The Murder of Olga Kupczyk (Part 1)

Hey, Weirdo's, I'm Ash, I'm Alena, and this is Morbid.

This is Morbid.

Guys, I love doing this podcast, but I am a little upset right now because

I was eating some dill pickle pretzels that were really good,

and I can't eat those on air, so I had to stop.

And it was upsetting for me.

And she said, that's your fault.

So I never said that.

I never said that, you guys.

This crazy bitch over here.

This crazy bitch.

This crazy bitch.

I'm post sedation.

Okay, post five hours sedation.

I had a lengthy dental procedure done.

Probably the last of them, which is fun.

That's exciting, but it was, it was wild.

And Ash was my picking up person because we had John stay with the ladies.

And she got to see me full, full post sedation.

I will never.

You're lucky that I'm a good, inherently good person, because I could have

used, I could have done you so nasty and just taken photos of the after.

I really wish I had, actually.

I do regret not taking at least one photo just for myself.

Damn, I walked in there, you know, just for me, for a lot.

Just for me, I had walked in there and she's got these big sunglasses on,

because you know, I think sunglasses, they give you a dentist and just like,

chipmunked out to the nines, because you were packed with gauze, blood over her teeth and her lips.

I was like, hey, like, how is she?

And they were like, oh, she's back there.

Like, you can, you can say hi to her.

I walk in and she just slowly rises and goes,

Hey,

I'm so cool.

What the fuck?

And I go, baby girl, are you okay?

Literally, you go, baby girl, you were so baby girl,

couldn't have in the moment.

I said, I have to care for her.

You did.

It was crazy.

But you know what?

I'm a fair, I'm not a combative sedative person, which is good.

No, you're hilarious.

I just go with it.

I got you a strawberry shake and you would have thought that I handed you a million dollars.

Like, we don't take it.

You were like, yeah, I got you in the card.

Do you remember this?

You go, oh my god, you're the best.

I think you said like, you're such a G or something like that.

I was like, okay.

I was really excited.

I do remember being very excited for the strawberry shake.

It was hilarious.

Oh, yeah, it was a whole thing.

But I think I'm feeling better today.

You look better.

I'm not as chip monkey.

I told John I was like, because I texted him to update him while you were down

and out and I was like, oh my god, she looks great.

She's coming out of sedation.

And it was scary.

That's why I thought today I saw him go, I lied to you.

He's like, oh, I know.

But yeah, sorry.

It's been a trip, but I'm here.

Yeah.

And everybody's been so helpful.

And I'm not listening.

So that's good.

I know.

You're not listening at all.

I was worried that it would be.

And your teeth look fucking awesome.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

So, you know, we're all fixed.

And I don't know why I said that.

That I was under, I was post sedation.

Oh, maybe because I was being a dick.

Maybe by saying that you said that it was everybody's fault.

Oh, yeah.

Maybe by just directing a quote that I never said.

Well, I just picked up a pretzel to eat it.

Like I could just eat it here.

I can't, I need to be stopped.

They're really good.

They are.

They're, I got them the big why.

And they're like, dill pickle flavored.

Oh, yeah.

Change your fucking line.

Dill pickle flavored anything.

Yeah.

Is really where it's at.

It is.

I love a dill pickle moment.

Yeah.

Like we had dill pickle pringles the other day.

Oh, fuck yeah.

Fuck it.

Life changing.

Wait, have you seen this whole thing?

It's like a whole like switch up.

So like, it's like ruffles, Doritos, and Cheetos.

They're doing like, let me pull it up so I can actually say exactly how it is.

I'm hoping you're going to tell me that like they're actually so healthy for you.

No, it's crazy.

Did you see this bombshell report?

Doritos are actually so healthy.

No, I was like,

what?

Cause it's a it's a flavor swap.

Okay, ready.

So this is going to be a lot.

So it's ruffles cheddar chips in Doritos form.

Oh, and then cool ranch Doritos in ruffle chip form.

Oh, and then finally the one that I really,

really want to try is lays barbecue chip in Cheeto form.

Oh, I want every one of these.

This is a dream.

This is a revelation.

We need to a revelation.

We need to order all of them and we need to do like a live tasting.

Yep.

I need that.

I'm going to figure it out.

We should probably order them soon because I think it's a big thing right now.

Probably going to like sell out.

What was the first one?

It's ruffles cheddar and sour cream, not flavor, but as a Dorito.

Oh, okay.

That's that one I'm really excited about.

Yeah, actually, it's hard to say what you're most excited about.

I'm really excited about the barbecue chip as a Cheeto,

but I also love ruffles.

I don't really like cool ranch that much, though.

Oh, I like cool ranch.

I like the cheese one better.

The nacho cheese.

Yeah, your kids have that at my house the other day.

And Doritos don't like cheesy chips.

So I just have a whole bag of Doritos for me.

Hell yeah, I feel rich.

Hell yeah, you are rich.

I am rich with cheese.

And that's important.

All right, you have a plug.

Oh, I have a little quick plug-y plug.

We're running low on the signed Barnes and Noble copies

of the butcher legacy.

So you better go get those.

So go get it.

Go pre-order it now before it's gone,

because we're like literally at the end of the stock.

And that's it for right now.

Yeah, and those are Barnes and Noble.

Pre-order my Barnes and Noble.

They've signed copies.

Go get them.

Go get them.

Go get them.

Go get them.

And if you just want some butcher legacy in your life,

which you should,

yeah, let's go, girls.

Hello.

But you're like a C.com.

You can get them anywhere.

You can get them.

You can get them.

You can get them anywhere.

Get them there.

Get the butcher legacy pre-order.

Anywhere you want to order it.

Yeah.

And yeah.

Go scoop up those signed copies of Barnes and Noble.

Hell yeah.

So I have a crazy case today.

It's somewhat old-timey, like in the 50s.

Oh, here we go.

This is the murder, unfortunately,

of Olga Koopchik.

While I was reading this,

have you ever seen the movie monster in law

with J-Lo and J-Lo?

Oh, yeah.

It was so reminiscent of that,

but like real,

that it was deeply upsetting.

I was like, that's scary.

This is if that movie played out in real life

and was even more awful somehow.

You wonder if they had any kind of inspiration.

I don't know if someone knew about the case

and kind of like to rule a little bit of it.

