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Episode: Episode 627: The Murder of Carol Thompson

Author: Morbid Network | Wondery
Duration: 01:15:20

Episode Shownotes

When thirty-four-year-old St. Paul housewife Carol Thompson was murdered in the spring of 1963, her entire neighborhood was shocked by the evil that had invaded their middle-class neighborhood. As far as anyone knew, Carol was a happily married mother of four who appeared to have it all, but the cruel

brutality of her murder suggested someone had hated her enough to kill her.When investigators began to dig deeper into Carol’s life and background, they found the truth was that, far from the happy façade she showed the world, Carol Thompson’s life was anything but happy. In the weeks that followed her death, investigators would uncover an unexpectedly complicated conspiracy involving several well-known criminals, all leading back to the one person no one wanted to suspect.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1963. "Slaying details related in court." New York Times, November 27: 49.—. 1963. "Woman is linked to 'hire' murder." New York Times, November 5: 17.2016. A Crime to Remember. Directed by Tony Glazer. Performed by Chloe Boxer and Christine Connor.Cesnik, Jim. 1963. "'Cotton' Thompson--as father, friend." Minneapolis Star, June 25: 1.Letofsky, Irv. 1963. "Never an acquittal vote." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), December 7: 1.Letofsky, Irv, and Jim Cesnik. 1963. "City man held in Phoenix in Thompson slaying case." Star Tribune, April 20: 1.Minneapolis Star. 1963. "FBI to check policies on Mrs. Thompson's life." Minneapolis Star , April 3: 1.—. 1963. "St. Paul mother 'critical' after stabbing in home." Minneapolis Star, March 6: 1.—. 1963. "Thompson arrested in wife's slaying." Minneapolis Star, June 21: 1.Presbrey, Paul. 1963. "Thompson killing gun identified." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), April 10: 1.Roberts, Sam. 2015. "T. Eugene Thompson dies at 88; crime stunned St. Paul." New York Times, September 6: 28.Romer, Sam. 1963. "Interview with captured suspect." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), April 20: 1.Rudick, Irvin. 1963. "Anderson told Sharp he slew Mrs. Thompson." Minneapolis Star, April 23: 1.Star Tribune. 1963. "Police seek clues in St. Paul slaying." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), March 7: 1.—. 1963. "Police want more talk with victim's mate." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), March 23: 1.—. 1963. "Statement also lists his assets." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), March 27: 1.Thompson, William. 2007. Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson. Nepean, ON: Borealis Books.United Press International. 1963. "Thompson trial told of insurance." New York Times, November 6: 29.Young, Douglas. 1963. "Husband of slain St. Paul woman explains $1,061,00 in insurance." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), March 27: 1.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
Hey Weirdos, before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends. Wondery Plus.

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00:00:23 Speaker_03
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00:00:35 Speaker_01
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00:01:20 Speaker_01
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00:01:32 Speaker_01
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00:01:43 Speaker_02
Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid.

00:02:02 Speaker_03
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.

00:02:14 Speaker_02
Thank you.

00:02:15 Speaker_01
But because you have, I hope you had fun. Yes. And I hope you ate all kinds of yummy food. Oh, scrumdiddlyumptious. I'm salivating just thinking of our food that we're going to eat. And we're thankful for you.

00:02:28 Speaker_02
Yeah, we love you.

00:02:29 Speaker_01
We'll be thankful for you.

00:02:31 Speaker_02
Thank you for being our listeners.

00:02:33 Speaker_01
Yeah, we'll stay thankful for you. It'll be a whole thing. It's gonna 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!

00:02:49 Speaker_01
Have you guys tried those? I didn't 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.

00:02:58 Speaker_01
You can split that in half and you two can eat it. Mikey took the journey with me. You did. That's cute. It wasn't bad. It was just one of those things where you're like, alright. Yeah. I felt like it wouldn't mix well with my sushi and dumplings.

00:03:08 Speaker_01
Probably not. I was 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.

00:03:18 Speaker_01
Right now I'm in a place of those little Debbie brownie Christmas tree things, cakes.

00:03:25 Speaker_00
Oh yeah.

00:03:26 Speaker_01
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 gonna throw something at me.

00:03:45 Speaker_01
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.

00:03:56 Speaker_03
My kids like the vanilla ones with me.

00:03:59 Speaker_01
I don't dislike them. I'll eat one every now and again. I'm horrified. But if I had to pick on a deserted island, you can only have one, brownies all the way. I hate that. I'd also pick brownies over cake in general. Wow. Yeah.

00:04:15 Speaker_03
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.

00:04:30 Speaker_02
Oh, TV show. The other night, Mike Flanagan. I want to watch that. And he was like, yeah, I'm not like 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.

00:04:44 Speaker_01
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.

00:04:52 Speaker_03
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 that is made by

00:05:11 Speaker_01
Mike Flanagan. You said two things with Kate? Kate Siegel. Kate, okay. His wife. Oh. Who's in both of them. Okay. Who's a phenomenal actress. Okay. She's just chef's kiss.

00:05:21 Speaker_03
And tell me you don't, you're not really into them? I don't understand that, that way of living.

00:05:27 Speaker_01
Yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna try again because I refuse to accept it. So I think I'm too forced.

00:05:31 Speaker_01
sim 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 yeah you quoted me correctly that made me upset

00:05:56 Speaker_01
No, I shouldn't say I don't really like them. I just don't prefer them. My preference is the brownies, you know? Right in. What's your preference? We'll do a social media poll. Oh lord. All he does is like, no! I'm like, no, I'll lose!

00:06:12 Speaker_01
America's sweetheart will win the brownie crusade. That's fine. More for me, like you said. Exactly, like you said. Like I said.

00:06:18 Speaker_00
Like I said.

