Jan. 4, 2023
A True Story of Marriage, Betrayal, and Murder
My special guest joins me to discuss the case of a woman who disappeared and was found in a way no one would wish on their worst enemy.
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Transcript
WEBVTT
1
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[eerie music] Enjoy this clip, and the full show is available to you right now on Patreon. Hi there, I'm K-Town, and on this edition of Mysterious Radio...
2
00:00:14.030 --> 00:00:47.000
[mysterious music] I've been invited to a lot of just general book conventions, but I have not been m- invited to one that was a true crime.
3
00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:53.160
Crime? Okay. Would you go to one? I mean, would you speak at one if you were invited? Sure. Okay. All right.
4
00:00:53.220 --> 00:01:01.180
We'll s- we gonna keep that open, so if anybody has any true crime conventions or whatever, Diane's open to doing that. Um, now, what about book signings?
5
00:01:01.220 --> 00:01:08.820
Do you go to maybe a- around your local area and sign books for people? I, yeah, I go around my local area, and sometimes I get far afield.
6
00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:24.180
Like, if I'm visiting family elsewhere, I'll, I'll coordinate a book signing there. So, um, I don't have a brand-new book out yet, but I am putting the final editing touches to one, so hopefully it won't be too long.
7
00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:24.720
Yeah.
8
00:01:25.160 --> 00:01:38.640
I would imagine, like, if you, uh, schedule that far enough in advance, you would get a lot of people coming out to see you and to talk about your book in person because, you know, women lo- especially women, they, they love true crime.
9
00:01:38.900 --> 00:01:51.310
You know, it's, it's a women's, um, area of interest way more than men, and I totally understand why. You know, 'cause women are the ones- Yeah... that are the victims in a lot of these crimes unfortunately. Yes.
10
00:01:51.340 --> 00:02:04.630
But, uh, f- I would like to know, how did you choose this one? I was living in the town of New Braunfels, which is just outside of San Antonio, and, uh, I heard about her disappearance,
11
00:02:05.880 --> 00:02:18.410
and I started following it and reading about it, and I wanted to write a book on it because I knew this... Uh, but I couldn't get a book until her body had been found. So I, uh,
12
00:02:19.700 --> 00:02:28.060
I just kept a close eye on it, and in fact, I was working a job where I had the whole week between Christmas and New Year's off.
13
00:02:28.740 --> 00:02:42.780
So I had planned at that time to join the search team and go and actually try to search for her, and it turned out that they closed it down, the search down for that week, so I wasn't able to do that.
14
00:02:42.890 --> 00:02:57.540
But there was something about this woman that really captured my attention, and I think it was because she was so well-loved, she was a consummate professional at her work, and
15
00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:10.400
she was in the safety of her home where nothing should've happened to her, and yet she ended up dead. And it just seemed like it did not fit how things are supposed to work.
16
00:03:10.440 --> 00:03:20.680
You know, I know it happens, but it seems like that if you're doing all the things right, you shouldn't become a victim. Oh, you're, you're exactly right.
17
00:03:20.740 --> 00:03:28.030
You know, and it really angers you that people just doing nothing, you know, it, like you said, in the safety of their own home become a victim of murder.
18
00:03:28.180 --> 00:03:38.580
Just infuriating 'cause you never know what's gonna happen, especially in her case. Um, let me ask you something. Okay, so explain that to us a little bit, uh, more because you said you wanted to write a book.
19
00:03:38.660 --> 00:03:52.560
You heard about it. However, you wasn't able to do that until they found her body. Tell us why that was. Well, publishers want to know that it's actually a, a murder case and, um,
20
00:03:53.960 --> 00:04:05.720
y- you know, people do disappear all the time intentionally, and she wasn't one of those. But they didn't wanna commit to a book unless they knew absolutely for certain.
21
00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:23.020
They also are happier if someone has been arrested because they kn- then know that there's actually a case, there's a suspect and, in all likelihood, it will eventually end up coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Mm-hmm.
22
00:04:23.080 --> 00:04:29.110
Okay, I get it. I get it. Okay. So you pitched the book to a publisher- Yes... beforehand. Got you. Got you. Right.
