501 - Live at Bass Concert Hall (Austin Night 1)

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What's up, Austin?

Oh my God.

You're loud in here.

Yay.

So exciting.

Are you running in place?

Where are you going?

What's up?

Are you running in place?

A little bit.

That's just so loud and exciting.

and hot Jesus is hot here

this is insane our second city of our 2025 tour yeah

it would have been our first but we were waiting for it to kind of get a little cooler here and we then we couldn't wait anymore so We decided to come.

We came and we match somehow.

This was a mistake.

This was unplanned.

This is what starts happening to your brain after 10 years of podcasting together.

That's right.

Your purples sink.

Aesthetic sinking is what they call it in science.

Well tell them about your outfit since we're talking about it.

Oh

I got this outfit.

It's by a designer named Kevin Holland has pockets.

Thank you.

Gorgeous, so pretty.

Thank you.

And how about your outfit, John?

Thank you.

I have a velvet, insane, drunk aunt at the Christmas party outfit that has, thank you.

Yes.

It has

questionable vintage stains on it.

And cowboy boobs.

Yeah.

Because we're in Texas.

That's right.

Obviously.

We're playing the part here.

I love that aunt.

That anti-catalyzing.

She just fed some cows and came out.

She's like, god damn this Christmas party.

Where's my eggnog and my cigarette?

Give it.

I need to stain this dress.

This is the True Crime Comedy Podcast, My Favorite Murder, if you didn't know.

Thank you.

That's Karen Kilgara.

That's Georgia Hardstark.

Oh.

I met a Texas raccoon last night.

What's this?

I met a raccoon.

Vince and I were going for a walk after dinner downtown.

I don't know if it's downtown, but it felt like it.

There were buildings in the city.

Lots of buildings.

And just like out of nowhere, a fucking raccoon jumps out of a trash can holding food and climbs into a gutter.

Boom.

When I fucking lost my mom.

A city, like a city raccoon, is the most exciting thing to me.

And I was like, wait, wait, wait, come back.

Come back.

I have questions.

I want to interview you.

Do you have an accent?

It was so cute.

So I'm clearly starved for animal love at this very moment.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess the raccoons in Austin are very well fed because every bite of food I've had since I've gotten here is the best thing I've ever eaten.

It's ridiculous.

What do you eat?

Have you had queso yet?

No, sadly.

That'll be my goal before I leave here.

Bucket of queso.

Race to queso the next 48 hours.

I got a hamburger at a place called Eureka, and they said these are the best burgers ever.

And we were like, we're from Los Angeles.

And then we ate and it was the best burger ever.

Nice.

Yeah.

Nice.

Had some fajitas.

Fajitas.

And

these, I think, homemade flour tortillas.

Like the tortillas were like someone cared about me as I ate it,

which is how you should make food, I think.

Yes.

Anyway.

guys

we're very new to this it's been six years and six fucking years it's a little crazy we didn't think anyone was gonna come this time yeah

and you guys haven't heard the first night of Denver we didn't remember our lines we don't know what we're doing we don't know where we are most of the time yeah so if there's like um podcast authorities here tonight

we're gonna get a bad report card for sure.

Absolutely.

Do you want to tell them about the podcast?

Yeah.

This is the speech I have to remember.

Literally, I had it printed out because I was like, see, this is the kind of thing that you just, when you do it all the time, it's no big deal.

And then that first night in Denver, I was like, literally like line.

I don't get what.

But we like to explain ourselves because sometimes it shows there are people, we call them them drag-alongs lovingly they're people who don't want to listen to this podcast but are forced to constantly and we say hi to you we thank you for your patience and your love of your partner that you would listen to these two assholes blab around all through your road trip or whatever it is you're doing

some drag-alongs come and they don't listen to the podcast and they don't like it and they think to themselves true crime and comedy those two things don't go together so we just want you to know: you know, we're two people who grew up, our childhoods were the type where there was a lot of coping with comedy types of things.

So, when we approach difficult, the difficult parts of life, we often do that with humor.

We don't think murder is funny, we just think we're funny.

So,

that said, if you don't like it, you can get the fuck out.

You got

I not only did I remember it, I added to you.

I know.

Yeah.

That's how comfortable you are.

Yes, we're right back on.

Like riding a bike.

Yeah.

An audio bike.

An audio bike.

Well, yeah, so we're going to tell you some stories tonight.

Should we do this?

Yeah, you go first, right?

I'm first, I think, yes.

Okay.

All right.

Let's do it.

So

we have done almost 500 episodes, and I feel like a quarter of them have taken place in Texas.

I know.

Many, many.

Many, many.

Do not fuck around.

So it has been hard to find news stories in cities we go to except for Texas.

So

great job.

And

we'd like to thank the Texas Monthly publication.

Yes.

Incredible, incredible publication, Skip Hollandsworth, particularly we would like to thank.

Mark Holland is an incredible writer who

he lets us regurgitate his stuff and then go, hey, did you hear Skip Hollinsworth really research this story?

It's great.

Well, it's funny that you say that because this story that I'm going to tell tonight, it was kind of forgotten.

It was a very high-profile case here in Texas.

It was kind of forgotten except for in the small town it took place in.

But then a journalist named Pamela Koloff wrote a Texas monthly story about it.

You're not going to fucking believe that.

That's the, yeah, our psychic purple link tonight.

And that revived the case, but it's still not as well known.

Maybe you guys know it.

This is the kiss and kill murder from Odessa.

Anyone from Odessa?

Yes.

So she wrote an article called A Kiss Before Dying.

I remember the story from, you know, late nights scrolling, and it's just wild and unexpected.

So here we go.

Do you know it?

I do not.

Okay.

So the main source is the Texas Monthly article that I just said and a memoir by the cousin of the victim, Shelton Shelton Williams, called Washed in Blood, nope, called Washed in the Blood.

So those are very different.

Those are two very different ideas.

Yeah,

as a person raised as a Catholic, those are

two different ideas.

Is that a thing?

What's that?

Blood, washing, and blood.

We love blood over in the Christian area.

We talk about it a lot.

It's very holy.

Sometimes.

Okay, and the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes, but not right now because this is live.

In the future.

In the future of show notes.

All right, so in 1961, Betty Williams is a 17-year-old high school senior at Odessa High School.

It's about 300 miles away from here.

It's the

real place of the fictional place where Saturday Night Lights took place.

Oh, Friday Night Lights.

That's what I meant.

Yeah.

Just a combination.

You know the

sketch football show.

Saturday Night Lights.

You can tell how well I grew up with sports.

I didn't.

Jewish people don't do sports, so we didn't.

I'm at the 50-yard line.

It's a really, really good show, though.

Yes, it is.

It's incredible.

Do you know I once saw her?

What's her name?

She's so cute.

No, not Connie Britton.

Minka Kelly, Minka Kelly.

Vince and I were in Germany on vacation and we were waiting in an elevator at her hotel and up comes Minka Kelly looking so gorgeous, I couldn't believe it.

And I was like, oh, she was with a boyfriend.

And I was like, look at that, that like,

like, you know, meathead she's with.

I was like, he must be her trainer.

Like, good for her for getting a like hot piece or whatever.

And we look it up later, and he's the singer of Imagine Dragons.

I don't know.

Yeah, singer Imagine Dragons.

I was like, good for her for getting this honk, whatever.

Like, I hope he like worships at her feet.

And he's like, the singer of the biggest fan that's ever.

So, what do I know?

Not sports.

No.

Not music.

No.

Podcasting.

Not podcasting.

We just know this exact thing we're doing right now.

Luckily, it's working out.

Right.

Okay, so it's about 300 miles west of here, and it's a pretty big town at this point, a booming population.

There's local oil fields, so that falls the population.

And there's money in the area because of that oil, but the stereotype is that most of the people with money live in nearby nearby Midland.

They don't stick in...

Yeah,

she's rich over here.

Are you really from Midland?

Congratulations.

Do you think for the rest of this show you would be our audience ambassador?

And whenever we pronounce something wrong or do it wrong, everyone's going to yell all at the same time, but we don't know what anyone's saying.

Minka Kelly.

Yeah, so you can be the one that we're going to look at you and be like, hey, Midland, what's going on?

And you can be like, they're saying Minka Kelly.

She's agreeing to it.

