and in a voice just above a whisper, she looked at Ruth and said, help me.
Oh, that's so haunting. And she's like, Ruth has just started her morning, just, you know, probably made a cup of coffee, watching the news and opens her door up to, like her beloved neighbor too, they were close.
And only 34 years old. Yeah, super young neighbor.
So Ruth called out to her husband and son who were still home. They had been in the kitchen and they moved Carol inside the house, laying her gently on their rug.
And while Harry Nelson ran to call the police, Ruth and her son just tried to comfort Carol however they could.

And one of the two ended up asking Carol what happened.

Had somebody attacked her?

Who had?

And in a faint voice that suggested she was losing consciousness really quickly, she answered, a man did it.

And Ruth asked what the man's name was, and she thought that Carol said Johnson, but by then Carol could hardly speak, even so she was just speaking over a whisper, so Ruth would never be quite sure what the name was. now moments later another neighbor dr fritz pearson arrived his wife had been watching everything that morning through their living room window and suggested that he go over to help

because she was like, something is very wrong over there. Yeah.
So, Pearson instructed the Nelson's son to go get some wet towels, and he carefully started wiping away copious amounts of blood. It was clear to everyone that somebody had attacked Carol and had beat her really badly about the face and head, which is where they assumed that the blood was coming from.

But when Carol dropped her hand away from her neck, Dr. Pearson noticed a large stab wound, and it seemed as though that the broken knife blade was actually still embedded into her neck.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

Ruth Nelson later said, I know Carol very well, but her face was covered with so much blood that even I didn't recognize her.

Oh, that's horrific.

So Harry Nelson... neck oh my god yeah ruth nelson later said i know carol very well but her face was covered with so much blood that even i didn't recognize her that's horrific so harry nelson's call to the saint paul police came into dispatch at about 907 a.m just think of how early first thing in the morning at which point he reported only that his wife had discovered a quote badly injured lady on their doorstep and just that they needed help immediately it's unclear what what Sergeants John Mercado and Roy Shepard were really expecting when they got to the scene, but whatever it was, it was not really likely that they had pictured just a housewife, a neighbor just drenched in blood.
Later, Mercado wrote in his report, the wounds were small and appeared to be stab wounds, but in truth, Carol had been injured so badly that it was impossible to tell where all the blood was coming from. She had so many wounds.
So as Dr. Pearson continued providing first aid, the officers tried to get any information out of Carol herself, but by then she was barely conscious and she wasn't able to communicate at all.
So it was Ruth Nelson who explained how she came to found Carol that morning, but nobody had any idea what happened to her, like how she got that. Yeah.
Can you imagine just finding someone like that? No. You have no clue what happened.
No. And she can't tell you, that's the worst part.
So the ambulance arrives or arrived a few minutes later and the EMTs were directed inside. And in their report, one of the EMTs described the extent of Carol's wounds as far as he could see at the time, writing,

We observed that the woman had numerous wounds about the forehead,

a wound bleeding quite heavily in the right eye,

and three or four wounds in the neck on the left and right side.

We also noticed a shiny metal tip,

or what appeared to be a knife blade protruding from the left side of the neck.

Who the fuck did this to her? Oh, just wait. So Carol was taken to Anchor Hospital by the ambulance while the officers called for additional support and started their investigation.
From what the two initial investigators could tell, Mercado and Shepard, it seemed like Carol had actually crawled or dragged her way down the street just trying to find help. Oh, that like shatters my heart.
Yeah. And just like this quiet 1960s suburban neighborhood, and she can't yell because she's been stabbed in the fucking neck.
So when they conducted their door-to-door canvas of the neighborhood, Fritz Pearson's wife, that was the doctor's wife who had sent him over, and a handyman who had been working on their house told investigators that she had seen who she now knew to be carol slumped in front of another neighbor's house just a few minutes before she made her way to the nelson's door so she had to like stop on her way there yeah of course which is i just can't imagine looking out my window and seeing that no and also like did you tell anyone she's the one that sent her husband over oh okay oh she's the one, like, I think something's going on over there. Yeah, so I think she saw.
Because I was like. I think probably what happened was initially she saw somebody, like, in the street and was like, who is that? Like, what's going on? And then, like, looked further and saw her get to the Nelsons and realized who it was.
I was like, all right, there's something wrong here. So when investigators arrived at Carol Thompson's home about just a block away, nobody was home and the front door was locked.
So the officers ended up entering through a side door that was open and that opened up into the kitchen. For the most part, the kitchen actually seemed to be pretty undisturbed, except there was one drawer where silverware knives had been pulled out and its contents were spilled to the floor.
But then they saw a trail of blood that led them from the kitchen to the front door where they discovered a large pool of blood and laying in the blood investigators discovered three unspent live rounds from a pistol what appeared to be the handle of the knife from carol's neck and several pieces of hard white plastic of unknown origin they like couldn't figure out what this plastic was once they confirmed that there was nobody in the house the attacker wasn't there a team of investigators started searching the thompson's two-floor home hoping to get some insight into what happened at all now the first thing they noticed was that the front door had been locked from the inside with the safety latch like a little chain latch but the door had been pulled so hard from the inside that it had actually come away from the frame slightly wow so somebody was trying to get out desperately also discovered on the floor by the door just under the rug was carol's wedding ring oh which is just like that's very chilling yeah like what now upstairs in the bathroom, investigators found several smears of blood in the sink,

which led them to believe that whoever had attacked Carol definitely tried to clean up after themselves before leaving.

And they also saw that there was about six or seven inches of water in the bathtub.

Huh.

It was just so weird.

From there, they followed the blood trail back to the primary bedroom, which had been completely ransacked. It looked like somebody had been looking for something in particular in a big hurry.
And while it was a mess, they couldn't help but notice that there was no rhyme or reason to the chaos. So they thought it was possible that Carol was attacked, like maybe, like I always say, some kind of robbery gone wrong.
That seems staged, though. But it felt way too staged, they thought.
And on top of that, nothing appeared to be missing. Yeah.
I mean, they just found her diamond ring by the front door. Yeah.
Whenever it's like no rhyme or reason to the ransacking. Yeah.
It's definitely staged. And nothing is missing.
And nothing is missing. Like, hello? Like, come on.
So there was ample evidence of a struggle, obviously, having occurred throughout several rooms in the house. And it seemed like Carol had fought back or at least tried very hard to get away.

But despite that, they couldn't really determine the sequence of events and they really couldn't tell where the assault had actually started.

Yeah, because it seems like chaos.

It's chaos and everything is just a mess.

