Transcript of 557 - Be Different Later

This is exactly right.

Hello.

Hello, and welcome.

To My Favorite Murder.

That's Georgia Hardstark.

That's Karen Kilgariff.

We're at home.

We are at home. I'm legit in my— I don't know if I'd call them pajamas. Are they pajamas when they're sweatpants?

Are they pajamas when they're all day long?

Exactly.

I mean.

Like, Vince got them in my pajamas, and I'm like, hmm, kind of in my indoor clothes, which isn't— I don't sleep.

Could you go to the bank in what you're wearing right now?

Ooh, that's a good question.

Is that the dividing line?

Yes. But I'd look a little— someone wouldn't be wrong to think that I was on my way to rehab.

Getting some money out.

Getting some money out before I go to rehab.

It's like a speakeasy in the back of the bank, but it's a rehab.

What's the code word to get in?

You know what that makes me think of is the time I was sitting in the— like, in front of a grocery store at night. This was so long ago, but a girl walked up to one of those red box machines, and she had the most insane, like, fleece pajama bottoms.

Yeah.

With, like— I think they were, like, probably Powerpuff Girls or something.

Yeah, yeah.

And this was pre-COVID, and I remember being like, ooh, what are you doing? And then, like.

Like some— someone got broke up with recently.

Yeah. Yeah, a lot of judgment, a lot of, like.

Yeah.

Outfits, outfits. And now it's like, absolutely, wear that to work.

Totally.

Do your thing.

Like, what do you wear when you don't leave the house that often? God, I need to leave the house more often.

I think it's why— and maybe you want to join me— that's why I do Scandi. My style is Scandi style.

Oh, like Scandinavian? What is that?

Yeah, Scandinavian. So it's like big sweaters, big pants, clogs.

Okay. That's like your style so that when you're at home, it's like, that's just what she wears. I thought you were going to go, like, scandalous and be like, I wear lingerie around my—

I tube-top it around the house nonstop.

All right. You're right. And then— because also, I need an escape, because my clothes are, like, you know, when they're cute, they're like made up, and everything is cinched and this and that, and has accessories.

Tight, yeah.

So, like, I need a break from that when I'm not wearing them. I shouldn't need a break.

Totally.

From my everyday clothes anymore. All right.

Listen, I think you're growing and changing in the way that you're like, do I need to be outfit-forward at all times?

Right.

No.

Right.

You don't owe anybody an outfit.

Yeah.

You'll gift them an outfit.

I owe 9-year-old Georgia, who got hand-me-downs and wore the same and got teased for wearing the same thing every week, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I owe her a new top for the Netflix podcast that we do every week.

Yes, I hear you.

You know what I mean?

You're like, I can now prove that I can get new shirts.

Exactly. Watch. You've never seen this one before, and you'll never fucking see it again.

Check this one out, Maureen from Orange County, or whoever we're talking to.

Fucker.

Motherfucker. And I think I'm doing the exact opposite of the full flop of just wear a black shirt all the time.

Yeah.

They can't say shit to you if you just wear the same thing all the time.

Yeah. Well, starting tomorrow, it's on.

Yeah. We're going to be different later.

Yeah, watch out, world.

Yeah, you've been warned.

Do you have anything? What do you got?

We went on a lovely vacation that I was very grateful to have, and when I came back from that vacation, I literally slept for about 6 days in a row.

Yeah.

It started to get kind of like, do I have one of those weird sleeping sicknesses or something? Because I could not stop sleeping. It was wild.

It's so joyful, though, sleeping.

Yeah, it is.

You know?

Especially when you have a hard time doing it.

Yeah. There's something so special about, oh, I fell asleep. It's like, yay, I won.

It's so good for you.

It's so good for you, and it never happens when it's supposed to.

It doesn't. And I'm also not used to daytime napping.

Right.

In fact, I think in our house, kind of subtextually, it was banned.

Yes.

Like, you were laying down during the day with.

It's totally a childhood thing of, was it okay or was it not okay? Like, it was totally fine in my house and celebrated. It's so.

Yeah.

It's so that. So if it wasn't.

That's healthy. Yeah, no. It was bad. You had people who would just come by and hit your foot and just be like, get a job. But point being, coming home, I would be falling asleep at 4:00 in the afternoon and sleeping hard, and then I would wake up at 6:00, and because it was like dusk, I would think it was dawn and that I'd slept through the day. And I would get— I did this two times. I got up and made coffee two times at like 6:00 p.m.

Oh, I was thinking of you as a little kid, and I'm like, you got up and made coffee? Cool.

No, no, no. This just happened. This is how I— this is how I celebrated my vacation.

Oh my God, you woke up and were like, well, it's the morning time.

