Blanche Taylor Moore, The Oldest Woman on Death Row (Part 2)

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash, and I'm Alina, and this is morbid. This is morbid. I started that with no warning, so I do have to give you like, well, for just jump and write it. You jumped right in, yeah. I was like, oh, I have to yon, I have to burp hold on. And then I was like, okay, hey, we're and you were like, whoa, I was like, all right, here I am. He said, I'm looking for a fun fact. Here I am. Here she be. Here I do. What's up? I don't know. Today, Alina said, whatever, I'm getting cheese fries. It's true. I literally said that and then I got cheese fries. Not Wendy's you guys. And it was right. I didn't get a foe foe. I got great at that. Did they sell that stuff? I don't think they have a foe foe. But I don't know. I'm not positive. I don't know either. Wendy's. I'm speaking out of my ass. Like, I don't have any clue if they have a foe foe. Well, then why would you tell me that they do? Because it felt like a long running little special. Yeah. You know, if they still have a foe foe. But maybe it's like the dollar menu. And it's just always there. Maybe. Oh, I used to fuck so heavy with that when I was in high school. We love the dollar. Broke as hell. We were like, oh, minimum wage. Let's go. Let's go get a dollar dinner at Wendy's for a dollar. Those were the days they were. And so were the foe foe days. Yeah. Now it's got a Dave single. Like with a combo, which was great. I think it was probably like nine dollars. I got spicy nuggets because she's reckless. Spicy nuggets are my favorite. I know. You love spicy nuggets. I love a little spice. We know. We know. A little spice. A little spice. I can't do the spicy nuggets because of IBS. Yeah. You know, you know, IBS girl. He's rise up. Yeah. And I got heartburn. I know. Yeah. That sucks. You don't get heartburned. No, I don't. Which is like, I feel precarious saying that. How does it feel to be John's favorite? I know. To be 40 and say that you got heartburned. Life is like, oh, we haven't given that to you. So I'm like, thank you, universe. I just thought of something that I've never gotten, but I'm not going to say it because I'm not going to know what it is. I'll tell you later, maybe. I'll like, I'll sign it to you. Okay. But I'm not saying it. I'm not going to speak it into existence. It's just a task that most people have to fulfill. Oh, I know exactly the time you turn it like when you turn 18. No, I didn't. No, I didn't say it. No, I didn't say it. You said it without saying it. But I didn't say it. So hasha, hasha, hasha. I think you all know what she's talking about. What task she has not been called for, called for even more. Don't call me. I'm busy. Guys say it to her. We didn't kick you, but it kicked you in the shed. I'm going to come over there and I'm going to hiya. Yes for it. Just fill it with. What? Just fill the comment section with. No. So what are you doing? I'm just kidding. What are you doing? I'm just kidding. No, I'm not going. I won't go legally. I think you can rest. All right. Moving on, moving on. Moving away from that task. Oh, you're screwed. You're screwed. Anyways, this is part two of a two-part series. I kind of reminded me of that song where you're like, standing in time with my mouth open wide. Yeah. We need that. Yeah. It's been, you know, it's been a crazy day. It has been a crazy day. A good day. Yeah. A good day. Yeah. A good day. Just like a little cookie day. We've been little silly. It's been a cookie week. Yeah. It's weird because I think it's, it's today, Thursday. Yeah. It's something. I don't. I think it's Thursday. Days don't have meaning anymore. It's coming. I woke up and I thought it was Monday. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I think every day is a weekend when the kids are out of school. Yeah. That's true. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. Very am I. Yep. All right. Well, speaking of cookie days. Yeah. This is a cookie part too. It's obviously very tragic, but my god of this woman. Yeah. Already. I'm like, whoa. Blanche. This should nothing like my pup. Nothing like your pup. I'm really only a little bit like Blanche to ever row the character. Yeah. And the fact that she was a flirt, but she wasn't a murderous. Yeah. That's where the comparison ends. So at the end of part one, Blanche's long-term boyfriend passed away suddenly. That was Raymond, Raymond Reed. And it seemed it could have been from Guillain-Barre syndrome. Her husband James had also passed suddenly not too long ago. And they thought that was potentially due to heart problems. And before that, her father passed away under strange circumstances. But at the time of each death, nobody really looked at the death says anything other than, you know, just a tragedy. I didn't think any foul play was involved or anything like that. Of course not. But this Blanche let me remind you now the oldest woman on death row. Yeah. Her luck was going to run out eventually. And can I just tell you it's kind of like an episode of the pit, but like even better. Oh. It's like the pit with arrests. Oh. Yeah. There wasn't a rest on the pit. Wasn't it a bad arrest though? It was a dumb one. What's her name? The red-headed one. Oh, McKay. Yeah. Yeah, fuck that arrest. When they arrested the K. And I was like, yeah, fuck that. I was pissed about that. Oh, you know what? You haven't finished season two yet. No. There's a good arrest in season