Transcript of The Murder of Olga Kupczyk (Part 2)

Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

And I'm Elaina.

And this is Morbid. This is Morbid. This is Morbid. This is Morbid. This is pretty Morbid. What's up, Big Red?

It's been busy. Yeah, it has been busy. It's been busy. It's been good. Yeah. Everything outside of this house is pretty ratchet, but in here, pretty good.

Yeah. In here, it's all right. We do want to rearrange our room a little bit.

We are going to rearrange the pod lab.

And here, it's actually also pretty ratchet. Yeah.

This room, specifically. Ratchet.

Pretty rough. Yeah. We just got to move some stuff around. That's all. Yeah. You know when you worked at a really terrible place for a long time and then things remind you of working at that time. This is hypothetical. Things remind you of working there. And then you just want to Change everything about the time in your life where your room looked like that.

Yeah. Because when it was the worst time of your life, like in that place where you were breaking down every day and crying and screaming and wanting to quit. That energy hangs out in a place, I think.

You can only salt the rug so much.

You can only salt the rug. You can leave Palo Santo the room so many times.

Oh. Hypothetically, Palo Santo was keeping my life together.

It was hypothetically.

Hypothetically.

But now that we're so happy and viby- The room's got to match the vibe. The room needs to be happy and viby. So we have to- So we have to- It was cluttered with all the- Dankness.

With our tortured souls for a little while.

Yeah, allegedly. And what we began with that I think really made a difference was I got, Ash got me potato slippers.

I did.

Slippers that look like a potato with a face and two little feet. And I've never been happier with a pair of slippers in my You're welcome. And so I think this is the beginning of something beautiful in here.

I got croissant slippers, but I left them at home. We're wearing slippers in the office. Office, it's a new thing. Office slippers. Office slippers, of course. I'm wearing big old Cheetah ones that Drew got me, and I love them. But I also want to wear my croissant slippers.

Yeah, Deb has some bear slippers.

I got her bears. We got to get Mikey. We got to get Mikey slippers. Some appropriate slippers. They didn't have animal ones when the place I was looking for a man's feet.

Yeah, a man's feet.

You know.

But yeah, that's what we have to say to you guys.

You know, that that's our business for today. Get yourself some office slippers. And when your boss says, what the fuck are you doing? Say, don't worry about it.

Don't fucking worry about it.

Say, allegedly, fuck off. Yeah. Just kidding. You'll get fired. Who gives a shit? Don't do that.

Who gives a shit? And also, continue trying to do those little romanticizing your life things.

Absolutely.

As the world gets crazier, get more romantic.

I got a little romantic with my bedtime. I have been, and it didn't do a lot for me last night, but two nights ago, this really helped me, and I just need to get into doing it, I think, more consistently. I got the hatch alarm clock.

Oh, I love my hatch alarm. This is not an ad.

It's not an ad, but they were nice enough to send us them. They did. And I was nice enough to give mine to Debbie and Mikey. And then Drew, because I knew that Drew got me one for Christmas. I accidentally saw that on our bank statement. Anyway, I started doing the meditation It's the nighttime meditations.

Yeah, they have some cool ones.

And I fell asleep, literally just meditating. And I want to do it every night before bed.

It's life-changing. I love my sunrise alarm. And again, not an ad. No, not an ad. We're just literally loving our hatch alarm.

I love them so much. And I really love the bedtime meditations. Last night, I fucked myself over because I'm trying to get more fiber in. And I said, you know what a fun way to do that is? Let's have some fucking dark chocolate, bitch. And I had some dark chocolate before bed, and I forgot that that has caffeine in it. Oh, it does. You're right. And so, I was like, Why do I wake? Why do I wake? It was rough.

I set my hatch alarm to, again, not net. I don't know why I keep saying my hatch alarm. I set my alarm to this Gatsby jazz. I tried that one. I've been telling you guys the slow morning jazz, which I did share the playlist a bunch of times on my story, but I think people kept missing it. I feel like at this point, I should just put it on my grid.

You know what you can do, actually, if you don't want it on your actual grid? Do a highlight.

Oh, there you I'll try to do that. If you guys are still looking for that, and I'll keep adding to it, I'll put it in my highlights.

I'll show her how to do it.

The youth will show me how to do it. I got you. But yeah, so there's a setting on it, on the alarm that you can wake up to slow. It's literally called Morning on West egg.

It's gorgeous.

It is such a good way to wake.

You could also pick the colors that you wake up to. Seriously, this isn't an ad. I swear to you.

People are going to be like, This is an undisclosed No, we actually have to tell you if it's an ad.

It's really not. Just to end the conversation there, I'm just obsessed with it. It's really changed shit, and it makes it a lot easier to wake up in the morning.

It's little stuff like that that I think we all need. Little things that make you happy.

If you can't get a hatch alarm right now, romanticize your life in other ways. Just get a pretty glass to put your drink in at dinner.

Yes. In fact, one last thing before we get into this. Tell me.

Did you just get new glasses?