They may have, maybe.

I mean, unfortunately, mother and mother,

you just also get a bad rap.

They do that for rap.

My name is Rapp.

Rapp.

You have a bad rap.

Okay, my mother can be both, right?

Yeah, but you always hear like, oh, it has a bad rap.

Is it both?

We're discovering right now a lot about the air.

Well, I hope it's heating bad to my face.

The correct fiat, the heating bad on your face

is actually insane.

Can I take a photo?

Can I actually have this?

Yeah, you look cute over there.

You just look ridiculous.

Oh, you're so adorable.

Okay, the correct idiomatic phase is bad rap,

which means an undeserved negative reputation,

which is weird because it's reputation.

Yeah, I don't know.

But I would derive some of the 19th century sling

for a rap, a criminal charge.

That's why I like your rap sheet.

That makes sense.

All right, all right.

So we figured it out.

Yeah, mother and mother in law is in general.

Just get a bad rap, but we have good ones.

Like, we're not going to talk about a good one today.

No.

So, Olga Nettie Coupchick was born March 24th, 1928

in Manitoba, Canada to Elias and Justina Coupchick.

Olga was super pretty, super smart.

She was friendly.

She had a ton of friends, a great social group.

Everybody said from a very early age too,

that she was a caretaker.

And by all accounts, a good one.

Unfortunately, there's not that much known

about her early life in Canada.

So we're going to start when she met 30-year-old Frank Duncan

in the fall of 1957.

Let's go.

That fall, Olga had moved from Vancouver to Santa Barbara

to finish nursing school.

And when she finished nursing school,

she started a job at St. Francis Hospital.

It was there in November that Olga met Frank

who had come by one night to visit his mom,

who was in the hospital.

Earlier that month, the night before his 30th birthday,

Frank and his mother Elizabeth got into a

fucking explosive argument.

She used his money to buy a beauty parlor

without his permission.

That's a big thing to buy.

Yeah, buying a beauty parlor without

somebody's permission is quite tight with their money.

Yeah.

So in a fit of anger, Frank who had lived with his mom

his entire life up to that point,

announced his desire for some fucking space.

Yeah.

And asked if she would please find a new place to live.

And pretty heavily suggested that she do that.

Later, he told a detective,

my mother's terrified of being alone

and she's afraid of losing me.

Oh, that's sad.

Yeah.

Devastated by her son's decision,

Elizabeth Duncan retaliated,

and this is trigger warning.

By taking an overdose of the sleeping pill secondals.

Oh.

Yeah.

By the time Frank had discovered what she had done,

Elizabeth had lost consciousness.

And so she was rushed to St. Francis hospital

where she stayed in a coma for nearly a week.

My God.

Yeah, this was a big deal.

Oh, that's it.

So Frank obviously felt like this whole thing was his entire fall.

Like he was really upset.

Yeah, of course.

That his desire for independence had caused his mother's overdose.

So he stuck by his mom's side every single day

that she was in the hospital,

really trying to get back in her good graces.

He was like, you don't have to move, it's fine.

Yeah, that's awful.

But privately, at least some of his interest

in being by his mother's side

was also the daily opportunity

to chat with Elizabeth's nurse,

29-year-old Olga Kubczyk.

Oh.

By the time Elizabeth was discharged from the hospital,

roughly two weeks later,

Frank and Olga had started dating.

Damn.

Much to Elizabeth's disappointment.

Oh, Elizabeth, come on.

She did not like that.

So in the years that followed,

Frank's relationship with his mom

became the source of a lot of salacious rumors and speculation.

Frank said,

Mother has always been very proud of me.

And I suppose I was the apple of her eye.

It's the mother.

All I can think of,

if you guys are bravo heads

and you're not listening to Watch What Crappens

with Ronnie and Ben,

what are you doing?

There's this show called Southern Charm

if you're not a bravo head

and there's this guy Whitney on it.

And he like,

I don't know that he lives with his mother still,

but he did on the show.

He did for a while.

And Miss Patricia, forever.

But when they do their impression of Whitney

talking to his mother,

they always go mother.

And they always like mother.

It's just so you got to go find a Southern Charm recap.

That's all I can listen to it.

So that's why that's what I was channeling

when I did Frank's quote there.

That's the mother.

So he was like, you know,

she's the apple of my eye.

She's proud of me,

but there's all these rumors.

Now, when it came to the suggestion

that their relationship was anything

other than that of a normal mother and son,

Frank vehemently denied the insinuation.

But there were plenty of insinuations

that they had a weird fucking relationship.

Damn.

Still,

to even the most casual observer,

Frank's relationship with his mother

was far and beyond the normal mama's boy stereotype.

Which is scary.

It is.

It's really freaky.

Because the mama's boy thing

in and of itself is scary,

but then it's far beyond that.

That's scary.

Yeah, agreed.

So in a court deposition,

the following year,

which should tell you something,

Elizabeth's friend,

so Frank's mother's friend,

Emma Short,

she said Frank's relationship with his mother

was, quote,

very intimate,

such as a man and wife should be.

I'm sorry, what?

Yeah, that's what she said.

That is far beyond.

Yeah.

What a mother and son should be.

One hundo percent.

Holy shit.

So with the exception of a very small period

during law school,

when he lived in San Francisco,

Frank always lived with Elizabeth

and was always there to cater

to her every last need.

Even when he was in school

and living away from home,

he would go to her house

to have dinner every single night.

Wow.

Yeah, they were close.

Elizabeth and Frank had always had

a really codependent relationship,

but Elizabeth became significantly more

needy about seven years earlier

when Frank's stepfather walked out

because he could no longer tolerate

her demanding and abusive nature.

Oh, yeah.

From that point on,

Elizabeth seemed to rely on Frank

entirely for companionship,

emotional support,

financial support,

validation,

whatever it was.

All the things you need from a partner.

Yes, just absolutely every last thing.

Later, when Frank would come up in a conversation,

Olga's friends would refer to him as a big baby.

Oh, gross.

Yeah.

And the women who worked at the courthouse

where he occasionally practiced law,

privately,

referred to him.

This is mean.

This is bullying.

They called him a wicked,

wasco rabbit

because they were mocking the way

that his mother infantilized him,

but he also had a slight speech impediment.

So they were being really fucking good.