two. Okay, cool. I think he gets arrested. So yeah, it's like the pit with arrests. It's like the pit. And it's also kind of like, um, house. It's a little bit like house. Okay. Okay. I'm locked in. So we'll get there. Okay. It's a little toward the end. Well, well, you said you were locked in and then it felt like you were backtracked. I mean, can I be locked in for that? Yeah. I'd have a literal job. Yeah. All right. So Raymond's death removed one obstacle from Blanche and don't forget Pastor Dwight. Pastor Dwight, going public with their relationship. And when the lawsuit against Kroger was settled in the summer of 1987, they were finally able to be together without fear of consequences. Because remember, part of the reason that they were kind of like living their relationship out in the shadows was that Blanche said her ordeal with Robert Hutton at Kroger made it so that she couldn't be with men. Oh, yeah. So she gets the settlement and all the sudden she's cared. Yes. After the lawyers were paid, the settlement left Blanche with about $100,000. So for now, her money problems were also gone. That summer, she and Dwight planned to get married. But that plan had to be put on hold when just one month after the settlement, Blanche was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor told her it was luckily still early enough that the cancer could be treated if she had a double mastectomy. And the idea of surgery was obviously devastating to her, but she went ahead with it, and it was successful at removing her cancer. After that, she got some reconstructive surgery done, and in the end, nobody could really tell that she had gone through this in the first place. Now with her surgery out of the way, Dwight slowly started introducing Blanche to his family and his friends. They found her to be somewhat strange and not really anything like his previous wife. Blanche told them that she was a devout Christian, but she also didn't seem focused on the things that like, I guess supposedly good Christian women do. Oh, I don't know what that is. I was going to say, just make me think of that TikTok where it's like, she reads, she's like, "Babble girl, who reads her Bible." I've never got that. What does he say? Go home and read her Bible. I think it was a vine. I'm going to find it. I've never received that on my free page. Yeah, well, you should. I just say, yeah. That's what it is. I love that. That's what his family wanted. That makes so much sense. This episode might be in-hidged because we're in-hidged. We're very in-hidged right now. So, however off-pitting they might have found her, it was obvious that Dwight really adored Blanche, so his family was like, "Okay, let's try to give her a chance," and nobody really went to him and was like, "We wish she was a church girl who went to church and read her Bible." I'm read her Bible. You're my evil. Now, Blanche, while she was getting to know her soon to be family, she was also increasing the distance between herself and Raymond's family, her boyfriend that had passed away. They'd been together for over 10 years at that point, so she had become very close with his children, Ray and Stevie, but after they all agreed to split up the inheritance three ways, Ray and Stevie just really didn't see or hear from Blanche all that much anymore. Now, at the time, they were obviously grieving the loss of their father and really not in any place to be dealing with as a state, so they considered it a blessing that Blanche was there. Sweet Blanche to help them with everything. Sweet Blanche. But after several months had passed and they were out of the initial stages of grief, things were starting to look pretty fucking suspicious. When Raymond died, Blanche told his sons that he had written a will and it dictated that his estate, which included a pension from Kroger and a life insurance policy, was to be split between all three of them. That's what she said. Okay. Once they had time to go over their dad's documents, though, their opinion of Blanche started to change. They weren't as thankful for her anymore. Oh, no. For one thing, when they went to see a lawyer with a copy of Raymond's will, they learned that it said absolutely nothing about splitting anything with Blanche. Oh, yeah. Their father had left everything to the two of them and made Blanche the executor. Oh, she didn't get anything. She was just supposed to steal it up. Yeah. Oh, damn. So by the time they got around to seeing the will, most of the estate had already been divided. though. Now, not long after Blanche finished her reconstructive surgery, Stevie Reid called and confronted her about the money. Not wanting to make things any more difficult, he actually took a pretty reasonable position. He was like, "What was done was done. You've already got some piece of it." Like, that's fucked up. We're not going to take the money back, but the life in Sharon's money hadn't been paid out yet. I think it was just the pension. So, he was like, when that gets paid out, we're not giving you a third of it. No. Because you're not into it. You're not in the will. As far as the estate went, there wasn't really much to speak of. The real payout was the life insurance. So, when Stevie told Blanche that they weren't splitting it with her, she lost her fucking mind. Oh, man. She went on a tirade about the will and the letter that Raymond had supposedly written before his death laying out his wishes. This tactic of high pressure insistence