If you go, you can find them anywhere. They're little water carafs. If you look at an antiquey-looking one and it's the glasses on top of it, if you put it on your night stand or even just in your living room as like a one, it makes you drink more water. It does. Because you'll want to finish that carafe. It does. Because you don't want it sitting out.

Just know that you'll be peeing in the middle of the night.

You'll be peeing. Join me. But also, you will feel like a fancy, like noble woman.

You really will. And that's the The difference between us. Noble woman/diva. I literally almost bought one-off the TikTok shop the other night, but then I was like, Is this too trendy? Because it was cherry. It was like a cherry, which was cute. But I like what you're putting down over there.

I like a vintage vibe. Look at an Art Deco, Gatsby era, 1920s-looking carafe. You can get them pretty cheap. You can look on Amazon, you can look wherever you want, but you can find a lot of different styles, and they look so fancy and so expensive, but they're not. Yeah, they do. It's just one little thing to add a little bit of whimsy and a little bit of luxury-looking shit.

Also, I'm here to say it. If you have a guest bedroom, put it in your guest bedroom because it says, I have my shit together. It does. I love putting together a guest bedroom when somebody's coming over and making it just like, bougey as fuck. Hell, yeah. I love it. Not that I ever have people over.

I was going to say I never have people over.

Very rarely. But when I do, I I go for it. Yeah.

So that's just little things. You guys said you like to like having little things to... To romanticize. To just romanticize. So that's why I'm trying to offer it whenever I can.

I have these cups that I got like vintage shopping or like thrifting, and they're so pretty. They're like beveled glass. And then they have like this on the rim. It's like this thick border. Yeah. That's like gold leaf almost. And I want to find more of them because I only have four. I'm like, I need to find them. I love thrifting, but that's the only issue is that it's not mass-produced. And I want more of it.

Because now you can find more. Now you're going to be looking.

I know. I'm on the hunt. So if you see anything like that, let me know. It's true. All right. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. So we are still talking about the murder of Olga Kupchick. And if you didn't listen I'm here for part one and you're here for part two, that's silly. I'm not judging you, but I'll fill you in, okay? Yeah. So Olga married Frank after meeting him while his mom was in the hospital where Olga was a nurse, and she literally took care of his mom. Yes. And he was like, Oh, my God, you're gorgeous. You're taking care of my Let's date.

They did.

You're a catch. Elizabeth, Frank's mom, is obsessed with him and essentially wants to be married to him. So she hates Olga, and she secretly annulls their marriage after they get married.

Frank's acting like a poussoie.

Frank is the poussoie of the century in this case. Yeah, truly. Thank you. Olga gets pregnant in the middle of all this, and unfortunately and incredibly, sadly, she goes missing at eight months pregnant. Jesus. Now, coincidentally, Elizabeth, while she's being looked at and her questioned a little bit. She admits that she was getting blackmailed around this same time, and she points toward this man, Louis Moya, but refuses to sign a formal complaint, and the way she identified him was super weird. She identified him, the police sent her home with a bunch of mug shots, which I have to think they don't do anymore. When I first read that, I was like, What?

They're just like, Go home and look at these.

They're like, Here's a book of criminals. Look at them. But so she identified him in the mug shot and then didn't identify him in a lineup. But Frank had seen the mug and he was like, Isn't that the guy literally right there? Yeah. And she was like, Oh, she is. I guess it is. But then she wouldn't sign anything. So the police were like, What's going on here? Sounds weird. They were a dead end. And now they're frustrated by Elizabeth Stonewalling. So they went back to her friend, Emma Short, the only other person who seemed to have any insight into what the fuck was going on here.

Come on, Emma.

Because remember, Emma would go to the Tropical cafe who was owned by the people that Elizabeth said were blackmailing her. So at First, Emma refused to speak to the detectives and suggested that Elizabeth had actually told her not to talk to the police about anything. But in her protest, Emma inadvertently mentioned something that caught Detective Henderson's attention, the annulment.

I was waiting for that to be discovered.

Until that point, investigators actually hadn't heard anything about an annulment. Actually, if Emma hadn't brought it up on accident, there was a good chance it actually would have gone unnoticed for probably forever, to be honest. Probably. But now that it was out, there was no going back, and Emma knew it. So Emma explained to the detectives that she only went with Elizabeth and Ralph to see the lawyer and go to the courthouse. She was there for some of it. But she insisted that she played no role in the scheme. She was simply there.

I simply let it happen.

Yeah, exactly. I just didn't do anything to stop it.

I didn't say anything to anyone.

I didn't tell anybody. So she knew all the details, and in early December, she ended up telling the police everything she knew about Elizabeth and Ralph posing as Olga and Frank. Soon, the conversation conversation shifted toward the Escavels who owned the Tropical cafe and the people who Elizabeth claimed was blackmailing her. The topic seemed to make Emma uncomfortable when it was brought up, not because she was just simply afraid of the blackmailers, but it seemed like she was afraid of Elizabeth, actually. Yeah, probably. Now convinced that there was a lot more going on with this whole thing than anybody was willing to tell him, Detective Henderson suggested that they continue their conversation at the police station. Once they were there, Emma finally came out the truth. Yeah, Emma. So according to Emma, when the annulment failed to end Frank and Olga's relationship, because Frank just didn't do anything about it, Elizabeth took the next step in her plan, and she actually approached Esperanza Escavel for help. So the very woman she's saying is blackmailing her, she turned to for help. It was Escavel who introduced Elizabeth to Louis Moya, who she had identified, and another man, Gus Valdonado.