23
00:04:29.120 --> 00:04:37.430
So they were interested in it, but they needed to know whether, you know, it was a true murder case before they- Yeah, w- when you do-... committed to it...
24
00:04:37.430 --> 00:04:50.120
um, th- the big difference between writing true crime and writing, uh, mystery fiction is that when you're writing true crime, you get your, uh, contract before you actually write the book.
25
00:04:50.360 --> 00:05:01.540
When you're writing fiction, you have to write the book, and then you get the contract. Gotcha. I didn't know that. Okay. And let, let me ask you something about, uh, you s- okay, so this is interesting here.
26
00:05:02.440 --> 00:05:14.020
You knew that, okay, this just happened. You pitched it to the publisher. They wanted to know it was gonna be a murder case, and of course, you know, this is still unfolding while you're wanting to do this.
27
00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:25.030
So w- tell me how that went. I mean, are you waiting to... Are you following the case and writing the book at the same time? Or tell me how you're doing this. Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. Tell me, tell me about that. Yes. Um,
28
00:05:26.400 --> 00:05:39.600
I, I e- even I went to the funeral service as well, um, and I, uh... It, it was open to general public. And I just wanted...
29
00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:53.120
It was a way to get close to her because the more I learned about her, the more I wanted to know her, and it was now impossible, but a funeral was a way to hear people talking about her, and so I did that.
30
00:05:53.240 --> 00:06:10.264
I didn't approach anybody at the funeral. I just quietly went in and quietly went out. And, um, Susan was, like, a very upbeat, positive person who if you had her for a friend- She would do anything for you.
31
00:06:10.464 --> 00:06:19.804
And if she was, um, someone you worked with, you could count on her help to help you figure out a solution to a problem.
32
00:06:20.264 --> 00:06:31.064
And she, she was a good, good person, and the fact that she died so young and so horribly just made my heart ache. You know what?
33
00:06:31.164 --> 00:06:43.354
You're actually the first author I've ever conducted an interview with that has written a book as the case was unfolding. Most of the time, the, the crime happened years before or something, you know- Mm-hmm...
34
00:06:43.384 --> 00:06:50.764
and then they write the book. So they're not able to actually get to kind of experience what's happening at the same time.
35
00:06:50.984 --> 00:07:06.464
Okay, so go ahead, and, and the book is called Gone Forever: A True Story of Marriage, Betrayal, and Murder. And so, uh, go ahead and start off by telling us about Susan. Susan, uh, worked for, uh, Southwestern Bell,
36
00:07:07.704 --> 00:07:21.064
and she was an accountant, and she was in charge of her division, and she was very good at what she did. Um, she was a counterpoint to all the stereotypes of,
37
00:07:22.144 --> 00:07:39.084
of accountants being introverted, nerdy people because she was very outgoing and loved to have fun in nor- any sort of way you can imagine it. She was a mother of three boys and she loved those boys dearly.
38
00:07:39.644 --> 00:07:51.204
When she married her husband, he was making a good living at a stock brokerage firm, but then he started to get very, uh, unemployable. He
39
00:07:52.164 --> 00:08:02.564
would lose a job and then he'd get one for six months and then he'd lose it and then he'd get another one for a year, then he'd lose it. And in between, of course he had all this spare time of unemployment.
40
00:08:03.704 --> 00:08:17.164
So eventually he just decided to stay home with his get rich quick schemes working at home and caring for the boys. So Susan was the breadwinner. She really, really, really wanted to have
41
00:08:18.164 --> 00:08:27.844
a happy, normal family more than anything. She didn't want the kids to have to, uh, go through a divorce or anything like that
42
00:08:28.784 --> 00:08:46.184
and she tried as hard as she could to make everything work, but her husband's problems were getting more and more obvious and more and more difficult. For example, she would, um... Her kids had some medications.
43
00:08:46.244 --> 00:08:52.744
One of 'em had, uh, had attention ef- deficit disorder and so he was on medication.