I blew through that whole day. I guess I needed to get jacked up on caffeine, and then it'd be like, oh shit, I should have looked at my phone.

Daisy and Frank are like, what the fuck are you doing?

What are we doing? Blossom, by the way. Blossom.

Shit's shit. Oh my God.

Who's Daisy? Who's Daisy? Whose dog is Daisy?

Blossom, Daisy, it's— they're similar.

True, true.

All right, should we get into it?

Let's do it.

Okay, Karen, you're first. I'm going to put my pajama ass into a comfy position.

It would be great if you would change into formal clothes for this, since you're already in pajamas.

Let me go put on my gown and jewels.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, my story today starts the morning of Friday, April 2nd, 1982, in the DC suburb of Montclair, Virginia. That's about 30 miles southwest of Washington, DC. It's around 10:00 in the morning, and a woman walking her dog through a local subdivision takes a short trail into the woods behind a nearby elementary school. And on that path, she comes upon what we know to be the worst-case scenario. She finds the dead body of a woman.

Wow.

So the main sources used are, of course, the 1991 episode of Unsolved Mysteries, which now sounds like I'm saying 1941.

Wow, yeah.

It's so crazy.

God.

And then articles from the Potomac News and the Washington Post archives, and the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So it's April 2nd, 1982, and a Jane Doe body is found in the woods in Montclair. In those woods behind a grammar school, crime scene investigators get to work. They notice that the victim's hands are tied behind her back with a pair of pantyhose, and then they notice signs of sexual assault. They see that her cause of death is one execution-style gunshot to the head.

Right.

Aside from her white and blue TreeTorn tennis shoes, the police really don't have anything, any identifying things like clothing, jewelry, tattoos that could help the public identify her. Throughout the day, investigators keep close tabs on any missing person reports that might be coming in, but no luck there. And since we all know that the first 48 hours of a murder investigation are make or break, they send nine detectives out to canvas the area around where the body was found.

Oh my God.

Which was, yeah, just a shocking out-of-the-blue thing. So now Hilda lives by herself in her townhome. So her neighbors report they haven't seen her since Thursday, April 1st, and that no one has been able to reach her. They're particularly troubled because Hilda's dog was found outside and unattended. Yeah, horrible feeling. When they went to check her front door, they discovered that it was unlocked. So around the same time that they're talking to these neighbors, Hilda's coworkers also reach out to the police.

Wow.

But because there's no evidence that the home was broken into, investigators suspect that Hilda might have been killed by someone she knew and maybe even someone she invited inside. So they take a closer look at her estranged husband, of course, as they always do. But by all accounts, the two seem to have broken up and moved on with their lives. They can find no evidence that connects her ex to this murder. And then they get a very promising tip. Investigators discover that on the evening of March 26th, 1982, which was a week before her death, she went to a bar and restaurant called The Rafters in Alexandria, Virginia, which is about a half an hour from her home.

Applebee's? Which one's the fanciest?

Black.

Black Angus was what I was going to say, but that's not even fancy anymore, is it? I don't know. I don't know. One of those.

It seemed fancy from the freeway to me.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's also the '80s. And so, like, on that episode of Unsolved Mysteries, they do reference this as a singles bar, The Rafters. But Maren looking into it was like, "I'm not seeing anybody else calling it that." So, like, it but it's that idea. It's like she basically went there, she ordered a drink at the bar, sat down, and she would later tell her friends that a man took the seat next to her, and they start chatting.

Yeah.

But for some reason that no one will ever know, she doesn't tell her friends the man's name. She only tells them that he introduces himself as a government consultant, and they hit it off.

Okay.

So Hilda tells her friends, "She and this man grab a table, and they eat dinner together, and then they walk over to the man's place at the Oakwood Apartments," which is a huge complex basically across the street from the Rafters. You can see it from the Rafters. And they go over there, and they keep the night going. So by the time Hilda's telling her friends about this, she's clearly excited. And one of her friends, who will later appear on Unsolved Mysteries, says that she thought this man sounded too good to be true.

Wow.

End quote. Yeah. But it's like such a heartbreaking thing. This is the risk of vulnerability of relationships. It's like.

Totally.

This is what women have to deal with.

You have to be constantly on guard that everything they say could be a complete lie, and they could be dangerous, like, on top of it all.

Right. And this, I think, only recent kind of discovery and discussion that women are having with each other.

Yeah.

About what actual danger looks like and how charming sociopaths can be.

Totally.

You know, how that's part of the plan. It's, you know, it's tough. It feels like 1982 is like that was still almost like a hangover of, like, the singles bar, fern bar '70s, you know?

Yeah, for sure.