And it kind of just looked like once the attack started, the attacker and the victim ran all throughout the house into several rooms and probably even doubled back, actually, more than once. So they canvassed the house on both sides of the street for several blocks.
But other than the Nelsons and the Pearsons, nobody had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary that morning. Given the time of day, a lot of families had gone their separate ways by the time the attack would have happened and wouldn't be back until like late that evening.
That's true. It's like work, school, you know, errands, all that stuff.
Exactly. Other than a few droplets of blood on the sidewalk, there was no evidence that a crime had ever even occurred out there or that Carol had crawled her way to the neighbors for help.
Wow. Which when you think about how badly she was injured is insane.
That's incredible. Yeah.
So while they were in the process of searching the home, Carol's husband, T. Eugene Cotton Thompson, so his name is T.
Eugene Thompson, but he's better known as Cotton. That's what he goes by.
Cotton weary. That's what I thought.
That's what I think of. While the detectives were searching the home, he arrives home, Cotton arrives home.
He had been at his law office downtown when he got a call shortly after 9 a.m. from the Nelson's son, Sidney, saying that there had been an accident involving Carol.
Sidney didn't tell him too much because obviously he's like, you have to drive here. Yeah, and he's like, and I don't even know much.
And nobody even knows exactly. So he just said there was an accident.
By the time Cotton got the call, Carol was on her way to Anchor Hospital. But instead of going directly to the hospital, Cotton drove back home and actually even stopped briefly at the Nelson's house before then going back to his own house.
Which was definitely a little weird. Yeah.
And like I'm sure you're not thinking straight, but it was something that people took note of. For sure.
I can understand that. Yeah.
So he told the police he had left the house that morning around 730. And he was taking his son Jeffrey to school.
And then he went to his office. So typical morning.
And also a well-tracked alibi. Around 830, he called the house to confirm with Carol that he would be picking up the kids at school.
And he said other than that, that was the last time he had spoken to her. He said, at that time, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
She didn't sound distressed, nothing. But by the time they finished the search of the house, detectives had actually discovered very little in the way of evidence.
And they really didn't have any leads to indicate what exactly happened in this house. Obviously, the attack had carried out through multiple rooms, covering the walls, the curtains, the rugs, everything in blood.
But as for why and how it all happened, they were at a loss. But based on all the evidence, they theorized that Carol had been hit at least once with a piece of large, heavy rubber tubing, which they found on the kitchen floor.
But they believe that she was also likely assaulted

with the butt of a gun.

Wow.

Because the handle of which was broken in the process,

leaving all these shards of plastic by the door.

Oh, that's what that was.

Yeah.

And she also sustained several stab wounds

from what they concluded was a small paring knife.

Holy shit.

And that's the handle that they discovered by the front door. Damn.
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That's Z-O-L-A dot com. So while they are still searching through the house and trying to figure out what the fuck happened here, doctors at Anchor Hospital did their best to stabilize a badly injured but still alive Carol.
She had 25 separate cuts on her head from a blunt object and several of those cuts had called uh had caused a quote skull fracture brain hemorrhage and contusions on the brain this is so vicious it's vicious and she also had two stab wounds in her neck when she got to the hospital she was completely was, quote, without measurable blood pressure. Wow.
Yeah. Surgeons did their best to revive her, performing a tracheotomy.
They also did an external heart massage, which I've never even actually heard of that. That's when they literally, like, with their, they will literally get the heart pumping with their, like, physically pump the heart.
I didn't even know that was an option or like a thing. Surgeons are wild.
And they also did what's called a trepanation and that was to relieve the pressure on her brain because I think she had like bleeding in her brain. Yeah, exactly.
But their efforts were futile, unfortunately, and she was pronounced dead a few minutes before 1 p.m. That's awful.
Which, when you think about that, she arrived on the doorstep around 9 that morning, like, so badly attacked. She lived until 1 p.m.
1 p.m. Like, she fought hard.
Oh, she must have been in agony, though. Yeah.
That's what kills me. You just hope that she wasn't, since she was unconscious.
I hope she was in complete shock. Yeah.
Ugh. So, in 1963, violent home invasions were pretty rare in the U.S., and especially in the middle of the day in a middle-class neighborhood.
Yeah. So in 1963, violent home invasions were pretty rare in the U.S., and especially in the middle of the day in a middle-class neighborhood.
This is not something that happened a lot. And when it did happen, the motive was typically robbery.
But in this case, nothing had been stolen, and aside from the bedroom, it really didn't even seem like the killer had gone through the Thompson's belongings at all. It kind of seemed like whoever attacked Carol had gone to the house to do exactly that.
And given the amount of violence done to her, the objective clearly seemed to be murder. But the question that they had to ask was who would have wanted Carol Thompson dead? So going back a little ways, Carol was born and raised in St.
Paul and she had spent her entire life there. Like just Like just Like just organizing events at their church she was the president of the women's association a member of the church choir and she even taught a kindergarten class oh my god like just carol is a the most wholesome woman and like what a what a badass oh yeah organizing four very active young children's lives and not that alone is the that's a lot is hard to do yep and then you add on like being the den mother like being a part of the boy scout troop a leader of the brownie troop teaching kindergarten class teaching a kindergarten class being a member of the choir a president of the women's association like she's literally everything and she also on top of all that i think i mentioned it later she was taking classes taking classes too.
Yeah. At the same time.
She's, what a badass. Yeah.
I can barely handle my shit and I don't have half of that. I don't even have kids and I don't know what I'm doing half the time.
I'm like, that's, that's wild. That's a lot.
Exactly. She was, she was liked by everybody and she had all that going for her.
So the police are at a loss. You're like, who theol everybody does and she's like a young mom you know like who's what's she getting into like you don't even like she's not getting into like organized crime here or something i assume no she's not so frustrated by the lack of evidence and the any leads at the scene investigators started questioning the family and the neighbors as a criminal defense lawyer Detectives actually had to wonder if one of cotton's previous clients had been maybe disgruntled and wanted to get back at him by targeting his wife how awful yeah but i mean it happens so i can see why they started there and cotton handed over a list of previous clients but he also insisted that he couldn't think of a single one of them who had been dissatisfied with his legal services enough to act like that.
Yeah. You know, like do something that.
I mean, I feel like you would have an idea if somebody was that disgruntled. Definitely.
Because you would think that there would be like steps leading up to that. You would at least feel like, you know what, this guy was really angry.
And like I could, and he's dangerous. And probably got maybe like made like a verbal threat at the very least, you know.
So investigators also started digging into Carol's background, of course.

And in a lot of ways, she was pretty, I don't want to say ordinary, but like she led an ordinary life.

Like nothing stuck out to them.

Yeah.

According to friends, she was very much an extrovert, much known and much loved by everyone, they said.

Carol.

Other friends described her as somebody who was, quote, interested in everything and constantly learning. I love people like that.
I know she seems like. I love people like that that just want to keep doing stuff.
Yeah I feel like Carol seems like somebody we definitely would have gone wrong with. One friend told a reporter she was always trying to gain more knowledge and in fact like I mentioned earlier the reason that Cotton had planned to pick up the kids from school that afternoon was because Carol was taking night classes and she had plans to go to class that

evening. Yeah.
On top of everything she's doing, she was going to a class. Yeah.
Now by most

accounts too, Carol and Cotton's marriage had been a good one. They always seemed happy together.