The plan was that the two men would kidnap Nap Olga from the apartment and take her to Mexico, where they would kill her, mind you, she's eight months pregnant, and dump her body.

This is her daughter-in-law who is eight months pregnant with her grandchild.

Yeah. But she doesn't... She's not recognizing that that baby is her grandchild, she is like, Oh, Olga got pregnant by another man.

But you know what? She knows it is. Absolutely, she does. There's nothing in me that believes that she doesn't know that's her grandchild. Oh, no, no, no.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying she's so gross that she's making up all these rumors.

She is such a... Wow.

She's a twa. She's a twa. She is. In fact, Emma told the detectives that Elizabeth had actually tried multiple times to find somebody to kill Olga before finally making the deal with Louis and Gus. First, if you remember, we talked about it in part one, she tried to convince a woman, Barbara Reid, to do it, throw acid in her face and throw her off a cliff. Jesus. But that fell apart when Barbara went to Frank and was like, Hey, I think your mom's losing her fucking mind. Yeah. Then after the annulment, she went back to Ralph Winterstein and offered him a very large sum of money, but he was like, No, I don't want to kill anyone. But I'm also like, You also could have gone to the police. Yeah. So the list of people that Elizabeth approached also included one of Frank's former clients. Jesus. And then just another woman named Becky, who she recently met. She told Elizabeth that she could find somebody to help her, but she just never ended up coming through.

I love that this woman is just Becky.

Yeah, just Becky with the murderous tendencies.

I tried to get Becky to do it, but she didn't do it. Forget Becky with the good hair. Don't ask Becky to do that.

Don't That's what I'm doing. I'm not going to do that. Becky will not come through. But also, you have to think of the amount of people that she approached to murder her daughter-in-law, and none of them were like, 911, I'd like to tell you something.

This lady's trying to get somebody to kill her daughter-in-law who's pregnant.

Like, hello? So According to author Deborah Holt-Larkin, that's the real tragedy of the story. Olga didn't have to die. So many people knew. Yeah.

They should all be ashamed of themselves.

So the story was obviously compelling to the detective, and all the pieces seemed to fit. He was like, Oh, shit. We're really making headway here. But in to arrest Elizabeth, they needed something a little more concrete. For the time being, the district attorney in Santa Barbara asked the detectives to continue pursuing the case. And in the meantime, he was going to call the district attorney in Ventura County, Roy Gustobson, and report the fake annulment and the imprisonment, the impersonation, excuse me. If nothing else, that would be enough to hold Elizabeth until they could track down Louis Moya and Guy Baldonato. Yeah. So the next day, Detective Henderson and his partner started rounding up Esperanza Escavel, Louis Moya, and Gus Baldonato. Under the threat of being charged as a co-conspirator, Esperanza basically said, Yeah, everything that Emma told you is true. She was like, She approached me. She needed somebody to get rid of her daughter-in-law. I showed her Louis and Gus But that's where my part in all of this ended.

She's like, So I'm completely innocent. Exactly. Obviously.

She's like, I just introduced her to two hitmen. What was that to do?

I didn't do anything else. I have a tropical cafe to run. What she did from there? Not my business. Like, Oh, okay. Did you think they were just going for coffee? Like, what the fuck? Everybody? What's wrong with everybody here? You knew everything that was happening. Agreed.

She also informed them of one other detail. In exchange for Olga's murder, Elizabeth offered the two men $6,000. Jesus. Which is a little more than 67,000. Today. Oh, shit. Which it's a lot of money, but to kill somebody? Yeah. Hello? Hello? When he got back to his desk, Henderson found a note from a patrol officer in the traffic division asking that he return his call. So the officer told Henderson he was holding a guy named Chico Rojo on a DUI, and Rojo actually seemed to know something about Gus Baldonado.

There are so many people involved in this.

It's a lot of people. According to Rojo, he had loaned his car to Baldonado and Moya a few weeks earlier And when they returned it, the upholstery in the back seat was ripped and burned. Oh, my God. At the time, the car was at the impound lot because obviously the guy was drinking and driving. But when they went to take a look, the back seat had definitely been destroyed. But it was obvious from the specs of dried blood that somebody had clearly tried to get rid of evidence. It's crazy how this is all just like, lining up. Yeah. He gets like one piece of information and then it's slowly- Like following red crumbs. Exactly. So while investigators kept putting the pieces together and going over the growing body of evidence, Henderson and his partner went to Frank Duncan's house and arrested his mother. Good. Yeah. The following day, Elizabeth was charged with four felony counts, including charges of fraud, forgery, and impersonation. Despite the evidence against her, she refused to cooperate, which I'm sure is so hard to believe. Because she's a bitch. She just said that she was innocent and was being blackmailed. Yeah.