Yeah, that's mean.

Yeah, don't do that.

Ew.

He can't help that.

Ew.

Yeah.

I'm actually really mad at them for that.

Yeah, I really don't like that.

Actually pisses me off.

Olga's friends calling him a big baby,

fully supportive.

Probably a big baby,

but she's a big fan of his speech impediment.

Grow up.

That's not something he can control, you fuck.

To quote my papa,

grow up.

Grow up.

Get a wife.

There it is.

So regardless of how her friends felt about Frank,

Olga was very drawn to him.

He was quiet.

He was on assuming.

He was a lawyer.

Like, you know, there's a lot there.

By the time she was just discharged from the hospital,

Elizabeth Duncan could obviously see that Olga and Frank

were attracted to each other.

And the following week,

her suspicions were confirmed

when Frank invited Olga to the house,

which is very normal.

Yeah, at 30,

your old dude, he's going to be dating

and, you know, he wants you to meet this lovely young woman

who was also taking care of you, by the way.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, meet her in a little more, uh,

what's honestly like,

chill setting scenario.

Yeah.

Like, you already know she's a caretaker.

Also, bitch, you were in a coma.

No, you're not.

Thanks, Olga.

Thank you, Olga.

Hello.

So during that visit,

Elizabeth made an offhand comment

about Olga not being good enough for her son

and how she could easily get rid of her

by pushing her down some stairs.

I would have run.

This is my site.

This is hindsight.

I would have run for the fucking hills.

Yeah.

If a man's ever brought me home

and his mom was like,

you're not good enough

and I could push you down the stairs,

I would say I'm sorry,

but yeah, nothing is going to make up for that.

Yeah.

Something's going to make up for that.

Something's wrong here.

Yeah.

If that's the feeling from the mom,

something's wrong.

Ain't nothing good enough to keep me

in that relationship.

Don't care who you are.

No.

So Emma had heard this,

Emma, who is Elizabeth's friend.

She had heard this kind of talk

from Elizabeth before,

so she really didn't think anything of it at the time.

She's like, oh, it's just her.

She was like, she's just angry.

She's blowing off steam.

She's not actually going to push this lady down the stairs.

So whether she was serious

about pushing her son's girlfriend down the stairs or not,

Elizabeth had every intention

of making her objections to this relationship known.

Almost immediately after they started dating,

Olga started getting calls from Elizabeth,

not only at home, but at work too.

Huh.

At first, the calls were

chiller, not polite in any way,

but it was just Elizabeth explaining

how important Frank was to her

and pleading for Olga to, quote,

leave her son alone.

What?

We're just like, we think the other one is cool.

We want to, like, this should be a good thing, babe.

We want to spend time together.

We're getting to know each other.

You can't date your son.

You can't.

It's actually super against the law.

You can't be doing that.

But when her appeals to Olga's sympathy didn't work,

Elizabeth just took a new, decidedly, more nasty approach.

Former landlord, Olga's former landlord, Dorothy Barnett,

said she claimed that Olga was unfit,

said she was a foreigner.

Oh, Elizabeth, it's like.

It's like, you know, Elizabeth, what are you doing?

She's also like, I just cannot.

Eventually, the calls became vaguely threatening

with Elizabeth implying that she would end the relationship

one way or another.

What the fuck?

Which, like, how do you handle that?

That's a thing.

And how, like, also I'm like, Frank, hello?

Hello, Frank.

That's something here.

That's what I'm wondering here.

I'm like, where's Frank and all this?

Are you gonna do something, step in?

No.

No, no period.

Cool.

Yeah, this gets crazy.

Oh, by the way, I didn't even mention this.

It's gonna be two parts because it's not crazy.

Whoa.

So after about a month of daily phone calls,

so 30 to 31 days of daily phone calls,

unless it was February, Olga had her phone number changed,

hoping that it would put an end to Elizabeth's harassment.

But unfortunately, all it did was make Elizabeth

more determined to run Olga to Frank's life.

When she wasn't able to get Olga by phone,

she just started calling the hospital

while Olga was working.

What?

Olga's friend said that she was being threatened

and harassed by Elizabeth on a daily basis at that point.

Yeah, and I'm sorry, I don't, this is not worth.

No.

I don't, I mean.

He had to have been a fine lover.

I was gonna say, is he just stellar in every way?

He had to have been-

Cause I can't imagine this being worth it.

He had to have been topped out.

Yeah.

So in like every way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now during the early months of their relationship,

you were just like, hey, where's Frank?

Yeah, Frank and Olga just tried their best to ignore his mom,

her constant interference and harassment,

which would be kind of impossible.

I was gonna say.

But in May of 1958,

Olga discovered that she was pregnant

and that changed everything.

Yeah, sure does.

Olga's pregnancy, Frank found,

put himself in a difficult position.

He was excited about the baby

and he wanted to start a family with Olga,

but he thought back on the previous year

when he asked his mother to move out

and he knew that breaking the news to her

was gonna be pretty fucking tough.

This is insane.

It's wild.

Like this is all I'm like, what?

Never have I ever heard another case like this,

except when I watched Monster in law,

with Joe Fonda and JLo.

This is wild.

And this is worse.

So a few weeks later, they decided, you know,

it's probably time to inform Elizabeth

that she's gonna be a grandma,

which would probably be,

it should be the most exciting time for a lady.

Absolutely.

Like an older lady with an accomplished son.

Yeah.

So all they could do was really just mentally prepare themselves

for whatever fight she was gonna put up

because they knew that she wasn't gonna receive the news well,

but they were like, I mean, we have to tell her.

Yeah.

It turned out that they were right to expect the worst.

When she found out about the pregnancy,

she exploded and declared that she would never allow them

to live together.

I'm sorry.

He's the, the grown is your soul.

Asked man.

Yeah.

What is going on right now?

You, I don't know.

I don't know.

You can't conceive of it.

This is a lot.

So when Olga responded with uncharacteristic anger,

like Olga was usually very chill and was like, okay, Elizabeth,

like we're gonna be together.

So you just get this lucky, that Olga is that way.

But she got really upset.

She said, no, we plan to be married.

Like we are going to be together.

We're going to have this child like get over it.

Elizabeth responded by telling Olga,

you'll never marry my son.

I'll kill you first.