People said they were, people said they were an anchor in the neighborhood. They were organizing

parties all the time, events all the time. Like things looked really good from the outside.
Carol met Cotton when she was a sophomore in college. And 10 months later, she dropped out of school and they got married.
And then a few months later, Carol got pregnant with their first child. And she really started on her career as a wife and a mother, which was very of the time.
This is the 60s. For sure.
And she approached that with the same enthusiasm that she did everything in life. She was super excited, like fully devoted to everything, kids and husband.
Carol seems like the type of woman who when she does something, she fucking does it. Yeah, she doesn't half-ass anything.
No, Carol whole-assed everything, and you can see that. Like even even more than whole-assed, if that's possible.
Yeah. In the public and even in the press, too, she was described as the pinnacle of a 1960s housewife.
But in private conversations... I was waiting for a but.
There's always a but. Because I was like, you can't tell me this is just the way it is.
No. Yeah.
In private conversation... The interesting thing is I'll tell you what happens, but it's not even that...
Like, on's end, you're like, I don't know. Like it really doesn't explain this necessarily.
In private conversations with friends and neighbors, detectives were starting to develop a little bit of a different picture of Carol. It was true.
She was a very devoted mother, but not everybody believed that she had abandoned her own dream so willingly. And not everybody was convinced that Carolyn Cotton's marriage was a good one.
I did wonder when you said, like, she dropped out of school and they got married. And she still has this love of learning, obviously.
Yeah, and it's like, obviously, if that was her choice and she was happy with that choice, then more power to her. Yeah.
I just wondered. I had, like, a weird little pinch.
When it seems sudden, too. That's the thing.
obviously it was just rumors. But some of the women in the neighborhood speculated that while she might not have been having a full-blown affair, Carol did have a friend that everybody referred to as Big Red.
Whoa. Who seemed more interested and attentive of Carol than was considered appropriate at the time.
Oh. Nobody said they saw them doing anything like scandalous or anything.
He seemed to like Carol.

He seemed to pay a lot of attention to her.

Okay, well, that's not her fault.

No.

And she's beautiful.

If you look up a picture, it makes sense.

So investigators soon learned that Big Red's real name was Kenneth Morin.

He was a local man in his early 30s.

He met Cotton and Carol when he sold them some windows and doors about a year earlier.

And he and Carol shared a lot of interests. So not long after meeting, kind of became part of their social circle.
According to him, he and Carol would visit museums together, go to galleries. Sometimes he would drive Carol and the kids' places when Cotton was unavailable, but he insisted they were just friends.
There was nothing more to it. And he claimed he actually hadn't seen Carol since the previous Novembermber and didn't know anything about her murder he also had an alibi for the day of the murder which was confirmed by his boss so he was quickly ruled out as a suspect so i wonder because i don't know if it's going to go any further than that but i'm like it sounds like they were just like good friends yeah like legitimately good friends and maybe maybe on his end he liked her i think i think they definitely like thought the other was attractive probably and like i think it was also really tough to have a friend of the opposite i was gonna say this is such a different time too and especially in like a small town and a close-knit community i think they probably were just really good friends who like maybe found each other attractive but it doesn't really sound like across the line at all okay so even though they had ruled out kenneth morin as a suspect his presence in carol's life definitely contributed to an emerging portrait of probably an unhappy woman in an unhappy marriage i mean i can degree i can absolutely see that yes like you know and in fact further interviews with friends and neighbors revealed that carol's relationship with Kenneth was a source of frustration for her husband Cotton.
And one afternoon in November, he got home and he found Carol and Kenneth just talking in the backyard and demanded, he walked back out there and demanded that Kenneth leave and not come back. Like he was, I think he was starting to probably hear people talking and I'm sure his pals were teasing him, that kind of thing.
So he was like, stay the fuck away from my wife. And you're like, you know, I kind of get, like, I can see.
Yeah, I get territorial. Because you think there's varying degrees of appropriateness when it comes to a relationship like that when you're married especially.
So it's like I can understand that from an outside point of view. It can be like, oh, you know, they're just like, that's a nice friendship.
And then I'm like, but you know what? If you're in the relationship, the relationship it's probably gonna look a little different well like and this is just me like to each their own but if i knew that drew had a close woman friend that he was like driving our kids around with i'd be like ah i'm not super comfortable yeah i too would have a problem with that you know what i mean yeah so for her part carol told a friend and this kind of explains what you were wondering earlier she said quote she did not dislike kenneth and was attracted to him but loved only her husband and children oh so she was like yeah like i he's handsome and like i like being around him but i only love my kids and my husband oh just she just sounds like the purest like truly really does now the other thing was the blow up in the backyard had resulted in cotton becoming more attentive to her and the kids, which she appreciated. She's like, you know, it got a little fire on his butt.
She's like, I miss Kenneth. Like, he was cool to hang out with, but this kind of worked out.
Yeah, this is great. It was a testament to Carol's popularity, too, that so many people were willing to cooperate with investigators and that they were offering whatever insight they had to her character.
but their descriptions of her life and personality, even the gossip, really didn't do much to point them in the direction of a killer. Yeah.
If anything, the interviews just confirmed detectives' earlier feeling that Carol Thompson was the last person anybody would have wanted to see dead. Yeah.
Or murdered, even worse. Like, everyone on the outside of her life seemed to really like her.
Yeah, like, she didn't really have a problem with anything. She wasn't beefing.
With anyone. Oh.
So in the absence of new leads, investigators turned their attention back to Cotton, of course, the husband, who did look particularly suspicious after detectives discovered multiple life insurance policies. Oh, I knew those were coming.
Life insurance policies in Carol's name from multiple different insurance companies. Oh, you gotta go.
That's it. You gotta.
I don't know how this ends. Yeah.
So I'm not gonna sit here and I'm not gonna dog on somebody and say that it's definitely them. You can.
I can? You can. Okay, yeah.
I think it's pretty. Come on.
I think it's pretty. Different life insurances from different companies and this happens? Yeah.
Yeah. a week after the murder it came to light that there were two term life insurance policies in carol's name three accidental death policies in her name and three group term life insurance policies covering each member of the family all totaling more than a million dollars in coverage back then, which today would be $10 million.
More than $10 million. Wow.
That would make my red flags go flappy, flappy, flappy. Yeah, 100%.
So there's eight. Eight insurance policies.
That's bonkers. Like, that's insane.
That goes crazy. That goes absolutely bonkers.
The news of the policies obviously caused out quite a stir amongst those who knew the family. As it should.
Since that much coverage seemed pretty fucking excessive by any measure. In his statement to the press, Ramsey County Attorney William Randall told reporters, Thompson is the applicant for a beneficiary of the policies, which are due to expire next month.
Oh. Yeah.
Are you telling me? I'm telling you. This piece of fucking shit.
Yeah, he did something. So the discovery raised some new questions about Carol's death, and investigators obviously wanted to talk more with Cotton.
But rather than address the matter with the police privately, Cotton Thompson released his own statement to the press via his friend, Douglas Young. Douglas.
He didn't even go do it for himself. He had his friend do it.
Don't involve Doug. Yeah, don't involve Douglas.
Come on. In the statement, Young laid out a detailed tally of the insurance policies in Carol's name, and he included many, many lengthy specifics about the payouts and the purchase prices, just like a very unusual amount of information that most people wouldn't understand or really give much of a shit about.
Yeah, it's a great way to confuse people and make them not want to think that you're the guy. It was strategic, for sure.
Now, as for why he purchased so much insurance, Cotton said, We had no debt, no debt bills or indebtedness to speak of and we felt that we could readily afford up to up to 200 a month on insurance as to each of us it's like how do you have like 55 000 insurance policies that's the thing like i like having a life insurance policy absolutely but i don't understand having eight yeah understand that. Most are like, damn, like you got really good deals on this.
Yeah. According to Cotton, they did have the children in mind when they purchased the insurance and they just, he said they hadn't intended to keep it beyond the children aging into adulthood.
Which like, okay, yeah, that all sounds great. Yeah.
Why do you have eight? You just don't need eight. That's the thing.
Like you're not not answering my question. Yeah.
Cotton. The most is six.
Why do you have eight? There's six family members, six policies, the end. And I'm pretty sure one policy can cover multiple people.
Yeah. I don't know.
That could be wrong, but. Well, it's like, why? I just, I don't know.
Like, that just, it seems excessive. It absolutely does.
So the explanation seemed kind of reasonable. Even if the number of policies and coverage were excessive.
People were willing to look past it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's not totally out of the realm of normality, but it's still excessive to me.
It raises your eyebrows. It does.
But what investigators still found unusual was that Cotton also hadn't been forthcoming about the insurance policies when they asked him immediately after carol's death like he didn't say anything about these they found them which it's like that's a little weird that's real weird when they ask you and you're just like but at the same time you're like but you also know it's gonna sound bad and remember he's an attorney yeah so he knows that's gonna make him but he's an attorney. Yeah, so he knows that's going to make him.
But also it's like, they're going to find them. Yeah, that's the thing.
So just be upfront and be like, listen, I know you're going to find these things and you're going to question me about them. Exactly.
So let me get ahead of it. I think he thought that he was smarter than everybody else.
Yeah, he thought he could outrun this. Yeah.
And they also thought it was weird that when the details of the policies came to light, he chose to send a prepared statement to the press instead of just talking to the detectives who were working on his wife's murder case. Yeah, that tells you a lot.
You know? In fact, according to the St. Paul Police Department and the county attorney's office, neither received a copy of the statement that had been given to the press, and they only learned about it when it hit papers on the morning of March 27th.
Wow. Yeah.
Yeah, that's shady behavior. So they didn't see any of that coming.
And then there's this like lengthy ass statement. Yeah.
So the original policies appeared to have actually been taken out by Carroll or at least somebody who signed Carroll's names to the form. Interesting.
But investigators decided to send the documents to the FBI for handwriting analysis to confirm that it actually was Carroll's handwriting. And in the meantime, they continued their investigation, but openly admitted that they had really made very little progress in the weeks following the murder.
Police Chief Lester McAuliffe said, we have a great deal of circumstantial evidence, but the case isn't complete by any means. We need a break to crack the case.
And little did they know that break was a coming.. It was going to find them.
Oh, no.