44
00:08:52.824 --> 00:09:03.324
So when, when her husband Richard went out of town to visit his parents in another state with the kids, he decided to put them on a medication vacation
45
00:09:04.224 --> 00:09:12.564
without talking to a doctor, without talking to Susan, anything like that. You mean just not give them medicine during that time? Exactly. Exactly.
46
00:09:13.444 --> 00:09:20.504
So they just took 'em off cold turkey and, um, she, they would, he would go out with them.
47
00:09:20.544 --> 00:09:34.644
If Susan had a business commitment in the evening or if she had to work late, uh, he would take them out a lot of times to go shopping and, um, and he would keep them out 'til 10:30, 11 o'clock at night.
48
00:09:35.484 --> 00:09:47.364
It was too late on a school night and she couldn't get him to stop doing that. Uh, and he also, while he had them with him, he was doing weird things.
49
00:09:47.444 --> 00:10:02.984
Like he went to Tallheimer's and bought some, uh, scooter bikes, little scooters, and he took the, uh, good handles and s- and accoutrements off of the new ones,
50
00:10:03.904 --> 00:10:13.874
put them on the boys' old ones and then put the old stuff on the new ones and then tried to return them. I mean, who does that? He's just an idiot. Yeah. Yeah. That is just crazy. Go ahead.
51
00:10:13.884 --> 00:10:27.504
Or he'll take and, and buy like, um, a Blackberry and he'll cut out the thing to send back in and get a rebate and then try to return it with that piece of stuff missing from it. I mean, it was
52
00:10:28.543 --> 00:10:36.764
just crazy and he'd buy more and more stuff that they didn't need and their house was just, closets were jam-packed with this junk he was buying.
53
00:10:37.324 --> 00:10:47.344
I mean, it didn't matter to him whether it was quality or not just so long as it was cheap and- Was, was he diagnosed with anything like mental disorder that you know of?
54
00:10:47.404 --> 00:10:59.424
I mean at this point, was there anything known like that- Uh, he-... with him? No. I mean, he went to see someone and was told that he really should stop taking his son's medication.
55
00:10:59.524 --> 00:11:13.884
Access this edition and many more by becoming a Mysterious Radio patron at Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/mysteriousradio to enjoy more and get rewarded with Mysterious Radio merchandise.
1
00:00:00.220 --> 00:00:13.540
[eerie music] Enjoy this clip, and the full show is available to you right now on Patreon. Hi there, I'm K-Town, and on this edition of Mysterious Radio...
2
00:00:14.030 --> 00:00:47.000
[mysterious music] I've been invited to a lot of just general book conventions, but I have not been m- invited to one that was a true crime.
3
00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:53.160
Crime? Okay. Would you go to one? I mean, would you speak at one if you were invited? Sure. Okay. All right.
4
00:00:53.220 --> 00:01:01.180
We'll s- we gonna keep that open, so if anybody has any true crime conventions or whatever, Diane's open to doing that. Um, now, what about book signings?
5
00:01:01.220 --> 00:01:08.820
Do you go to maybe a- around your local area and sign books for people? I, yeah, I go around my local area, and sometimes I get far afield.
6
00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:24.180
Like, if I'm visiting family elsewhere, I'll, I'll coordinate a book signing there. So, um, I don't have a brand-new book out yet, but I am putting the final editing touches to one, so hopefully it won't be too long.
7
00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:24.720
Yeah.
8
00:01:25.160 --> 00:01:38.640
I would imagine, like, if you, uh, schedule that far enough in advance, you would get a lot of people coming out to see you and to talk about your book in person because, you know, women lo- especially women, they, they love true crime.
9
00:01:38.900 --> 00:01:51.310
You know, it's, it's a women's, um, area of interest way more than men, and I totally understand why. You know, 'cause women are the ones- Yeah... that are the victims in a lot of these crimes unfortunately. Yes.
10
00:01:51.340 --> 00:02:04.630
But, uh, f- I would like to know, how did you choose this one? I was living in the town of New Braunfels, which is just outside of San Antonio, and, uh, I heard about her disappearance,
11
00:02:05.880 --> 00:02:18.410
and I started following it and reading about it, and I wanted to write a book on it because I knew this... Uh, but I couldn't get a book until her body had been found. So I, uh,
12
00:02:19.700 --> 00:02:28.060
I just kept a close eye on it, and in fact, I was working a job where I had the whole week between Christmas and New Year's off.