And is this just with Frank standing there being like,

oh, mother, I guess silly mother.

Yeah.

Like, what?

Law, mom.

Law.

Hello.

So what's?

Yeah.

Now a few weeks later on June 20th,

Elizabeth and Frank were alone, just having a little combo.

And Elizabeth made Frank promise her that he wouldn't marry Olga

and that he would never leave her.

What are you doing, Frank?

He's agreeing.

He said, I promise.

Frank, Franky.

Franky, this is not the life you want.

Life you want.

Frank.

My goodness.

Frank, you're meant to be a tank.

You're not meant to be living with your mom

and carrying on a strange relationship.

No.

So he says he promises.

But the next day, unbeknownst to Elizabeth,

Frank and Olga got married at the County Courthouse, damn.

According to journalist Joan Renner,

Elizabeth went apoplectic when she found out

that Frank had secretly married Olga.

Oh my goodness.

In fact, on the night of their wedding.

No, no.

The night of their wedding where they're supposed

to be having a good old time, honey.

Consumating.

Consumating.

Elizabeth tracked them down at a motel

in the middle of the night and banged on the door

until 1.30 in the morning.

When Poussois of the century, Frank agreed to go home

with his mommy.

Rather than let the scene go on any further.

Never touch that man again.

Never touch that man again.

Never touch that man again.

That is damaged goods right there.

If your mother-in-law shows up at your place of consummation

on the night of your marriage and starts banging on the door

and your husband is like, I have to go home with her.

I have to go home with my mother.

You would know the fuck out of that marriage.

Yeah, you get the fuck out of me.

In fact, you get in that you say, okay, I understand.

And then you drive to the Courthouse and you say,

don't fucking file that people that shit.

We were kidding.

Yeah, just kidding.

That was a big old joke.

You.

What the fuck?

Yeah.

So hoping to make the transition easier on mother.

You.

Frank continued living with her until the end of June.

Oh my God.

But starting on July 1st, he and Olga moved to a new apartment,

keeping the address a secret from Elizabeth

because she's so fucking diabolical.

They can't even know where she lives.

And also, she can't even know where they live.

Excuse me.

I'd become the police.

Absolutely.

Like the first time that this person said to me,

you're.

I'll kill you.

I'm gone.

I don't care who you are.

Yeah, we're straining more.

You're not saying it.

The thing that sucks though is especially back then.

Oh, no.

The police would have been like, well, the fuck are we going to do?

Yeah, that's fine.

She was talking to you, especially.

Yeah.

So they kept the address a secret from her.

And it's unclear how she found out, but she did.

But she did.

And it didn't take her more than a few days

to figure out where Olga and Frank were living.

My God.

Olga's father, Elias, told a reporter.

She wrote to us, meaning Olga, that immediately

after they were married, her husband's mother

would come to their apartment and revile her every time

her husband was at work.

What the fuck?

And Elizabeth wasn't just abusive to Olga

in the privacy of the apartment.

She also had gone out of her way to spread

slanderous lies and rumors about Olga all around town.

Just days after Frank and Olga moved in together,

Elizabeth told Barbara Reed and acquaintance of Franks

that Olga had become pregnant by another man

and that she was trying to frame Frank

to extort money from him.

Wow.

She's disgusting.

She's a bitch.

She's like a monster.

She's a bitch.

Yeah.

Literally monster in law.

That's what that movie is called.

Yeah.

So according to Olga's family, and I have

no problem calling her a bitch.

So don't get mad at me anybody.

No.

According to Olga's family, the escalation

of Elizabeth's possessive and abusive behavior

just continued to worsen.

They said Olga told us she was afraid of her mother

in law and complained of, quote, violence

and threats she underwent at the hands of her mother in law.

That's wild.

Yeah.

So while most of the people around Olga

seemed to see Elizabeth as an obnoxiously overbearing,

incredibly possessive mother in law.

That's to put it lightly.

To put it lightly, exactly.

It turned out that Olga was right to actually

be afraid of her.

When her attempts to intimidate Olga

were unsuccessful at breaking up the marriage,

Elizabeth went to a friend Barbara Reed

and offered her $1,500 to quote,

throw acid in the face of a girl who was framing her son

and then toss her over a cliff.

Oh, she's off the deep end.

So in case that wasn't clear, she went to a woman in town

and said, hey, throw acid on my daughter-in-law's face

and then murder her.

My pregnant daughter-in-law.

Pregnant daughter-in-law.

And I'll give you $1,500.

Elizabeth is a bitch.

And that's to put it nicely.

Yeah, that's really being nice.

According to Reed, Elizabeth told her Olga had been threatening her,

and quote, chasing around her son

and she just didn't want anything to happen to Frank's career.

Oh my god, get over it.

So not wanting to irritate Elizabeth any further,

Barbara was like, I'll think about it.

I'll go back to you.

Barbara.

Barbara.

Barbara.

You call the authorities, Barbara.

Check out the company you keep.

Yeah, like Barbara, take it easy.

So here's the thing.

Barbara was like, I think I keep some rough company.

She was like, I'm not sure what to do about this,

but I think I should call Frank and let him know

that this is happening.

Probably.

Nine more mom would have been your best bet.

But you know, I don't even know if it exists.

I guess her husband should know as well.

Yeah.

So she said, I think your mother's gone crazy.

You would better get that girl out of town

before something serious happens to her.

And Frank was like, no.

Frank was like, oh, no, I'm not there.

I'm not going to do that.

So whether or not Frank took the story seriously is,

they say it's unknown, but I think it's pretty clear

that he didn't take it seriously.

But just two weeks after he moved into the apartment

with Olga, they separated.

And he was living back with his mom.

What?

Yeah.

So from that point forward, Frank would visit

his pregnant wife from time to time,

sometimes promising that they could work things out.

But around nine p.m., he would always go home to mommy.

Wow.

That's exactly what it is.

He would always go home to mommy.

Disgusting.

That truly is the thing.

If Nicholas would hear, Nicholas is chomping at the bet

right now to sell his piece.

Would have a fit over this.

He'd be like, I can't even say what Nicholas would say.

No, I can't either.

So at the time, it seemed like Elizabeth had gotten her way.

Frank's relationship with Olga was on the rocks.

Her son was back living under her roof,

but that wasn't good enough for her.