So in their struggle to make any headway in the case,

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was pretty much what you would expect to find from a home,

except for the pieces of plastic

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Service not available in all states. In the days that followed the murder, investigators theorized that that plastic had come from the hand of a pistol, which the intruder obviously used to beat Carroll.
That caused the pistol grip to break and fall on the floor, and that's where the plastic came from. But the problem was they didn't have the gun that the pistol grip had come from and they actually weren't even sure what kind of gun it was at all.
Wow. So they didn't have a lot to go on.
But despite the lack of information, they held a televised press conference where they showed those broken pieces of the pistol grip and they asked for the public's help identifying the weapon. And within a week, the St.
Paul police got a call from a man named Wayne Brandt. He was a St.
Paul salesman who claimed that the gun they were looking for was his 7.65 millimeter lugger pistol, which had been stolen from his apartment on February 14th, just a few weeks before the murder. Holy shit.
He was certain that this gun was his because he actually recognized the pistol grip as one he made for himself in a shop class. Stop it.
Yeah, several years earlier. According to him, the gun was one of several items stolen from his apartment, along with a television, a diamond ring, and a typewriter.
Poor guy. Stealing all the shit.
And now he's got to call and be like, yeah, that gun piece found at that murder scene, that's my gun, but I promise you I wasn't there. Now he's got to go through the whole rigmarole.
I know. I can't imagine.
And good for him for being like, yeah, that's mine because some people wouldn't. I know.
A lot of people would be like, I'm not getting wrapped up in that. Right.
We love a good Samaritan. Yeah.
So a few days later and by chance, a lot of things in this case just came together by chance, which I like to believe is my girl Carol up there. The universe is working for her.
Yes. So police arrested a man named Willard Ingram during a holdup, like during a legit holdup.
Ingram had a long criminal history, and he was actually willing to provide information about other crimes in exchange for leniency with the whole holdup case. And it just so happened that he had information to share about the pistol used in Carrienthal.
Oh, shit.

Oh, my goodness.

