0:00Hey weirdos, I'm Ash, and I'm Alena, and this is Morbin. This is Morbin. This is Morbin. This is pretty Morbin. What's up, Big Red? Uh, I don't, 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 uh, in here, pretty good. Yeah. And 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, like this room specifically, ratchet, pretty rough. Yeah. It's going to move some stuff around. That's all. Yeah. You know, and like, you worked at a really terrible place for a long time, and then like things remind you of working at that time. This is hypothetical. Things remind you of working. Yeah. And then you just want to change everything about the time in your life where your room

1:03looked like that. Yeah. Because when it was like the worst time of your life, I put that place where you were breaking down every day and crying and screaming and wanting to quit, um, that energy hangs out in a place, I think. And you can only salt the rug so much. You can't only salt the rug. For those of you that say the room so many times, oh, hypothetically, palosanto was keeping my life together. It's true. It was hypothetically, hypothetically. But now that we're so happy and viby, the room's got a match, the room needs to be happy and viby. So we have to, with all the, uh, with our tortured souls for a little while, so, uh, allegedly. And what we began with that I think really made a difference was I got, um, 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 life. You're welcome. And so I think this is the beginning of something beautiful and new.

2:04I got croissant slippers, but I left them at home, I'm wearing, we're wearing slippers in the office. It's a new thing. Office slippers. Office slippers, of course. I'm wearing big old Cheetah ones that you got me and I loved them. Yep. But I also want to wear my croissant slippers. Yeah. Deb Deb has some bare slippers. Yep. I got her bears. I have to get Mikey some slippers, some appropriate slippers. They didn't have animal ones when I, 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 your, 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. Who gives a shit? Who gives a shit? Um, and also, uh, continue trying to do those little romanticizing your life things. Absolutely. As the world gets crazier to 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 the like two nights ago, this

3:05really 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 it on now. It's not enough. But they were nice enough to send us them. They did. Um, 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. Yeah. I really saw that on our bank statement. And, uh, anyway, I started doing the meditations, the nighttime meditations. Yeah, they have some cool ones. And I fell asleep, literally just meditated. Yeah. And I want to do it every night before bed. It's life changing. I love my sunrise alarm. And again, not a nap. Not a nap. Not a nap. 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 to have some fucking dark chocolate, which, and I had some dark chocolate before bed. And I forgot that that has caffeine in it. Oh, it does. You're right. I was white. Oh, like, why do I like? It was rough. I set my Hatch alarm to, again, not net.

4:07I don't know why I keep saying like my Hatch alarm. I set my alarm to like this Gatsby jazz, like slow because I've been telling you guys the slow morning jazz, which I did share at the playlist a bunch of times on my story. 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, and if you don't want it on your actual grid, do a highlight. Oh, there you go. I'll try to do that. So 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. I'll show her how to do it. Yeah. The youth will show me how to do it. I got you. But yeah, so I, there's a setting on it on the alarm that you can wake up to like slow, and it's literally called like morning on West Egg. It's gorgeous. It is such a good way to wake. And you can also pick like the colors that you wake up to. And it's seriously this isn't an ad. Like I swear to you. You're going to be like, this isn't undisclosed to it. We actually like half the time you open it up. It's really not. And just set in the conversation there, I'm just obsessed with it.

5:07It's really changed shit and it makes it a lot easier to wake up on the morning. Yeah. It's little stuff like that that I think we all need. Yeah. And things that make you happy. You know, if you can't get a hatch alarm right now, we're going to emphasize your life in other ways. It's really glass to put your drink in at dinner. Yes. In fact, tell me one last thing before we get into this. Did you just get any glasses? If you go like, if you can find them anywhere, they're like little like water crafts. If you look at like an antique-y looking one, and it's like the glasses on top of it, if you put it on your nightstand, or even just like in your living room as like one, it makes you drink more water. It does. Because you'll want to finish that craft. It does. 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 of a- You really will. And that's the difference between us, noble of a and slash diva. I literally almost bought one off the TikTok shop the other night. But then I was like, is this like too trendy because it was cherry.