So identifying this man becomes the focus of the murder investigation. The police talk to the people who were at the Rafters that night. They get this man's physical description. It's very vague. He's a white man with brown hair and brown eyes. He's around 40 years old. He's about 5'7". It's like as general as it could be.

Yeah.

But they do use it to investigate their most compelling clue, which is they know this man has an apartment at the Oakwoods.

Right.

Complex across the street. But here's the thing. This complex has 1,400 units in it.

Holy shit. Yeah.

It's gigantic. I mean, I can't comprehend it. It's so gigantic.

No. It makes sense with, like, government workers where it's just like, "We need a place to temporarily put a lot of people."

Exactly. That is kind of what it was. So detectives end up pouring over as many lease agreements, like, lease agreements dating back three years.

Wow.

Hoping to find a tenant that is a man, like, a white man, all those things, the description. But of course, it's a huge complex, and it is a revolving door of government employees. So it's like quick, you know, contract employees that are in and out. So it's now months into the investigation. When police finally get the big break they need, they find out that Hilda lost her wallet at the Rafters the night that she met this mystery man. So it turns out that the man that she left with, he called the Rafters and insisted that he be called if her wallet is found.

Okay.

So then he leaves his phone number with the staff. And it sounds really creepy, and it's very easy to kind of write a story about what that meant.

Yeah.

He does live across the street, and Hilda is far away, and she's excited to see him again. So it could have made sense to be like, "Oh, we'll meet again, and you can bring my wallet."

Yeah. I can grab it. It's close by, kind of a thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

So Hilda's wallet is found at the restaurant, and a manager gives the man a call. So he stops by that same week and picks it up. So when the detectives learn about this, they go back to the Rafters. They find that manager to get the man's contact information, but, like, hoping it's filed away somewhere.

Yeah.

But of course, she doesn't have it anymore. So basically, as an investigative Hail Mary, they ask the manager if she'll be willing to be put under hypnosis in the hope that they could get something.

Wow.

From anything to point to this man's identity. And she agrees. But by the time she's placed under hypnosis, it's been three months since she called the man about Hilda's wallet. So it definitely seems like a long shot, and it seems just weird and out of the box.

Yeah.

But incredibly, when she's hypnotized, this manager recites a complete phone number.

No.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

I know. It's crazy. Now, investigators don't immediately celebrate because the hypnotist warned them.

Yeah.

"Listen, these numbers could be off in some way. Some could be reversed or misremembered. Like, it could be partial." But while this is happening, the other investigators are whittling down those lease agreements. And Detective Cahill says on his episode of Unsolved Mysteries, he says, quote, "We went through probably 25,000 to 30,000 files, and out of that, we came up with 32 possible names that fit the profile of the man." End quote.

That's so much work for also not even knowing if he is a suspect, because it was a week before, right?

Yes. It's a part of, like, police work and detective work where you understand the burnout and the.

Yeah.

When people kind of, like, half-ass things or they don't want to write up a report or a file or whatever, because they have to do all of that and work so hard, and yeah, sometimes for no reason.

Yeah.

And it's like, "Why can't we get AI to do something? Why does AI have to be an artist all the time?" Anyway, we'll talk about AI on a different show.

I hope so.

You're looking forward to that conversation.

Yeah. Always.

So they do have these 32 possible names, and on this shortlist, they find a phone number that is an almost perfect match to the one recited by the hypnotized restaurant manager.

Wow.

And that phone number belongs to a 38-year-old man named Gregory Richard Barker, who it turns out moved out of the Oakwood Apartments and left town shortly after Hilda's murder.

Oh, shit.

So now detectives are on it, and they are looking to interview him, but they can't find him. He leaves behind a forwarding address for a new place in Las Vegas, but when they call and talk to people at that address, he no longer is affiliated or seems to be affiliated with it. So police start to dig into this man's background. There's no immediate red flags. He's a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He completed two tours, the second one being in military intelligence, which is something he and Hilda could have bonded over, because that's where she worked now.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. So it's a direct link, and it also suggests she may have been in the trunk alive.

Right. Totally.

So two and a half years after Hilda Roche's body is found in September of 1984, Greg Barker is arrested, but he's not arrested for Hilda's murder. He's actually arrested for three bank robberies in Las Vegas, one in December of '83, one in January of '84, and a third in March of '84. But these aren't, like, major heists. He only made $2,100.

Wow. On three bank robberies.

Three bank robberies in the '80s. Do you want to know how much it is in today's money?

$2,100 in the '80s today is 10,000 no, 8,000.

$6,700. It's like.

Holy shit.

It's nothing. And in the robberies, he didn't use a weapon, so one could maybe assume that he was just desperate and was, like, trying to get money, like, truly on the run.

Yeah.