Okay, great.

Great.

So the quote is that Midlands is where you raise your kids, Odessa is where you raise hell.

Hey!

And actually,

a murderino named Rachel, I checked our emails and she wrote in and said, Odessa has consistently voted as one of the most violent cities in Texas in the U.S.

as a whole because of the rampant street races.

I don't know why I pointed at you.

Oh shit, I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about you and your street racing.

I've been arrested for street racing and drag.

What's the thing?

Fading and dragging.

Midland, what is that?

Furious, fast and furious?

Shirts.

Donuts.

Donuts.

Yeah.

Street racing.

Sorry, what's your actual name?

Christy.

Drifting.

Her name is not drifting.

Drifting.

Christy Drifter?

That's insane.

What a coincidence.

It is drifting.

That was what I was thinking about.

That's true.

That's true.

She passed a test.

She is good.

She is good.

That was a test.

Midlands.

Okay, rampant street races, drunk driving, and then she wrote, and you know, drugs.

Oh.

In the 60s, it was similar.

So that's where we are.

Thank you to Rachel the Murderino for giving us a.

Is that you?

No.

Okay.

I think this was in like 2018 that she wrote this, so she might not be a listener anymore.

Yeah.

We're still kind of churning through that Gmail.

There's a lot of stuff in there.

Please be patient.

That said, all things relative.

And for Betty, Odessa is very square.

She's kind of sounds like me growing up in the suburbs where it's like, oh no, I'm stuck in this place that I don't fit in at.

I want to get out, but it's the 60s, so you kind of can't leave, right?

They couldn't leave in the 60s, could they?

Right.

Everyone is locked in.

Betty probably would have done really well in like, you know, in Austin or a bigger hipper town, but unfortunately, she's struggling in Odessa.

She's a big fan of the writing of Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg.

She loves Lenny Bruce's stand-up.

And

she frequently rails against segregation and calls out the racism she sees all around her, even though she is raised by a Baptist preacher.

So she's just like rebellious in a small town.

And also a good person.

Yes.

She likes to go against the grain.

When she's bored, she goes to the local diner wearing all black and white lipstick and not putting on a bra, which I think even today is like

doing it.

So, Pamela Colliff

describes Betty's appearance by saying she had, quote, sandy blonde hair that brushed her shoulders and big, expressive blue eyes that could feign sincerity when talking to authority figures, but were alive with irreverence.

So she was, you know, sharp.

Odessa is ruled, though, by football, shockingly, football team.

About 30 years later,

as I said in the book, Friday Night Lights.

Capital S.

Yes.

And

it is that culture there even then.

And so in the 60s, the popular girls

are known around town as the Cashmere Girls.

That's their nickname.

I don't know why, because that sounds really fucking hot in Texas to be wearing cashmere everywhere.

Remember, like a light silk?

Yeah.

The light silk gang?

The cashmere girls, aka the sweaty bitches.

That's right.

That's right.

And they even belong to little mini sororities within their high school, and they're rich and, of course, you know, obedient when their parents are paying attention.

They're conformists, unlike Betty.

And her family does struggle financially, and her father is deeply religious.

And he's constantly reminding Betty of all the ways that she, in his eyes, fails to measure up to his very rigid set of standards.

So, Betty does have friends,

and she writes notes to them in classes,

But she's just kind of over it in her city.

It sounds like she's very alone, or you know, kind of alienated.

Right.

And so she's cool, but she's still a teenager.

And people know her say that, well, she pretends to be above it all.

She also deeply wants to be accepted.

And she sees the world in that classic teenage way where they think the things have to happen immediately.

You know, all this is to say it's difficult for her.

It sounds like nowadays she maybe would have gotten some mental health help as we all need, but back then and with religious parents, it's not going to happen.

So she does start

having sex around with the boys at school because she's bored.

Did you just woohoo?

I like it.

You can't.

You're right.

It's fun.

It's so fun.

She's not wrong.

She's not incorrect.

And so because of that, of course, she gets talked about a lot by the popular girls.

She dreams dreams of getting out of Odessa and becoming an actress but she also can't imagine that and picture a realistic path forward.

She's the oldest of her four.

Her family's poor.

So she doesn't know where she gets the money to leave or go to college.

And so during the summer between Betty's junior and senior year, she winds up in a relationship with a boy named Mac Herring.

And it's more

like not really a real relationship.

It's more real than she's had in the past.

But it sounds like he just kind of isn't willing to like make it public that he's dating her.

They won't go to, he won't take her to parties and he won't acknowledge that, you know, that she's his girlfriend.

Give him his letter jacket as a thing, I guess.

Yeah, it is.

That happens with sports.

It does, yeah, it does.

So you're basically saying he's an asshole.

Right, yeah.

It's not ideal.

Okay.

And so Betty, at the end of the summer, maybe because she's feeling hurt, she hooks up with someone else and Mac finds out and ends the relationship.

And so this this is a huge blow for Betty.

It only gets worse when school starts.

It's her senior year, and for one reason or another, she doesn't get cast in the school play.

And like I said, she wanted to be an actress.

It's like part of her personality.

It's a really big deal to her.

Also, it's where the kids who don't belong other places, like the theater department is like, that's where it's at.

You're not a jock and you're not a cheerleader, right?

Yep, I can't.

I have rehearsal.

That's how we cope.

I wish I had known that.

I'm also not a good actress, but I could still have been there, right?

They would have accepted me.

You would have done great in there.

I could have built sets.

I don't know.

You love a black turtleneck.

You would have been great.

So it sounds like this kind of,

like, just kind of brings her down in a way that it sounds like as someone with depression, she gets really depressed.

Things get worse at home, and

her friends all say that things have gotten pretty bad.

Her father, very religious, devout Baptists, but he takes it to the next level.

He goes into her room and reads her diary and finds out about all the trifes she's had.

And

it sounds like her father is at least verbally abusive and her mother is passive about it.

That's the most we kind of know about it.

But by the winter, Betty is telling classmates that she wants to die.

Today, of course, as I said, this would be taken seriously, you would hope, and she'd get some mental health help.

But in 1961, everyone in the community just kind of chalks it up to Betty being dramatic.

Madam Betty, of course.

She spends the next several months telling multiple classmates that she wants to end her life and asks them to help her to do so, which is such a cry for help.

It's like, yeah, not even.

Yeah.

It's like people need, you need to be, you need the skills.

and the communication.

So you're a teenager and there's another teenager telling you a really scary thing that like, what do you do?

You laugh it off, you freak out, you don't know what to do right um

and so it sounds like no one actually believes that she's gonna go through with her plan and then on march 20th 1961 betty's at school and she runs into that summer ex and she says to him quote it's been nice knowing you and when he asks her what she's talking about she says she's going to talk mac into killing her is what she says

Two days later, Betty gets a ride home from

rehearsals for the school play, but she's not in, but it sounds like maybe she was a stage manager or doing sets or something from a classmate named Ike.

And she suggests he comes back a half an hour later, and she'll sneak back out to meet him.

And she tells him, she tells this guy, Ike, that Mac has agreed to kill her.

And

Ike is like, there's no way she's serious, doesn't take it seriously.

I think we have a photo of Mac and Betty, actually.

I know, isn't she lovely?

She's gorgeous.

Also, like,

it's always that thing where it's like when people tell you, and it feels like everyone that ever went to high school, it's just like, oh, I was miserable, it sucked in this way, here's why I think I wasn't good, people didn't like me, and then it's like, it's like, why wouldn't anyone not like you?

Right.

Like, that kind of thing where you're just like, yes, that's a teenage dream couple right there.

Right.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, I had the most fucked up bangs, and I plucked this eyebrow back to here.

I had a lot going against me.

But I did have the theater.

You did have the theater.

I did.

So she,

at 10:30 that night, she sneaks out of her house, meets Ike, and then Mac drives up to where they are.

And Ike is so sure that Betty had been joking about Mac killing her that he doesn't even stop her from getting out of the car and going with him.

He says that Betty

turns over her shoulder as she's leaving and says, quote, I've got to call his bluff, even if he kills me.

So from Ike's perspective, it sounds like the scenario Betty is imagining is from

one in which Mac doesn't actually go through with it.

Who knows

what was going through everyone's mind, but

unfortunately, for the rest of the story, the only perspective we have and the only version we have is Mac's.