She didn't just want Frank back at home.

She wanted to be 100% sure that this marriage would end

and there would be no further threats

to her preferred living situation.

Elizabeth, gosh.

This next part will rock you.

This is top tier Kuku Nuts Bananas.

Oh, man.

So one day in early August,

Elizabeth called the local Salvation Army

and she asked if they could send somebody to her house

to help with work, which was like a thing that happened back then.

She would have gone there herself to choose somebody,

but she had actually been banned from the Salvation Army

for causing too many problems.

Wow.

So the phone had to suffice in this instance.

Wow.

A short time later, Ralph Wintersdine,

I'd down on his luck former convict,

arrived at Elizabeth's door, assuming he was there

to like wash windows or something.

Yeah.

But once he was inside, Elizabeth said,

hey, I will give you a hundred bucks

if you will just help me out with this simple scheme I've concocted.

You pose as my son, Frank.

I pose as my son, Frank's wife Olga.

Well, you're going to go to a judge,

explain that our recent marriage was a mistake

and that we want an annulment.

What do you think?

What the actual fuck?

She hired somebody from the Salvation Army to pose as her son.

She poses as her son's wife and goes to the courthouse

and asks for a fucking annulment.

This is like a Kuku Natal man.

I cannot, I have no words.

Also, it must be noted, like I just told you,

Elizabeth was so intense and violent and like just nuts

that she was banned from the Salvation Army.

Yeah.

So I just want you guys to think about like this poor man.

He basically was just like, yeah,

I don't want her to like throw acid on my face or kill me.

So I guess I'll do this for a hundred dollars.

What the fuck?

Yeah, so he agrees to the plan.

And on the morning of August 7th, Elizabeth and Ralph,

posing as Olga and Frank Duncan,

appeared in the office of attorney Hal Hammons

who had no other choice but to be an attorney.

Hal Hammons is such a good attorney.

Hal Hammons.

Yeah.

So they explained that they had impulsively married in June,

but within just a few weeks,

they realized their mistake

and they really, really wanted this all in all.

Wow.

In fact, quote unquote Frank, aka Ralph,

even told Hammons that they hadn't consummated

the relationship and they weren't even living together.

Oh my God, because you know she was like,

I need to believe that they have not fucked.

Meanwhile, Olga's literally pregnant with Frank's child.

But you know she's like, I need to believe that this is real.

100%.

Wow.

So since neither was contesting to the enolman

and the entire thing was mutual,

Hammons saw no reason to object

and he wrote up the petition.

Wow.

The next day, Elizabeth and Ralph,

as Olga and Frank appeared at the superior court

before Judge Perry Churchill,

who had no reason either to question their story

and he granted the enolman.

Because who would ever be like,

I wonder if these people are posing?

I wonder if that is his mother

and a random man that she hired.

Yeah, I wonder.

So unfortunately for Ralph,

Elizabeth actually didn't have the $100 to spare

right then and there, but she said that

she'd pay him in the coming days.

Oh, I'm sure.

Despite those assurances,

Ralph was never compensated.

Wow.

So she just got him to do this for her.

Damn.

A few weeks later in early September,

Frank learned about the enolman

and it's unclear if he ever told Olga about it.

Again, for the people in the back,

Frank learned about the enolman.

He learned that his mother had hired somebody

to pretend that they were him

and she pretended to be his wife

and got a fucking enolman

and he didn't tell his wife, his pregnant wife.

I am just like Frank.

Frank, what the fuck?

Frank, he's the most curious specimen I've ever come across.

All we can think is that he was raised by Elizabeth.

So there's that.

But holy shit.

Yeah.

So instead, he just kept trying to assure Olga

that things would get better once the baby arrives.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that I don't think so.

There's a large evidence,

large amount of evidence to the contrary.

But Olga was holding out hope

because also she's pregnant.

She's in a really fucking vulnerable state.

Of course.

Olga's father said the letters came every week

and they gradually became more cheerful

although she was still fearful of her husband's mother.

So Olga's fear, it turned out, was very, very well placed.

Although she and Frank no longer lived together,

Elizabeth suspected, correctly, it turned out,

that they were continuing to carry on their relationship

in private and she was now determined to find proof.

One afternoon in late August while Olga was at work,

Elizabeth turned up at Olga's apartment building

and according to the land lady,

she, quote, kicked up a terrible fuss

about needing to check the apartment for Frank's clothes.

What the fuck?

Barnette, the landlord, said she tricked me

into letting her into the apartment.

The minute she was inside,

she ran to a closet, threw up in a door and looked inside.

She was almost screaming and said,

there, you see his clothes aren't there, they're not married.

I can't get over how much this lady wants to marry her son.

I can't get over this.

Crazy.

So as far as Barnette could tell,

Elizabeth was trying to convince her or maybe herself

that Olga was not the kind of person she should be renting to.

She said she wanted me to kick Olga out of the apartment,

said her son wasn't going to be responsible

for Olga's debts.

Okay.

She's like, what about his child's debts?

Yeah.

And also his child period.

You and all the marriage, man.

So exactly.

Don't worry about it.

Right.

So the land lady dismissed Elizabeth's comments.

She was just like, okay, clearly you're an overprotective human.

But she was caught off guard when just before leaving,

Elizabeth told her she's not going to have him.

I'll kill her if it's the last thing I do.

Does anyone want to go to the authorities?

This bitch is walking around, literally being like,

hi, my name's Elizabeth.

I'm literally going to murder my daughter-in-law.

She's basically walking around with a sign

that some of us watch.

And people are like, wow, that's crazy.

I'm sorry.

I hear someone say I'm going to kill this person.

Yeah.

I'm telling someone.

You got to tell someone.

Like see something, say something.

Here's something.

Yeah.

Tell someone.

When this lady is walking around freely saying to anybody,

don't worry about it, everyone.

I'm going to kill this bitch first.

Listen to her.

Yeah.

Do something.

And what is she talking with everyone?

She clearly has a reputation around town

as like a not well woman.

Yeah, she's not easy to get along with, clearly.

Going to random friends being like,

will you throw acid in her face and throw our off a cliff?

I'm banned from the Salvation Army, by the way.

Yeah.

Getting banned from the Salvation Army is crazy.

And it's like people aren't walking around.