6:10Like, it was like a cherry, which was cute. But I like what you're putting down over there. If you look at a vintage rock. It's kind of like an art deco, like Gatsby era, like 1920s looking craft. You can get them pretty cheap, like you can look on Amazon, you can look wherever you want. But you can find a lot of different styles, and you can, and they look so fancy and so expensive. But they do. And 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 shirt together. It does. When you love, I love putting together a guest bedroom when somebody's coming over and making it just like bougie as ful hell. Hell yeah. I love it. Not that I ever have people over. It's good to say I never have people over very rarely. But when I do, I go for it. Yeah. So that's just little things, you know? Yeah. Did you guys said you like to like have in little things to romanticize? To just romanticize. So that's why I'm trying to, trying to offer it whenever I can. I have these cups that I got like vintage shopping or like, um, thrifting.

7:14And they're so pretty. They're like beveled glass. And then they have like this on the rim. It's like this thick, um, border. Yeah. That's like gold leaf almost pretty. And I want to find more of them because I only have four. Yeah. I'm like, I need to find them. That's, I love thrifting, but that's the only issue. I know. I'm not mass-produced. I want more of it. Because now you can find more. Like now. Yeah, you're really working. 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 Koopczyk. You didn't listen to part one and you're here for part two. That's silly. I'm not judging you, but I'll fill you in, okay? 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 mom. Let's date. They did. They did. 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. And Frank's like, act in like a pousseau. Yeah.

8:14Frank is the pousseau of the century. Yeah. In this case. Yeah. In this case. 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 kind of questioned a little bit, she admits that she was getting blackmailed around this same time and she points toward this man, Lewis Moya, but refuses to sign a formal complaint and the way she identified him was super weird. Yeah. And then she told him the police sent her home with like a bunch of mug shots, which I have to think they don't do anymore. Yeah. When I first read that, I was like, what? There's like, go home and look at these. And I was like, here's a book of criminals. Look at them. Yeah. But so she identified the mug, him and the mug shot and then didn't identify him in a line up. But Frank had seen the mug shots and he was like, isn't that the guy literally right there? Yeah. And she was like, oh, gee, wait. Yes. But then she wouldn't sign anything. So the police were like, what's going on here? It's weird. They were kind of 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

9:17insight into what the fuck was going on. Come on, Emma. Because remember, Emma would go to the tropical cafe who was owned by the people that Elizabeth said were blackmailing her. Yeah. 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. Oh. But in her protests, Emma inadvertently mentioned something that caught Detective Henderson's attention, the annulment. Oh, I was waiting for that to be discovered. Yeah. Until that point, investigators actually hadn't heard anything about an annulment. And 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 them. But she insisted that she played no role in this game. She was simply there. But she knew. I simply let it happen. Yeah, exactly. I just didn't do anything.

10:18I 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 shifted toward the Eskivels 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, her rap, probably. So 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. And once they were there, Emma finally came out with 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 Eskivel for help. So the very woman she's saying is blackmailing her, she turned to for help.

11:19It was Eskivel who introduced Elizabeth to Louis Boya, who she had identified and another man, Gus Baldenado. The plan was that the two men would kidnap Olga from the apartment and took 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 now. 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. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying, like, she's so gross that she's making up all these her parents. She's such a, that's, wow. She's a twat. Wow. She's a twat. So 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 Reed to do it through acid in her face if there were off a cliff.

12:20Yeah. But that fell apart when Barbara went to Frank and was like, hey, I think your mom's losing her fucking mind. Yeah. And 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. And then just another woman named Becky, who she recently met. And 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 tendency. I tried to get Becky's. You didn't do it. Forget Becky with the good hair. Don't ask Becky to do that. Like, don't do that. Becky will not come through. Yeah. 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, 9-1-1. I'd like to tell you something. Just trying to get somebody to kill her daughter-in-law, who's pregnant, like hello. So according to author Deborah Holtlarkin, that's the real tragedy of the story. Olga didn't have to die. So many people knew.