And Betty's parents report, so Betty's parents report her missing the next morning.

I'm burping, excuse me.

Wow, it's really terrible on stage to do that.

Look, embarrassing.

You'll work it out by the end of this tour.

You'll never do it again.

I wasn't in theater class.

I don't know how to silently burp.

Dude, just push it down and silently fart.

I don't know how to do that either.

It's not true.

I hate it.

I know.

Can you tell?

Why is this so hard?

It's so weird.

We do it all the time and we like doing it.

It's just hard.

It's really intense.

Especially when you're going through perimenopause.

yeah that's the difference that's a difference six years later this time

menopause is upon us ladies and gentlemen six years late ago i was in my 30s still who is she this feels so good who was she do you want me to do that while you talk

i want some

thank you oh my i'm wearing like velvet gown yeah you're wearing what the fuck polyester like the hottest thing you could be wearing spanks

what is happening yeah

thank you you're welcome

okay and we're back so Betty's all of that would have been edited out of the regular podcast

now we just have to do it in front of you that doesn't not oh she's a fan oh do you want that fan yeah we'll take the fan thank you so nice

you're an angel

it's the fan from Moulin Rouge thank you so much but now you're gonna be sweating you don't have a fan no you're okay she's a sweater on so she's okay

thank you oh my god that was just

awesome.

What a look, too.

Do I?

I mean, is it working?

This look is coming together.

Snap it out.

Slay.

Slay girl.

Slay.

Slay, bitch.

All right.

And death drop right in the front of this.

Come on.

Okay, the drag-alongs are angry.

They're like, what is this fucking thing?

What's happening?

We don't get it.

People over 40 should not be on stage.

What is happening?

We're here to fight for the sweaty bitches.

That's right.

You know, Texas.

Austin gets it.

So,

okay,

back into the shit.

They report her missing, and the police quickly pull out her classmates for questioning,

including some that tell them that the last time they saw her, she was getting into Mac's car and that, you know, things were not going well with her.

And police question Mac.

He claims that he picked Betty up, like Ike said, but that he dropped her back off at her house at midnight without waiting to see if she got in, which we know you guys don't fucking do in Texas, right?

Like, it's very rude.

Right.

This obviously is suspicious to investigators for that very reason.

And she was wearing, she had snuck out of her house, so she was wearing like pajamas and like a duster robe.

And so,

and they're skeptical that he would leave a girl standing on her porch in her pajamas, and they're also skeptical that she would have gone back through the front door, because when you sneak out, you have to sneak back in, usually.

Hopefully through a window.

Hopefully there's a window that's not too high.

Yeah.

The window I used to have to sneak in and out of, I think

back to now, I could have broken my fucking neck.

Like, it's insane.

Was it second story?

Second story, and then you had to leap to a landing

that was like over the shed, so it probably wasn't very sturdy to begin with.

I could have fallen right through it.

And then you had to leap back into the door, into the window.

All that on drugs.

Yeah.

We all do a lot of things, and we all have, and it's fine.

It's really fun.

And then you get a podcast.

Yeah, that's right.

If you do enough of those things, you get a podcast.

So

she had a sneak back in, so probably didn't go to the front door.

And after a 45-minute interrogation, the whole story comes out.

He says that Betty Betty had been begging him, like others at school, to kill her.

And he said he finally agreed to it and that she, this is his story, selected a 12-gauge shotgun and that he did it.

He admits it in 1961.

Like, what the fuck?

What?

I mean.

He brings police to the land that his father uses for hunting about 25 miles out.

And there he leads them to a pond.

And they police see that there's blood on the ground.

And they ask him to retrieve her body.

He takes off his leather jacket and all his clothes, goes into the water, and pulls her body to shore.

Oh my gosh.

I know.

Because the idea, we have to entertain this idea too.

The Mac has been pulled into this idea.

So

we want to.

Yeah.

But there is a horrible consideration that this is a person who is trying to just give a person what they want because they are begging for it.

Like, that's,

it's a crazy consideration, but what a horrible situation that could be.

Right.

And, like, you'd hope the first thing they do is like, go

get help.

Do something.

Tell one other person.

Right.

Yeah.

He said that

it's just awful.

She chose the spot.

She was

like into it.

She gave him a kiss and then he shot her.

One of Betty's close friends said that it was always abundantly clear that Betty truly didn't want to die and that Betty was bluffing, trying to get Mac to tell her that she was loved and wanted by him.

This friend says, Quote, I always believed Mac's script was, I'll teach her a lesson.

She'll be so scared at how close we came to doing this, she will grow up and stop the

dramatics.

And that Betty's thought was, she thinks Betty's thought was, when Mac sees how miserable I am and how much I love him, he'll realize that we should be together.

So just teenage decisions.

Horrifying every direction.

So

something terribly flawed led him to step over the line and shoot.

And

so at that point, a highway patrolman who was present at the scene says, quote, it didn't move him when he pulled her body out of the water or when he said that he put a shotgun, he'd had put a shotgun to her head.

It was as cold-blooded and premeditated as it could be.

So the authorities think that he did do it, like wanted to do it.

It sounds like they didn't see any remorse and didn't show any fear or regret, is what they think.

Mac is charged with Betty's murder, but it sounds like he gets out on parole in the beginning because he goes back to school and around town and he doesn't experience any negative impacts to his social standing.

He still goes to parties.

Remember, he was like, you know, football player, popular.

He goes to parties.

He goes to,

he still dates.

girls still date him and the attitude around town by everyone except for Betty's close friends is that she tricked Mac Mac into killing her.

So they have sympathy for him.

And,

you know, her friends don't believe it at all.

And, you know,

maybe,

who knows?

But in 1961,

you know, the mentality was so different, of course.

And just as Betty was never offered any kind of resources when she was asking classmates to kill her, no mental health resources were offered to the students at Odessa High School in the aftermath of her murder.

Mac is charged and his case goes to trial a year year later in February of his senior year of high school.

At the time, this is without a doubt the biggest crime story in Texas in decades.

The press gives it the name, the Kiss and Kill Murder, and

it's a huge pool of jury selection.

So there's like hundreds of teenagers showing up to the trial to watch it and just people are obsessed with it.

Most people expect Mac to be convicted because he admitted to shooting Betty and

what winds up happening is that his lawyers mount a temporary insanity defense, and he takes

the stand saying he deeply regrets his actions, but at the moment he was convinced he was doing the right thing.

And in the end, after 11 hours of deliberation, the jury finds Mac not guilty.

The prosecutor tries to appeal a decision, but the verdict is upheld, and Mac goes on to live a very normal life, remaining in Odessa, and dies at the age of 75 in 2019.

I know.

Like,

what?

I mean,

yeah,

this is an insane story.

I've never heard this.

And I, I mean,

just like, imagine being on that jury.

Like, how do you, how do you make

any decision?

If you read this story in the news,

like, if I did, I would absolutely go to that courthouse because I'd be like, what is going on?

Like, how are they even arguing?

Right.

What are the details of this and how are they arguing it?

Right, right.

Yeah.

So, as as I said, Betty's cousin

Shelton

wrote the memoir.

While he was writing in 2001, he visits Odessa High School.

And by that point, a lot of Betty's story had been lost to time and the students don't really know the details, but Betty's ghost is like a big deal at Odessa High School.

Like there's

tales of it everywhere.

So some believe that if you drive up to the site of the school auditorium and blink your lights, she'll appear.

And they talk about her being in the auditorium where the theater was.

That's like where she remained because she wanted to be, so you can see her ghost there.

Others think you can see her in the sports field.

And a teacher says, quote, there's even a propriety dispute between athletics and theater about whose ghost she is.

He says, I am.

Okay, that's okay.

That shouldn't be going on.

Let's settle that dispute and just say it's everybody's fucking ghost.

What are you doing?

And I mean there could be more than one ghost, right?

I mean

she belongs to everyone.

Yeah.

Well this this person said that I can settle that one.

She belongs to the theater.

Oh okay.

It's kind of sweet that they like clammed her?

Yeah.

Maybe.

And Rachel the murderino who doesn't listen anymore

said, quote, I graduated from Odessa High School.

Betty is a fixture in the culture of the school where kids go on Betty hunts late at night in or around campus where they hope to see her in the windows of the auditorium peering out over the school.