had always worked for her in the past. Yeah. But Stevie held his position good and insisted something about this all just wasn't right. Yep. So, when she realized that he wasn't going to back down, she yelled at him to keep the damn money and basically never speak to her again. Okay. That was really the last time that his Raymond son's ever heard for Blanche. Honestly, good. Yeah. But it's like bullshit that she did get money from the estate. She got some. And she wasn't entitled to it. No. And honestly, big of them to let her have it. Honestly, I was going to say that was really big of them. But the sad thing is if they sued her for it, they probably would have spent all the money that they were getting and fees. Yeah. It's honestly not worth it. No, it's not. Unfortunately. Now, the money she had received from Raymond's estate had already run out. And with all the hospital bills and the time that she had been out of work for her reconstructive surgery, the money from her settlement with Kroger wasn't going to last her much longer. So, a few days after her conversation with Stevie, Blanche brought up the potential of marriage with Dwight. Because she's like, I got to hitch my fucking ride to somebody, of course. And he was just as enthusiastic as he had been in the past. But before they went forward with their marriage, he said he wanted to tell her about his past relationship. So they drove into the mountains for the weekend to get away. And Dwight told Blanche the full story of how his marriage had fallen apart about his 17 year affair with his secretary. And about how he had lost his congregation as a result. But also, Blanche doesn't have a like to stand on because she cheated on her husband for the better part of their marriage. Exactly. With multiple men. Yeah. She also cheated on her Mr. with other men on her Mr. Yeah. Now Dwight knew that the affair was wrong, he said. But he also said he he knew how much he loved Eileen and genuinely believed that they would end up married. That was his mistress. So he said while he wasn't proud of the affair, he didn't regret the relationship. Now, given how close they'd become over the previous year, Dwight probably expected some amount of sympathy and compassion from Blanche. I mean, she does want to marry him after all. So he was stunned when she just quietly called him a sinner and like kind of shut down. Whoa. Rather than listening to his story without judgment or disapproval, she was devastated. And she insisted that he turn the car around and take her home immediately. Instead, he pulled over and he gave her a minute to collect her thoughts and then listened as she told him about her father and all the awful things that he had done throughout his life. Clearly, she was feeling triggered by the honesty. Yeah. Because remember her dad was like a huge womanizer. Now, after the confessional car ride, things between Dwight and Blanche kind of went back to normal or at least Dwight thought they did. Blanche on the other hand was still harboring very intense feelings of betrayal. And she was pretending everything was okay when they were together, but she couldn't help let some of her anger seep out around Dwight's family. One afternoon, she and Dwight's daughter Debbie went out together shopping. And Blanche kind of started to pry about how Debbie and her brother Doug felt about their father's divorce and all the events that had led up to it. And Debbie said they really didn't have any anger towards their father. And both she and Doug understood that sometimes things don't work out with people. That kind of should have put the matter to rest. Yeah. But Blanche pressed on. She outright called Dwight's previous mistress, a slut, and said that Debbie's mother must absolutely hate her dad for what he did. But Debbie insisted, everybody moved dynamically, like we're all over let it go. Let it go. Exactly. It really wasn't your situation. No. Blanche lost her shit though. When Debbie was like, it's fine. Like everything is cool. She told Debbie her father, aka, the man Blanche is about to marry was a wicked evil man who deserved whatever karmic retribution he got. What? Yeah. So Debbie was like, what the fuck? Debbie's like, I'm sorry, what? But she chalked Blanche's response up to her religious upbringing because Dwight had told his daughter that Blanche had been raised in a fundamentalist religious community that had very outdated views. So Debbie was like, OK, maybe her outburst is just like a result of those views, I guess? People are so much more understanding than I am. Same. I would be like, that's insane what you just said. It's also her fault. Like how you reacted. You're not going to marry my dad. No, I'm going to make sure of it. So she was like, OK, like I'm going to let that go. But she put that to her back pocket. She never forgot that shit. Smart. And she really never felt entirely comfortable around Blanche. Yeah, I imagine. I wouldn't either. Now, this is I think it's like sweet. She never told her dad that this happened. I mean, that was kind of her to not. Because I think she just didn't want to fuck things up for him and hurt him. Yeah, and her, because he really loved Blanche. Like he was like, he wanted to marry her. He wanted to continue his life with her. Because if you, I imagine in her case that she's like, well, he's not going to not marry her. Yeah, like he loves her. So all I would be doing is hurting his feelings. Exactly. Is that really worth if