00:06:19 Speaker_01
I said it! All right. Well, I think that was an unhinged enough intro. I do want to see. I think it was. Follow the House of Usher. Follow the House of Usher. I highly recommend it, guys, if you haven't watched it. I'll wait to watch it with you.

00:06:32 Speaker_01
It's a banger of a miniseries. It's only eight episodes. Oh, that's not bad. And he is... Mike Flanagan's brilliant. And so is his wife, Kate Segal. I'm willing to try his stuff. I don't think I've ever seen any. I think you would dig it. I really do.

00:06:47 Speaker_01
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.

00:06:56 Speaker_03
He just has a way.

00:06:59 Speaker_01
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.

00:07:11 Speaker_01
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.

00:07:22 Speaker_01
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills just came back. First episode. Absolutely obsessed. A banger. I do not condone smoking unless your name is Dorit Kemsley. Have you seen the picture of her lighting up a Virginia Slim and just driving her out? No.

00:07:37 Speaker_01
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.

00:07:49 Speaker_01
And 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.

00:07:57 Speaker_01
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 onto the case. This case is absolutely bonkers from start to finish. Oh, I'm excited.

00:08:11 Speaker_01
Yeah, I will let you know like right off the top right off the top of this. 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 6, 1963.

00:08:27 Speaker_01
Ruth Nelson was just sitting in her living room in her St. Paul, Minnesota home. She was catching up on the morning news and she heard what sounded like somebody lightly knocking on her front door.

00:08:38 Speaker_01
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.

00:08:46 Speaker_01
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.

00:08:55 Speaker_01
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

00:09:12 Speaker_03
Oh, that's so haunting.

00:09:13 Speaker_01
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. Yeah.

00:09:23 Speaker_03
And only 34 years old.

00:09:24 Speaker_01
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.

00:09:33 Speaker_01
And while Harry Nelson ran to call the police, Ruth and her son just tried to comfort Carol however they could. Shit.

00:09:40 Speaker_01
And one of the two ended up asking Carol what happened, who 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.

00:09:51 Speaker_01
And Ruth asked what the man's name was, and she thought that Carol said Johnson, but by then Carol like could hardly speak, even so she was just speaking over a whisper, so Ruth would never be quite sure what the name was.

00:10:05 Speaker_01
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 like very wrong over there.

00:10:17 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:10:18 Speaker_01
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

00:10:29 Speaker_01
and had beat her really badly about the face and head, which is where they assumed that the blood was coming from.

00:10:34 Speaker_01
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.

00:10:47 Speaker_01
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.

00:10:52 Speaker_04
Oh, that's horrific.

00:10:54 Speaker_01
So Harry Nelson's call to the St. Paul police came into dispatch at about 9.07 a.m. Just think of how early this is.

00:11:00 Speaker_02
First thing in the morning.

00:11:01 Speaker_01
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.

00:11:09 Speaker_01
It's unclear 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.

00:11:21 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:11:22 Speaker_01
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.

00:11:34 Speaker_01
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.

00:11:45 Speaker_01
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 way. Yeah, can you imagine just finding someone like that? No.

00:11:54 Speaker_03
You have no clue what happened.

00:11:56 Speaker_01
No, and she can't tell you, that's the worst part. So the ambulance arrived a few minutes later and the EMTs were directed inside.

00:12:04 Speaker_01
And in their report, one of the AMTs 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.

00:12:21 Speaker_01
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.

00:12:31 Speaker_01
So Carol was taken to Anchor Hospital by the ambulance while the officers called for additional support and started their investigation.

00:12:39 Speaker_01
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.

00:12:50 Speaker_01
Yeah, and just like this quiet 1960s suburban neighborhood and she can't yell because she's been stabbed in the fucking neck.

00:12:59 Speaker_01
So when they conducted their door-to-door canvas of the neighborhood, Fritz Pierson's wife, who that was the doctor's wife who had sent him over,

00:13:06 Speaker_01
And a handyman who had been working on their house told investigators that she'd 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.

00:13:17 Speaker_01
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?

00:13:27 Speaker_01
She's the one that sent her husband over Oh she's the one who said like I think something's going on over there Yeah so I think she saw 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 looked like looked further and saw her get to the Nelsons and realized who it was It was like alright there's something wrong here

00:13:45 Speaker_01
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.

00:13:57 Speaker_01
For the most part, the kitchen actually seemed to be pretty undisturbed, except there was one drawer where silverware and knives had been pulled out and its contents were spilled to the floor.

00:14:06 Speaker_01
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.

00:14:14 Speaker_01
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.

00:14:28 Speaker_01
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.

00:14:35 Speaker_01
A team of investigators started searching the Thompson's two-floor home, hoping to get some insight into what happened at all.

00:14:42 Speaker_01
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.

00:14:55 Speaker_03
Wow.

00:14:55 Speaker_01
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.

00:15:02 Speaker_03
Ooh.

00:15:04 Speaker_01
Which is just like... That's very chilling. Yeah, like what?

00:15:07 Speaker_01
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.

00:15:18 Speaker_01
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.

00:15:30 Speaker_01
Like, 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.

00:15:40 Speaker_01
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.

00:15:53 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:15:53 Speaker_01
I mean, they just found her diamond ring by the front door. Yeah. Whenever it's, like, no rhyme or reason to the ransacking, it's definitely staged. And nothing is missing. And nothing is missing. Like, hello?

00:16:03 Speaker_02
Like, come on.

00:16:04 Speaker_01
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.

00:16:14 Speaker_01
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.

00:16:22 Speaker_01
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.

00:16:35 Speaker_01
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. Wow.

00:16:46 Speaker_01
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, errands, all that stuff. Exactly.

00:16:58 Speaker_01
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.

00:17:06 Speaker_03
Wow.

00:17:07 Speaker_01
Which when you think about how badly she was injured is insane.