Theater productions tend to ask for Betty's blessing so everything goes smoothly as well before their new play.

So she's remembered.

And theater students say sometimes doors close mysteriously or furniture moves mysteriously, stage lights like blink on and off if you say the name Betty.

Sometimes you hear unaccounted-for footsteps crossing the stage, and her presence is always talked about fondly.

At Odessa High School, Betty is now beloved.

And that is the story of the kiss and kill murder.

Wow, wow.

So heavy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Incredible.

Incredible.

Wild.

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Goodbye.

I'm going to take a left turn now.

Please.

Why don't I just talked into the fan and not the microphone?

You got to take those theater classes, I swear to God.

Okay, well, I'm going to tell you a story that's very different.

and

it kind of is about, I think the simplest way to boil it down is like nerds for Texas, Texas nerds.

Right?

Okay, so it starts in 1979 when a 27-year-old rare books dealer in Austin named Tom Taylor gets what he thinks is this golden opportunity, a chance to buy a valuable document at a very low price, a copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Huh, you guys have your own?

Yeah.

These are a very independent group of people.

Oh, yeah.

And they like things big.

Okay.

So, for anyone who isn't from the state or who might need a refresher as to why Texas has its own Declaration of Independence,

that's me.

Oh, yeah, Karen, the scholar.

You're going to tell us.

Tell us everything.

Yeah.

Guess what?

Okay.

That's because Texas used to be a part of Mexico until it declared independence in 1836.

You got it.

Which was the same year that

the Declaration of Independence was published.

And it was an independent, the state was an independent republic for nearly 10 years after breaking away from Mexico before joining the United States in

Good John.

Yes, Texas.

She's been waiting for since her fucking fucking life.

She knew.

She knew we were going to ask.

That was incredible.

Did it.

Oh, wait.

It really is Moulin Rouge.

It is.

She was making it up.

Like, oh, it's so, it's red.

It's Moulin Rouge.

It's fucking...

Just reading.

Just reading like I always do.

And then the next thing I wrote was history lesson over.

So the seller who approaches Tom

to sell this is asking for $11,000 for his copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence, which would be around, give it a whirl.

What, Airborne, 70, 79, 79, 11,000 is going to be 68,000.

50.

Oh, by the way, we're retiring this tour.

We decided.

Georgia keeps saying that.

I refuse.

I just hate it.

It's never.

We're never right.

It's disappointing every time.

That's kind of why I love it.

Okay.

That's fine.

That sounds like the podcast.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, that's us.

We're just disappointing, but we love it.

Disappointing.

We're never really right, but we love it.

So while Tom's specialty is actually English literature, he knows enough about the rare items business that he's willing to bet that he can resell this copy for a way higher price.

And so he buys it.

And then he gets wind that there's a group of men who have raised enough money to buy a copy of the United States.

Declaration of Independence.

You've heard of that, the Nicholas Cage one,

because they they want to display it in Dallas.

So Tom talks these men into buying his copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence to like

get the same frame and go right next to it.

Yeah, twins.

Twinsies.

He they agree on the price of $20,000.

All right, that's a profit.

Which in today's money might be $68,000.

Now, you don't do the same one.

Because it was, okay, it's $82,000.

$90,000.

Very close.

Okay, but first, obviously, these men want to check the Texas Declaration of Independence's authenticity.

Sure.

So they compare Tom's version of it.

I say Texas Declaration of Independence in this story about 100 times.

Let's call it the TDI.

The TDI.

TDI.

There you go.

That sounds like one of those technical colleges you go to.

There's commercials for them.

I went to TDI, and now I have a job.

So they compare Tom's TDI against the copies that are held right here in Austin at the University of Texas.

Okay, so like there's legit.

Hey!

Oh my god.

So there's a legit one, and they could be like,

like holding them up next to each other.

Yes, exactly.

There was the original and then they made copies.

Got it.

I'll go into that later, but if I guess the amount of copies and the details, I'll be wrong.

She'll be right, but I'll be wrong.

Okay, so the only difference that they can find when they compare it is that the text on Tom's copy looks a little bit blurry compared to the rest.

But when the original documents were printed back in

1836 is when they were printed, it's when they were printed.

They printed 1,000 total.

The printers...

Is she arguing?

She's like, that's actually incorrect, and I wish you wouldn't continue with the story until you get it right.

The printers that made them had to issue a public apology for inconsistencies in quality because the original printers, they had to print those amid actual battles with Mexican troops.

So sometimes they were in the dark.

They were breaking, they were like setting up and breaking down the printing presses.

You can't take a break?

No.

Like a couple months off or something?

No.

From war?

No.

They just won't let you.

So they had to move them from place to place.

And so, actually, the blurry text kind of makes it seem like they're legit.

And so

these men pay Tom $20,000.

And not long after, Tom gets a chance to buy yet another copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence, this time for $15,000.

And now this feels extremely lucky because that first sale went so well.

So Tom jumps on this sale too, and he winds up reselling this copy for $30,000.

$99,000.

$135,000.

See, it just, it's never

satisfying.

It's kind of just irritating.

Then lo and behold, Tom finds out about a third opportunity.

No, I think we're all on to him.

Yep.

So

this one, it's for 30.

He resells it for 33.

We don't have to worry about what happens in today's money.

But this is when Tom starts to question his luck.

There were only a thousand copies of the original printed.

And before 1970, there were only five known original copies left.

Okay.

And so he's like, I run across three of the five.

That's insane.

So he starts to worry if what he has bought and sold are fake.

And if so, who is making them?

And this is the story of Tom Taylor's investigation into the Texana artifacts.

Yes.

Yes or no?

He should have just walked away and,

you know, wiped his hands of it and

enjoyed the.

They bought it.

Not my problem.

And he just never thinks about it again.

But that's the thing, he's a good guy.

Okay, so

the sources for this story that we used are an article from the Great Texas Monthly

entitled Forgery, Texas Style, by a writer named Gregory Curtis, and then an article from the New York Times called Lone Star Fakes by Lisa Belkin, and an article from the Antiques Road Show subpage

on their website called Who Faked the Texas Independent Documents by Sarah Kay Elliott.

You know when Antiques Roadshows getting in on this shit, it is serious.

Yeah.

The rest are in our future show notes that don't exist right now.

So we're going to talk now about what I said there, which is Texana, the Texana artifacts.

So Texana is, I've never heard of it.

It's basically anything reminiscent of the culture of Texas.

So, like the delicious Tex-Mex cuisine I've been eating, or honky-tons, or your cowboy boots, or

chicken shit, bingo

in the afternoon.

You don't know how sad we were when we found out it's Sundays only.

I know.

That was one of the best days of our life being at chicken chick bingo.

Yeah, it was epic.

I don't think anyone knows what we're talking about.

We do,

yeah, they do.

You guys have chicken shit bingo in fucking Austin.

So awesome.

I'm jealous.

One of these other things that I wanted to name is Willie Nelson getting stoned, but it's too late now.

Sorry.

It's okay.

We needed to have a chicken shit bingo moment.

Either way,

This is basically a catch-all for historic artifacts or collectibles like old maps, personal items owned by Texas's forefathers.

So for decades following the formation of modern Texas, there isn't much interest in these kinds of items from collectors or rare items, dealers as a whole.

So even very important artifacts like the Texas Declaration of Independence are not considered particularly valuable.

The first

notable Texana collector is a New Jersey oil businessman

and a history buff named Thomas Streeter.

So he takes a lot of business trips out to Texas in the 20s and 30s and he buys a bunch of books and artifacts.

He is actually credited with gathering the first significant

collection of Texana in the world.

But in 1957, when Streeter offers to sell his entire collection to the University of Texas, interest in Texana is so low they don't want it.

No, thanks.

We're not interested in our own history or anything that's been going on here.

Oh, man.

So he winds up selling everything to Yale.

Boo.

Even the Texas state government doesn't care much about the historical documents in their possession.

Land grants, meeting minutes, even the original manuscript of the famous Texas Revolutionary Era victory or death letter that William B.

Travis wrote, which is the namesake of the county that we're in right now.

Those are all put on display without any security measures.

And in the 60s, countless historical artifacts are stolen from public institutions.