he's going to go through with it? Anyways, am I going to pile on her feelings as well? Which, again, she's, she's, that's pretty smart and pretty like kind. It's also just like such a shitty position. I don't know if I'll position. And I also wonder if she was like somewhat afraid of Blanche. Because that was very wild behavior. That was freak me out. Yeah. I'd be like, I don't want to be involved in this. Yeah. I don't like when people are over the top like that. I don't like to get it together. So she'd ever said anything about Blanche's outburst. So as far as Dwight was concerned, things couldn't have been better. Yeah. I don't know anything about karma courtribution that he was in for. So in the summer of 1988, they started making plans like official plans for their wedding. It was to be a fall wedding at Dwight's congregation just after Thanksgiving. Everyone in Dwight's family was pretty excited when they heard the news. Dwight's sister, Nolan said, we thought Blanche would be a tremendous asset to Dwight's ministry. Blanche's daughters on the other hand were less enthusiastic about their father, their mother's new fiance. Yeah. Cindy said, we're capable of a good deep belly laugh. He's capable of a giggle. Like they just didn't feel like he really fit in. Yeah. It also didn't help that her daughters were really attached to Raymond after their father passed because he was a huge part of their lives. Yeah. And they kind of always hoped that Raymond and Blanche wouldn't have me. Yeah. So this was a little tough. It's tough for everybody. Yeah. No, as with as they were planning the wedding, Blanche revealed to Dwight that her daughters were going to be the ones paying for the reception. Oh, up until that moment, Dwight had never considered Blanche's finances or her source of income, which is wild because like I'm not blaming him, but like when you are getting married to someone, please get an idea of their financial future. Yeah, just for future wrap because you're tying yourself to their death. Yeah. Your stuff is their stuff. Their stuff is your stuff. Now, he knew that she got some money from Raymond's death and the settlement from the Kroger suit, but that was really all he knew. I don't know that he knew how fast she was running out of that. When it came to his finances, the complete opposite was true. Once they decided to get married, he gave every detail about his income sources to Blanche, including his life insurance policy and retirement package. Oh boy. She had a full view of everything. Oh boy. Now, as Thanksgiving approached, Dwight was getting more and more excited about the wedding, but just a few weeks before the wedding was supposed to take place. His enthusiasm was cut short when he suddenly became very ill. It started with a terrible case of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. And what was weird was that he never really had stomach issues before this. So he kind of chalked it up to just nerves and excitement and stress leading up to the wedding. But a few days later, he was still experiencing these kind of GI symptoms. And then his symptoms elevated to also include a skin rash and numbness and tingling in his arms and hands. Oh, that's not good. So the new symptoms concerned him enough to go see his doctor who diagnosed him with shingles. The same illness that Raymond had been diagnosed with prior to his death. Okay. Weird. Yeah. One week before the wedding, Dwight and Blanche managed to make it out to go to dinner and then returned home and went to bed. Dwight's stomach had been bothering him since they got home, which he figured maybe he just ate something weird. Yeah. So we went to bed. But unfortunately, not long after laying down, he bolted upright and projectile vomited across the room. Oh, my God. And then just collapsed on the bed and pure agony. Holy shit. The next morning, he was still in too much pain and too sick to do his usual visits with parishioners. And strangely to his surprise, Blanche who ate the same exact meal that he had the night before was the very picture of health. Oh, so it wasn't the food weird. Yeah. Now the theory that Dwight had been experiencing some sort of food poisoning became even less possible as his symptoms persisted for days at a time. Yeah. After a while, he would get better and think that whatever it was had passed, only to have the painful nausea and the agonizing symptoms return at the worst possible times. Like when he was driving or giving a sermon. Oh, no. Imagine you're in the middle of church, like trying to like lift people up and then you just have to go vomit. Oh, that's awful. Yeah. So things became more alarming on the afternoon of Blanche's physical with her doctor for the marriage license, which by the way, I looked this up. This, it's been phased out since. But up until like the 80s/90s, you had to get a physical before you got married to get your marriage license. Really? They wanted to rule out like syphilis and like any kind of like- I didn't know that. Infectious diseases. Interesting. Isn't that crazy? It's not a thing anymore. But you just have to get a full blood blood test. Now, the doctor gave Blanche a clean bill of health, but he was slightly concerned about how Dwight looked. He was like, "You don't look so good." He looked like shit. He was like, "I might not give you this fucking bill of license." Yeah. The Reverend assured the doctor that he was just experiencing a flu, like a terrible flu. A really bad