She didn't even say she was a bitch. No, she just knew it. But you know what? We know. We knew it. She's a bitch. Yeah. Elizabeth Duncan might not have been talking, but her co-conspirators a lot more forthcoming. Of course. Having been identified by Emma Short and Esperanza Escavel as one of the men hired by Elizabeth to get rid of Olga, and also having now been linked to the bloody vehicle, it didn't take long for Gus to confess and implicate everybody else. Oh, yeah. According to Gus Baldonado, he and Louis met with Elizabeth, who was with Emma, by the way. So Emma knew about this.

They're always trying to get themselves further away from it. And I'm like, you're going to get caught.

You were literally there. They met at the Tropical cafe on November 13th, and they established That she would pay them $3,000 when they killed Olga and another $3,000 within 3 to 6 months, like when she could get the money.

What a complete piece of shit, truly.

All of them. Yeah. The plan was that they would kidnap Olga from her apartment and take her to Tijuana, where they would kill her and dump the body.

An eight-month pregnant woman. Yeah.

So on the night of November 17th, after Olga's friends left for the night, Louis and Gus went to her apartment and Louis went up and knocked on the door, which is where the landlord or the landlady he heard the footsteps.

Oh, yeah.

When Olga came to the door, Luis told her Frank was in the car and he was really drunk and they needed help getting him inside.

So they prayed upon her. And also, no grown men needs your help.

Needs your help. No. No, no.

Especially when you're eight months pregnant.

Hell, no. No. But obviously she's worried about her fiancé. Excuse me, she's worried about her husband. So she's like, oh, shit. Let me help you. Yeah. So in the car, Gus was sitting in the back seat posing as Frank. But when Olga got down the car and opened the door in the back. Louis hit her in the back of the head with the butt of his gun, and Gus pulled her into the back seat as Louis drove away. This is so violent.

It is.

Along the way, they stopped the car because she was struggling so much that Louis hit her again with the gun and then tapped her hands, ankles, and mouth. She went through hell. So they planned to drive her to Mexico, but they had car trouble when they reached Ventura County. So they stopped in O'Hai and pulled the car off the road by Casita's Pass, A culvert that ran under the road. They used the gun as a club several more times, which then caused it to jam, so they couldn't use it anymore. So they then took turns, strangling Olga until they no longer felt a pulse. Wow. Assuming she was dead, they dug a shallow grave and they tossed her body in there, covered her with dirt, and then drove the car back to Santa Barbara. Holy shit. Once there, that's where they tore the upholstery and tried to destroy the blood evidence. And then just went back, called Elizabeth, and told her the job was done. Wow. Yeah. Just went about their lives.

They just went about their lives. Elizabeth just said, Okay, good. Thanks for killing my daughter-in-law. My daughter-in-law. My daughter-in-law.

My grandchild.

The wife of my son. Yeah. Thanks for doing that. Nbd. Yeah.

On December 21st, Gus Baldonato actually led police to the culvert in Ohio, where they had buried the body, and Olga's remains were disinterred and taken back to Santa Barbara. This is horrible. When the medical examiner her performed the autopsy, it was obviously noted that Olga was pregnant and that she'd suffered several blunt force traumas to the head, as well as having been manually strangled. But the cause of death was listed as suffocation, such as would be produced by being buried alive.

Oh, shit.

She wasn't fully dead. She wasn't dead. She was buried alive. She was buried alive.

Holy shit. Yeah.

You can only hope that she was unconscious.

That's horrific.

Because her pulse was so faint or they They don't think they felt a pulse anymore when they buried her. But she was alive when she was buried.

That is horrific. Yeah.

And pregnant. Please don't forget that.

Holy shit.

When Luis Moya was confronted with the evidence, witness statements, Baldonado's confession, all of it, he, too, confessed. And he confirmed that he had also been hired by Elizabeth Duncan. And he also confirmed that while she had given him, the two of them, a few hundred dollars as an upfront payment, which she got from hauling some jewelry, She hadn't given them the money that she promised them when they were hired. She wasn't going to. So they did all this for nothing. Yeah.

I mean, she's an asshole through and through. She's not going to... She's not going to fall through. She's not going to come through with anything. No.

Now, on December 21st, the district attorney, Roy Gustafsson, charged all three with first-degree murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder, among other things. And bail was set at $100,000. According to Deborah Holt-Larkin, Roy Gustafsson had political ambitions, and he had actually been looking for a case that would elevate his prominence. So he was eager to prosecute Elizabeth and her co-conspirators in what would be a death penalty case.

Damn.

Yeah. When the updated charges were announced in the press, he took full credit saying, I was tired of waiting for somebody to do something with this case, so I ordered my men to question Baldonado. Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm to prosecute the killers, the district attorney had forgot to inform Olga's family that her body had been discovered.

Oh my God.

It It was only when reporters called the house that evening that Olga's family learned she was in fact dead and had been murdered. Holy shit. Yeah. A reporter for the LA Times wrote, Mrs. Kupchick answered the phone insisting on being told what the call was about when she was told, she moaned and left the telephone.