13
00:02:28.740 --> 00:02:42.780
So I had planned at that time to join the search team and go and actually try to search for her, and it turned out that they closed it down, the search down for that week, so I wasn't able to do that.
14
00:02:42.890 --> 00:02:57.540
But there was something about this woman that really captured my attention, and I think it was because she was so well-loved, she was a consummate professional at her work, and
15
00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:10.400
she was in the safety of her home where nothing should've happened to her, and yet she ended up dead. And it just seemed like it did not fit how things are supposed to work.
16
00:03:10.440 --> 00:03:20.680
You know, I know it happens, but it seems like that if you're doing all the things right, you shouldn't become a victim. Oh, you're, you're exactly right.
17
00:03:20.740 --> 00:03:28.030
You know, and it really angers you that people just doing nothing, you know, it, like you said, in the safety of their own home become a victim of murder.
18
00:03:28.180 --> 00:03:38.580
Just infuriating 'cause you never know what's gonna happen, especially in her case. Um, let me ask you something. Okay, so explain that to us a little bit, uh, more because you said you wanted to write a book.
19
00:03:38.660 --> 00:03:52.560
You heard about it. However, you wasn't able to do that until they found her body. Tell us why that was. Well, publishers want to know that it's actually a, a murder case and, um,
20
00:03:53.960 --> 00:04:05.720
y- you know, people do disappear all the time intentionally, and she wasn't one of those. But they didn't wanna commit to a book unless they knew absolutely for certain.
21
00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:23.020
They also are happier if someone has been arrested because they kn- then know that there's actually a case, there's a suspect and, in all likelihood, it will eventually end up coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Mm-hmm.
22
00:04:23.080 --> 00:04:29.110
Okay, I get it. I get it. Okay. So you pitched the book to a publisher- Yes... beforehand. Got you. Got you. Right.
23
00:04:29.120 --> 00:04:37.430
So they were interested in it, but they needed to know whether, you know, it was a true murder case before they- Yeah, w- when you do-... committed to it...
24
00:04:37.430 --> 00:04:50.120
um, th- the big difference between writing true crime and writing, uh, mystery fiction is that when you're writing true crime, you get your, uh, contract before you actually write the book.
25
00:04:50.360 --> 00:05:01.540
When you're writing fiction, you have to write the book, and then you get the contract. Gotcha. I didn't know that. Okay. And let, let me ask you something about, uh, you s- okay, so this is interesting here.
26
00:05:02.440 --> 00:05:14.020
You knew that, okay, this just happened. You pitched it to the publisher. They wanted to know it was gonna be a murder case, and of course, you know, this is still unfolding while you're wanting to do this.
27
00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:25.030
So w- tell me how that went. I mean, are you waiting to... Are you following the case and writing the book at the same time? Or tell me how you're doing this. Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. Tell me, tell me about that. Yes. Um,
28
00:05:26.400 --> 00:05:39.600
I, I e- even I went to the funeral service as well, um, and I, uh... It, it was open to general public. And I just wanted...
29
00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:53.120
It was a way to get close to her because the more I learned about her, the more I wanted to know her, and it was now impossible, but a funeral was a way to hear people talking about her, and so I did that.
30
00:05:53.240 --> 00:06:10.264
I didn't approach anybody at the funeral. I just quietly went in and quietly went out. And, um, Susan was, like, a very upbeat, positive person who if you had her for a friend- She would do anything for you.
31
00:06:10.464 --> 00:06:19.804
And if she was, um, someone you worked with, you could count on her help to help you figure out a solution to a problem.
32
00:06:20.264 --> 00:06:31.064
And she, she was a good, good person, and the fact that she died so young and so horribly just made my heart ache. You know what?
33
00:06:31.164 --> 00:06:43.354
You're actually the first author I've ever conducted an interview with that has written a book as the case was unfolding. Most of the time, the, the crime happened years before or something, you know- Mm-hmm...
