Transcript of The Murder of Olga Kupczyk

Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

I'm Elaina.

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 pick me up person because we had John stay the ladies. And she got to see me 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 in photos of her after. I really wish I had, actually. I do regret not taking at least one photo just for myself. Damn. I walked in there. No, just for me, for a lull. Just for me. I walked in there and she's got these big sunglasses on because you know like these sunglasses they give you at the dentist and just chip-bunked out to the nines because you were packed with gauze, blood all over her teeth and her lips. I was like, Hey, how is she? And they were like, Oh, she's back there. You can say hi to her. I walk in and she just slowly rises and goes, Hey. I was like, What the fuck? And I go, Baby girl, are you okay? I literally did. You go, Baby girl. You were so baby girl-coated in that moment. I said, I have I have to care for her. You did. It was crazy.

But you know what? 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 dollar locker ticket. Oh, like a liquid gold chicken. You were like, I got you in the car. Do you remember this? You go, Oh my God, you're the best. I think you said, You're such a G or something like that. I was like, okay.

I was really excited. I do I 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. I didn't want to scare him. Today, I saw him, I go, I lied to you.

He's like, oh, I know. It's been a trip, but I'm here. Yeah. And everybody's been so helpful. And I'm not lisping, so that's good.

I know. You're not lisping at all.

I was worried that it would be.

And your teeth look fucking awesome. Thank you.

You're welcome. So 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. Why did I do this? Wait, I just picked up a pretzel to eat it. I could just eat it here. I need to be stopped. They're really good. They are. I I got them at the Big Y, and they're dill pickle-flaved. Oh, yeah. Change your fucking life.

Dill pickle-flaved anything is really where it's at.

It is. I love a dill pickle moment.

We had dill pickle Pringles the other day.

Oh, fuck, Yeah.

Fucking life-changing.

Wait, have you seen this whole thing? It's a whole switch up. So it's like Ruffles, Doritos, and Cheetos. They're doing like... Let me pull it up so I can actually say it exactly how it is.

I was hoping you were going to tell me that they're actually so healthy for you. No. It's crazy. Did you see this bombshell report? That Cheetos are actually so healthy. No. I was like, What?

Give me some. It's a flavor swap. Okay, ready? So this is going to be a lot. So it's Ruffles Chetter 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 Lay's 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. We need to do like a live tasting. 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. So they're probably going to sell out. What was the first one? It's Ruffles Chetter and Sour Cream, that flavor, but as a Dorito.

Oh, okay. That one I'm really excited about.

Yeah, actually, it's hard to say which I'm 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. Drew doesn't like cheesy chips, so I just have a whole bag of Doritos for me. Oh, hell, yeah. I feel rich.

Hell, yeah. You are rich.

You're rich with cheese.

I am rich in Doritos. You're rich in Doritos. And that's important. All right.

You have a plug.

Oh, I have a little quick pluggy plug. We're running low on the signed Barnes & 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 literally at the end of the stock. And that's it for right now. Yeah.

And those are at Barnes & Noble.

Pre-order at Barnes & Noble. They would sign copies.

Go get them. Go get them. Go get them. Scoupe up the list of them.

And if you just want some Butcher Legacy in your life, which you should. Yeah, why wouldn't you? Let's go, girls. Hello. Butcherlegacy. Com. You can get them. You can get them anywhere. You can get them there.

You can get them anywhere.

Get the Butcher Legacy on pre-order anywhere you want to order it. Yeah. And yeah, go scoop up those signed copies of Barnes & 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 Kupchick. While I was reading this, have Have you ever seen the movie Monster-in-law with JLo and Jane Fonda? Oh, yeah. It was so reminiscent of that, but 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 inspiration. I don't know. Or if someone knew about the case and drew a little bit of it. They may have. Maybe.

I mean, unfortunately, mother-in-law's, do you just also get a bad rep? They do. That's true. Rep, rep. Is that rap or rep?

Rap.

You have a bad Okay.

My mother- It could be both, right? Because it's reputation. Yeah. But you always hear like, Oh, it has a bad rap. Is it both? We're discovering right now lives on the air while I hold a heating pad to my face.