But because he didn't use a weapon, he is able to post bond, and he is released before his trial. And also, because of bad communication between different police jurisdictions, the Las Vegas authorities have no idea Greg Barker is wanted for murder in Virginia.

Right.

By the time detectives who are working Hilda's case find out about his arrest in Vegas, he's gone again. So now it's April of 1991. It's nine years after Hilda's murder, and the TV show Unsolved Mysteries runs a segment on her case. The detectives working the case think it's a great way to get the word out about Greg Barker nationwide. He is out there running around, and it works.

And I think we should say that, like, to the young people listening to this podcast, everyone watched that show, and, like, everyone watched it live. We were obsessed with that show.

It was such a good idea.

Yeah.

Because it was like, "Can you help us find " I always think about the guy, and you covered it, that cold case where it was, like, the boy that, like, he got out of his car and was, like, out in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest.

Yeah.

And he's talking to his parents on the phone. I remember watching that one and just being like, "We've got to find him."

Totally.

Like, it activated the audience in this amazing way.

Yeah. To pay attention to their surroundings more, I think, right?

Yeah. And that, like, they're a part of like, they could actually help something.

Yeah.

In, like, these cases where it's like, "Well, if the police just say it's cold, and then they start on the next murder because they never stop coming."

Right.

"What do we do with these cold cases?"

Right.

Yeah. And Robert Stack, just what a you really wanted to help that man.

You did.

He was so sincere and so, like, come on. He was just in it. And it worked because a 46-year-old maintenance worker named Becky Grannis is watching the show that night in Arizona when a familiar face flashes across the screen. It's presented as a photo of Gregory Barker, but she says, quote, "I was sitting in my living room saying, 'I know that man.'" End quote.

Everyone's dream who watched that show.

Especially every 12-year-old's dream that watched that show.

That's my what? That's my boss.

Yeah. That's my horrible teacher. So Becky thinks that this man looks exactly like a telemarketer who works in the office complex where she works, and that guy goes by the name Alex Graham. She's so smart because I think I would have just called immediately and just been, like, freaked out. She goes to work the next morning and gets a look at Alex Graham to make sure.

How spooky.

Right? But, like, also smart where it's like, "This is the guy." So she's convinced it's the same guy from the episode, so she calls police. And because Greg Barker is also a federal fugitive from the robbery charges, the FBI swoops in and arrests him less than 24 hours after that episode of Unsolved Mysteries airs. Greg Barker is then extradited to Nevada and prosecuted for those three robberies first. He's given 20 years in prison, and then he's brought to Virginia to be tried for the abduction and murder of Hilda Roche.

Really? Wow.

Yeah. He just immediately pleads. He's given 110-year sentence to be served after his federal sentence is over.

Wow.

And while we don't have direct testimony from him, Detective Cahill says on Unsolved Mysteries that he believes that Barker went to Hilda's house that night under the guise of returning her wallet, and then after attacking her in the living room, he took her upstairs and sexually assaulted her in her bedroom, then put her in the trunk of his car, drove and found a secluded place 10 miles away, led her into the woods, and shot her in the head.

So awful.

Yeah. So when he's arrested in Arizona, Barker reportedly tries to claim that he was a government agent entangled in some sort of military conspiracy. And actually, on that episode of Unsolved Mysteries, Detective Cahill says Barker was known to have an unhealthy obsession with spy novels and believed himself to be a, quote, "master spy."

Oof.

Yeah. Greg Barker dies in prison in 2013. As of now, Hilda Roche is the only victim that we know of that he has. And a lot of people talk about if he had this unhealthy obsession with spy novels, then, you know, he was mentally ill, mentally unwell, and whether his motive was straightforward and opportunistic, and he was aware of what he was doing, or he was in a psychological state where he didn't. The fact is that he sexually assaulted and then murdered a woman who thought that she could trust him.

Wow.

"We feel that possibly he could even be a serial murderer. We're very sure of the fact that he is smart and he's very dangerous."

Wow.

End quote. And that's the story of the murder of Hilda Roche.

Wow. Wow. Great job.

Thank you.

It's so troubling that the little piece of information that you gave earlier on that they found her wallet at her house, I hadn't even connected. It's like, that's how you know they had seen each other again.

Yes. I mean, we know this, too, and I'm sure that's why people didn't really he didn't even really try to he didn't try to claim insanity or anything.

Yeah.

It's like, it's so clearly planned. It was so clearly planned from probably when he sat down next to her.

Yeah.

And that's the darkest part.

Yeah. For sure. God. Oof. DNA, let's get some fucking cases solved with this asshole.

Yeah.

Well, great job.

Thank you.

All right. Well, I have a very different style of story, as we like to do.

Great.