Oh.

That's the shit that you're like, Don't report on that.

That's horrific.

I get like, Certain things need to be reported on, but like, nobody deserves to know what her initial- Oh, that's awful. Response was to finding that out.

Yeah, that's really awful.

Now, from her jail cell in Ventura County, Elizabeth Duncan continued to say she was innocent. She maintained that she was a victim of blackmail, even though all of the evidence was pointing to the contrary. Gustafsson told a reporter, As far as I'm concerned, the only reason Moya and Valdonado sought some money for Ms. Duncan was because they wanted the pay they were promised for the job they did. She's saying, I was being blackmailed, and he's like, No, you hired them to kill your daughter-in-law, and they were looking for payment. Which They're all shitty. It's just horrible all the way around. But you're not a victim.

Yeah, exactly. You are not a victim.

Less than a week later, Gustafsyn presented the case to the grand jury, calling on almost a dozen witnesses. All of whom testified that Olga had been repeatedly being harassed by Elizabeth Duncan consistently and had actually gotten multiple death threats. Yeah. Given the number of people who had heard Elizabeth make all of these threats to or something similar, Gustafsinn really didn't have a lot of trouble as betraying Elizabeth Duncan as a vicious overprotective mother with a deep hatred for Olga.

I don't even know if you can be calling her an overprotective mother, even vicious overprotective, is even the correct thing to say. She's just a monster. She wasn't just protecting that child. She had a weird attachment to that child that is un natural.

Well, and that's the thing.

That is not a natural motherly protection.

And there's nothing to protect him from. He willingly got married. He willingly decided to have a child.

He's a grown man.

Like, what's the problem here? No. Speaking of Frank, he was noticeably absent from the grand jury hearing after he learned what had happened to Olga and that his mother was being- Was responsible for it. Was responsible on charges for it. He just disappeared.

Wow.

Yeah. According to Elizabeth's lawyer, Eswaard Sullivan, Frank had moved out of the apartment that he'd rented with Olga and hadn't been seen since the body was recovered. Also, he moved out, but she wasn't living there. Yeah. He lived with mommy. Exactly. Now, the trial began in late February of 1959, and by that time, Frank had resurface and was standing by mommy, fiercely supportive of her claims of innocence. In that time, or in the time that had passed since the indictment, Louis Moya and Gus Baldonado had actually withdrawn their plea of innocent and actually pleaded guilty to the charges. But their lawyers had signaled their intent to refile, please of not guilty, by reason of insanity, which is like, no. You had every- You got paid to do something horrific. You had every chance to stop. This isn't a A crime of passion, a crime of insanity, none of the above. But that meant that when it came time for the trial for the murder of Olga, Elizabeth would stand alone in the courtroom because she was the only one maintaining innocence. Now, once the jury was selected and the case really got started, it proved to be a lot more sensational and bizarre than anyone had expected.

In addition to the already bizarre facts of the case and the salacious and scandalous rumors surrounding Elizabeth and Frank's weird fucking relationship, the investigation also turned up some previously unknown facts about Elizabeth. Oh. That while not exactly relevant here, were still very fascinating for reporters.

Yeah, hey, I want to know.

Among other things, Elizabeth had been married 11 times.

Holy shit.

Homegirl was married 11 times.

Okay.

She also had dated one of Frank's law school classmates while they were in school together.

Okay. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Salacious and scandalous rumors?

Nope.

I think we're just seeing it for what it is. Yeah. You're dating one of his classmates?

I'm also like, were you trying to make him jealous? What the fuck? I think she was trying to make Frank jealous in a weird way. So Gustafsson seemed to relish telling the jury, and I would have, too. It wasn't relevant to the case, but it was interesting.

Still, you're like, Gross.

So the district attorney also seemed entirely willing to share gossip and unverified rumors about Elizabeth that I personally believe, including the fact that she had paid for Frank's law school by conning several men out of money and writing bad checks. Damn. Given that she had stiffed everybody she'd promised money to in the murder of Olga, I'm pretty sure that's true. She's just known to not make good on her word.

It's at least something to think about.

Now, as far as the facts of the case and the people called to the witness stand There was no shortage of drama there either. In the early days of the trial, Gustafsson called Barbara Reid to testify. She was the woman who Elizabeth was like, Hey, could you throw some acid in my daughter-in-law's face?

And she was like, I'll think about it.

Yeah. So Barbara told the jury all about that. And then she brought up Elizabeth's daughter Patty, who had died, sadly, at age 15. Elizabeth obviously cried at the defendant's table. But her tears were quickly replaced with fiery anger as soon as Barbara claimed that Elizabeth tried to hire her to commit murder. The testimony was continuously interrupted by Elizabeth having some outburst. She would yell at the prosecutor. She would cry about the loss of her daughter, the love for her son. And also at random times, she would just lal.

And there's pictures.

She was having a lal fast.

She was having a lal fast. With her head thrown back laughing. Yeah. In the courtroom.