13:21Yeah. It 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 order 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 and Ventura County, Roy Gustopson, and report the fake annulment and the impersonation, excuse me. If nothing else, that would be enough to hold Elizabeth until they could track down Louis Moya and Guy Baldenado. Yeah. So the next day, Detective Henderson and his partner started rounding up Esperanza, Ask of Elle, Louis Moya, and Gus Baldenado. Under the threat of being charged as a co-conspirator, Esperanza basically said, yeah, everything that I'm told you is true. Jesus. 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 and all of the sudden did. She's like, so I'm completely innocent. Exactly. Obviously.

14:21I just introduced her to two-hit men. Yeah. I didn't do anything else. I have a tropical cafe. What she did from there? Not my business. Like, okay. Okay. Did you think they were just going for coffee? Like, what the fuck? Everybody wants to have coffee. What's wrong with everybody here? Look, Reed. 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. Which like, it's a lot of money, but like, to kill somebody? Yeah. Hello. When he got back to his desk, Henderson found a note from a patrol officer in the traffic division asking that he returned 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 Baltonado. There are so many people involved in this.

15:23It's a lot of people. According to Rojo, he had loaned his car to Baltonado and Moia 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 inbound 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 specks of dried blood that somebody had clearly tried to get rid of evidence. Oh, no. This is all just like lining up. He gets like one piece of information and then it's slowly, 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. And she just said that she was innocent and was being blackmailed. Yeah. She didn't even say she was a bitch. No.

16:23But you know what? We know. We knew it. She's a bitch. Yeah. So Elizabeth Duncan might not have been talking, but her co-conspirators were a lot more forthcoming, of course. Having been identified by Emma Short and Esperanza Eskivell 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. And according to Gus Baldenado, he and Louis met with Elizabeth, who was with Emma, by the way. But also 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. Yeah. 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 three to six months, like when she could get the money. What a complete piece of shit, truly all of them. Yeah. One 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. Yep. So on the night of November 17th, after Olga's friends left for the night, Louis and Gus

17:24went to her apartment and Louis went up and knocked on the door, which is where the landlord, or the landlady heard the fun stuff. Oh, yeah. When Olga came to the door, Louis 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 need your help, nope, nope, no, no, especially when you're eight months pregnant. Hell, no, nope. But obviously she's worried about her fiance. Yeah, she's worried about her husband, so she's like, oh shit, like let me help you. Yeah. So when the car, Gus was sitting in the back seat posing as Frank, but when Olga got down to 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 taped 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.

18:25So they stopped in Ohai and pulled the car off the road by Cacitas 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, 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. Oh, 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. And Elizabeth just said, OK, good. Thanks for killing my daughter and daughter-in-law and my grandchild, the wife of my son. Yeah. Thanks for doing that. NBD. On December 21, Gus Baldinado actually led police to the culvert in Ohai where they had buried the body. And Olga's remains were disinterred and taken back to Santa Barbara.

19:27This is horrible. When the medical examiner 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 didn'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. So when Lewis Moyer was confronted with the evidence, witness statements, Baldinado'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 ponding some jewelry, she hadn't given them

20:30the 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 like she's not going to, she's not going to fall through it. She's not going to come through with anything. No. Now on December 21st, the district attorney Roy Gustafson charged all three with first degree murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder among other things. And bail was set at a hundred thousand dollars. According to Deborah Holtlarkin, Roy Gustafson 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 and 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 Baldenado. And fortunately, 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 was only when reporters called the house that evening that Olga's family learned she

21:34was in fact dead and had been murdered. Oh, shit. Yeah. A reporter for the LA Times wrote Mrs. Coupchick 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 kind of shit that you're like, don't report on that. That's horrific. Like I get certain things need to be reported on, but like nobody deserves to know. What her initial response was to finding that. 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 country. Yeah. Gustavsend told a reporter, as far as I'm concerned, the only reason Moia and Baldenado sought some money for Miss Duncan was because they wanted the pay they were promised for the job they did. So she's saying like, 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 is not... They're all shitty. It's just horrible all the way around. But you're not a victim.