00:17:10 Speaker_02
That's incredible.

00:17:12 Speaker_01
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.

00:17:24 Speaker_01
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.

00:17:33 Speaker_01
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.

00:17:42 Speaker_02
Yeah, and he's like, and I don't even know much.

00:17:44 Speaker_01
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.

00:17:52 Speaker_01
But instead of going directly to the hospital, Cotton drove back home and actually even stopped briefly at the Nelsons' house before then going back to his own house. Which was definitely a little weird. Yeah.

00:18:02 Speaker_01
And like I'm sure you're not thinking straight, but it was something that people took note of. For sure.

00:18:07 Speaker_02
I can understand that.

00:18:08 Speaker_01
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-trekked alibi.

00:18:22 Speaker_01
Around 8.30 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.

00:18:31 Speaker_01
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.

00:18:43 Speaker_01
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.

00:18:56 Speaker_01
But as for why and how it all happened, they were at a loss. But based on all the evidence, they theorize that Carol had been hit at least once with a piece of large, heavy rubber tubing, which they found on the kitchen floor.

00:19:09 Speaker_01
But they believe that she was also likely assaulted with the butt of a gun. Because the handle of which was broken in the process, leaving all these shards of plastic by the door.

00:19:18 Speaker_03
Oh, that's what that was.

00:19:20 Speaker_01
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. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

00:19:43 Speaker_01
I love the burr months, December, November, all the burr months because they're so cozy. For some, wrapping up in a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate or, you know, watching a movie with a family is the best way to spend the month of December.

00:19:56 Speaker_01
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00:20:28 Speaker_01
Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash morbid today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash morbid. Audible's best of 2024 picks are here.

00:20:41 Speaker_01
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00:21:22 Speaker_01
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Go to audible.com slash boarbrand and discover all the year's best waiting for you, like my sister's titles.

00:21:45 Speaker_01
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.

00:21:56 Speaker_01
She had 25 separate cuts on her head from a blunt object, and several of those cuts 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 on her neck.

00:22:14 Speaker_01
When she got to the hospital she was completely unconscious and was quote without measurable blood pressure. Wow. Yeah. Surgeons did their best to revive her performing a tracheotomy.

00:22:25 Speaker_01
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.

00:22:37 Speaker_01
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. You like drilled into the skull.

00:22:49 Speaker_01
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.

00:23:03 Speaker_01
She lived until 1 p.m. 1 p.m. like she fought hard. She must have been in agony though. Yeah.

00:23:09 Speaker_03
That's what kills me.

00:23:09 Speaker_01
You just hope that she wasn't since she was unconscious. I hope she was in complete shock. 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.

00:23:23 Speaker_01
This is not something that happened a lot. And when it did happen, the motive was typically robbery.

00:23:28 Speaker_01
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 Thompsons' belongings at all.

00:23:36 Speaker_01
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. Yeah.

00:23:46 Speaker_01
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 she's lived her entire life. She was really well-liked.

00:23:59 Speaker_01
She was a mother of four. She was super, super active in her kids' lives. She was the den mother for her son's Boy Scout troop. She was a leader of her daughter's Brownie troop.

00:24:09 Speaker_01
And when she wasn't coordinating the lives of four really, really active children, she was 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.

00:24:21 Speaker_01
Oh my god, like Carol is the most wholesome woman ever.

00:24:27 Speaker_03
And like what a badass. Oh yeah. Organizing four very active young children's lives, that alone is hard to do.

00:24:37 Speaker_01
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 a kindergarten class, being a member of the choir, a president of the Women's Association.

00:24:50 Speaker_01
Like, she's literally everything. And she also, on top of all that, I think I mentioned it later, she was taking classes too. Yeah, at the same time. What a badass. I can barely handle my shit and I don't have half of that.

00:25:05 Speaker_01
I don't even have kids and I don't know what I'm doing half the time. 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 doesn't like Carol?

00:25:19 Speaker_01
Everybody does.

00:25:20 Speaker_03
And she's like a young mom, you know, like who's, what's she getting into?

00:25:24 Speaker_01
Like, you know, you're like, she's not getting into like organized crime here or something, I assume. No, not at all. No, she's not.

00:25:29 Speaker_01
So frustrated by the lack of evidence and any leads at the scene, investigators started questioning the family and the neighbors.

00:25:36 Speaker_01
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.

00:25:46 Speaker_03
How awful.

00:25:47 Speaker_01
Yeah, but I mean it happened, 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.

00:25:58 Speaker_01
enough to act like that, you know, like do something. 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.

00:26:08 Speaker_01
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 least, you know.

00:26:17 Speaker_01
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.

00:26:28 Speaker_01
According to friends she was very much an extrovert much known and much loved by everyone they said.

00:26:33 Speaker_03
Carol.

00:26:34 Speaker_01
Other friends described her as somebody who was quote interested in everything and constantly learning.

00:26:39 Speaker_03
I love people like that.

00:26:40 Speaker_01
I know she seems like... I love people like that. They just want to keep doing stuff. Yeah, I feel like Carol seems like somebody we definitely would have gone along with. One friend told a reporter she was always trying to gain more knowledge.

00:26:52 Speaker_01
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.

00:27:03 Speaker_01
Yeah, on top of everything else she's doing, she was going to a class. Now by most accounts too, Carol and Cotton's marriage had been a good one. They always seemed happy together. People said they were an anchor in the neighborhood.

00:27:16 Speaker_01
They were organizing parties all the time, events all the time. Things looked really good from the outside.

00:27:23 Speaker_01
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.

00:27:36 Speaker_01
This is the 60s. 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.

00:27:47 Speaker_03
Carol seems like the type of woman who when she does something she fucking doesn't.

00:27:52 Speaker_01
Yeah she doesn't half-ass anything. Carol whole-assed everything and you can see that. Like 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.