However, this story does involve the death of innocent people at the hands of people who are criminally responsible. It's just in a different way. We're starting in the fall of 2008 in Dayton, Ohio, and Minnie Borden is an 82-year-old woman, originally from Alabama, who has been in great health, other than suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, which has been an issue most of her life, not just in her older age. In fact, at 82 years old, she still lives by herself, and she's fiercely independent.

Yes.

Acknowledge being not well.

Yeah.

By December, the symptoms have not let up, and Minnie is noticeably weaker. Finally, on December 10th, she calls her daughter, Earlene, and says the stomach pains have worsened, and she now also has chest pains. They take her to the hospital. Basically, they check her heart, and nothing shows up, so Minnie's discharged. But there's no improvement, and Minnie then goes back to her primary doctor. A few days later, the doctor finds out she had been having bloody stools for weeks now, and so Minnie goes back to the ER and is admitted, but it takes several more days before a stool sample is sent for pathogen testing, which is it's unclear why that took so long.

Yeah.

Sad. So this is the story of a foodborne safety crisis that ended up causing multiple deaths and had criminal consequences. The main sources for the story are reporting from The New Yorker and The Washington Post, as well as a blog post from a very prominent food safety lawyer named Bill Marler, who represented some of the victims in this case. The rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So the outbreak had begun in the fall of 2008, and a total of 714 people are known to have become sick from it.

So people just will have salmonella and just not know it?

Yeah. Like, you know, you and me were, you know, younger. We have the immune system that can fight it, but it's, you know, children and immune-compromised and elderly people. Those are the ones who can't fight it and are, like, hospitalized and found out. So it's probably way higher than that number.

Have you had food poisoning?

I don't think I've had legit food poisoning before. I think I would remember, right?

You would know.

Yeah. I remember.

You wouldn't.

We've been to eat an oyster when we were in Las Vegas, and I can't imagine.

It's insane. Like, I got it one time from a Chinese chicken salad.

That's right.

That was, like, made with cabbage.

Yeah.

And I truly was like, I think I'm going to die. Like, I was like, when do I call someone?

Yeah.

Because I haven't been able to stop doing this for two, three days.

It's that long? It's two, three days?

It's like, your system has to purge.

Yeah.

And then it won't stop purging. And it's crazy. Yeah. It's awful.

Well, so yeah, for children especially and the elderly, you know, it's a problem. In early November of that year, a seven-year-old boy named Christopher Mignet from South Burlington, Vermont, spikes a high fever. It's the first time his mother can remember him being sick since he was a toddler. He has bloody diarrhea and is throwing up, and his stomach pain is so severe he screams that he wants to die.

Oh, God.

I know. So while this is going on all over the country, both state and federal health organizations are still trying to pinpoint the source of the contamination. They realize people are getting sick. They don't know how. In Minnesota, where there are nine known cases, a group of grad students working in the Department of Public Health start calling patients about their diets. The group works at night, and they call themselves Team Diarrhea, which is I don't know how to comment on that.

Whatever gets them through their day.

Exactly.

Because they actually.

They do have to deal.

Right.

With literal diarrhea.

It's a dark time.

Whatever gets you through it.

Yeah.

Eventually, in late December, they get a break. They find that two nursing homes and an elementary school each have a cluster of cases, and everyone seems to have eaten peanut butter. One of the nursing homes still has a jar of peanut butter that they had used on hand. It's from a brand called King Nut, which only sells to institutions like nursing homes, hospitals, and schools, and is fully made by the Peanut Corporation of America.

Yeah.

Which I don't think you should be allowed to call your company that. Doesn't it seem like they represent the country in peanuts? Like, call it Joe's Peanut Corporation.

Yeah.

It's not like.

Well, that's.

You know what I mean?

Like, NBC is the national biscuit company or whatever.

Right.

Like, that's it was a good naming device back then because it's like, no, no, no, I'm not just a guy that.

Yeah.

Built this by myself earlier. It's we're a whole thing of America.

I don't think we should be able to do that. It just.

Yeah.

It's so not clear that it's, like, just the fucking company of executives making decisions, you know?

It's just a bunch of people that do not have peanut allergies.

Exactly. So the Peanut Corporation of America had originated as a family business started by a man named Hugh Parnell, who mostly sold raw peanuts to candy manufacturers. In 1977, the Parnells buy a roasting facility in Virginia and start roasting their own peanuts and eventually making their own peanut products. In the '90s, Hugh sells the company, but just six years later, his sons buy it back, led by the eldest named Stuart. So that's Stuart Parnell. And business booms through the early 2000s.

I will show you pictures of that Halloween party they had.

I know. The Halloween party was.

It was the best.

So cute.

It was so good.

I love it.

They really did it.