The sisterhood of the traveling gun. It's about to go crazy.
You have no idea. There are so many people involved in this.
It blew my mind. So he steals the gun, but then he gives it to his friend, Norman.
Yes. So Norman Mastrian was a 40-year-old former prize fighter with mob ties.
Oh. And he was mostly known to St.
Paul police for kind of like a series of petty crimes. That was until he became the prime suspect in a 1962 kidnapping and murder of a local bar owner.
What the fuck? Yeah. Investigators actually hadn't been able to find enough evidence to convict him for the murder, and he was let go, but pretty much everybody agreed he was the killer.
Holy shit. They just didn't have enough.
He's just just didn't have enough walking so on the morning of april 19th a group of detectives knocked on his door with a warrant for his arrest but he refused to let them in or come outside he wasn't letting them in and he wasn't going out there that's not shady at all no so after speaking with the county attorney the detectives were actually given the authority to take him by force so Uh-oh. So they kicked down his door and they put him under arrest without further incident, luckily.
Now, once they were at the station, he said he didn't know anything about Carroll's murder. He refused to say anything more without a lawyer.
Now, obviously, this was frustrating. But by then, investigators had already found a second witness.
Shut up. A man named Henry Butler, who was now in custody pending trial for a robbery.
Is everyone okay? No. The answer is no.
Criminals are everywhere. Criminals.
My goodness. In your hair.
You'd be criminaling. Everybody stays criminal in this time of St.
Paul. So, Henry Butler claimed that he had seen Norman Mastrian in possession of the stolen pistol, but he said he also saw Norman give the gun to another man.
This gun is changing hands yet again. And this time it goes to Dick Anderson, yet another criminal who had left town a few days earlier.
Well, and this seems shady too. So the connections that led from Willard Ingram to Norman Mastrian to Henry Butler, Henry Butler, excuse me, those all made sense.
They all had very lengthy criminal histories. They were all known to associate with other criminals.
Like it was like a criminal fucking enterprise. Yeah, they just stay criminalling.
Yeah, they stay criminalling, like you said. But Dick Anderson, on the other hand, he made less sense.
He was a twice-wounded military vet who had fallen on really hard times, and he turned to petty burglary just to try to get by. But he seemed to be a far cry from the more hardened criminals that he was currently being associated with.

But once the warrant for Dick Anderson's arrest went out, St. Paul police got a tip from a reporter that he was actually staying at the Tropics Motor Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.
So when Phoenix police arrived at the motel, actually, they found Anderson in the lobby, luggage in hand, ready to check out, presumably to avoid arrest. He had definitely been tipped off.
Yeah. It turned out that the fucking reporter who gave the tip to police about him being in Phoenix in the first place actually conducted a phone interview with Dick Anderson and let him know that the police were looking for him in relation to this murder and this whole slew of shady characters.
What a dumbass. Right? Like, are you serious? I'm like, what are you looking for here? And you're fucking up the investigation.
What are you doing? Like, you're playing both sides. Well, I know what he's looking for.
He's looking for a byline. Exactly.
So Anderson told the reporter that he was only in Phoenix for a few days for vacation and that he didn't know anybody named Norman Mastrian. He didn't know anybody named Henley Butler or Willard Ingram.
He repeated these denials to the Phoenix police once he was arrested and said he would sign the extradition papers. But as the papers were being drawn up, he changed his mind and instead contacted a prominent Phoenix criminal attorney to rep him.

Wow.

Yeah.

He then said, I have no knowledge of the crime back home.

Only what I read in the newspapers.

It's a big stink here.

Okay.

This murdered woman is a big stink. Is a big stink here?

I would say so.

Yeah.

So while detectives in St. Paul waited on Anderson's extradition hearing, they started interviewing

his friends, including the man

who had actually been arrested with him in Phoenix,

a man named Richard Sharp.

Richard Sharp. Another guy.

Like Anderson and the others, Sharp

was a known criminal. He had actually fled

to Arizona with Anderson

to avoid prosecution for a recent

burglary that he was involved in. Can all

these men stop stealing other people's shit? They literally cannot and will not. Yeah, Sticky Fingers Magoo gang here.
But like the others, he was willing to exchange information in order to get leniency on his own shit. So in a 23-page statement given to the police, Sharp told investigators that Dick Anderson was lying.
He said Dick Anderson actually was the one who murdered Carol Thompson. What the fuck? And that he needed Sharp to contact the quote unquote payoff man on his behalf.
Shut up. He was waiting for his money.
According to the statement, Anderson told Sharp that Norman Mastrian had paid him $3,000 carol thompson what yeah so it literally just all went full circle holy crap now investigators actually did find that norman mastrian had paid dick anderson to kill carol thompson but what they couldn't figure out was why some small-time criminal with mob ties would want a saint paul housewife dead like how did that connect i was that connect? Yeah. When I said earlier, like, I'm pretty sure she doesn't have connections to organized crime.
Like, she doesn't. Whoa.
But somehow they know about her. But it's just like, how did it end up here? Right.
So they're sitting there trying to figure out exactly what you just said, and they get another lucky break when they arrest yet another motherfucking criminal, Sheldon Morris, who was a local cab driver and friend of Norman Mastrian's who claimed he knew where Dick Anderson had disposed of the rest of the pistol that they were still looking for, the stolen pistol. Under threat of prosecution as a co-conspirator in the murder at this point, Sheldon Morris led detectives to a remote location in the woods where the gun had been tossed.
Wow. And they found it.
Shut up. Yes.
So now with the murder weapon in their possession and the murder suspect on his way to St. Paul from Arizona, investigators were really close, were really, really close to closing the case on Carol Thompson's murder.
They knew that Norman Mastrian had received the murder weapon from Willard Ingram. He's the one who stole it in the first place.
So Willard Ingram breaks into the house of the man who had made this pistol. And then he gives it to Norman Mastrian.
And then Norman Mastrian gives it to Dick Anderson. and he also along with the gun tells him he promises to pay him $3,000 to kill Carol

$3,000

to take a human life

can you imagine how excited the investigators felt after going through this whole thing and having no idea? And finally getting this fucking gun, this murder weapon, in the middle of the woods? Can you imagine how—it must be the most insane feeling to finally get there. They literally started with next to nothing, and they asked the public for help, and this guy thankfully comes forward and is like, yes, that is my gun, but it was stolen.
But to pull that thread – And then they tracked down four or five different criminals and local criminals in the area. Exactly.
That's what I mean. Like they pulled that that thread and kept pulling it, and to end up with the actual murder weapon in the middle of the woods is wild.
And crazy how, like, all of these people were willing to turn on each other because they all, they lucked out because they all had cases that they were facing. That they wanted to get, yeah.
That they wanted leniency on, exactly. So it was just, like, lucky like lucky strike after lucky strike seriously so they knew all of this now but they were still missing the last piece of the puzzle that would you know wrap this entire story together make it make sense yeah they needed to know who hired norman mastery in in the first place because he didn't know carol why would he want her dead where is this coming from so just like they had done earlier, detectives went back to the basics of the case and they looked for anything that would connect Norman Mastrian to the Thompson family.
And that's when they found that list of previous clients that Cotton had given them at the start of this whole investigation. And of course, it included a familiar name, Norman Mastrian.
So there's no disgruntled former client. Nope.
There's a client that you felt so comfortable with. Precisely.
Pre-fucking-cicely. So after Mastrian was arrested that previous year on the suspicion of the kidnapping and the murder, he consulted with Cotton Thompson about potentially suing the county for false arrest.
Even though everybody was pretty convinced that he did this,

he was so ballsy that he was willing to sue the county.

Luckily, the suit never went forward,

but it was the only connection they could find between the two of them.

Wow.

The last piece of the puzzle finally fell into place

when St. Paul detectives were able to get Dick Anderson back in custody in Minnesota.