00:28:06 Speaker_01
But in private conversations. I was waiting for a but. There's always a but. I was like you can't tell me this is just the way it is. No. Yeah.

00:28:13 Speaker_01
In private conversation the interesting thing is I'll tell you what happens but it's not even that like on Carol's end you're like I don't know like it really doesn't explain this necessarily.

00:28:23 Speaker_01
In private conversations with friends and neighbors detectives were starting to develop a little bit of a different picture of Carol.

00:28:30 Speaker_01
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 Carol and Cotton's marriage was a good one.

00:28:41 Speaker_03
I did wonder when you said like she dropped out of school and they got married.

00:28:45 Speaker_01
And she still has this love of learning obviously.

00:28:47 Speaker_03
Yeah and it's like obviously that absolutely if that was her choice and she was happy with that choice then more power to her.

00:28:52 Speaker_01
Yeah. I just wondered. I had like a weird little tinge. Well it seems sudden too. That's the thing.

00:28:57 Speaker_01
But 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.

00:29:08 Speaker_01
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.

00:29:20 Speaker_01
Okay, well that's not her fault. No, and she's beautiful if you look at the picture. Yeah. It makes sense. So investigators soon learned that Big Red's real name was Kenneth Moran. He was a local man in his early 30s.

00:29:32 Speaker_01
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, Kenneth kind of became part of their social circle.

00:29:43 Speaker_01
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.

00:29:54 Speaker_01
And he claimed he actually hadn't seen Carol since the previous November 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.

00:30:07 Speaker_03
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.

00:30:14 Speaker_01
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 sex at that time.

00:30:27 Speaker_01
I was going to say this was such a different time too. And especially in like a small town and a close knit community. For sure.

00:30:32 Speaker_01
I think they probably were just really good friends who like maybe found each other attractive, but it doesn't really sound like it crossed the line at all. Okay.

00:30:39 Speaker_01
So even though they had ruled out Kenneth Moran as a suspect, his presence in Carol's life definitely contributed to an emerging portrait of probably an unhappy woman in an unhappy marriage to some degree. I mean, I can absolutely see that. Yes.

00:30:53 Speaker_01
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.

00:31:02 Speaker_01
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.

00:31:12 Speaker_01
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.

00:31:23 Speaker_03
Like you think there's varying degrees of appropriateness when it comes to a relationship like that when you're married, especially.

00:31:29 Speaker_03
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.

00:31:35 Speaker_03
And then I'm like, but you know what, if you're in the relationship, it's probably going to look a little different.

00:31:40 Speaker_01
Well, and this is just me, to each their own, but if I knew that Drew had a close woman friend that he was driving our kids around with, I'd be like, ah, I'm not super comfortable with that. Yeah, I too would have a problem with that.

00:31:51 Speaker_01
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.

00:32:03 Speaker_01
So she was like, yeah, he's handsome and I like being around him, but I only love my kids and my husband. She just sounds like the purest, like truly. Yeah, she really does.

00:32:14 Speaker_01
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 under his butt. She's like, I miss Kenneth.

00:32:24 Speaker_01
He was cool to hang out with, but this kind of worked out. Yeah, it was great. It was a testament to Carol's popularity too, that so many people were willing to cooperate with investigators.

00:32:33 Speaker_01
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.

00:32:44 Speaker_01
If anything, the interviews just confirmed detectives' earlier feeling that Carol Thompson was the last person anybody would have wanted to see dead or murdered, even worse. Like everyone on the outside of her life seemed to really like her.

00:32:57 Speaker_01
Yeah, like she didn't really have a problem with anything. She wasn't beefing. With anyone.

00:33:00 Speaker_01
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.

00:33:13 Speaker_03
Oh, I knew those were coming.

00:33:15 Speaker_01
Life insurance policies in Carol's name from multiple different insurance companies. Oh, you got it.

00:33:20 Speaker_03
That's it.

00:33:21 Speaker_01
You gotta, I don't know how this ends, so I'm not gonna sit here and I'm not gonna dog on somebody and say that it's definitely them.

00:33:27 Speaker_03
You can. I can? You can. Okay, yeah.

00:33:30 Speaker_01
I think it's pretty.

00:33:32 Speaker_03
Come on.

00:33:32 Speaker_01
I think it's pretty.

00:33:33 Speaker_03
Different life insurances from different companies and this happens?

00:33:37 Speaker_01
Yeah. Yeah. Like, what?

00:33:40 Speaker_01
About 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.

00:34:02 Speaker_01
Holy shit. More than $10 million. Wow. Yeah.

00:34:07 Speaker_03
That would make my red flags go flappy flappy flappy.

00:34:11 Speaker_01
Yeah. Yeah. 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 quite a stir amongst those who knew the family. As it should.

00:34:27 Speaker_01
Since that much coverage seemed pretty fucking excessive by any measure.

00:34:32 Speaker_01
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.

00:34:46 Speaker_01
This piece of fucking shit. Yeah, I did something. So the discovery raised some new questions about Carol's death, and investigators obviously wanted to talk more with Cotton.

00:34:57 Speaker_01
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.

00:35:10 Speaker_01
Yeah, don't involve Douglas. Come on.

00:35:13 Speaker_01
In the statement, Young laid out a detailed tally of the insurance policies in Carroll'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.

00:35:29 Speaker_01
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, It's like, how do you have like 55,000 insurance policies?

00:35:51 Speaker_01
That's the thing, like I get having a life insurance policy, absolutely. But I don't understand having eight. Yeah, I don't understand that. Most are like, damn, like you got really good deals on this. Yeah.

00:36:03 Speaker_01
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.

00:36:11 Speaker_03
Which like, okay, yeah, that all sounds great.