So there's a man named David Brooks. He's a buyer for a snack company, and he has long refused to do business with the Peanut Corporation of America, and this was based on three visits he made to the company's processing facility in the '80s. Brooks says, quote, "It was just filthy. Dust was all over the beams, the braces of the building. The roof leaked. The windows would be open and birds would fly through the building."

What?

It was just a time bomb waiting to go off, and everybody in the peanut industry in Georgia, Virginia, and Texas, they all knew. End quote.

You know, I'm just thinking of it, like, and I'm truly talking off the top of my head and out of my ass right now.

In what way?

Yeah. But, like, it feels to me like the peanut industry was really, like, a major thing in this country. Like.

Oh, yeah.

Back in the day, you know what I mean? Like, peanut farmers and, like, the way, you know, people in Georgia, like, made their money.

Yeah.

And it was a huge thing. There's a reason we all eat peanut butter.

Totally. We eat so much freaking peanut butter in this country, I'd imagine, more than any anywhere else.

Yeah. And they're like, "Yeah, the birds can come through here." That's cool.

Totally. Peanut scientists, email us at my favorite murderer Gmail and tell us.

We want to know.

We want to know how big it is. How big is Big Peanut here in the US?

You know, they just did get because it is, you know, it's Halloween time, but they just did a story about how candy is getting really bad because, like, private equity keeps buying into candy companies and then just being like, "You don't need real cocoa. You don't need real this."

Right.

And they just keep making everything taste worse.

And everyone's like, "Oh, is it because I'm not a kid anymore?" No. It's because nobody gives a fuck anymore.

Yeah. We need that oversight.

We do.

We get to bring it back.

Imagine that.

We need it.

Yeah. So Brooks mentions the fact that it's also Georgia, Virginia, and Texas because the Peanut Corporation of America has facilities in all three states and all appear to be equally filthy.

Ugh.

I know. This seems to consistently remain the case into the '90s and the 2000s. In 2006, a new assistant manager named Ken Kendrick points out cleanliness issues at the facility, the leaking roof being the most egregious, and he'll later tell reporters, quote, "Water, particularly anything leaking off of a roof " and this is where things get a little disgusting "there is bird feces washing in."

Yeah.

This is a quote. "The owner wouldn't give us the money to do what we needed to do. The funds were not there." End quote. And so he quits the job pretty quickly after he gets it. He's just like.

Wow.

"I can't in good faith do this without."

I mean, it is that thing where it's like, after a little while, the greed doesn't even make sense anymore.

No.

You are it's just insanity, and you are doing damage and pretending it doesn't matter.

Totally. Totally. There's a thing called moral something.

Moral peanuts?

Moral peanuts.

Where you don't put bird shit into your peanut mix.

Yes.

Yeah. I love that kind.

That, that's it. Moral peanuts.

Moral peanuts.

But then, in early 2009, after Ken had left the position, he hears that a PCA facility in Georgia has been linked to the salmonella outbreak in Minnesota, and so he actually calls authorities and keeps calling them, telling them that whatever problems they are seeing in Georgia will likely be found in the Texas facility as well. So he's just like, "I'm not only going to quit my job. I'm going to be a whistleblower because this is so fucked."

And how maddening where you're like.

Yeah.

It's worse than you even think because it's not just in the place you're focusing on. You've got more coming.

Totally. Totally.

Horrible.

So sure enough, just as Ken had said, in February of 2009, Texas authorities shut down a Peanut Corporation plant in Plainview after discovering dead rodents, their excrement, and bird feathers near an air exchange that ventilates into the production room. Have you heard that thing where, like, there's allowed to be a certain amount of, like, bug parts in peanut butter or something like that?

Yeah. There's all kinds of things like that with food and.

Yeah.

Again.

I don't want to know.

The problem with, like, when they made that argument of, like, corporations are people.

Yeah.

It's like.

Oh, God.

But the problem is that there's some people in this world that are immoral and don't give a shit about other people.

Exactly.

It's fucking not so.

It's not a good thing.

No.

Later, it'll become apparent that there was either a massive oversight on the part of Texas authorities or possibly some corruption that's never been fully unraveled. That Texas plant opened in 2005, and at the plant, peanuts were blanched, roasted, and chopped, but the facility never got a state license to manufacture food. The state never performed a single inspection until that one, four years later, when all the rodent and bird activity was discovered.

Damn.

So that's allegedly. Tests from this inspection come back positive for salmonella, and a sweeping recall is issued of everything ever produced at the facility in the entire time it had been in operation. So all of this, of course, is very bad, but what makes this situation cross over into criminal territory? Well, when the FDA inspects the Georgia plant, they invoke a 2002 law aimed at counteracting bioterrorism, and they do this in order to gain access to the company records. So it wasn't criminal until this moment that they were so.