Yeah, she's something. She wasn't the only one in the courtroom who's hysterics added to the drama. At various points throughout the trial, Frank's audible weeping also disrupted the proceedings. At one point during Louis Moyas testimony, where he gave a detailed account of the kidnapping and the murder, Frank flood the courtroom in tears, saying, not over the death of his wife.

Hold on. Because I'm like, oh, I mean, obviously, I would also be that way.

He said, it It's inconceivable that my mother could associate with a man like that. What a cold-blooded man. Mommy would never like him.

Wait a minute. So my mother would never be friends with a creep like that, is his concern.

It's mind boggling.

I don't even know what to say about that. Nor do I.

I don't. Nor do I, brother.

Holy shit.

So the testimony from the killers really didn't leave a lot of doubt for the jury as to the role of Elizabeth in Olga's death. Louis Moya told the court, At first, she she would like to scare her out of the way. After we gained each other's confidence, though, she said she would like me to get rid of her and would leave it up to us what to do.

Jesus.

According to Moya, Elizabeth said that Olga was blackmailing Frank and trying to ruin his career, and that's why she wanted her out of the way. But she had some ideas as to how they could go about it. Moya said, She told me she had acid, rope, and sleeping pills if we decided we could use them. The pills were to be for an overdose, the rope to tie her and the acid to disfigure her face and fingerprints.

Now, here's the thing. That's so fucked up, I can't even conceive of it. Also, the whole acid in the face thing, she is so jealous of Olga. Absolutely. That that is such a clear psychological manifestation of that. Absolutely. She wants to disfigure her because your son is in love with her.

100,000 %.

And that pisses you off.

And that thought process is inconceivable.

It is so alien to me that I can't even get on the same planet as it. I just cannot.

Why are you so jealous of your son's wife?

This is an unnatural relationship. It's so fucked. And there's something deeply, deeply dark and fucked up about it.

We've told a couple of these mother and son cases, and they freak me out to no end.

No, that freaks me the fuck out.

I hate it. Now, in his testimony, Gus Baldonado was a lot less forthcoming. He mostly just responded to questions with, I don't remember, and I don't recall. But when it came to Elizabeth's involvement, he was a lot less cagey. He said they both asked why they couldn't just scare Olga to the point where she fled and didn't return. Elizabeth told them, No, I've tried that, and it's not possible.

Wow.

It was clear that what Elizabeth wanted was for her daughter-in-law to be killed, and like you said, disfigured beyond recognition.

Yeah, that's some Freudian shit right there.

It is.

The dramatics continued when Emma took the stand toward the of the trial to testify against her BFF Elizabeth.

Jesus. Her BFF, Jill. At one point during her testimony, as she was describing how she went with Elizabeth to meet with the killers, Elizabeth jumped out of her chair and shouted, You're a liar!

Shut the fuck up.

And her attorney was literally trying to restrain her. Was like, Shut the fuck up. Hey, you're not doing any favors for yourself. When she was admonished by the judge and warned about future outbursts, Elizabeth replied, This woman has my clothes on right now, and she is a liar. I feel like tearing them right off of her.

I love that she's like, She has my clothes on.

She said, Bitch, stole my look.

This bitch is saying that you are a literal murderess. It's legit. You're like, But you're wearing my goddamn sweater. I want it back.

What the fuck? I may not be able to wear my own clothes soon, but I want it. So despite all the outbursts, all the antics, Elizabeth insisted on testifying on her own behalf.

Honestly good.

These bitches always do.

Dig that grave for yourself.

And she took the stand on March third, which is weird because today is March third.

What the fuck? We don't do this on purpose. We don't plan this. I don't know why this happens.

In fact, we were supposed to record this a couple of days ago, I think. Yeah. Holy shit. Hello.

What is that?

Now, according to Elizabeth, she did once have a plan to truss up her son Frank, and take him out of Santa Barbara, quote, in the hope that he would come to his senses and leave his wife. She never went through with that, she said. No. I love that she was going to truss up her son. Yeah. Hello? She even went as far as admitting that she tried to enlist Barbara in the plan, but she insisted that she never went through with it, and certainly she never arranged for the kidnapping and murder of Olga. No.

I love that she's like, Of course, I asked Barbara to throw acid in her face and toss her off a fucking cliff. But I would never go so far as to organize a kidnapping murder.

She wasn't even admitting to that. She was saying that the whole... She was saying Barbara was lying about everything and that she had only gone to Barbara to truss up Frank.

To truss up Frank?

Yeah, that's what she's saying. What the fuck? Like, they were going to kidnap him and scare him into leaving Olga, is what she's saying. Now, according to Elizabeth, the entire plot had everything to do with keeping her sunny at home and nothing to do with Olga personally. Olga was fine. She didn't care about her. She doesn't want her son to be with him. Yeah. With her, excuse me. She told the court, If I had to live alone, I wanted to die. I'm petrified if I have to be by myself at night.

Babe, you're going to be by your sofa a long time.