00:36:14 Speaker_01
Why do you have eight? You just don't need eight. That's the thing, like you're not answering my question, Cotton. The most is six. Why do you have eight? There's six family members, six policies, the end.

00:36:23 Speaker_01
And I'm pretty sure one policy can cover multiple people. 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.

00:36:35 Speaker_01
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. It's not totally out of the realm of normality, but it's still excessive to me.

00:36:50 Speaker_01
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. He didn't say anything about these.

00:37:03 Speaker_01
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, I don't know. But at the same time you're like... But you also know it's gonna make you look bad. You know it's gonna sound bad.

00:37:15 Speaker_01
And remember, he's an attorney. Yeah, so he knows that's gonna make him, but also it's like, they're gonna find them. Yeah, that's the thing.

00:37:21 Speaker_01
So just be upfront and be like, listen, I know you're gonna find these things and you're gonna question me about them, 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.

00:37:32 Speaker_01
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.

00:37:42 Speaker_01
Yeah, that tells you a lot. You know? In fact, according to the St.

00:37:45 Speaker_01
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.

00:37:58 Speaker_01
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 Carol, or at least somebody who signed Carol's name to the form.

00:38:08 Speaker_02
Interesting.

00:38:09 Speaker_01
But investigators decided to send the documents to the FBI for handwriting analysis to confirm that it actually was Carol's handwriting.

00:38:16 Speaker_01
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.

00:38:24 Speaker_01
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.

00:38:38 Speaker_01
So in their struggle to make any headway in the case, detectives revisited the scene and revisited the evidence that they found in the home.

00:38:44 Speaker_01
For the most part, the evidence collected from the house was pretty much what you would expect to find from a home, except for the pieces of plastic that were recovered in the pool of blood by the front door.

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That's rocketmoney.com slash morbid rocketmoney.com slash morbid. 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 Carol.

00:41:34 Speaker_01
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.

00:41:46 Speaker_01
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.

00:41:59 Speaker_01
And within a week, the St. Paul police got a call from a man named Wayne Brandt. He was a St.

00:42:04 Speaker_01
Paul salesman who claimed that the gun they were looking for was his 7.65 millimeter Luger pistol, which had been stolen from his apartment on February 14th, just a few weeks before the murder.

00:42:16 Speaker_03
Holy shit.

00:42:17 Speaker_01
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.

00:42:24 Speaker_03
Stop it.

00:42:25 Speaker_01
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. Wow.

00:42:36 Speaker_03
I know, and now he's gotta 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 gotta go through the whole rigmarole.

00:42:44 Speaker_01
I know, I can't imagine. And good for him for being like, yeah, that's mine, because some people wouldn't.

00:42:48 Speaker_03
I know, a lot of people would be like, I'm not getting wrapped up in that.

00:42:50 Speaker_01
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.

00:43:01 Speaker_03
Yeah, the universe is working for her.

00:43:03 Speaker_01
Yes. So police arrested a man named Willard Ingram during a holdup, like during a legit holdup.

00:43:11 Speaker_01
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.

00:43:21 Speaker_01
And it just so happened that he had information to share about the pistol used in Carol Thompson's murder. Oh shit.

00:43:27 Speaker_01
He admitted that he actually robbed Wayne Brandt's apartment and stolen the gun, but insisted he had nothing to do with the murder itself, and he had given the gun to his friend Norman Mastrian.

00:43:39 Speaker_02
Oh my goodness.

00:43:40 Speaker_01
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Gun. It's about to go crazy. You have no idea. Oh man. 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.

00:43:54 Speaker_01
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.

00:44:03 Speaker_01
That was until he became the prime suspect in a 1962 kidnapping and murder of a local bar owner.

00:44:10 Speaker_03
What the fuck?

00:44:11 Speaker_01
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. He's just walking. Mm-hmm.

00:44:23 Speaker_01
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.

00:44:35 Speaker_01
So after speaking with the county attorney, the detectives were actually given the authority to take him by force, so they kicked down his door and they put him under arrest without further incident, luckily.

00:44:45 Speaker_01
Now, once they were at the station, he said he didn't know anything about Carol'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.

00:44:58 Speaker_01
A man named Henry Butler, who was now in custody pending trial for a robbery. Is everyone OK? No. The answer is no. Criminals are everywhere. Criminals in your hair. My goodness. You mean criminaling. Everybody stays criminal in this time of St. Paul.

00:45:14 Speaker_01
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.

00:45:24 Speaker_01
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.

00:45:36 Speaker_01
So the connections that led from Willard Ingram to Norman Mastrian to Henry Butler, those all made sense. They all had very lengthy criminal histories. They were all known to associate with other criminals like

00:45:49 Speaker_01
It was like a criminal fucking enterprise. Yeah, they just stay criminaling. Yeah, they stay criminaling, like you said. But Dick Anderson, on the other hand, he made less sense.

00:45:56 Speaker_01
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.

00:46:10 Speaker_01
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.

00:46:20 Speaker_01
So when Phoenix police arrived at the motel, they found Anderson in the lobby, luggage in hand, ready to check out, presumably to avoid arrest. Whoa. He had definitely been tipped off. Yeah.

00:46:32 Speaker_01
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.

00:46:48 Speaker_03
What a dumbass. Right? Like, are you serious?

00:46:50 Speaker_01
I'm like, what are you looking for here?

00:46:52 Speaker_03
And you're fucking up the investigation.

00:46:53 Speaker_01
Exactly. What are you doing? Like, you're playing both sides. I know what he's looking for. He's looking for a byline. Exactly.

00:46:58 Speaker_01
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.

00:47:09 Speaker_01
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.

00:47:24 Speaker_03
Wow.

00:47:24 Speaker_01
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 here. I would say so. Yeah. So while detectives in St.

00:47:38 Speaker_01
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. Another guy.