34
00:06:43.384 --> 00:06:50.764
and then they write the book. So they're not able to actually get to kind of experience what's happening at the same time.
35
00:06:50.984 --> 00:07:06.464
Okay, so go ahead, and, and the book is called Gone Forever: A True Story of Marriage, Betrayal, and Murder. And so, uh, go ahead and start off by telling us about Susan. Susan, uh, worked for, uh, Southwestern Bell,
36
00:07:07.704 --> 00:07:21.064
and she was an accountant, and she was in charge of her division, and she was very good at what she did. Um, she was a counterpoint to all the stereotypes of,
37
00:07:22.144 --> 00:07:39.084
of accountants being introverted, nerdy people because she was very outgoing and loved to have fun in nor- any sort of way you can imagine it. She was a mother of three boys and she loved those boys dearly.
38
00:07:39.644 --> 00:07:51.204
When she married her husband, he was making a good living at a stock brokerage firm, but then he started to get very, uh, unemployable. He
39
00:07:52.164 --> 00:08:02.564
would lose a job and then he'd get one for six months and then he'd lose it and then he'd get another one for a year, then he'd lose it. And in between, of course he had all this spare time of unemployment.
40
00:08:03.704 --> 00:08:17.164
So eventually he just decided to stay home with his get rich quick schemes working at home and caring for the boys. So Susan was the breadwinner. She really, really, really wanted to have
41
00:08:18.164 --> 00:08:27.844
a happy, normal family more than anything. She didn't want the kids to have to, uh, go through a divorce or anything like that
42
00:08:28.784 --> 00:08:46.184
and she tried as hard as she could to make everything work, but her husband's problems were getting more and more obvious and more and more difficult. For example, she would, um... Her kids had some medications.
43
00:08:46.244 --> 00:08:52.744
One of 'em had, uh, had attention ef- deficit disorder and so he was on medication.
44
00:08:52.824 --> 00:09:03.324
So when, when her husband Richard went out of town to visit his parents in another state with the kids, he decided to put them on a medication vacation
45
00:09:04.224 --> 00:09:12.564
without talking to a doctor, without talking to Susan, anything like that. You mean just not give them medicine during that time? Exactly. Exactly.
46
00:09:13.444 --> 00:09:20.504
So they just took 'em off cold turkey and, um, she, they would, he would go out with them.
47
00:09:20.544 --> 00:09:34.644
If Susan had a business commitment in the evening or if she had to work late, uh, he would take them out a lot of times to go shopping and, um, and he would keep them out 'til 10:30, 11 o'clock at night.
48
00:09:35.484 --> 00:09:47.364
It was too late on a school night and she couldn't get him to stop doing that. Uh, and he also, while he had them with him, he was doing weird things.
49
00:09:47.444 --> 00:10:02.984
Like he went to Tallheimer's and bought some, uh, scooter bikes, little scooters, and he took the, uh, good handles and s- and accoutrements off of the new ones,
50
00:10:03.904 --> 00:10:13.874
put them on the boys' old ones and then put the old stuff on the new ones and then tried to return them. I mean, who does that? He's just an idiot. Yeah. Yeah. That is just crazy. Go ahead.
51
00:10:13.884 --> 00:10:27.504
Or he'll take and, and buy like, um, a Blackberry and he'll cut out the thing to send back in and get a rebate and then try to return it with that piece of stuff missing from it. I mean, it was
52
00:10:28.543 --> 00:10:36.764
just crazy and he'd buy more and more stuff that they didn't need and their house was just, closets were jam-packed with this junk he was buying.
53
00:10:37.324 --> 00:10:47.344
I mean, it didn't matter to him whether it was quality or not just so long as it was cheap and- Was, was he diagnosed with anything like mental disorder that you know of?
54
00:10:47.404 --> 00:10:59.424
I mean at this point, was there anything known like that- Uh, he-... with him? No. I mean, he went to see someone and was told that he really should stop taking his son's medication.
55
00:10:59.524 --> 00:11:13.884
Access this edition and many more by becoming a Mysterious Radio patron at Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/mysteriousradio to enjoy more and get rewarded with Mysterious Radio merchandise.