It's like going into a diner and like taking the salt and pepper shaker and being like, e-oink, I'll take that.

But it's the Texas Declaration of Motherfucking Independence.

No one cares.

They're just gone.

People are like, I thought we had that thing up here.

And actually, could we take a look?

Because we can see what it would have looked like.

It's just like, who stole my big thing?

I could have sworn this wasn't an empty frame yesterday.

But I guess.

You just replace it with any old other newspaper front page or something.

You're just like, unless you've got your readers on, you have no idea.

So,

but then Texas's economic boom and the growth of urban sprawl.

I don't know if you heard about this, but Texas got super rich on oil a little after this.

So these old traditional rural ways of life start disappearing across the state, right?

And as they do, the older generations start to pass away, and there's this new sense of nostalgia for the old way of Texas living and people get more interested in finding and collecting Texana and the value of these items start going up and up and as they do rare items dealers in the state start prioritizing Texana it becomes more and more profitable heading into the 70s.

Now there's a security guard standing in front of that framed piece of paper.

So in 1986 a few years after Tom Taylor's first declaration score, his suspicions are confirmed And so let's take a can we take a look at Tom Taylor?

This is him in 2021.

There he is.

Yeah.

He likes books.

So honest.

History.

He loves the past.

And he's honest.

He doesn't take the money and run.

But he also, based on that shirt, parties party.

Totally.

He's like, make no mistake, I will be at Chicken Ship Bingo this Sunday.

Meet me there.

Okay.

But this is 1986.

Okay.

So

this is the year that Tom learns a friend and fellow printer was asked to authenticate yet another original copy of the TDI.

And

it had recently come up on the rare items market.

And so

his friend started comparing the copy against one housed at the University of Texas.

And at first glance, they seemed identical, but then he spotted a crucial difference.

The text on his copy seemed much narrower than the original.

So Tom's friend, like any good printer, knows that ink doesn't shrink over time, especially when it has lead in it,

which is what they used back then in the 1830s.

So the only explanation was that this document he was authenticating was printed way after, and it was a fake.

So now Tom decides he's going to devote his time to becoming the go-to guy when it comes to authenticating the Texas Declaration of Independence, which is quite a pastime.

I mean, you're at a party and you ask someone what they do and they say that.

How do you respond?

It's like,

have you watched Real Housewives?

It's also good.

He hunts down the 20-ish known copies, the ones that are on display and also in private collections, and he forensically analyzes them, and he discovers there are actually 10, not five as previously thought, that are genuine copies of the TDI, which means about half of them are fakes.

So, including two copies that Tom bought and sold himself.

So, he's a part of it.

Oh, shit.

Yeah.

But he doesn't like that.

No, not avoiding it.

Don't make me a criminal.

No, no, no.

For sure.

But they're really good fakes.

So the people in the institutions that have been duped by

these fakes include several several universities here in Texas and beyond, the Dallas Public Library, and even the private collection of former Governor Bill Clements.

Got some Clements heads in the house tonight.

Yeah!

So Tom starts finding very subtle tells in these fakes, like inaccuracies and text dimensions, stay with me.

Use of inks and fonts that don't exist back then.

Someone did copy-paste and like shrunk the font.

Come on, guys.

Come on.

It just says Yahoo at the bottom.

And there's even small typos in the face.

No.

So by looking through sales records, Tom's able to trace these fakes back to these three dealers who were very active in the 70s.

I'm going to introduce you now

to these three

rare like antiquities Texana dealers, starting with a man named John Jenkins.

So we take a look at John Jenkins.

Oh, oh, he got a lot of chips in front of him.

Yeah,

that's amazing.

That's a fucking time and place.

That's like

that cigarette and those nails.

Yep.

Over that lady over there.

Fuck yeah.

She's like, she's raise, raise.

You got it.

You got a good hand.

Raise.

You got to raise.

You should raise.

All right.

Stay.

Stay.

He's winning.

That's chips.

Yeah.

Okay.

John Jacens grew up in Beaumont, Texas, and it's great, right?

It's so awesome.

All the chips and cats.

He takes an early interest in rare objects.

He, like, as a kid, makes money selling rare coins.

And then when he graduates from UT, he starts his own business selling rare coins and books and historical documents.

But he's also a big Texas personality.

He is fond of Stetsons, as we saw,

alligator skin cowboy boots, like you like,

and even mink coats, like I like.

What?

He wears mink coats.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, I didn't put that together.

Put that whole look together.

The alligator boots and a mink coat, nice Stetson,

probably a nice, one of those brown cigarettes that's real long.

Yeah.

And some barbecue.

He sits behind a massive desk in an equally massive mahogany chair decorated with snake and dragon carvings.

And he spends his off hours, as we saw in the photo, gambling in Vegas under the fake name Austin Squatty.

Does that mean something?

We don't know.

Perhaps.

No.

No.

No.

They say no.

Squatty.

Austin Squatty.

I'm going to check into hotels with that name from now on.

You'll never find me.

He's a high roller, regularly winning and losing enormous amounts of money at the tables.

So

another dealer is named William Simpson.

He's far less eccentric, but equally successful at selling his collectibles.

He opens his shop in Houston in 1964 and he sells things.

Houston.

He sells.

What?

Am I wrong or did that sound like a boo and a yay at the same time?

So whose side are we on?

He's done.

No, we're neutral.

We're neutral.

Yeah.

We love everybody equally.

He sells things like crystals, linens, and furniture, but as Texana becomes more popular, he jumps on that bandwagon and he starts holding auctions that are packed and profitable.

Half the time, people are buying from rarities dealers like Jenkins and Simpson, but they aren't collectors or enthusiasts.

They're usually other rarities dealers who want to get something for less and then turn it it around and sell it for a bigger profit.

That's how popular it has become.

And that's what Tom Taylor was doing.

And this makes for a highly competitive industry full of gossip and clickiness and enemies and frenemies, just like the real housewives.

Having a good eye and good taste is one thing, but without the right people skills, a dealer could be dismissed as kind of a joke.

And that's exactly how both Jenkins and Simpson come to view the man linked to all the dupes Tom Taylor keeps finding, and that man's name is C.

Dorman David.

And I think we have a picture of him.

God, he looks like your new stepdad.

You know what I mean?

Kids, I met a man, and I want you to meet your new stepdad.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

There's a bit of,

he's like, I'm going to stop dyeing my hair, but I'm not going to stop dyeing my eyebrows.

That vibe?

It's a look.

There's an amazing picture of him that I think Molly didn't clear for, like, we couldn't clear it, but it's black and white.

He's kind of like this.

It looks like he wrote a book about Carl Jung or something.

So he's kind of like this, and he's got a turtleneck and a blazer on, and he's like over to the side.

And that's the last picture I saw, so I forgot this is the picture.

This has a true AI quality where it's like,

yeah.

But anyway.

Hilarious.

So he is born in 1937 in Houston to very, very wealthy parents.

He grows up, he's a tall, imposing man.

He has a reputation as a, both a womanizer.

He ends up having some plot for the womanizer.

Absolutely, because you know why?

He has seven wives over the span of his life.

Wait, seriously?

Yes.

I wasn't wrong.

Stepdad, stepdad, stepdad.

Yes.

Yeah.

They just keep having to go, here's your new stepdad.

Roll it through.

He keeps taking me to the tracks.

Like, he tells mom, we're actually going to the mall.

He takes me to the tracks to bet on horses.

That's right.

He keeps asking me to pluck his eyebrows for him.

It's cheap and wrong.

Obviously, he's an incredibly, you know, charismatic and charming man because he marries and divorces short and women.

Yeah, you got to do it for at least a minute.

Yeah.

High five.

Okay.

But he also has a reputation of being a real wild card.

There's a story story that everyone tells about David wanting to go buy cigarettes and he drives his car through the front of the store.

What the fuck?

Yeah, he's just like, I can't bother to park.

I got to get in there.

Just go all the way, I guess.

Yeah.

Do you want those cigarettes?

Make those people clean it up.

So.

He's also known for his rich knowledge of Texas history and his great eye for artifacts.

When he's in his 20s, he starts traveling through Texas, through the South, then into Mexico, aggressively collecting Texana and other rare items.

And by the mid-60s, he opens a shop in Houston called The Bookmen.

Yeah.