00:47:49 Speaker_01
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?

00:48:01 Speaker_01
They literally cannot and will not.

00:48:03 Speaker_03
Yeah, sticky fingers Magoo gang here.

00:48:06 Speaker_01
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, Sharpe told investigators that Dick Anderson was lying.

00:48:21 Speaker_01
He said Dick Anderson actually was the one who murdered Carol Thompson. What the fuck? And that he needed Sharpe to contact the quote-unquote payoff man on his behalf. Shut up. He was waiting for his money.

00:48:34 Speaker_01
According to the statement, Anderson told Sharpe that Norman Mastrian had paid him $3,000 to kill Carol Thompson. What? Yeah, so it literally just all went full circle. Holy crap.

00:48:47 Speaker_01
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 St. Paul housewife dead. Like, how did that connect?

00:49:01 Speaker_01
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.

00:49:09 Speaker_01
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.

00:49:32 Speaker_01
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.

00:49:45 Speaker_01
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.

00:49:56 Speaker_01
They knew that Norman Mastrian had received the murder weapon from Willard Ingram. He's the one who stole it in the first place.

00:50:03 Speaker_01
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.

00:50:15 Speaker_01
And he also, along with the gun, tells him he promises to pay him $3,000 to kill Carol. $3,000. To take human life. Yes.

00:50:25 Speaker_03
but imagine how excited the investigators felt after going through this whole thing and having no idea getting this fucking gun this murder weapon in the middle of the woods like can you imagine how

00:50:39 Speaker_03
It must be the most insane feeling to finally get there.

00:50:42 Speaker_01
You have, like, they literally started with, like, next to nothing. And they asked the public for help. And this guy, like, thankfully comes forward and is like, yes, that is my gun, but it was stolen. But to pull that thread.

00:50:51 Speaker_01
And then they track down, like, what, how many, like, four or five different criminals and local criminals in the area. Exactly. That's what I mean. Like, they pulled that thread and kept pulling it.

00:51:02 Speaker_01
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.

00:51:17 Speaker_01
That they wanted leniency on, exactly. So it was just like lucky strike after lucky strike. Seriously.

00:51:23 Speaker_01
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.

00:51:31 Speaker_01
They needed to know who hired Norman Mastrian in the first place because he didn't know Carol. Why would he want her dead? Where is this coming from?

00:51:39 Speaker_01
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.

00:51:48 Speaker_01
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.

00:52:00 Speaker_01
There's a client that you felt so comfortable with. Precisely. Pre-fucking-cisely.

00:52:06 Speaker_01
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.

00:52:19 Speaker_01
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.

00:52:30 Speaker_01
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.

00:52:41 Speaker_03
They extradited him.

00:52:42 Speaker_01
Now, 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.

00:52:55 Speaker_01
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. What? Not me.

00:53:06 Speaker_01
That's literally all I could think of the entire time I was going through this. I love that. 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.

00:53:17 Speaker_03
Oh.

00:53:17 Speaker_01
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.

00:53:25 Speaker_03
Oh, fuck you, Cotton.

00:53:26 Speaker_01
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.

00:53:36 Speaker_01
He had this motherfucker come into his house while his children were still in this house. His four children.

00:53:41 Speaker_03
He had a mobster with a fucking rap sheet sneak into his goddamn house while his kids were in there.

00:53:47 Speaker_01
Yeah. Never mind what he did to Carol. Yeah, exactly. Dick Anderson doesn't have mob ties. It's Norman Mastrian who has mob ties. Dick Anderson.

00:53:56 Speaker_01
Dick Anderson is like the guy who they were like, this doesn't even make sense that he's connected to all these criminals because he's like a petty thief.

00:54:04 Speaker_03
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.

00:54:11 Speaker_01
mm-hmm 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 yeah he's the one that they were like why is this guy connected all this literally like a military vet like not tied up in the mob not tied up but like it was like petty shit exactly

00:54:28 Speaker_01
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 him for the day. This guy he doesn't know. He has no idea what he's capable of. Yeah. Yep. Wow.

00:54:38 Speaker_01
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.

00:54:48 Speaker_01
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.

00:54:56 Speaker_01
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.

00:55:05 Speaker_01
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.

00:55:13 Speaker_01
oh so he really put some thought into this oh he did because the accidental death would have triggered the double indemnity clause and 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 gonna work out for you nope

00:55:37 Speaker_01
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 stairs were creaking as he walked.

00:55:48 Speaker_01
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.

00:56:01 Speaker_01
But she just goes back to her own bedroom. and Anderson appears in the doorway of her room. Oh god.

00:56:07 Speaker_01
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.

00:56:18 Speaker_01
Instead, Carol fought back hard, and she was actually able to knock him to the floor, and she made a break for the stairs.

00:56:24 Speaker_03
I wish she got out.

00:56:25 Speaker_01
And she stopped quickly to grab her robe so that she wouldn't run out of the house indecent.

00:56:30 Speaker_03
Oh no.

00:56:30 Speaker_01
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.

00:56:42 Speaker_03
Holy shit.

00:56:44 Speaker_01
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.

00:56:54 Speaker_01
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.

00:57:08 Speaker_01
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.

00:57:16 Speaker_01
Holy shit It was also at this point that those three rounds from the clip got came loose and dropped to the floor So that's why they found those unspent clips

00:57:26 Speaker_03
Damn.

00:57:27 Speaker_01
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.

00:57:35 Speaker_01
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.

00:57:46 Speaker_01
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... So she could escape out the front door.

00:58:00 Speaker_00
Exactly.

00:58:00 Speaker_01
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.

00:58:09 Speaker_01
So panicked when he saw that she was gone he stopped what he was doing and he fled the house from the kitchen door and got the fuck out of there.

00:58:16 Speaker_04
Wow.