The correct, yeah. The heating pad 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. Reputation. Yeah. I don't know. But, oh, it derives from the 19th century slang for a rap, a criminal charge. That's why. Like your rap sheet. That makes sense. All right, all right. We figured it out. Yeah, mother-in-law in general just get a bad rap. They do. But we have good ones.

Mine's awesome.

We're not going to talk about a good one today. No. So Olga Nettie Kupchick was born March 24th, 1928 in Manitoba, Canada, to Elias and Justina Kupchick. 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 It's 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 crazy with their money.

That's diabolical. 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'd 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. For right now.

It is for right now.

Yeah.

Devastated by her son's decision, Elizabeth Duncan retaliated, and this is a trigger warning, by taking an overdose of the sleeping pill Secondal. 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. Oh my God. Yeah, this was a big deal. Holy shit. So Frank obviously felt like this whole thing was his entire fault. 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 Kupchick. 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.

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 Happens with Roni 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. I don't know that he lives with his mother still.

He might- 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 think of.

That's all I can listen to it. So that's what I was channeling when I did Frank's quote there. That's mother. So he was like, She's the apple of my eyes. 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?

That's what she said.

That is far beyond Yeah. What a mother and son should be.

100 %.

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 stepfather walked out because he could no longer tolerate her demanding an abuse of 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. The women who worked at the courthouse where he occasionally practiced law not privately referred to him. This is mean. This is bullying. They called him a wicked wascle 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 mean. Oh, that's fucked up. Yeah, that's mean. Yeah, don't do that. Eew. He can't help that.

Eew. Yeah. I'm actually really mad at them for that.

Yeah, I really don't like that.

That actually pisses me off.

Olga's friend's calling him a big baby. Fully supported. I'm a big baby. Making fun of a speech impediment, grow up.

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

To quote My Papa, grow up.

Grow up. Get a life. There it is.

So regardless of how her friends felt about Frank, Olga was very drawn to him. He was quiet, he was unassuming, he was a lawyer. 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, that's what you do. He's a 30-year-old dude. He's going to be dating, and he wants you to meet this lovely young woman who was also taking care of you, by the way. Yeah, exactly. Meet her in a little more chill setting.

That's honestly the best case scenario. Yeah. You already know she's a caretaker.

Also, bitch, you were in a coma, and now you're not. Thanks, Olga. Thank you, Olga. Hello. 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 hindsight. This is Insight, I would have run for the fucking hills. 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 nothing is going to make up for that. Nothing's going to make up for that.

Something's wrong. Here. If that's the feeling from the mom, something's wrong.

Ain't nothing good enough to keep me in that relationship. No. Don't care who you are. No. So Emma had heard this. Emma, who is Elizabeth's friend, she had heard this talk from Elizabeth before, so she really didn't think anything of it at the time.

She's like, That's just her.

She was like, She's just angry. She's blown 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. 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... 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 Barnet, said, She claimed that Olga was unfit, said she was a foreigner.

Elizabeth, get the fuck out of here.

Eew, Elizabeth. What are you doing? She's also like, I just cannot. Eventually, the calls became vaguely threatening with Elizabeth implying that she And then we're going to end the relationship one way or another. What the fuck? Which, how do you handle that? That's the thing. And how, also I'm like, Frank, hello?

Hello, Frank. Can you do something here? That's what I'm wondering here. I'm like, Where's Frank in all this? Are you going to do something? Step in?

No. No? No, period. Cool. Yeah. This gets crazy. Oh, by the way, I didn't even mention this is going to be two parts because it's that crazy. So after about a month of daily phone calls, so 30 to 31 days of daily phone calls unless it was February. Sorry. 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 out of 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, 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 going to say, is he just stellar in every way? He had to have been. Because I can't imagine this being worth it.

He had to have been top-notch. Yeah. So in like every way. Yeah. Now, during the early months of their relationship, you were just like, Hey, where's Frank? Frank and Olga just tried their best to ignore his mom, her constant interference and harassment, which would be impossible.