Because remember, he was in Phoenix, but they sent him on over. They extradited him.
No. For some reason I have such trouble with the word extradited.
Extradited. Like I can say it in a conversation.
But when I look at it. I can't say it how I'm supposed to.
I have words like that too. Yeah.
It's so weird. So they get him back.
Initially he stuck to his story. He denied knowing anything about the murder.
He didn't know any of these people. Why am I even here? Who, me? Where am I even? What? I didn't steal the cookie from the cookie jar.
No. Not me.
That's literally all I could think of the entire time I was going through this. He's just like, nope.
We're on the same page. But by late June, he finally broke down and confessed and told them everything they wanted to know.
Oh. According to Dick Anderson, he had been hired by Norman Mastrian to kill Carol, but it was Cotton Thompson who had arranged the entire hit.
Fuck you, Cotton. Her husband.
According to Dick Anderson, he'd been given instructions to sneak into the house through the side door before dawn and wait in the basement until everybody had left the house. He had this motherfucker come into his house while his children were still in this house.
children he had a mobster with a fucking rap sheet yep sneak into his goddamn house while his kids were in there yeah never mind what he did to carol yeah exactly uh dick anderson doesn't have mob ties it's norman mastrian who has mob ties dick anderson dick anderson is like the guy who they were like this doesn't even make sense that he's to all these criminals. Because he's like a petty thief.
Exactly. So he's the one that you wouldn't even, my goodness.
You wouldn't even expect him. That's the thing.
And he's a brutal fucking monster. Who knew? There's so many people involved in this that it's so hard to keep track of everybody.
But he really is the last person that they would have expected. Yeah, he's the one that they were like, why is this guy connected to all of them? He's literally like a military vet, like not tied up in the mob, not tied up in just petty thefts.
Exactly. So yeah, he has this guy just fucking sit in his basement while his kids are getting ready to go off to school.
And his wife is, you know, preparing them for the day. This guy he doesn't know.
Has no idea what he's capable of. Yeah.
Yep. Wow.
It's so messed up. So the plan was that Cotton would make a phone call to the house once he got to work, which would be Dick Anderson's signal to act because he would hear the phone ring.
And then he would know that everybody except Carol was out of the house. So that morning, Cotton filled the bathtub with six or seven inches of water.
And the plan was for Dick Anderson to strike Carol on the back of the head with a heavy piece of rubber hose, which they hoped would knock her unconscious. And when she'd been disabled, Anderson was to place her body in the bathtub, making it seem like Carol had hit her head getting into the tub and drowned.
Oh, so he really put some thought into this. Oh, he did.
Because the accidental death would have triggered the double indemnity clause in several of the insurance policies, thus paying up the higher amount. Oh, so he was hoping this would look like a total accident.
Yeah. It's god awful what happened to Carol, but it's also like, yeah, that's why you don't hire somebody to murder your fucking wife, dude, because it's not going to work out for you.
Nope. But unfortunately, like we just said, things did not go to plan.
So after Cotton placed the call to the house anderson started going up the stairs from the basement but the the stairs were creaking as he walked so he was nervous that the noise was going to give him away so he waited a minute or two and during that time carol went back upstairs to lay down in bed which sounds like something she probably never did yeah she was so busy all the time but she just goes back to her own bedroom and anderson appears in the doorway of her room oh god so she panicked assuming that it was a robbery and she jumped out of bed which he then immediately hit her on the back of the head with the hose but it didn't disable her like they hoped it would instead carol fought back hard and she was able to knock him to the floor, and she made a break for the stairs. She got out.
And she stopped quickly to grab her robe so that she wouldn't run out of the house indecent. Yeah.
Anderson caught up with her in the hallway, but she was able to escape him again, and she ran for the front door. But when she reached the front door, she found that it had been locked with a chain lock.
Holy shit. When you hear why this was locked, it's going to break your heart.
So as she fumbled to get the chain off the door, Dick Anderson obviously caught up with her and pointed the gun at Carol. Now, still thinking that she was being robbed, she took her diamond ring off her finger, her wedding ring, and offered it to him.
But he responded by pulling the trigger of the gun.

To both of their surprise, the gun jammed, sending him into a panic.

And that's when he started beating her with the gun so aggressively that the pistol grip broke and fell to the floor.

Holy shit.

It was also at this point that those three rounds from the clip came loose and and dropped to the floor so that's why they found those unspent clips damn now when the beating didn't appear to have killed carol he went to the kitchen and grabbed a paring knife from the door which he used to stab carol until the handle broke now finally convinced that she was dead he went upstairs to the bathroom where he tried to wash the blood off his hands and arms. And he went to the bedroom to stage the scene to look like a robbery.
And while he was staging the scene, he heard a noise downstairs and ran to look by the door. And that's when he saw that Carol was gone.
So she most likely actually played dead to make it seem like. she could escape exactly like she fought him as hard

as she did and then had the whereabouts to pretend she was dead so she could get away that is

horrifying so panicked when he saw that she was gone he stopped what he was doing and he fled the

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Now, this is gut-wrenching. Years later, Jeff Thompson, Cotton and Carol's son, would recall that on the morning morning of his mother's murder his father instructed him to put the chain on the front door before they left for school piece of actual fucking shit he had his you got you put that on your kid yep like fuck this guy into oblivion to a boy fuck this guy and jeff even said he thought it was strange because they never changed the door and he said if if it hadn't been locked obviously his mother would have been able to escape her attacker he said i had never done that before i haven't forgiven my father and you never should never fuck that guy never like why can't you just i don't want you to do any of this but you put that on your fucking.
You can't even just go do it. You're making him a part of this.

He had a man, a criminal, who he has no idea what he's capable of,

hiding in his house while his kids are walking around upstairs.

He has zero moral compass.

To involve your kids like that is so, so messed up.

What a piece of garbage.

So on June 21st, 1963, you will all be very happy to hear,

detectives arrested Cotton Thompson in connection with the murder,

labeling him as the payoff man in the conspiracy,

because remember, they were looking for the payoff man.

When he appeared before the judge for his arraignment,

Cotton, quote, looked haggard, had tears in his eyes,

and his voice cracked as he answered the judge's questions.

Oh, fuck you and your tears.

Yeah, get fucked.