Like mother and mother are not walking around saying

to people, I'm going to kill my daughter-in-law.

Hopefully not.

Like out loud sitting there being like, yeah,

just so you know, like, I'm going to get rid of her.

Yeah.

So it's not a big deal.

They're not just freely saying this shit.

I've never run into that in my life.

If someone's outwardly saying that,

they have lost a screw its loose.

Yeah.

And you should call someone.

100.

Like I'm shocked.

100 P.

So many people let this go.

It's crazy.

It's one of those cases where you have to scream about that

because it's just like mind-volving.

It really is.

So over the course of September and October,

Olga just continued to endure daily harassments

and threats from Elizabeth.

But in her letters home to her parents,

she did her best to hide her frustration and her fear.

No.

It was father later wondered if she was doing her best,

not to upset or worry her mother

because her mother had a bad heart.

Oh, that breaks my heart.

It really does.

In mid-November, though, the letters stopped altogether.

According to Olga's father,

her last letter was sent from Santa Barbara

and dated November 12, 1958.

A week later, on November 19,

Franklin to the police and reported his wife missing.

It was Frank who filed the report,

but it was actually two of Olga's co-workers

from the hospital who expressed concern in the first place

about Olga being missing.

So it's like, were you just going to wait around until...

Well, we're going to do here.

I think she was going to be missed.

So her friends and co-workers

had last seen her two days earlier,

around 11 p.m. when they left her apartment.

And she hadn't shown up for work the previous two days,

which was very unlike her.

At first, investigators thought it might be like a runaway

wife situation because Frank had mentioned to them

that there was a lot of tension in the marriage,

and that he actually wasn't living with her for a while.

So under the circumstances, it did seem plausible

that maybe she simply packed up and left

just to get away from everything,

but there was a lot more cause for concern

when they started following up on the report.

Patrol officer Peter O'Brien,

who took the Missing Persons report,

called Olga's family in Canada

to find out whether they had heard from her.

And he was informed that they hadn't received word

from her in about a week,

which was very unusual.

And she had no plans to visit them.

In fact, they actually had plans

to come visit her soon.

In the last letter that they received from Olga,

she was super excited about her mom's plans

to come visit when the baby was born in early January.

Given that, it didn't really make sense

that at nearly eight months pregnant,

she would just take off unexpectedly to Canada.

Yeah.

So according to the report,

Frank told the officer that Olga,

quote, probably took off to teach him a lesson.

I'm like, maybe you should mention the fact

that you have a homicidal mother.

Yeah, perhaps that should be mentioned.

Like if I have a homicidal mother,

I'm definitely gonna mention mom.

They'd been arguing a lot over the recent weeks,

he said mostly about his not living at the apartment

and the abuse from his mother.

But when O'Brien followed up with Olga's co-workers

and her land lady,

everybody appeared to agree

that Olga just wasn't the kind of lady

who was just gonna run away without telling anybody.

Yeah.

So after looking over the report,

detectives paid a visit to the land lady,

Dorothy Barnett.

And she was more than eager to help find Olga.

She really liked her.

Dorothy had last seen Olga the day she went missing

just after Olga had returned home from work.

They exchanged in pleasantries

and Olga complimented Dorothy's garden

before she went upstairs to her apartment.

She said the last she heard of Olga

was when her two co-workers

who were hanging out with her that night

left around 11 p.m.

Now, things seemed to be pointing in a different direction,

but investigators floated the idea

that she possibly could have harmed herself

or maybe ran off.

And Dorothy was like, no, absolutely not.

She said Olga might have been unhappy about some things

but she would never do anything to hurt her baby.

Yeah.

Besides, she also insisted Olga simply

wasn't the kind of person who would deliberately hurt herself

or somebody else.

She said, she's way too reasonable.

And that's what it sounds like to do that.

I mean, look what she endured.

Yeah, exactly.

She clearly can keep a level head.

Yeah.

So even tempered or not,

the evidence still didn't exactly support

the increasingly unlikely theory

that Olga had run off.

It was Dorothy Barnett who discovered the first sign

that something was amiss actually.

The morning after Olga's visit with her friends,

Dorothy said she heard what sounded like

a strange thumping sound coming from Olga's apartment.

And when she went upstairs to investigate,

she found that Olga's sliding glass door was wide open

and the heavy droops were blowing in the breeze.

So that was really weird.

At first, she was like,

maybe she just left the door open when she went to work.

But while she was there,

the two nurses who had been over the night before

showed up at the apartment looking for Olga.

Oh.

They explained she hadn't shown up for work that morning

and they were worried something happened to her.

So now also worried that something could be wrong

with the baby or that Olga might be having

some sort of other emergency,

all three of them,

but like went into the apartment together to look for Olga,

but there was nobody there.

Inside, things were still concerning.

There were several lights on.

There was dirty dishes from the night before in the sink.

There were baby clothes folded and placed

in little piles on the couch.

Like it didn't look like somebody intended to leave.

When they looked in the bedroom too,

one of the ladies noticed that the pink robe

Olga had been wearing the night before

was nowhere to be found.

Oh, is there like is she still wearing it?

And most concerning was her purse

still sitting on the dresser

with its contents undisturbed.

Yeah.

So it appeared to all of them

that Olga had said goodnight to her friends

the previous evening,

started folding some baby clothes in the room

and then disappeared without a trace.

Oh, no.

When pressed by detectives,

Dorothy couldn't think of anything

that she had seen or heard the previous evening

that seemed super out of the ordinary.

But there was the matter of the mother-in-law.

Frank alluded to problems in their marriage

to the authorities,

but Dorothy was far more willing to elaborate.

Yeah, I bet.

She explained that ever since she met Frank,

Olga had been locked

in an aggressively adversarial relationship

with Frank's mother

and it was all one-sided.

She said, I don't know all the specifics,

but this woman has been harassing Olga

on a regular basis.

And she relayed the story

about how Elizabeth had shown up

at the apartment recently

and kind of tricked her to get in there looking

for Frank's clothing.

She was like, this lady's,

she's cuckoo.

Yeah, she's tapped.

So the detectives thanked Dorothy

for the information

and they headed out the door.

But before they made it out,

she remembered one other thing

from the night that Olga went missing.

She said it wasn't long after her friends had left.