Liar, you're lying.

It's a beautiful store filled with an impressive collection, but it actually looks so ostentatious that it intimidates customers and people don't go there.

What?

It's like too fancy.

Yeah.

So

the store doesn't make much money, but David's rich, he's a rich nepo baby, so he doesn't care, and he just keeps running that business.

And marrying those women.

Yep.

He's like, well, if no one comes in and buys something today, I'm going to have to get a divorce and remarry someone else.

That's it.

Yep.

I have to.

It does bother him, though, that his fellow dealers, John Jenkins and William Simpson, keep besting him in the deals that they're making, especially Jenkins.

They trade with each other often, and because David has the better eye, he actually finds and gets the most valuable items first in his collection.

But then Jenkins is such a masterful negotiator, he always seems to successfully lowball David, who is a little bit gullible.

So David's all about the like, this is the real deal and the legit thing, and I paid this much money for it.

And then Jenkins is like, waits until no one else makes an offer, and he's like, fine, I'll give you half.

And that keeps happening.

So what starts out as a strong, you know, working friendship sours, and these men become enemies.

But even beyond Jenkins, it's really the dealing community at large that David has a problem with.

He has a well-known habit of overspending.

This is what I just said.

So it's like he basically outprices himself.

Yeah, you can't do that.

Because he's like, I'll pay any price for that old pair of Willie Nelson boots or whatever.

People are like, no, sir.

So all the while, David's wildcard reputation remains and rumors begin to swirl that he's hawking stolen goods at auction.

People suspect he's behind the bulk of the Texana artifacts that are going missing from Texas libraries and museums.

Oh, he's just, he's the one guy just swooping in and

he's like, I got a library card, but you know what I'm going to do with it?

Not looking at micro fiche, motherfuckers.

I'm doing something else.

Of course, David denies this, but in a kind of wink-wink way to people,

he titles one of his, so they guess the sellers make catalogs of the stuff that they have that people can buy.

and he titles one of his catalogs quote the bookman offers for sale texas books from a recent robbery

bro

he's just like he's funny he's charming he's divorced he's married he's divorced he's doing it all

he's got to play it cool though like no because on the next catalog he puts a mocked up wanted poster with his own face on it

It's like, don't do the hard work for the authorities.

You know what I mean?

Like, make them find you.

I think he's like so rich, he's just bored.

He's just like, come on, everybody.

So, around the same time, he's honing his forgery skills.

There's really no one more suited to create fakes than him because he deals with old artifacts for a living.

He has all this raw material and the money to buy it and to like cut it up.

So, he like cuts end papers out of his own antique books to use as the base for his dupes.

He perfects his calligraphy.

He's so rich, he can perfect his calligraphy.

He even hires a trusted

lithographer, lithographer, to enlarge negatives of genuine documents so he can study every detail.

And then he prints versions

of them himself using

ink he makes out of candle smoke and linseed oil.

It's fucking impressive as shit, but do something good.

Right.

You know?

Take those skills, Richie Rich, and do something good with them.

Yeah.

No, he says no.

But in May of 1971, on his way to a show, around 3,000, oh no, sorry, on his way to show around 3,000 documents to a potential buyer in Waco, David gets stopped by a Texas Ranger and a Texas state archivist.

What?

Yeah.

They have a, they can, woo, woo, they can pull you over.

Down here, there's a, they've set up a program where archivists drive around with Texas Rangers.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

They've been doing it for years.

I'm baffled.

Uh-huh.

So these guys go after him.

They accuse him of stealing the documents he has from the state archives.

So that's the archivist is like, hey, I saw you leave my, we saw you leave the back room.

And he went and got himself a ranger, and then they pulled him over.

When they look through the documents that he's carrying, they find a few that

they believe are stolen.

And without any proof, they confiscate the documents.

So word gets around about this, and David's already kind of rocky reputation driving into the cigarette store, takes a note.

He's wasting everybody.

Fucking Jesus.

He's like, my wife made me do it.

As David's mental health, as does David's mental health.

So he falls into a deep depression, and he's already what Maren

quoted as, he's already a lover of drugs.

Is that what they call him?

Yeah.

A lover of drugs.

I have a different name for that.

A lover of drugs.

Is that what you called yourself when you were doing the drugs?

Yeah, I'm not an addict I'm a lover of drugs

it's more of a passion of mine you know I

uh

so when he's in this very low state he decides the thing that I've told all of you time and again not to do he decides to try heroin what

no it's true never heroin whatever else you want I don't care fall into a K-hole over and over again we don't do heroin we never do heroin

Okay, that's the rule.

Thank you.

And thanks for the support.

Thanks for the heroin support.

There's one angry heroin dealer in the back, like, thanks a lot.

What about my business?

I'll find my place, and then you'll be sorry.

So, in the summer of 1971, two men are arrested in connection with the library and museum thefts that have been targeting Texana goods, and they waste no time in implicating David as the mastermind.

He really does look like a mastermind.

He totally looks like a mastermind.

He has mastermind eyebrows.

This pretty much confirms those rumors that he was selling stolen items at auctions, but more than a year passes.

He isn't charged with anything.

It's weird.

That happens to rich people all the time.

Anyways,

meanwhile, his life is unraveling.

He is entirely caught up in this horrible addiction.

He is doubling down on his forgeries.

On the few occasions where he manages to show up for business meetings, he is basically very overt about the fact that he makes fakes.

He loses all credibility, his customers abandon him, and he ultimately sells the entirety of his rare Texana goods to none other than his enemy, John Jenkins.

Sorry, enemies, John Jenkins and William Simpson.

And then he unceremoniously retires.

And then the year after, in June of 1972, he gets arrested on drug charges.

Okay.

He's not in custody for long, though, because he is rich.

So,

oh, but no, that actually isn't true.

It's because he jumps bond and he lives on the lamb for seven fucking years.

Seven years?

For seven years.

Damn.

Yeah.

Maybe that was an on-the-lamb picture.

Yeah.

I feel like you could do that back then a lot easier

than today.

Let's try it.

Let's go.

Here we go.

Goodbye.

Eventually, exhausted by life on the run, he turns himself into police.

He just, he hadn't been married in so long that he was like, come on.

Got to get that hit.

In Texas in 1980, he serves a year in prison.

He gets out and then he cleans his life up.

So that's nice.

Yeah.

And it's here for cleaning your fucking life up.

I mean.

It's a good thing.

It's tough to do.

In 1980, the same year he turns himself in on those drug charges, that's when Tom Taylor sells his first Texas Declaration of Independence.

So that's kind of how these storylines kind of meld together.

We're now back to that.

So

Tom begins, so a few years later, Tom begins his deep investigation into the Texana dupes.

And amid his ongoing investigative work, the two men, he and David, finally cross paths.

Tom sets up a meeting at David's house.

And by this point, Tom's unearthed 13 different fake historical Texas documents that have been forged over 50 times since 1970, and they're all traceable to Jenkins, Williams, and David.

And poor Tom in his Hawaiian shirts, just like, I've got to fight for the justice of documents, good documents, not these goddamn dirty documents.

This is beyond the Texas Declaration of Independence.

For example, Tom digs up a document that David had sold

as the authentic announcement of the founding of Houston, ostensibly from 1836, but it uses a typeface that did not exist at that time.

Oh, come on.

Sans serif, I don't fucking think so.

But according to Tom, when he confronts David about these fakes, David just seems kind of confused.

My biggest pet peeve, when you're like, hey, you lied, and the person's like, I'm not sure what you're doing.

I don't know.

Like when you have to, oh, yeah, they just pretend that they don't even understand

the accusation.

It's weird.

I don't

know what these words mean.

You want someone to be like, yeah, motherfucker.

Yeah, I did.

I fucking did.

And then he pulls out the catalog with his wanted face.

I told you.

Yes.

So he doesn't admit to any wrongdoing.

But at this point, Tom doesn't need an admission from him.

He can prove these items are fake with irrefutable evidence.

And so he goes public with those findings.

And then that story gets picked up by a New York Times reporter named Lisa Belkin in 1989.

So she writes an article entitled Lone Star Fakes.

And it dives into Tom's crusade to weed out forged documents.

And it's especially significant because it's the first time C.

Dorman David publicly admits to forgery.