00:58:27 Speaker_01
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00:59:16 Speaker_01
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00:59:28 Speaker_01
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01:00:01 Speaker_01
Years later, Jeff Thompson, Cotton and Carol's son, would recall that on the morning of his mother's murder, his father instructed him to put the chain on the front door before they left for school.

01:00:12 Speaker_03
Oh, what a piece of actual fucking shit.

01:00:14 Speaker_01
He had his son do it.

01:00:15 Speaker_03
You put that on your kid?

01:00:17 Speaker_01
Yep. Like fuck this guy into oblivion. And Jeff even said he thought it was strange because they never chained the door and he said if it hadn't been locked obviously his mother would have been able to escape her attacker.

01:00:34 Speaker_01
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 son, you can't even just go do it?

01:00:45 Speaker_01
Like you're making him a part of this? He had a man, a criminal, who he has no idea what he's capable of, hide 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.

01:01:01 Speaker_01
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.

01:01:14 Speaker_01
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.

01:01:24 Speaker_01
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.

01:01:31 Speaker_01
One neighbor said there was no conflict between the Thompsons, recognizable or known to their closest friends.

01:01:37 Speaker_01
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 was shocked.

01:01:47 Speaker_01
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.

01:02:01 Speaker_01
Yeah, like come on. Yeah, he's like essentially making a doctor salary. Yeah. So it wasn't like he was in desperate need of money.

01:02:08 Speaker_01
But in reality, the motive for Carroll's murder had pretty much been staring them in the face since the beginning of the investigation.

01:02:15 Speaker_01
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 Carroll's marriage was on the rocks for a long time.

01:02:25 Speaker_01
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.

01:02:37 Speaker_01
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.

01:02:53 Speaker_01
It's the perfect time for that tune, 1963 especially. Exactly, exactly.

01:02:59 Speaker_01
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 her new responsibilities with open arms. She was happy to do everything she had to do.

01:03:11 Speaker_01
And by all accounts, she was a great wife. She was a great mother.

01:03:14 Speaker_01
yeah but the longer they were married people said the more unhappy carol had become that author swanson said cotton was a tough self 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

01:03:41 Speaker_01
Fucking dung. Yeah. On the bottom of an elephant's foot. Yeah, I would say like he's even lower than that. Yeah. Honestly. Later, their son Jeff would say, I know my mother knew about my dad's affairs.

01:03:53 Speaker_01
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 Moran. Yeah.

01:04:03 Speaker_01
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, illicit affair. Yeah, just like someone that pays attention and is kind to her.

01:04:13 Speaker_01
Yeah, and like, and of course that other person was Kenneth Moran. They had shared interests together. Yeah. They gave a shit about each other.

01:04:23 Speaker_01
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 each other. And that was until Cotton put an end to that relationship.

01:04:34 Speaker_03
Which makes me even angrier that that motherfucker was out there doing everything he wanted and he was being that possessive.

01:04:39 Speaker_01
Yeah.

01:04:39 Speaker_03
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.

01:04:46 Speaker_01
Yeah, whoever and whatever. Asshole. Exactly. And 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.

01:04:59 Speaker_01
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. Like, what would you do if mom went away for a while?

01:05:08 Speaker_01
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.

01:05:21 Speaker_01
Oh Jeff. And that's like his son. I want to give Jeff a hug. I know I do too.

01:05:25 Speaker_01
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.

01:05:39 Speaker_01
Yeah and I mean those uh 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.

01:05:52 Speaker_01
Which is it's like you don't want to be married either. Yeah. You're 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.

01:06:02 Speaker_01
I'm like, why can't you do it at a certain point? What are you doing with it? Exactly. Why do you need more? You just don't at a certain point. It's not like you're struggling.

01:06:10 Speaker_03
It's not like one of these situations where it's like the family is struggling financially and they're like, last, you know, and it's obviously, it's never okay. But in those situations, there's a desperation factor that plays into it.

01:06:21 Speaker_01
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.

01:06:31 Speaker_01
You guys are throwing parties, you're throwing events, like 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 27, 1963.

01:06:46 Speaker_01
He pleaded innocent, and in his opening statements, prosecutor William Randall laid out the state's theory about Thompson's motive for the murder.

01:06:53 Speaker_01
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.

01:07:04 Speaker_03
So just leave, leave.

01:07:05 Speaker_01
Just leave. But he wouldn't have got his money. They'd all be better off without you anyways. Wouldn't have got his money, so he wouldn't have been happy. You got plenty of money, you piece of shit. Seriously.

01:07:13 Speaker_01
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 timeframe, he would be able to marry her. Girl.

01:07:28 Speaker_01
11, just give me 11 months. Why the fuck are you being so specific?

01:07:32 Speaker_02
Yeah. It's like, girl, come on. Like, first of all, stop fucking a married guy.

01:07:36 Speaker_01
And second of all, when he's saying, when he's giving you a timeframe, you got to wonder, you got to wonder what that timeframe implies. You sure do.

01:07:43 Speaker_01
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.

01:07:52 Speaker_01
11 months before Carol's death, 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.

01:08:07 Speaker_03
Guys, we got to use the stuff between your ears here.

01:08:10 Speaker_01
Your granada, 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.

01:08:17 Speaker_02
So some guy, some high-powered defense attorney,

01:08:21 Speaker_03
who's like fucking everything with two legs, is out here telling you that he's got to get 85 life insurance policies on his wife, his young wife, his young healthy wife, his family too.

01:08:35 Speaker_01
And he's got to do it quick, quick, quick, quick. And you know why?

01:08:39 Speaker_02
He had a vision.

01:08:40 Speaker_03
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?

01:08:48 Speaker_03
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.

01:08:56 Speaker_01
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.

01:09:11 Speaker_01
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. It's his thing. That's not OK.