She was trying to get some sleep

and she heard the sounds of heavy footsteps

on the stairs leading up to Olga's apartment.

At the time, she thought

that it was the couple who lived across from Olga,

the Williamson's,

because they went out to late movies all the time,

which, like, side note,

that's just really cute.

But the next morning,

when she ran into Mrs. Williamson,

she was like, oh, like,

did you come home late last night?

I thought I heard you.

And Mrs. Williamson said

that she and her husband

had been home all night.

Oh.

So the next day,

detectives paid a visit to Frank

to inquire about his relationship

with his wife a little more in detail.

Mm-hmm.

He was kind of,

he was pretty much up front with the investigators.

He gave all the details.

He explained to that on the night

she went missing.

He was at home watching television with mother,

with mother.

And then they went to bed around 11 p.m.

He said that he had no idea where Olga could be.

But he did say a few weeks ago,

she threatened to make trouble for me

if I didn't move back in with her.

Guys, why are we letting this lady just run shit?

Like that?

Like, why are we letting this happen?

Well, and it's like,

you're safe.

He's making it seem like Olga's

gonna cause trouble.

I'm like,

she just wants to live with her husband

and the father of her child.

She's gonna make trouble for me if I don't move.

What?

Oh my God, I think she was threatening you.

Literally married.

She probably was just like,

hey, we're gonna get divorced

if it continues like this.

Even though neither,

I don't know that our fucking marriage has been an old.

Hey, can you break up with your mom?

Yeah.

That's literally what she was asking.

Can you please break things off with your mother?

I hope none of you have a relationship

like this with your mother-in-laws.

Do you ever get those TikTok videos

where people, like, detail how awful

their relationships are with their mother-in-laws?

I can't imagine.

If this is something,

if this is even remotely similar

to a situation you're going through,

our heart goes out to you.

Like, I can't imagine.

I literally, I cannot fathom

this kind of shenanigans level.

Like I can't imagine a mother-in-law

who thinks that they somehow

have like authority over who

their grown-ass son dates.

It literally turns my stomach.

Because why?

Why do you feel that way?

That's the thing, why?

If I'm a mother-in-law someday,

I'm going to be the coolest mother-in-law.

Like, damn.

Seriously.

Damn.

But yeah, so Frank had probably

been hoping to avoid the subject of his mother.

That's about his monster mama.

But his statement about Olga's threat to make trouble

for him inevitably led to more questions about

why he didn't live with his wife.

Yeah, they're like, wait a minute.

They were like, hey, that's kind of weird.

Yeah.

So he explained to that his mother

had a profound fear of losing him and of being alone

and that he'd been giving her time

to adjust to him moving out of the house.

My God.

But just like, you're not giving her time

to adjust to being out of the house

while still living up the house.

No.

His main concern, he said though,

was that his mother might try to hurt herself again,

like she had the previous year

if he abruptly left.

He said his wife on the other hand was a strong woman

and he knew that he loved her

so he wasn't worried

that she would do anything irrational.

Interesting.

So when it came to the matter of Elizabeth's relationship

with Olga,

Frank quickly rejected the stories

that investigators had heard.

He said, that's just gossip.

Mother is mad at me

and anything you heard from Olga's friends

or from her land lady is an exaggeration.

He actually assured him that his mother

had only met Olga one time.

So it would have been almost impossible

for her to have developed any negative feelings

based on that one occasion.

What?

Please remember

that the entire reason

Frank and Olga even know each other

is because Olga was taking care of Elizabeth

while she was in a coma.

Yeah, like what the fuck are you talking about?

So they definitely met on more than one occasion.

What?

Yeah, this is very fucking strange.

That's wild.

Yeah.

So Frank's narrative obviously

didn't seem to match what detectives had already learned

about their rift between Elizabeth and Olga.

So it was inevitable

that they were ready to speak to Elizabeth herself.

The next day, Frank arrived at the station

with his monster mama

who refused to go inside

unless she was allowed to speak with Sergeant Myers

who was one of the officers

that Frank knew from his work in criminal court.

The lead detective on the case,

Clarence Henderson explained

that that's actually not how criminal investigations work

but Frank cut him off and was like,

listen,

we actually came here to talk about

something completely unrelated.

We're not even here to talk about Olga.

Okay.

Clarence was like, what?

He's like, hmm.

So you don't say,

this is where things get racist as fuck.

Oh, just so you know.

Oh, cause not only is Elizabeth

a homicidal maniac.

She's also racist in nature.

Oh, she's a literal monster.

She's horrible.

Yeah.

According to Frank,

the week before Olga went missing,

she received a threat from Esperanza Eskival,

the manager of the tropical cafe,

which was a restaurant that Elizabeth

and her friend Emma visited regularly.

Okay.

Fraud and extortion were in his regular beat.

But Henderson figured there might be some overlap

between Frank's missing wife.

So he was like, okay, I'll sit down with you guys

and listen to this story.

Elizabeth claimed that

after Frank had defended Eskival's husband

in a recent case,

the woman demanded that Elizabeth

help return the $500 she paid in legal fees.

Elizabeth told the detective

she's got two Mexicans going to kill me

and Frankie if I don't give back the $500

that she paid Frankie to defend her husband.

So much about that.

One of the things being Frankie is so upsetting.

Yeah, it's turned to my stomach.

So upsetting.

And also,

why would she want the money back

if he won the case for her son?

Like I think that would be payment enough.

But yeah, that doesn't really make sense.

Yeah.

And also just saying like two Mexicans

some like the way you say that is like very real.

Oh yeah, you know.

So at that time,

the Eskival's were known to the police as petty criminals

and their restaurant,

the tropical cafe was known

as a hangout for other petty criminals.

It wasn't the best place.

So Elizabeth's claims of a extortion

didn't seem that far fetched.

And she also claimed she had a witness

to at least one of the attempted extortions.

She said her friend Emma had been with her

when Esperanza accosted her on the sidewalk

in front of the tropical cafe.

According to Elizabeth,

Esperanza and another man grabbed her

and threatened to kill her

if she didn't get the money for them.

So she said that she pawned some jewelry

to give them at least some of the money.

She's in a lot of shit.

She's in a lot of shit.

She's at your ears and shit.

Yeah.

So given what he knew about the Eskival's

Elizabeth story sounded somewhat plausible to Henderson.