The news of Cotton's arrest obviously shocked the friends and neighbors of the thompson family one neighbor said there was no conflict between the thompson's recognizable or known to their closest friends and others recalled how quote he and carol never missed a sunday taking the kids to church and how cotton was active with jeff's scout troop all of it like everybody shocked. Even the most obvious motive, the large insurance payout, even didn't really make that much sense to everybody.
Because remember, he's a successful lawyer. He's making, like, $40,000 a year back then, which today is more than, like, $400,000 a year.
Yeah, but come on. Yeah, he's, like, essentially making a doctor salary.
Yeah. So it wasn't like he was in desperate need of money.
But in reality, the motive for Carol's murder had pretty much been staring them in the face since the beginning of the investigation. There were so many claims that they were this ideal couple, but it seemed like the neighborhood gossip had been right all along.
Cotton and Carol's marriage was on the rocks for a long time. author William Swanson said there were all kinds of things that wouldn't jive with Cotton's idea

of a wife and mother in 1963. Before they were married, Carol had obviously big dreams, and she envisioned a very exciting life for herself.
She wanted to go after all her interests, all her passions. But her marriage, and obviously the quick arrival of children, pretty much sidelined all of her goals and required that she turn her attention to supporting her husband's ambitions yeah but regardless it's the perfect time for that time that too in 1963 especially exactly exactly but regardless of how she felt about having to prioritize her responsibilities as a wife and mother like i said in the beginning she approached all all her new responsibilities with like open arms.
She was happy to do everything she had to do. And by all accounts, she was a great wife.
She was a great mother. But the longer they were married, people said the more unhappy Carol had become.
That author, Swanson, said, Cotton was a tough, self-absorbed character. And soon it became clear that he was intent on doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to he was having affairs with other women and he was just completely indifferent to carol's wants carol's needs wow so he's just like a literal slimy piece of fucking dung yeah on the bottom of an elephant's foot yeah i would say he's even lower than that, honestly.
Later, their son Jeff would say, I know my mother knew about my dad's affairs. She was saddened by a lot of his behavior, so it would not surprise me if she was to reach out to another person.
Oh, that breaks my heart. Which honestly is probably why she was so close with Kenneth Morin.
Yeah. Like, I'm sure they, like, she just wanted somebody to be there for her.
She needed someone. And it doesn't even really sound like they were having any kind of, like, a listed affair.
Yeah, just like someone that pays attention and is kind to her. Yeah, and like, and of course, that other person was Kenneth Morin.
They had shared interests together. They gave a shit about each other.
And, you know, nobody really knows if there was an affair or not, but it seemed pretty obvious to everybody that there was some kind of connection to yeah to each other and that was until cotton put an end to that relationship which makes me even angrier that that motherfucker was out there doing everything he wanted and he was being that possessive yeah and here i was being like oh yeah you know like i guess when you're in the relationship but he was doing whatever the fuck he wanted out there in those streets. Yeah, whoever and whatever.
Asshole. Exactly.
She just has a male friend and you're, ugh. Literally just a friend.
Fuck you, Cotton. But the final straw, at least as far as Cotton was concerned, came just one day before Carol was murdered.
Apparently that afternoon, seemingly out of nowhere, Carol turned to her daughter, Margaret, and asked what she would do if she went away for a while. what would you do if mom went away for a while and jeff thompson remembered this happening and he said margaret was very surprised and concerned and the thought was that she was planning on leaving my father looking back on it i hope she was however she would have been foolish to tell him oh jeff and that's like his son i want to give jeff a hug i know i do Now, nobody knows if Margaret said anything to her father about her mother planning to leave, or if he just came to that conclusion on his own.
But either way, it seemed that Cotton Thompson knew or strongly suspected that Carol was most likely planning on leaving him. Yeah, and I mean, those policies were set to expire the following month.
Exactly. So he was, it's either act now or don't act.
Exactly. So he quickly made sure, made plans that she would never get out of this marriage.
Fuck that guy. Which is, it's like, you don't want to be married either.
Yeah. You're going here, there, and everywhere with everyone.
Well, and he wants all this fucking money. It's like, you're making that money.
That's the thing. I'm like, what can you do with it? At a certain point, what are you doing with it? Exactly.
Why do you need more? You just don't. It's not like you're struggling.
It's not like one of these situations where it's like the family is struggling financially and they're like, and obviously it's never okay. But in those situations, there's a desperation factor that plays into it.
That wasn't even here. That's not even here.
He just wanted more. Yeah.
I'm like, you have four kids. Holy shit.
They all are doing what they want to do as far as activities, it sounds like. You guys are throwing parties.
You're throwing events. What do you need more for? Why? Fuck that guy.
But after several delays and a change of venue, Cotton Thompson finally went on trial for the murder of his wife on October 27th, 1963. He pleaded innocent.
And in his opening statements, prosecutor William Randall laid out the state's theory about Thompson's motive for the murder. He said the motive was not only to enable Mr.
Thompson to collect the more than $1 million in life insurance he had recently taken out on his wife's life, but also to free him up to see other women. So just leave.
Just leave. They be better off without you anyways wouldn't have got his money so he wouldn't have been happy you have plenty of money you piece of shit seriously but randall pointed to cotton's long history of infidelity and one particular incident a year earlier where he apparently told his mistress just give me 11 months implying that after that time frame he would be able to marry her girl 11 just give me 11 months why the fuck are you being so specific yeah it's like girl come on like first of all stop fucking a married guy and second of all when he's saying when he's giving you a time frame you gotta wonder you gotta wonder what that time frame implies you sure do testifying for the prosecution one of the several insurance agents told the jury about the, quote, sense of urgency Cotton conveyed to them when he was buying up all of these policies.
11 months before Carol's death. Come on.
Cotton told one agent that he had a, quote, unquote, premonition in which Carol would meet with a tragic accident. And no one thought to tell anyone? No.
Guys, we got to use the stuff between your ears gray matter as public would say what are you doing yeah he said that was why he was in such a such a hurry to get all these policies so some guy some high-powered defense attorney has a premonition everything that with two legs yep is out here telling you that he's got to get 85 life insurance policies. You're not far off.
Eight. On his wife.
His young wife. And his family.
His young healthy wife. His family too.
And he's got to do it quick. Quick, quick, quick.
And you know why? He had a vision. You know, it's so weird.
I just have this weird vision that she's going to meet with a tragic accident and die. And none of you sat there and said, you know what? We might want to call someone and maybe put some tabs on that guy because I feel like that's shady behavior.
No. They were just like, sure, sign it here.
I'll get my check. Okay, cool.
It's all money. Everyone's just like, whatever.
I got paid. Yep.
Money talks. Damn.
No, this is what the defense went with. The defense explained that Cotton was just an eccentric when it came to insurance.

No, no.

He's just eccentric.

No, that's not one of those things.

He's just kooky.

He just, you know, he just fucking loves insurance.

Loves insurance.

You guys know Jake from State Farm.

Cotton's kind of like that.

You know, Cotton, insurance is my kink kind of guy, you know?

That's not okay.