I was going to say.

But in May of 1958, Olga discovered that she was pregnant, and that changed everything.

Yeah, it 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 going to be pretty fucking tough.

This is insane.

It's wild.

Like, What?

What do you mean? Never have I ever heard another case like this, except when I watched Monster In-law with Jane Fonda and JLo. This is wild. And this is worse. So a few weeks later, they decided, it's probably time to inform Elizabeth that she's going to be a grandma, which would probably and should be the most exciting time for a lady. Absolutely. As like an older lady with an accomplished son. Yeah. So all they could do is really just mentally prepare themselves for whatever fight she was going to put up because they knew that she wasn't going to 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 grownest. Thirty years old. Ass, man. Yeah. What is What is going on right now?

I don't know. I don't know.

You can't conceive of it. What is going... This is a lot.

So when Olga responded with uncharacteristic anger, Olga was usually very chill. I was like, okay, Elizabeth, we're going to be together. So you just get used to it.

Man, I was lucky that Olga That's how it works. It works that way.

But she got really upset. She said, no, we plan to be married. We are going to be together. We're going to have this child. 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, mother?

I guess.

Silly mother. Like, what?

Lol, Mom. Lol.

Hello. Ha ha. What?

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 Frank. Franky.

Frank. Franky, this is not the 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. Oh, 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 damn Imaged 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 daughter. You annul the fuck out of that marriage.

Yeah, you get the fuck out of there.

In fact, you get in that, you say, Okay, I understand. Then you drive to the courthouse and you say, Don't fucking file that.

Don't file that shit.

We were kidding.

Yeah, just kidding. That was a big old joke. What the fuck?

Yeah. So hoping to make the It's a shit easier on mother. Frank continued living with her until the end of June.

Oh my God.

But starting on July first, 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, I'm sorry.

She can't even know where they live.

Excuse me. I'd be calling the police.

Absolutely.

The first time that this person said to me, I'll kill you first. I'll kill you. Gone. I don't care who you are.

Yeah, restraining order.

You're not saying it.

The thing that sucks, though, is especially back then. The police would have been like, what the fuck are we going to do? She's just talking shit.

Yeah, the time period. She's just talking shit.

So they kept the address a secret from her, and it's unclear how she found out, 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 Reid, an acquaintance of Frank's, 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. She truly is. 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, quote, 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 seem 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 Reid, 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 Reid, Elizabeth told her Olga had been threatening her and, 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. 911 would have been your best bet, but I don't even know if it existed.

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. Not mother.

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. From that point forward, Frank would visit his pregnant wife from time to time, sometimes promising that they could work things out. But around 9: 00 PM, he would always go home to mommy.

Wow. That's exactly what it is. He would always go home to mommy. Disgusting. That truly If Nicholas would hear. Nicholas is chomping at the bit right now to say his piece.

Nicholas would have a fit over this. He would be like... He would. 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 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 this is top tier cuckoo 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 Winterstein, down on his luck, former convict, arrived at Elizabeth's door, assuming he was there to 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. We're going to go to a judge, explain that our recent marriage was a mistake and that we wanted 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 cuckoo net, man. I cannot. I have no words.

Also, it must be noted, I just told you Elizabeth was so intense and violent and just nuts that she was banned from the Salvation Army. Yeah. So I just want you guys to think about this poor man. He basically was just like, yeah, I don't want her to throw acid on my face or kill me. So I guess I'll do this for $100.

What the fuck?

Yeah. So he agrees to the plan. And on the morning of August seventh, Elizabeth and Ralph, posing as Olga and Frank Duncan, appeared in the office of attorney Hal Hammonds, who had no other choice but to be an attorney. Hal Hammond is such a good attorney.

Hal Hammond. Yeah.

So they explained that they impulsively married in June, but within just a few weeks, they realized their mistake and they really, really wanted this all in old. In fact, Frank, a. K. A. Ralph, even told Hammonds 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 is 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 annulment and the entire thing was mutual, Hammond 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 annulment.

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. She just got him to do this for her.

Damn.