A long, long time. She claimed she never wanted Olga to be murdered, but she didn't make any secrets how she felt about her daughter-in-law. She said when she learned that Olga had become pregnant before they were married, she confronted Olga and she yelled to the court, I told her I didn't want a daughter-in-law of her character, and she called me a bad name. And she said she would marry my son, whether I liked it or not.

You know what I would have called you? A bitch. A cunt. C-u-n-t.

The worst name.

C-u-n-t. That's what I would have called you.

Honestly, I hope she did call her that. I love that she was in death being like, Listen, I didn't murder her, but I fucking hated her. Yeah.

She's like, You're not doing yourself any favors here, miss. She thinks it's going to help, though, because she's like, Look, I'm being honest about how I felt.

Yeah. So the testimony got heated the next day when Roy Gustoveson cross-examined Elizabeth. At one point, he said he was going over answers to questions that she'd been asked the previous day in relation to her son, Frankie. Frank leapt to his feet and shouted, Just a minute, Mr. Gustoveson. My name is Frank. Not Franky. I'm a big boy, sir.

He's like, Only mommy gets to call me Franky, Mister. I hate it.

Pooh to you. In response, Gustovson was like, Hey, can you eject him from the courtroom?

Can you get that pooswa the fuck out of this courtroom.

But the judge would not. Going forward, though, whenever Gustovson referred to Frank as anything other than Frank, Elizabeth sharply corrected him and said, Frank is an attorney and an officer of the same court as you are, Mr. Gustoveson. I think you should have some respect for him. So as anyone could have predicted, Elizabeth proved to be a pretty difficult witness on cross-examination. She would refuse to answer questions, and she would only answer them after the judge was like, Hey, you have to fucking answer that. At one point, when the prosecutor was like, There was no blackmail. You were just supposed to make payments for the murder that you hired somebody for. She said, I did not. I did not. I did not. I did not do that. Even though her testimony was riddled with outbursts and sarcastic remarks, frequent bounce of weeping, all the above, she did manage to stick to her story more or less. Her protests and her insistent that she was the victim were consistent, but they were nothing compared to the mountain of evidence and testimony linking her to the murder of Olga. So on March 17th, 1959, after a brief deliberation, the jury returned to the courtroom to find Elizabeth Duncan guilty of the first-degree murder of Olga Kupchick.

Hell, yeah. The verdict shocked everybody in the court, but Elizabeth seemed to primarily focus on, you guessed it, her sunny boy. After the verdict was read, she told him, Don't worry too much, Frank. Lord. Later, when she was asked about the verdict, she told a reporter, I don't know how that jury could do this to me. I didn't do it. You did. Okay. In the week that followed, the jury heard arguments in the penalty phase, first to determine if Elizabeth was of sound mind when she committed the crime. I bet that probably went on for a long time. Yeah. Then to determine the actual penalty. In his testimony, psychiatrist Dr. Louis Nash said of the evaluation, I found Mrs. Duncan to be a maladjusted, egocentric, and emotionally immature individual. Hell, yeah, you did. The defendant, particularly, has been unable to stand frustrations or maintain her emotional equilibrium and independence during major and minor stresses.

Yeah.

But when asked whether he believed Elizabeth met the criteria for mental incompetency, he said, I did not find her to be insane. So he said, She's sane. She's just a Yeah, she's just very difficult. Yeah, she's got there's something going on for sure, but she's sane. According to Dr. Nash, Elizabeth's personality was the same as most criminals and those who he came in frequent contact with in his line of work. He said, A psychopathic personality is a social misfit who causes problems for themselves and the world they live in.

Yeah, and that's her.

Right. It's like you can be a psychopath, but still be sane. I know that's hard to understand, but it's the fact. So now that she was determined to have been sane, but really a lot, when she contracted Lewis and Gus to kill Olga, the jury followed the prosecutor's wishes and they sentenced Elizabeth to death.

Whoa. Yeah.

When asked for a reaction by a reporter, she was defiant. She said, They are not going to make me cry. Those jurors were prejudiced. I think they all lied when they said they would give me a fair trial. Liars. I don't think so. All of them. After her trial, Lewis and Gus were also determined to be sane at the time of the murder, and they, too, were sentenced to death.

Yeah, you're all going down together. Yeah.

According to author Deborah Holt-Larkin, which, of course, we'll link her book in the show notes, she wrote, Duncan's trial might never have stood up to today's legal standards, which is pretty true. It's highly likely that Gustafson tainted the jury a little bit with his repeated release of irrelevant facts.

It's about Elizabeth. When you really do look at the legal part of that, really pair it down to the skeleton there, you can't do that. We can look at it now and be like, Well, yeah.

Yeah, we can talk about it. But if we were presenting this case to a jury, we really couldn't say those things. You can't do that. They're not pertinent to the case, unfortunately. The guilty verdict and the death sentence could have been more the result of a character assassination than a strong case put forward by the prosecution. But you also have to remember at the same time, it could have had a lot to do with the fact that Olga was eight months pregnant when she was killed. Yeah. And the heoping mountain of evidence against Elizabeth.