But something about the entire thing

just felt disingenuous at the same time.

She was very performative.

She was basically hysterical

which was usually a pretty good indication

that somebody was lying.

But Frank had already explained

that his mother was high strong

and she kind of tended toward the dramatics.

So it also seemed on brand for her at the same time.

But his hesitancy, the detectives hesitancy

had more to do with the facts and the timeline

more than anything else.

According to Elizabeth,

this all happened on November 13th

which was a week before Olga went missing.

But she only told her son about it the previous day

after detectives interviewed Frank

about his missing wife.

Interesting.

And on top of that, like I said,

Marciano Eskival could have gone to jail

for multiple years.

But thanks to Frank,

his sentence was cut in half.

Yeah.

Like, so he didn't necessarily win the case

but he got him much less time

in prison.

And under normal circumstances,

a legal defense on par with Frank

actually would have cost three times

what Frank charged the couple.

Who's doing them a solid?

Yeah.

So all things considered, like I said,

Asperger and her husband

would have been grateful.

Yeah.

It should have been

not only for the strong defense

but also for the reduced rate.

But here was Elizabeth saying

that not only were they ungrateful,

they were actually demanding a refund.

Down it.

And Henderson wondered,

why would they approach Elizabeth

about the money instead of her son

who presumably actually had the resources to pay?

Yeah.

Like, that doesn't make any sense.

No.

Now, according to Elizabeth,

the criminals had warned her not to tell anybody

about the extortion,

especially not Frank.

So she kept it to herself

and she scraped together some money.

Like she said,

she pawned some jewelry.

And then she asked Frank

for a check to buy a typewriter

which she actually used

to pay the rest of the money to Asperger

except for $50,

which she said she kept for herself.

Little tip.

Little tip.

When Frank asked where the typewriter was,

she broke down and she told him about the extortion,

adding that she believed they might come back

and actually ask for more money,

maybe as much as $6,000.

Whoa.

So a few days later,

the missing person's case

and the extortion case were actually combined

based on the belief that they were connected

and whoever was behind the extortion

was also responsible for Olga going missing.

But the deeper they dug into the case,

the more they found themselves being led back

to Elizabeth Duncan,

monster in love of the century.

Or everybody that they spoke to about Olga

told them about the harassment,

how afraid Olga was of her mother in law.

And every lead on the extortion case

turned out to be a dead end

despite Elizabeth insisting

that she was the one being targeted.

All roads are leaving one way.

Yes.

So finally about a week later,

Frank returns some mug shots to the police

that they had left at the apartment

for Elizabeth to look over.

Among the group in the photo array,

she identified two young men,

Louis Moya and Gus Baldenado,

both petty criminals,

as the men who had been threatening her.

The next day,

Henderson and his partner picked up Louis Moya

at the Blue Onion,

which was a restaurant where he was working at the time

and they brought him into the station.

He admitted, yes,

he knew Esperanza Eskivel

and occasionally he helped down

around the tropical cafe,

but he said he wasn't blackmailing anything

or he wasn't blackmailing anybody

and he didn't know anything about Elizabeth Duncan.

But when the subject turned to Olga,

Louis became even more insistent

that he had nothing to do with her disappearance

and he said,

I'll even stand up in a line.

Like I have nothing to do with this.

Elizabeth, like I just said,

had already identified him from his mug shot

a few days earlier

and she swore up and down

that she would recognize the men

who attacked her anywhere.

But when she was standing on the other side

of the two-way glass,

she claimed she didn't recognize anybody in the lineup.

Interesting.

Even though he was literally right there

and she had already taken him out.

Frank, on the other hand,

who he didn't even have the experience

that Elizabeth did,

but he saw the mug shot.

He said he immediately recognized Boya

from the photograph

and he was like,

mother, why don't you recognize this woman?

Mother.

It was only when he threatened to move out

that she agreed to take another look at Boya.

Wow.

And she begrudgingly told the detectives,

yeah, he was the one who's blackmailing.

This relationship is so gross.

It's wild.

It really is.

It's wild.

So to everybody's surprise,

even after she identified Louis Boya

as one of the men extorting her,

she refused to sign a formal complaint.

In fact, it actually occurred to the detectives

that throughout the entire investigation,

during which Elizabeth had repeatedly expressed fear

for her and her son's life, the lives,

she seemed to go out of her way

to not cooperate with them.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Now, with the suspect literally standing in front of her,

she did not seem even remotely interested

in getting justice.

And if she was unwilling to sign a complaint against him,

there was nothing detectives could do.

So they set the case aside for that moment

and continued working on Olga's disappearance.

And pretty soon,

they were going to make a crack in this case.

I have a feeling I know where this is going, potentially.

You might not, but maybe you do.

I don't know.

I believe in you.

This is terrifying.

Yeah.

Elizabeth is a terrifying woman.

She's horrible.

And Frank is a Poussois.

Frank is the Poussois of the century.

Of the century.

Yeah, truly.

Hello of the universe.

Actually, when it comes to Frank,

like goodbye.

Yeah.

To the Lou.

That was weird.

Did you guys just hear that?

That was crazy.

Jinks, you want me to cook?

Okay.

Do you have a fun fact?

Oh, I do have a fun fact.

Tell me your fun fact.

And we'll be back for part two,

right after this.

Let me see.

Where's my fun fact?

Your taller in the morning

than you are at night.

What?

You're about one centimeter taller

because at night when you're laying down

your spine stretches and decompresses.

But throughout the day,

the soft cartilage between the bones gets squashed.

That's actually a little.

Really cool.

Yeah.

So you are taller in the morning than you are at night.

Fuck.

Yeah.

Why do you shrink when you get old?

I think.

Hunching over, right?

Yeah.

Is that it?

Just let your hunched over.

Yeah.

Interesting.

You just crunching and hunching.

As you get older, crunching and hunching.

I'm crunching and hunching right now.

Yeah.

I know.

I need to get that form bra,

that Taylor Swift wears for posture.

Oh, yeah.

I always get that out on TikTok.

I know.

I need to.

Right now.

I'll do that for sure.

But right now, I'm just going to eat more pickle pretzels.

I think that'll help.

We hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

But not so weird that you are this kind of mother in law.

No.

Because that is crazy on top of your head.

That is crazy on top of your head.

That is crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.