A few weeks later, in early September, Frank learned about the annulment, and it's unclear if he ever told Olga about it. Again, for the people in the back, Frank learned about the annulment. 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 annulment, and he didn't tell his wife, his pregnant wife. I'm 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.

So there's that.

There's that. But holy shit. Yeah. So instead, he just kept trying to assure Olga that things would get better once the baby arrived.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that'll be good.

I'd be like, I don't think so. There's a large evidence, a 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 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 landlady, she, quote, kicked up a terrible fuss about needing to check the apartment for Frank's clothes.

What the fuck?

Barnet, the landlord, said, She tricked me into letting her into the apartment. The minute she was inside, she ran to a closet, threw open 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.

It's so crazy. So as far as Barnet could tell, Elizabeth was trying to convince her or maybe herself that Olga was not the 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.

Or his child period. You annulled the marriage, man. So. Exactly. Don't worry about it. Right.

So the landlady 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 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 says as much.

People are like, Wow, that's crazy. I'm sorry. I hear someone say, I'm going to kill this person. I'm telling someone.

You got to tell someone. See something, say something. Hear something, 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. Do something.

What is wrong with everyone? She clearly has a reputation around town as a not well woman.

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

She's going to random friends being Will you throw acid in her face and throw her off a cliff? I'm banned from the Salvation Army, by the way. Yeah. Getting banned from the Salvation Army is crazy work.

It's like people aren't walking around. Mother-in-law's are not walking around saying to people, I'm going to kill my daughter-in-law.

Hopefully not.

Out loud sitting there being like, Yeah, just so you know, I'm going to get rid of her. So it's not a big deal. They're not just really saying this shit.

No, I've never run into that in my life.

If someone's outwardly saying that, they have lost a screw is loose and you should call someone.

One hundo I'm shocked. One hundo.

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 mind-boggling. It really is. 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. Olga's 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 letter stopped altogether. According to Olga's father, her last letter was sent from Santa Barbara and dated November 12th, 1958. A week later, on November 19th, Frank went to the police and reported his wife missing. It was Frank who filed the report, but it was actually two of Olga's coworkers 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?

What were you going to do here?

Did you not think she was going to be missed? So her friends and coworkers had last seen her two days earlier, around 11: 00 PM, 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 person's 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 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.

If I have a homicidal mother, I'm definitely going to mention that. 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 coworkers and her landlady, everybody appeared to agree that Olga just wasn't the lady who was just going to run away without telling anybody. Yeah.

So after looking over the report, detectives paid a visit to the landlady, Dorothy Barnet.

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 some 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 coworkers who were hanging out with her that night left around 11: 00 PM. Now, things seem to be pointing in a different direction, but investigators floated the idea that she possibly could have harmed herself or maybe ran off, and 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 person who would deliberately hurt herself or somebody else. She said she's way too reasonable. Like a level headed to do that. That's what it sounds like.

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 Barnet who discovered the first sign that something was a miss, 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. 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 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. 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. They're like, Is she still wearing that?

Is she wearing it?

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 good night 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. She relayed the story about how Elizabeth had shown up at the apartment recently and tricked her to get in there looking for Frank's clothing. She was like, this lady's... She's cuckoo. Yeah, she's tapped. 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 to Olga's apartment. At the time, she thought that it was the couple who lived across from Olga, the Williamson, because they went out to late movies all the time, which like, side note, that's just really cute.

I don't go for them.

But the next morning when she ran into Mrs. Williamson, she was like, Oh, did you come home late last night? I thought I heard you. And Ms. 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. He was pretty much up front with the investigation gators. He gave all the details. He explained 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: 00 PM. He said that he had no idea where Olga could be. But he did say, A few weeks ago, she threatened Why would you make trouble for me if I didn't move back in with her.

Guys, why are we letting this this lady just run shit? That's the thing. Why are we letting this happen?

Well, and it's like, he's making it seem like Olga's going to cause trouble. I'm like, she just wants to live with her husband and the father of her child.

She's going to make trouble for me if I don't move. What?