22:35Yeah. Exactly. You were not a victim. So less than a week later, Gustavsend presented the case to the grand jury, calling on almost a dozen witnesses, so all of whom testified that Olga had been repeatedly being harassed by her with Duncan consistently, and had actually gotten multiple death threats. Yeah. Given the number of people who had heard Elizabeth make all of these threats too or something similar, Gustavsend really didn't have a lot of trouble as portraying Elizabeth Duncan as a viciously overprotective mother with a deep hatred for Olga. I don't even know if you can call her an overprotective mother, even viciously 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 unnatural. Well, and that's the thing. Like, he's... That is not a natural motherly protection. And there's nothing to protect him from. He willingly got married. Yeah. He willingly decided to have a child. He's a grown man. Like, what's the problem here? Yeah. Now, speaking of Frank, he was noticeably absent from the grand jury hearing after he learned

23:35what had happened to Olga, and that his mother was being... He was brought on charges for it. He just disappeared. Wow. Yeah. According to Elizabeth's lawyer, S. Ward Sullivan, Frank had moved out of the apartment that he'd rented with Olga and hadn't been seen since the body was recovered. Almost like he moved out, but she wasn't living there. Yeah. He lives with mommy. Exactly. Now, the trial began in late February of 1959, and by that time, Frank had resurfaced. Oh. 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 Baldenado had actually withdrawn their pleas of innocent and actually pleaded guilty to the charges. Wow. But their lawyers had signaled their intent to refile pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity. Which is like, no. You had... No. You got paid to do something horrific. And you had every chance to stop. This isn't 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

24:38would 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, we're still very fascinating for reporters. Yeah. 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?

25:39I think she was trying to make Frank jealous in a weird way. Ew. So Gustavson seemed to relish telling the jury and I would have too. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Given that she had stiffed, everybody should promise money to in the murder of Olga, I'm pretty sure that's true. Yeah. Like, she's just known to not make good at least something to think about. No. 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, Gustavson called Barbara Reed 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. And Elizabeth obviously cried at the defendant's table. But her tears were quickly replaced with fiery anger as soon as Barbara claimed that Elizabeth

26:43tried to hire her to commit murder. The testimony was continuously interrupted by Elizabeth's having some kind of 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 lull. And there's pictures. She was having a lull face with her head thrown back laughing in the courtroom. Yeah. She was 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 Lewis Moyis testimony where he gave a detailed account of the kidnapping in the murder, Frank fled the courtroom in tears saying, not over the death of his wife. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Obviously, I would also be that way. It is 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.

27:43Because he's concerned. 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 us to the role of Elizabeth and Olga's death. Lewis Moyia told the court, at first, she said 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 Moyia, 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. Moyia 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. And also the whole acid in the face thing, she is so jealous of Olga. Absolutely. She's such a clear psychological manifestation of that.

28:45She 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. Like I just cannot. Why are you so jealous of yourself in a natural 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-in-son cases and they freak me out to know it. That freaks me the fuck out. I hate it. Now in his testimony, Gus Baldenado 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 then return. And Elizabeth told them, no, I've tried that and it's not possible. Wow. It's clear about 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.

29:56So the dramatics continued when Emma took the stand toward the end of the trial to testify against her BFF Elizabeth. Jesus. 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 like literally trying to restrain her. I 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, don't my look. Like this bitch is saying that you are a literal like murderous. And it's like, you're like, but you're wearing my goddamn sweater. Yeah. 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, get great for yourself.

30:58And she took the stand on March 3rd, which is weird because today is March 3rd. We don't do this. We don't know why this happened. In fact, we were supposed to record this like a couple days ago, I think. Holy shit. Hello. What is that? Now, according to Elizabeth, she did once have a plan to trust, trust 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. For me. She never went through with that. She said, no. I love that she was going to trust up her son. Yeah. Hello. She even went as far as admitting that she tried to enlist Barbara Reed 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 and 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 trust up Frank. Nothing. Nothing's up Frank. Yeah.

31:58That's what she's saying. What the fuck? She's like they were going to kidnap him and scare him into leaving Olga. That's what she's saying. Now according to Elizabeth, the entire plot had everything to do with keeping her sonny at home and nothing to do with Olga personally. Olga was fine. She didn't care about it. Yeah. 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 yourself for a long time. A long, long time. She claimed she never wanted Olga to be murdered, but she didn't make any secrets about 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 to daughter-in-law her character and she called me a bad name and she said she would marry my son whether I liked it or not. Do you know what I would have called you? A bitch. A cunt. What? To you and T. The worst thing. To you and T. That's what I would have called you. Honestly. I hope she did call her love.