Absolutely. I mean, you have several people who are and are showing a pretty clear paper trail and a pretty clear trail of evidence that lead back to this. Right. And when the jury- Her best friends are saying that she knew that she was there.

A woman who is literally there when she hired these men is like, I was right there. She's my friend. I'm actually wearing her sweater right now. Yeah.

She also was there for the annulment thing. So she's been there. She's been a pretty ride or die friend. And at this point, she's like, Yeah, I got to tell you because I'm under fucking oath. Yeah. I can't perjure myself that this is what happened. So it's like, this isn't out of nowhere. It's not like they're just like, Yeah, you're a bitch, and you have a weird, unnatural attraction to your son. Yes. So we're going to pretend that you're a murderer? There was evidence, but I do understand that they're saying the case could have been tighter, I think.

The case definitely could have been tighter. But I really do think a lot of it had to do with Olga having been eight months pregnant. Absolutely. If I was sitting on that jury, that would absolutely factor into my decision making. How could it not? Yeah. So after sentencing, Elizabeth's lawyer petitioned the court for a new trial. Obviously, that always happens. At appeal, the defense argued, among other things, that the jury had been prejudiced by all the news coverage and that Elizabeth hadn't got a fair trial. In the spring of 1960, the California Court of Appeals heard the case, and after reviewing the evidence and hearing testimony, they concluded that the prosecution and the trial court had followed standard procedure with regard to the jury and that the judge was well within his rights to deny the request to move the trial.

There you go. I mean, some of the things that they let out, they were gossipy, they were rumors, whatever. For sure. Not a lot of them would lead me to believe that somebody would do this to their daughter. Yeah, Exactly. You know what I mean? Yeah. It makes me think she's a bitch and that she's an unlikable and very untrustworthy person.

But there's also all the evidence of her guilt. Yeah. So with her appeal denied, Elizabeth's lawyer petitioned California's governor, Pat Brown, for clemency. We've talked about Pat Brown before. At the time, he actually had expressed sympathy for those on death row, and he frequently sided with the anti-death penalty movement, particularly in the case of Carol Chesman, the so-called Red Light Bandit. We talked about that. We about. When the Clemency case came up for his review in this case, Pat Brown's assistant evaluated the case and, quote, acknowledged there had been serious irregularities in the trial, but ultimately decided that the evidence was so overwhelming that Elizabeth Duncan acted with malicious predatory intent, so they denied the request.

Yeah, I mean, again.

It's everything we're saying.

There was some extra little spice in there that didn't need to be there, that could have and now probably would fuck up the trial. A big time. But the meat of the trial was there.

Exactly. And it was, again, a very different time. Yeah. So she exhausted all of her appeals at that point, and Elizabeth Duncan was sent to the gas chamber on the morning of August eighth, 1962, and so were Louis Moya and Gus Valdonado. Elizabeth last words before the gas was released. Where's Frank? That makes sense. That makes sense. And then the cyanide pellets were dropped, and that was a wrap on Elizabeth. Damn. A few minutes later, at 10: 12, the prison doctor announced all three were dead. Elizabeth Duncan was actually the last woman executed in the state of California. Wow. Isn't that crazy?

What a distinction.

Now, in state records, it seems that she was buried on the grounds of San Quentin Prison, but there's actually No records of her grave being in the cemetery. The general consensus is that Frank actually claimed her remains after the execution and that he had her buried in a private cemetery.

Not one part of me believes that. No. That absolutely Now, what about Frank, you may ask. What about Frank?

Frank remained committed to his mother's innocence for the rest of his life. But the case, Elizabeth's notoriety, all of that obviously negatively affected him in the years that followed. Because remember, he's a lawyer. Like, that ruined his career pretty much. Immediately after Elizabeth was arrested, he was let go from the legal firm that he worked for. And in the years that followed, he was repeatedly sanctioned by the California bar for previous offenses. Until May of 2022, when disciplinary charges were filed that resulted in his being found ineligible to practice law in California. Whoa. The following year, he was disbarred. But the reasons for the disciplinary actions and the disbarment are not public information. Wow. Yeah. So that is the case of Olga Kupchick's murder.

Holy shit.

Yeah. So it's just really, it's just such a tragic case with Olga. Yeah. Like, just being terrorized in the final year or so of her life.

And then ultimately, murder. Eight months pregnant, being kidnapped and murdered. Like, what the fuck?

It's really sad. Yeah. It's awful. So let's do a fun fact.

Yes.

Bees actually have knees. You know how people say the bee's knees and you're always like, fun? What? Fact. Yeah. This expression, the expression the bee's knees comes from the fact that they store large buildups of pollen and hairy baskets on their knees.

Hairy baskets?

Mm-hmm.

They have just hairy baskets hanging from their knees, don't you? That is a fun fact. I love it. That's a fun fact that keeps on giving.

Yeah. Bees, in fact, have knees. I like that a lot. That came from thefactsite. Com. I love that. And with that, we definitely hope you keep listening.

Yeah. And we hope you keep it weird.

But not so weird that you don't think about the fact that bees have knees. I'll think about that forever. Think about it forever. Bye. Bye.