So in an interview with Belkin, the now 51-year-old David admits he's directly responsible for the two fake declarations that Tom Taylor sold.

And he even explains how Tom's one genuine copy served as the template for his later dupes.

Do you think that makes that one copy more even more valuable?

Yeah, eventually it does.

Oh, I'm sorry that I just.

No, no, no.

I mean, but in that way, well, I'll just read it off this fucking page that I was on forever.

This is the kind of thing where, you know, you really do wish you had your lines memorized.

You're like, and then Tom went down to the library, but that's never going to happen.

So, what he would do is, he explains, he photographed the one genuine, he made a negative, he repaired any visible damage on the magnified copy, created a zinc plate from the negative, he printed fakes, and then the way he made that ink that I was saying before, he collected smoke in a paper bag and mixed the carbon that attached to the bag with various oils, like the linseed oil, and that, and then the blank paper came from his edges from his old book.

I mean, that's already 10 times smarter than I am.

Like, use that for something good.

He says, no.

No.

He says, sorry, I have to go get some cigarettes.

I'll be right back.

And another wife.

What's your point?

That's how he met his fifth wife.

Right.

I couldn't do one of those steps.

Ask me to do one of those steps and then I go take a nap.

I'd literally be like, sorry, I was looking at my phone.

What do you want me to do again?

But in this interview, David keeps going.

He also fesses up to Belkin about forging dozens of other documents, but he claims he meant to sell them as known fakes not pass them off as genuine

I forgot to stamp it with fake yeah

the problem with that is that of course David didn't let the buyers know that they were counterfeit so it wasn't like oops get that get that real money but you have counterfeit in your heart

So two of the biggest customers were Jenkins and Simpsons at Simpsons.

Sorry, not the TV show.

And of course, because he did not like them, it's easy to believe that he targeted them for revenge.

That's why he kind of pulled them in and made them believe that he had something on his hands.

Revenge.

Because

if he were that smart, I bet he could just forge money.

I mean, right?

Why not get it at that point?

Yeah, get your little tin-type plate or whatever the thing I was that just

get something going in your basement.

Nope.

Wants to fuck people over.

Yeah.

Because I think it's like he loves the antiques and then he wanted to be like the big fish in this world.

Sure.

And the other two were like, sit down, dummy.

And then he was like, I'll get you.

Right.

Then

he's duping them when they think they're duping him.

And they act confused about it and pisses Karen off.

Real housewives.

I mean, I'll just keep saying it.

We're done with that paragraph.

In all the years since Tom Taylor's investigation first exposed these Texana forgeries, not one person has been prosecuted for them because there's just enough plausible deniability and not enough proof of criminal intent to bring charges.

So the same year that that New York Times article comes out, which is 1989, 49-year-old John Jenkins is found shot in the head near Bastrup.

What?

Yeah, someone tried to cheer for Bastrup while others were upset about a terrible.

This is...

This whole thing is confusing, and we apologize.

It always has been.

It was officially ruled a suicide but at the time Jenkins was being investigated for arson related to an insurance fraud scheme and he'd also reportedly racked up around a million dollars in gambling debts

I'm not even gonna make you ask but it was a million in 1989

1.72 I don't have it

then yes then by default then you're right you finally win

she did it

she did it

I love that our researchers just give up halfway through.

Like, she's putting this in the calculator.

If you're not going to say it, I'm not going to put it in.

So to this day, some people do believe that John Jenkins was murdered, either because of those debts that he had or because his big personality earned him some menu.

William Simpson, on the other hand, dies in 2001.

The details are very fuzzy on his cause of death.

He remained very low profile compared to everybody else in this story.

And then in 2013, C.

Dorman David dies in Houston at the age of 75.

After spent, this is kind of an incredible like later life story.

He spends the latter part of his life running a business that makes benches shaped like alligators.

Wow.

Yeah.

You don't have a picture?

No.

Fuck.

Couldn't clear it.

You know, I don't even want to, I want to know, I want to see what's here.

Because you know what?

What's I'll describe mine.

Okay.

My bench looks like Lyle the crocodile.

It's not the same animal.

Do not lecture me on that.

What's yours look like?

Oh my God.

I don't know.

It's not comfortable.

No.

No.

Whatever.

Like, you can't take a nap on it.

So it's useless to me.

Kind of low to the ground.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Spiky.

Spiky.

It's real spiky.

Doot, dude, dude.

Why did I take my finger off this fucking page?

Meanwhile, Tom Taylor, who is now in his 70s, remains a devoted bookseller and a master printer in Texas.

And after his investigation into these fakes, he goes back and he finds the two clients who bought the dupes from him and he reimburses them.

Are you crying?

Not really.

Oh, my God.

That was acting.

That was acting, ladies and gentlemen.

Wow, that's very honorable.

Yeah, he's the good guy.

What if the guy, they're like, I didn't want you to tell me it was fake.

It's fine living the rest of my life telling all my guests that this is what real.

And I don't want my $11,000 in 1980s money back.

Right.

You know, that happened to me right when I got my house, when I moved into my house.

Oh, yeah.

My cousin is my real estate agent, Pete Castro, in Los Angeles.

If you ever need any help, I did it again.

Fuck.

I have a new weird nervous tick where I pinch the end of my nose like that.

Very weird.

Georgia pointed it out to me the other day, and I was like, wow, talk about not wanting to know something.

I'm doing what?

Hey.

You're just gonna like, because also you're gonna wipe all your makeup off the end of your nose only.

Like, that's really what I wanted to warn you about.

It's gonna look fucking weird with just a red nose.

I'm gonna look like that Lady Elaine from Mr.

Rogers' neighborhood.

Yeah.

That's my goal in life.

I was just gonna tell tell you guys the story, and I may have said this on the podcast, but we do that all the time, so go with it.

When I moved into my house, my cousin Pete, they went down, they had to get some official records, and they pulled some records and saw that one of the previous owners of the house was Charles Chaplin.

And so, when I had my housewarming party, he gave me a framed,

like this certificate that said that was a previous owner.

So, that was on my wall where I'm like, fucking take a look at this Hollywood legend.

Like, you kind of can understand why people get into this shit.

Sure.

Where it's just like, here's the certificate of authentication.

And then this was, this was right before COVID.

Then we go into COVID.

And then somewhere near the end of COVID, I finally meet my next door neighbor.

And I'm talking to him about, hi, how are you?

in the neighborhood and stuff.

And I go, oh, by the way, did you ever meet like the family, the chaplain family that lived here?

And he goes, who, Chuck?

No, no, they're not related.

They're not related.

Chuck Chaplin?

Chuck Chuck Chaplin.

I just had to go into my house and just take this little frame thing down and just put it under the thing.

No,

I think you should leave it still.

It's an even better story.

I fucking brought every person that walked through my front door over to that certificate.

It was, what is it about that?

We were just like, I don't know, me and Charlie Chaplin living in the same house.

When will I love you?

So you get it.

So you get this story and like how it can just bewitch you.

I will marry and divorce this story seven times.

I love it so much.

I will drive my car through this fucking front window of this story.

I will smoke a cigarette out of

the debris of this story.

I love it so much.

Tom also publishes a book called Tex Fake.

We should all buy it, which is said to be the most thorough account of this entire forgery saga.

You'd hope so.

Because this version is not.

So please read it if you're interested.

It is unclear how many of C.

Dorman David's fakes are still out there today, but when they were exposed back in the 90s, it was reported that many institutions didn't take them off their walls and instead put a little label underneath that said something like, This is a facsimile.

I bet at least one person's grandma in this audience had a fake on accident, didn't know it, right?

At least one.

Yeah.

Honey, look at the Texas Declaration of Independence and please.

Don't touch it.

Honey.

Maybe that's what I should have done.

I leave Charlie Chaplin up.

This is a facsimile.

That's right.

Of Charlie Chaplin.

Just a little tiny sign that says, Karen's a big liar.

She can't stop.

According to PBS's Antiques Roadshow, David's fake Texas Declarations of Independence are so notorious that they can be worth up to $1,000 today from buyers.

So that's what I meant before, where it's like they got their own little renown, kind of,

what's up with my nose?

I don't know.

But if you can find yourself a genuine copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence, it could net you as much as $1 million.

And that is the story of Tom Taylor's investigation into Texana fates.

Can we dig it?