Okay.

You know, lax.

This was more like they were going to be given fines.

Right.

And told to clean up and the usual thing.

Exactly.

Okay.

But I think it was so it's so severe that the FDA was like, "Ooh, fuck this." These are records that state inspectors, you know, wouldn't have been able to gain access if it was just, you know, regular charges. These records show that on 12 occasions between 2007 and 2008, tests of peanut products made in the Georgia plants came up showing salmonella contamination. And after this, subsequent tests seem to come up with clean results, but these initial tests would have prompted the company to quarantine the products and deep clean the processing plants, but none of that happened.

They're not even lightly cleaning. They're not even doing a.

No.

Karen on a Saturday afternoon just in case someone drops by Passover clean. Like.

Nope.

Bird shit.

Bird and rat shit. Like.

Ugh.

Come on.

Come on. Why do we have to ask?

Truly.

Why do we have to ask?

Yeah. Why can't at the same time, in February of 2009, at the start of the Obama administration, Congress conducts its own investigation into the company, and through this investigation, internal emails are released. These emails demonstrate that Stuart Parnell, the head of the company, the son of the guy who started it, and other higher-ups knew there were issues with salmonella and other food safety concerns. It also shows that the company would falsify test results by testing one batch of products repeatedly, then assigning those results to lot numbers of products that had never been tested.

I'm sorry because this is a little random, but this reminds me of that story, that a doc series that came out about the mortuary guy that was just throwing bodies, where it's like the internal mechanism to go what's right or wrong, what's good or bad.

Yeah.

And they're not seeing it's like, yeah, you can't just do one of these and walk away.

Yeah. Consequences.

There's consequences, and you're creating a situation that you're going to have to answer for at some point.

Totally.

Like, you can't just keep putting, like, a cover over it and being like, "It's fine."

Exactly.

It's just crazy. It stresses me out.

Well, you can when there's no oversight whatsoever. In another email, Stuart's daughter, who works at the company, emails the company's national sales manager and says, quote, "They " meaning the peanuts " need to be air hosed off because they are covered with dust and rat crap." End quote. So she put it in fucking. How about.

Writing?

Throw those ones away. Don't air hose.

No, no, no. It's five-second rule and rat shit.

Ugh.

Doesn't fucking that doesn't work.

There's no air hose. There's no.

No.

What the fuck?

Yeah.

That's not I love a person coming in and pretending they're really mad where it's like, "You know what? We have to air hose these all off."

Yeah.

Or it's like, "No, no, no. It's over."

And also, like, how crazy is it they put it in writing that, like, that mean they didn't think that they were doing anything wrong or that they didn't think they'd ever get caught? Well, I think this was early enough in, like, computer internet times where no one understood it was forever.

Right. Right, right, right, right. Totally.

Including, like, email stuff. They're just like, "This is my private email server."

Totally.

You know, all the fancy stuff.

It's working.

Yeah.

Another set of emails from March of 2007 has a manager from one plant telling Stuart that the test results for salmonella and other pathogens were not ready for a batch of peanut products that were scheduled to go out, and Stuart wrote back, quote, "Just ship it." End quote. So, like, bro.

Just fuck it.

No. And then goes home at night and is like to the kids, like, "Don't eat don't eat that peanut butter. Yes, we get free peanut butter from the plant that I own, but you're not we don't have that in the house."

Is this the kind of person that's gotten a family for themselves, or is this the kind of person that leaves work, goes straight to a bar, talks very loudly about other things, and tries to push all of the air hosing off of rat shit away?

I bet both. I bet both of those things are true.

Yeah. Some people can do it all.

That's true.

Truly.

Two years after these investigations begin, in 2013, Stuart Parnell, his brother Michael, and three other company executives are indicted. Two of the other executives plead guilty and cooperate in exchange for a lighter sentence. The third is found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison. And Stuart and Michael, who own the company and are the sons of the guy who created it, they're found guilty of multiple counts of conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, and the sale of misbranded food.

You're not allowed to do that?

No.

Shit.

Like, it sounds like a kidnapping thing where it's like, "Oh, you took the food over state lines."

Yeah.

That's true.

And you adulterated it.

That's not.

Or inadulterated it?

I don't know. You did something gross to it.

You did something adult to it.

These are some of the stiffest sentences ever given to an executive in a food poisoning outbreak, again, in Obama's administration because that would never happen today. Investigators believe that as many as 20,000 people, possibly more, were made sick from salmonella in Peanut Corporation of America products. At least nine people, but possibly more, died.

Oh my God.

But were never traced back to the PCA.

Right.

No children are killed in the outbreak, but several become very ill.

God.