Nobody's eccentric when it comes to life insurance policies. An eccentric for life insurance.
Like what? Hello? Are we really just giving them that? So we're really just like not taking all the responsibility off him. Ridiculous.
So pointing to the excessive coverage he'd purchased for his home and car, they continued to say he was an eccentric. But he just loves it.
were also double the average coverage at the time so he really did put like excess coverage on everything he is eccentric when it comes to home insurance and life insurance but if the urgency and amount of coverage cotton had purchased on his wife's life weren't compelling enough the testimony of the state's chief witness dick anderson definitely gave insight to cotton's cruelty oh boy on the stand anderson recalled the attack on carol and he said she managed to get out of the tub so i knew i had trouble i was instructed either way so i went to pull the gun so he uh cotton told dick no matter what happens you pull that trigger and you kill her. Wow.
He is so fucking cold. I don't care what happens.
Yeah. He then explained, Dick explained to the jury in no uncertain times that he had been hired by Norman Mastrian, who was hired by Cotton.
Also, according to Anderson, there was supposed to be a second murder. Anderson quoted Norman as telling him, the broad's father will be next in six or seven months.
What the fuck? They were going to kill Carol's dad as well. Apparently, this was Cotton's plan to gain an even greater access to Carol's family fortune, which she would have inherited upon her father's death.
I am? So if she's dead and her father dies, Cotton and kids get everything. So this guy is a literal fucking monster.
Yeah. Like no amount of money would ever satiate that man.
That's like. What is wrong with you? I don't know.
What is wrong with. That's more money than you'll ever be.
Like what is wrong with you? And I just. I never understand valuing that much money over human life.
Like. That's the thing.
And especially. And we always say say this i feel like when it comes to a spouse murdering another spouse but it's like you take vows you walk down the aisle with that person in this case you procreate multiple multiple times with this person and you don't feel anything that's the thing i'm like you don't feel any connection to them drew and i get in a little tiff and I'm like, I'm the worst horrible woman in the world.

And I feel so bad.

Like, what?

You don't feel anything.

That's what I don't get.

Like, I'm like, I could never, I can't imagine causing harm to John.

No.

Or having someone else cause harm to John. Emotionally, physically, anything.
Anything, but for money. Like, I, and it, like, I just can't, I can't even picture, I can't even picture that thinking that money is going to, like, like, that you're going to hold that money and feel good.
Like, what is wrong with you? I think he would have. You have to be dead inside.
I think he absolutely is. You have to be dead inside i think you have to be dead inside this guy has to be dead inside 100 and and also like to kill your wife one is absolutely just like unthinkable then to kill her grieving father six or seven months later first of all you're gonna make him wait six or seven months yeah and then secondly, you're also killing her father.
Like what? So her poor mother has just lost her daughter and her

husband. Yeah.
Yeah. So Cotton Thompson did testify on his own behalf, essentially telling

the court that he had nothing to do with his wife's murder and that the extent of his relationship

with Norman Mastrian was just an advisor one year earlier. But he didn't really say much else to

convince the jury that he had no connection to the murder. Instead, the defense just argued that the jury couldn't trust a chain of circumstantial evidence and the testimony of criminals who had all turned on each other in exchange for lighter sentences.
But on December 7th, 1963, the jury deliberated for more than 26 hours before emerging to announce that they

found T. Eugene Cotton Thompson

guilty. Yes.

Of the first degree murder of his wife,

Carol Thompson. Bye, bitch.
And when

asked about how they arrived at the verdict, one

juror said, there was no one primary

reason for our verdict. We thought

of the case as a whole.

And after waiving his right to a delay in

sentencing, Judge

Ralph Fawson immediately sentenced

Cotton to life in prison, which at the time was the required sentence in cases of premeditated murder in Minnesota. Rot, bitch.
Rot. And in the months that followed, Norman Mastrian and Dick Anderson were both tried and both were found guilty of first-degree murder, meaning they both also got life sentences.
Yeah, as you should. Now, Cotton appealed his conviction, of course.
Shut up. He appealed to the state Supreme Court in 1966, arguing for a new trial on the grounds that he had been convicted on false testimony provided by several of his criminal co-conspirators.
But the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision and denied the motion for a new trial he did end up being paroled in 1983 what and tried to reconnect with his family but he was never very successful jeff johnson later said it's very hard for a child to have a parent in prison but once he got out we never had much of a relationship i think based on my experience with minnesota's criminal justice system that the jury did the right thing. Wow.
Jeff is like a very, he's a really good person. He's elevated higher.
Yeah. Than, you know, most people.
Like that is. That's Carol's son.
I was going to say that is Carol's son. That's Carol's son.
That's not Cotton's son. I mean, it is Cotton's son.
I'm not saying that, but you know what I'm saying. Yes.
Now, just for kicks. On August 7th, 2015, on his 88th birthday, Cotton Thompson died in his sleep after struggling with failing health for several years.
And if that's not the universe saying ha ha ha ha ha. Especially on his birthday.
On his birthday. Because I was like, I do hate that he got to die peacefully in his sleep.
And I hate that he lived 88 years. Yeah.
Like that's a long ass life. He got to like at least be out.
Yeah, that pisses me off. He got a lot of time on the other side.
But rest in fucking distress. And the universe is always going to get you.
I'm going to die on your birthday if you do some fuck shit. Wow.
I told you. It's one of those cases that just starts and doesn't stop.
It doesn't stop. Like not one.
And poor Carol. I know.
And her kids. And that's the thing.
Like her kids just went to school that day. Yeah.
And had no idea. And Jeff, poor Jeff, his dad told him lock that door.
And then he spent the rest of his life thinking, what if I hadn't locked that door? Like, why did my dad make me lock? Like, I can't imagine the psychological damage that would do to you. That's the thing.
You'd be constantly thinking, why didn't I just ignore that? But it's like, why would you ignore that? And especially in 1963, you're not disobeying your father when he tells you to do something. Definitely not.
That was just, you did what you were told by a parent who is supposed to be a safe place and that you are supposed to feel comfortable doing what you're told to. And why would you question that? No, of course not.
He said, like, they never locked that door, so he did kind of question it, but he's not going to out loud question it. And he's not going to sit there and think, okay, he's having me lock that because he's going to have my mom killed and he doesn't want her to escape.
That's not going to be in your head. You can never come up with that.
That's your worst nightmare. That's an awful, awful case.
It's such a sad case too because you, in the beginning, like when I started reading about this case, I was like, oh, like she's going to live. She's going to pull through.
That's what I thought. It's just so sad.
That's awful. But she was a fighter.
She fought hard to think that she literally dragged herself or crawled a block away after sustaining what she sustained. Yeah.
Running around that house multiple times, getting out of the bathtub. Yeah.
Oh, my God. No, she's unbelievable.
Truly. Damn.
But what a tragic case. It really is.
But as always, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird.
in 11 months because he had a premonition that she's going to die unexpectedly in a tragic accident. Yeah, and obviously I know they're not all from the same life insurance company,

but still it's fucking weird. Okay, bye.
Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.

We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect.
He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.
I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law and Crime and Twist.
This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely

American moment that could change the country forever. He's awoken the people to a true issue.

Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our

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