Good job.

Thank you.

Away to go.

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Good.

Bye-bye.

Do we have hometown time?

I think it's time to do a hometown.

Here's Vince April, everyone.

Let's take a look.

It's done.

It's done.

time.

Hey.

Thank you.

We got to give it up for this crowd tonight.

Yeah.

Because there was, in fact, a my favorite murder-themed cocktail.

Uh-oh.

And it was tequila-based.

Uh-oh.

And I didn't get any reports of any vomit in the house today.

Good job, you guys.

That's classy.

You did that.

That's historically not the case.

Sometimes, you know, it does lead to vomit.

Austin can drink.

This is is our

route.

So I'm going to be right here, confirming the lucidity of whoever you drink.

Thanks, Vince.

Oh, and we have a present.

Oh, yeah.

These were pitched to us by merch, and we love them.

Nicole and merch, did you see her at the merch table?

Oh, it's her first time in Texas.

Did you know that?

Are you serious?

Give her a big old Texas hello when you see her.

We have stress hot hot dogs.

They really work.

Yeah.

Let's say my favorite murder on them.

Yeah.

Okay, so we've talked really quickly.

We know you know this, but we actually forgot the first couple shows we did, so we'll just run it down.

Where right now, George is going to randomly pick someone from the audience to tell their hometown story.

And a hometown story, drag-along, is basically either

a crime that happened in your town

that got you into true crime, or that you just would like to tell everybody that everybody might like to know.

There's a couple rules one of them is it should be a texas story hopefully uh an austin story whatever you can do but please don't do what poor poor katie did the other night and say i'm from broward florida and yet the entire place booed her and she walked off stage it was yep very painful first night back very hilarious

um

she was a great sport we got to talk to her about it later because i thought she thought she was just supposed to come up and proclaim her hometown and leave, which I loved.

But she was like, no, I had a story.

I just got nervous and left.

And we're like, oh, no.

Poor baby.

At least now we talk about you.

Okay, so try to make it, you should be local.

That's what people like.

Don't be so drunk that you can't tell your own story.

Don't read off paper.

Nobody wants that.

It just should be casual and fun.

Beginning, middle, end.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tell it like a good story.

You know how to tell a good story, Texas.

You guys are theater people.

Yeah.

So does anybody have a hometown?

Does anyone have a hometown?

Do you think would be good?

Do you know her?

Or are you just pointing at her?

You know her?

Okay, come on up.

Do you know her?

Because a lot of times people will point at something.

Like the person next to them raises their hand.

What's wrong?

They're right in the middle of the...

Well, no, I just was like, oh, this is very unsafe in terms of fire.

You have to go all the way down like that.

I don't like that.

I'll talk to the theater later.

She had to slide all the way down.

Thanks, Vince.

Hi.

Laura?

My name is Laura.

Laura, and my visitor.

Laura.

Hi!

Where are you from, Laura?

I have waited nine years to tell you

that I helped the Texas Rangers take down the polygamous sex cult at the YFZ Ranch in Al Dorado, Texas.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

And then she walks off stage to the end.

Oh my God.

What do you do for a living?

Oh, I'm in publishing.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, Brandon.

Okay.

Okay, so

I actually practiced just in case I'm a little nervous.

Okay, okay.

We won't interrupt you anymore.

Maybe a couple times, but.

So I grew up profoundly Mormon, but I got better.

thank you

my great great great grandfather was one of the first converts and was called to polygamy when he came to salt lake city and a lot of my family is still polygamists so i know these people you did a story

Episode 340.

You did Irva LeBaron.

Yeah, yeah.

I used to work with his daughter.

She escaped and she grew up chained around the neck in a goat.

They're not good people.

No.

So when I was in my 20s, I was living in Utah.

I come back to Texas, I promise.

I'm here.

But

I was married and my husband got a job working with Meryl Jessup, who is

Warren Jeff's right-hand man.

And we got divorced shortly after.

I divorced for very good reasons.

Good job, good job.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And he skedaddled and I couldn't get child support.

So I came back to Texas.

I'm doing IT.

I learn how to, this is in the 90s, so there's no like real proper internet.

But I find a chat room that all of those guys were talking about stuff.

And I was hoping to find my ex.

And I just started collecting all of the data.

But I didn't know what to do with it, so I'm just hanging on to it.

Then in the early 2000s, a show called Big Love starts.

Oh, yeah.

And I started to write reviews of it on Live Journal.

I'll take that one.

On Live Journal, where I'm saying, this is who this is really about.

Oh, my God.

And these are the real people, and this is the real story.

And I had this person that was constantly asking me questions.

It turns out that that was a person who worked for the Del Rio Texas Rangers.

And I said, hey, what's our username, like XX Louis?

Well, I'll tell you what the VIP.

But

long story short, I said, hey, do you want this information?

They said, absolutely, we do.

Meanwhile, one of the things that I had tracked and kept contact of, somebody had asked on a fucking chat board,

Does anybody have a blueprint for a potato burning shed that gets hot enough to destroy DNA evidence?

Oh,

on a chat room.

And a chat, this is the 90s.

People were, they didn't know.

And then it said LOL.

Yeah.

Right.

So

that was code.

Potato was code.

So they found, they ended up finding things, but that's the next story.

Then they messaged.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing, sorry.

So they, I got another message from the person at the Texas Rangers when they were going in.

They had tanks that were lined up outside of this place in El Dorado, which is just by Midland.

It's south of Cooper Story.

and

asked me if I'd ever been inside the temple and do I know the floor plan and I said no I didn't but I do know that Mormon temples always have a special room at the very top on the eastmost side called the celestial room but most importantly there's going to be an altar so you know that that's the room and there is a hidden panel on a wall because there's somebody that sits in it and records everything because Mormons track and record all of the data.

Can I ask a question?

Yes, you can.

Was this a phone call or like this was still typing?

We're live, we're like live DM.

Live journaling.

And is your heart racing?

Are you just like dry mouthed and going, yeah?

I'm like, finally, all of this geekery of the recording shit is working.

I'm so excited.

So they ended up, they didn't find the altar.

There was a bed.

Because they're really bad people.

And they did find the panel, and there was a guy in there trying to destroy the evidence off the computers the particular ranger his nickname was marathon man.

Yes, and he was also the canine guy.

So he was just like

go for it and dropped the leash.

So they got that guy.

So multiple people are

life sent it multiple life sentences these guys

I will say a month after all of this happened, I got an email from that dispatch

with a list of all known aliases.

Every time a license had been run, the license plate had gone through anything for my ex.

I got my child support.

Yes!

Yes!

With interest!

Incredible.

And for all that work, you get a hot dog.

Yay!

Amazing dog.

Amazing girl.

Wow.

Laura.

Let's say give it up to Laura.

Thank you.

Churry up.

Or whatever.

Yeah, be careful.

Can we get together as a group and make sure she does save Laura?

Oh my God.

Wow.

Perfection.

She was great.

Amazing.

That was it.

That was it.

They shut it down.

There's nothing else to do after this.

Except eat barbecue.

Oh, yeah.

And marry seven women.

Oh, wait.

No, she says, no, don't do that.

No, no, don't do that.

We won't do that.

The lesson we learned is don't do that.

Thank you.

We love you.

Thank you so much, Austin.

This has been unbelievable.

We

can't believe we're back on the road and you guys have been so supportive and incredible and fun and we really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for being with us for all these crazy fucking years with this stupid podcast.

We love you so much.

Stay sexy and

thank you.

Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Wally Smith.

Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Liana Scolatchi.

Our researchers are Maren McLashen and Allie Elkin.

Email your hometowns to myfavorite murder at gmail.com.

Follow the show on Instagram at myfavorite murder.

Listen to MyFavorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page.

While you're there, please like and subscribe.

Goodbye.

rinse tonight.

And I need it more.

I can't wait to bed and the smell of a meat.

I don't know what to do.

I'm always in the dark.

The swecking deck shore smells like a dark bar.

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When impossible odors get stuck in...

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On a cold January day in 1995, 18-year-old Krista Pike killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Since her conviction, Krista has been sitting on death row.

How does someone prove that they deserve to live?

We are starting the recording now.

Please state your first and last name.

Krista Pike.

Listen to Unrestorable Season 2, Proof of Life, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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