I'm like, I don't think she was threatening you. You're literally married. She probably was just like, hey, we're going to get divorced if it continues like this, even though 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-law. Do you ever get those TikTok videos where people detail how awful their relationships are with their mother-in-law? 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. I can't imagine.

I literally, I cannot fathom this shenanigan.

This is next level.

I can't imagine a mother-in-law who thinks that they somehow have authority over who their grown-ass son dates.

It literally turns my stomach because why? 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. I bet. 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 weird. Yeah. So he explained that his mother had a profound fear of losing him and of being alone, and that he'd giving her time to adjust to him moving out of the house. My God. Which is like, you're not giving her time to adjust to being out of the house while still living at 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... She knew that he loved her, so he wasn't worried that she would do anything irrational.

Hmm.

Hmm. 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 landlady 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 Elizabeth while she was in a coma and afterwards.

What the fuck are you talking about?

So they definitely met on more than one occasion. What? Yeah, it was very fucking strange.

That's wild.

Yeah. Frank's narrative obviously didn't seem to match what detectives had already learned about the 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 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. You don't say.

This is where things get racist as fuck. Oh. Just so you know. Okay. Because 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 Escavel, the manager of the Tropical Cafe, which was a restaurant that Elizabeth and her friend Emma visited regularly. Okay. Fraud and extortion weren't 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 Escavel'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 Franky, if I don't give back the $500 that she paid Franky to defend her husband.

So much about that. One of the things being Franky. Franky is so upsetting.

Yeah, it just turned my stomach. So upsetting. And also, why would she want the money back if he won the case for her son? I think that would be payment enough.

Yeah, that doesn't really make sense.

Yeah. And also just saying like, two Mexicans. I'm like, the way you say that is like, very rude.

Oh, yeah, you know.

So at that time, the Esquivels 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 extortion didn't seem that far fetched. And she also claimed she had a witness to at least one of the attempted extorsions. 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. Jesus. So she said that she ponds 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 up to her ears and shit. Yeah. So given what he knew about the Escavels, Elizabeth's story sounded somewhat plausible to Henderson, but something about the entire thing just felt disingenuous at the same time. She 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 strung and she tended toward the dramatics, so it also seemed on brand for her at the same time. But his hesitancy, the detective's 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 Escavel could have gone to jail for multiple years, but thanks to Frank, his sentence was cut in half. Yeah. 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.

So he's doing them a solid. Yeah.

So all things considered, like I said, Esperanza and her husband would have been grateful grateful, or 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. Doubt it. And Henderson wondered, why would they approach Elizabeth about the money instead of her son, who presumably actually had the resources to pay them. Yeah. 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 ponds some jewelry. Then she asked Frank for a check to buy a typewriter, which she actually used to pay the rest of the money to Esperanza, except for $50, which she said she kept for herself. A little tip. A 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 law 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 leading 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 Baldonado, 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 Ascavel, and occasionally he helped out 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. 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 identified him.

You had already picked him out.

Frank, on the other hand, he didn't even have the experience that Elizabeth did, but he saw the mug shot. He said he immediately recognized Moya from the photograph, and he was like, Mother, why don't you recognize this man?

Mother.

It was only when he threatened to move out that she agreed to take another look at Moya. 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 Moya as one of the men distorting 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 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. 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 don't know. I believe in you.

This is terrifying. Yeah. Elizabeth is a terrifying woman.

She's horrible.

Frank Frank is a poussou.

Frank is the poussou.

Of the century. Of the century. Yeah, truly. Like, hello? Of the universe.

Actually, when it comes to Frank, goodbye.

Yeah. Truly.

That was weird. Did you guys just hear that?

That was crazy.

Jinks, do you want me a Coke? 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. Hold on. Where's my fun fact? You're 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 really cool. Yeah.

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

What the fuck? Why do you shrink when you get old?

I think hunching over, right?

Yeah. Is that it? Just that you're hunched over? Yeah.

Oh, interesting. You're just crunching and hunching as you get all day?

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 mother-in-law. No. Because that is crazy on top of your head.

That is crazy on top of your head.