01:09:23 Speaker_01
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 of them. Ridiculous.

01:09:38 Speaker_01
So pointing to the excessive coverage he'd purchased for his home and car, they continued to say he was an eccentric, but those amounts were also double the average coverage at the time. So he really did put like excess coverage on everything.

01:09:52 Speaker_00
He's wily.

01:09:53 Speaker_01
He is eccentric when it comes to home insurance and life insurance.

01:09:56 Speaker_01
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.

01:10:08 Speaker_01
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.

01:10:18 Speaker_01
So he, Cotton told Dick, no matter what happens, you pull that trigger and you kill her. Wow, he's so fucking cold. I don't care what happens. Yeah.

01:10:29 Speaker_01
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.

01:10:41 Speaker_01
Anderson quoted Norman as telling him, the broad's father will be next in six or seven months. Apparently- What the fuck? They were gonna kill Carol's dad as well.

01:10:52 Speaker_01
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.

01:11:01 Speaker_03
I am.

01:11:01 Speaker_01
So if she's dead and her father dies, Cotton and kids get everything. So this guy is a literal fucking monster. Yeah.

01:11:09 Speaker_03
Like no amount of money would ever satiate that man.

01:11:13 Speaker_01
That's like... What is wrong with you? Like what is wrong with... That's more money than you'll ever be able... Like what is wrong with you? And I just... I never understand valuing that much money over human life. Like That's the thing.

01:11:25 Speaker_01
And especially, and we always 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?

01:11:41 Speaker_01
That's the thing, I'm like, you don't feel anything? 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. What? You don't feel anything.

01:11:54 Speaker_02
That's what I don't get. Like, I'm like, I... I could never... I can't imagine causing harm to John.

01:12:03 Speaker_03
No.

01:12:04 Speaker_01
Or having someone else cause harm to John.

01:12:06 Speaker_03
For money.

01:12:07 Speaker_01
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 the thinking that money is going to, like,

01:12:20 Speaker_03
like that you're gonna hold that money and feel good.

01:12:22 Speaker_01
Like, what is wrong with you? I think he would've. You have to be dead inside. I think he absolutely is. You have to be dead inside.

01:12:28 Speaker_03
This guy has to be dead inside.

01:12:31 Speaker_01
Wow. And also, like, to kill your wife, one, is absolutely just, like, unthinkable. Then to kill her grieving father six or seven months later. Yeah. First of all, you're gonna make him wait six or seven months. Yeah.

01:12:44 Speaker_01
And then secondly, you're also killing her father. So her poor mother has just lost her daughter and her husband? Yeah. Jesus.

01:12:53 Speaker_01
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.

01:13:04 Speaker_01
But he didn't really say much else to convince the jury that he had no connection to the murder.

01:13:08 Speaker_01
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.

01:13:19 Speaker_01
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 of the first degree murder of his wife, Carol Thompson. Bye, bitch.

01:13:34 Speaker_01
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.

01:13:43 Speaker_01
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.

01:13:58 Speaker_01
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.

01:14:10 Speaker_01
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.

01:14:21 Speaker_01
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 and tried to reconnect with his family but he was never very successful.

01:14:34 Speaker_01
Jeff Thompson 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.

01:14:47 Speaker_01
Jeff is like a very, he's a really good person. He's elevated higher than most people. That's Carole's son. I was going to say that is Carole's son. That's Carole's son. That's not Cotton's son. I mean, it is Cotton's son.

01:15:01 Speaker_01
I'm not saying that, but that's Carole. 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.

01:15:19 Speaker_01
Especially on his birthday. on his birthday. I do hate that he got to die peacefully in his sleep. And I hate that he lived 88 years. That's a long ass life. He got to at least be out. Yeah, that pisses me off. He got a lot of time on the other side.

01:15:32 Speaker_01
Rest in fucking distress. And the universe is always going to get you. You're 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.

01:15:47 Speaker_03
Like not one. And poor Carol. I know.

01:15:50 Speaker_01
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?

01:16:03 Speaker_01
Why did my dad make me lock that? I can't imagine the psychological damage that would do to you.

01:16:08 Speaker_02
That's the thing.

01:16:09 Speaker_01
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.

01:16:20 Speaker_01
Like 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. And why would you question that?

01:16:30 Speaker_01
You know like he said like they never locked that door so he did kind of question it but he's not gonna out loud question it.

01:16:36 Speaker_01
And he's not gonna sit there and think okay he's having me lock that because he's gonna have my mom killed and he doesn't want her to escape. Like that's not gonna be in your head. You can never come up with that. That's your worst nightmare.

01:16:45 Speaker_01
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 gonna live. She's gonna pull through. She's gonna pull through. That's what I thought.

01:16:55 Speaker_01
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.

01:17:11 Speaker_01
Yeah. Oh my god.

01:17:13 Speaker_03
No, she's unbelievable.

01:17:14 Speaker_01
Truly. Damn. What a tragic case. It really is. But, um, as always, we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird.

01:17:25 Speaker_01
But that's a way that you go and take out eight life insurance policies on your wife because somebody these days is gonna say, hey, that's weird and you're not just eccentric and I'm gonna call somebody. Yep.

01:17:33 Speaker_01
And if you work at a life insurance company, call somebody. Call somebody. Say, hey, this guy just took out eight life insurance policies on his wife, and that's kind of weird.

01:17:40 Speaker_01
And he needs them within 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. OK, bye.

01:18:34 Speaker_01
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. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

01:18:43 Speaker_01
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01:18:50 Speaker_00
Hello, ladies and gerbs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tiz the Grinch Holiday Podcast.

01:18:57 Speaker_00
After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting, and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire.

01:19:07 Speaker_00
You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all.

01:19:19 Speaker_00
Somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters to Santa and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out.

01:19:33 Speaker_00
Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.