32:59But 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. She thinks it's going to help, though, because she's like, well, I'm being honest. Yeah. I know how I felt. Yep. So the testimony got heated the next day when Roy Gustavson 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. Gustavson. My name is Frank, not Frankie. I'm a big boy, sir. It's like only mommy gets to call me Frankie. Mr. You mean it. Poo to you. In response, Gustavson was like, hey, can you eject him from the courtroom? Can you get that Poo swat the fuck out of this courtroom? But the judge would doubt. Going forward, though, whenever Gustavson 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. Gustavson.

33:59I think you should have some respect for him. So as anyone could have predicted, Elizabeth proved to be a pretty difficult person to 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 bouts of weeping all of 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 Kubczyk. The verdict kind of shocked everybody in the court, but Elizabeth seemed to primarily focus on you guessed it, her sonny boy.

35:03After the verdicts was read, she told him, don't worry too much, Frank. Oh, 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. Lewis Nash, set 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. 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 lot. Yeah. She's just very difficult. Yeah.

36:03She's got, there's something going on for sure, but she's sane. So according to Dr. Nash, Elizabeth's personality was the same as most criminals and those who he came in frequent contact with in his, 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. And it's like, you can be a psychopath, but still be sane. And I know that's hard to understand, but it's the facts. Yeah. 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 reporter, she was defiant. She said, they are not going to make me cry. Those jurors were prejudice. I think they all lied when they said they would give me a fair trial, liars, all of them. So 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 Holtlarkin, which of course will link her book in the show notes,

37:06she wrote, Duncan's trial might never have stood up to today's legal standards, which is pretty true. Yeah. It's highly likely that Gustavson kind of tainted the jury a little bit with his repeated release of irrelevant facts. It's about a little bit. You really do look at the legal part of that, like really parent down to the skeleton there. You can't do that. Yeah. Like, we can look at it now and be like, well, yeah, we can talk about it. But if we were presenting this case to a jury, we really couldn't say that we couldn'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 heaping mountain of evidence against Elizabeth. Absolutely. I mean, you have several people who are telling her 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's 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.

38:09She's my friend. I'm actually wearing her sweater right now. Yeah. She also was there for the annulment thing. Yeah. So she's been there. She's right or die friend. And at this point, she's like, yeah, I got to tell you because I'm under a fucking oath. Yeah. I can't purge her myself. Right. But 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. Right. Like there was evidence, but I do understand that they're saying like 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. If I was sitting on that jury, that would absolutely factor into my decision. For sure. 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

39:11and 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- For sure. They were- For sure, or whatever. Not a lot of them would lead me to believe that somebody would do this to the daughter of my- Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, yeah. It makes me think she's a bitch. Right. And that she's an unlikely likeable 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 Chessman, the so-called red light band. We talked about that. We talked about that. 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

40:14acted 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 again, a very different time. Yeah. After all of her appeals at that point, and Elizabeth Duncan was sent to the gas chamber on the morning of August 8th, 1962, and so were Lewis, Moya, and Gus Waldenado. Well, Elizabeth's 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 1012, the prison doctor announced all three were dead. And 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.

41:18The general consensus is that Frank actually claimed her remains after the execution, and that he had her buried in a private cemetery. I know. Not one part of me believes that though. No. Like, that absolutely happened. Now, what about Frankie Mayass? 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.

42:18So that is the case of Olga Koopchik's murder. Holy shit. Yeah. It's just really, it's just such a tragic case with Olga, like just being terrorized in the final. Yeah. You're so of her life. Yep. And then ultimately, being kidnapped and murdered, like, what the fuck? It's really sad. Yeah. Yeah. So let's do a fun fact. Yes. B's actually have knees. You know how people say like the B's knees and you're always like, fun, yeah. This expression, the expression, the B'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 you. Yeah. B's in fact have knees. I like that a lot. That came from the fact site. I love that.

43:19And with that, we definitely hope you keep listening. Yeah. And we hope you keep it. But not so weird that you don't think about the fact that B's have knees. I'll think about that forever. Think about it forever. Bye. Bye.