In the wake of this and other outbreaks, the Obama administration introduced sweeping new regulations to food safety systems aimed at preventing outbreaks instead of reacting to them. Unfortunately, during the second Trump administration, the FDA has lost about 20% of its staff, and the CDC has lost 25% of their staff. The CDC used to have 11 scientists tracking food parasites. Now it has three.

And one of them is RFK.

Don't I am too a scientist.

Oh, and Ivanka.

I'm wearing a white coat.

Ivanka Trump is the head of the.

These cuts were widely attributed to having exacerbated the cyclospora outbreak from this past summer.

Hmm.

It's, guys, it's all connected. And that is the story of the Peanut Corporation of America scandal.

I'm sorry, but I kind of want to rename my LLC, the Peanut Corporation of America.

The Karen Kil what about the Karen Kilgariff Corporation of America? You're the only one who's in charge of Karen Kilgariff.

But I love bird shit, so I have a real there's a real push-pull about me and my recipes.

Just hose down your house with the air hose before people come over.

I'm going to have to air hose this cat shit out of your dinner.

Oh my God.

What? No, thank you.

No. Oh, God. It just makes you want to just grow your own food for the rest of your life.

I mean, it feels like that's what so many people are doing.

Oh, and also, of course, this podcast, We'll Kill You, did an episode on salmonella that is incredible. So go listen to that. It's episode 99. Check that out.

Nice.

Yeah.

Yeah. Get all the ins and outs of salmonella.

Yeah.

That you that you didn't get here.

Get it so that you know when it when it's happening instead of being like, "I'm so sick." And no, you're not. Like, you ate something wrong. Did you see the Lizzie Borden, Monstrous Lizzie Borden show? There's a scene in it where they eat tainted oyster stew.

Oh.

And it is the most disgusting but probably accurate scene I have ever seen that made me go, "No, I'm never eating oysters again."

I have to say, you just reminded me. I started that before I left for vacation, and it was I think I got to episode two of that of Lizzie Borden's monsters.

Ella Beatty. She's Warren Beatty and Annette Benning's daughter, and she's incredible in it.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

I know. I know. Here's the thing about acting nepo babies is they got raised by actors.

Totally.

So.

Totally.

It's not it's different than some of these nepo situations. Like, it's like if you have a mom that's the most bad if you have if your mom's Meryl Streep, you should get parts.

Totally.

Because you already know how to do this shit.

Yeah. I feel like with this one, Ella Beatty's like, "Bitches, no one better call me a nepo baby because I'm going to do this so well." Like, it's really good.

Back up. Back all the way up. I love that that's a truly hot take in 2026. I'm like, you know what? I love nepo babies.

We need more nepo babies.

Plumber nepo babies.

Peanut Corporation of America nepo babies.

I was going to say, the Peanut Corporation of America really was not served by their nepo babies.

It's like.

It depends on the on the milieu.

Oh my God. Can we talk about who the first podcasting nepo baby's going to be? Because there's going to be one, and it's not going to be ours. Who's it going to be? Well, she grew up with a podcaster, so of course she has a podcast.

Of course she speaks compulsively about things that happen in junior high that don't apply to the subject at hand.

Oh my God. Ira Glass. Where are your children? Are they podcasting? We need to know.

We demand to see your children.

We must know.

Well, that was great. I mean, upsetting, and there's a lot to think about. People are all opening their packages of something with peanut butter and closing them back up.

Seriously. Like, Uncrustables would never, you know?

God. We'd know right away.

We would because I live off of those.

They're pretty goddamn great.

Well, thanks for listening, everyone. From we're back from break, and we're happy we'll be back on video next week.

This was very retro. This actually reminds me of COVID.

I know. Me too. The pandemic having to record on fucking Zoom every time.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Being like, "Hey, what's up?"

And then you have to see your own stupid face in the Zoom thing. I hate it.

I know. Well, I covered mine I used my piece of paper to cover the Zoom thing while I was talking because I just will keep on looking at my hair.

It's not even.

There's a whole part I just don't brush. I'm sure you've noticed. There's a whole part I'm like, "Oh, that's not my problem. That's whoever's back there's problem."

It's none of your business. If you can't see it, that part of your hair is none of your business.

And that's what my mother did, and so that's what I will do because I'm a nepo baby.

Because you are a nepo baby.

Of laziness.

Yeah.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an Exactly Right production.

Our managing producer is Molly Smith.

Our consulting producer is Kate Schellenbach.

Our creative lead is Alison Agosti.

Our associate producer is Tessa Hughes, and our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Liana Schwalache.

Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder@gmail.com and follow the show on Instagram @myfavoritemurder.

Listen to Myfavorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Goodbye.

Goodbye.