one. Yeah. And he said, "I'm going to take some medication when I get home. I'll be all right." As they were driving, he felt another wave of nausea that awash over him. And he quickly pulled over to the side of the road with just enough time to get his door open to vomit. And behind him, he could hear Blanche laughing at the fact that she was the one coming from the doctor, but he was the one vomiting. I imagine you're vomiting in your partner's laughing at you. Your fiance. Who you're doing to marry in like six days. It threw ever left at me while I was vomiting. Oh my god. There would be- I love you, babe. There would be a safe corner on the surface. I'd lose my face. No, are you kidding me? Like what? Oh, that's awful. No. He might have found it humorous as well, but when he looked at the ground, he saw streaks of red blood in his vomit. Oh no. So things were escalating here. And the days that followed it became abundantly clear that he was far too sick to go through with the wedding. So they pushed it back six weeks to give him time to rehearse. Okay. You gotta go to the hospital. Yeah. Like why is no one going to the hospital? He's about to go to the hospital. Okay. Things only continue to get worse. Within a day or two of that doctor's appointment, that was blanches. Dwight symptoms became much worse. He was nauseous pretty much constantly. And now his abdomen was starting to swell. Oh. So this time he didn't bother with just going to a doctor like a doctor's appointment. Instead, he had blanched drive. I'm straight to the hospital. Yeah. They waited in the emergency room for hours. The ER doctors ran some tests. They took an x-ray and they diagnosed him with a bowel obstruction. Oh, shit. Now they recommended that he go home and rest, consume a liquid diet, and then it would eventually pass. I don't think it was like super big at this point. Also, it was what the 80s, like almost the 90s. So pretty serious. He did as they suggested. But less than 24 hours passed before he was back up hospital. Yeah. More x-rays were taken, more tests were run, but the doctors were pretty confused about what this was. Maybe you should keep them in the hospital. Maybe you should admit him. Yeah. In the x-rays, they could clearly see a mass, but they couldn't figure out what it was because it had gotten bigger. But no cancer that they knew of grew like that exponentially within 24 hours. So weirdly. So he's told he has a mask. He's told it's getting bigger. Despite not having any explanation for what this mass in the x-ray is, blanching immediately ran to the phone and called Dwight Sisters to tell them that it was cancerous. Huh. The mass in his intestines was cancerous. He loves to call family members and prematurely diagnose or call for time of death. Yep. Yeah. He shared us before calling anybody to eat wild. That's wild and see services. He's wild. Wild lady. Like, whoa. Yeah. So after talking over their different options for what they could do here, the ER doctors explained that they did want to do surgery to remove breast, but the problem was his heart was showing signs of stress that were very concerning. And that came as a surprise to Dwight because as far as he knew, his heart was strong. He never really smoked or drank to access. And like, he exercised like, yeah, he never had a problem. No, he never had an issue. But when doctors looked at the results from his EKG, the results appeared to be the profile of a much older person who had suffered heart problems for years. So he was like, what the fuck has happened? What is going on? Now, he agreed to do the surgery. And a few days later, he was administered the anesthetic and wheeled into the OR. But when the surgeon cut into his intestine, they were stunned to find that contrary to the x-ray. There was no cancerous mass or mass at all in Dwight's intestine. What? There was no sign of any kind of blockage either. His intestines were just inflamed. What the fuck? But there was no mass. And they had seen a mass on the x-ray. The inflammation didn't account for what they saw on the x-ray. Yeah. Nothing about this made any kind of fucking sense. Yeah, apparently. And like, they would have known if he had passed the blockage, so it wasn't bad either. Now, just to be certain that they didn't miss anything, this is so gross, the surgeons pulled out the entire length of Dwight's intestines and inspected them from one end to the other. Holy shit. You know how long intestines are. Yeah. They inspected. And that's just like tedious. And like also recovering from that. Yeah. Having your fucking, like, you're literally being disemboweled. Yeah. Literally bowled. Yeah. They found nothing. So they put everything back and they sewed them up. No. When he came out of surgery and was conscious enough to speak to the doctors, they explained that they hadn't found anything during his surgery. And the best they could estimate was maybe he had a kink in his intestines and they worked that out. Wow. Now, the news that he was cancer for you obviously came as a relief. But a surgery like this had been very traumatic. And it was also going to take a long time to recover. So he was going to need to take it easy. Now, fortunately, he had blanched by his side. Yeah. I think she said she would be there to help him through. She told his family Dwight and I are going to live in sin for a while because I'm going to have to move in with him to care for him. Okay. So they did. Great. As the weeks passed after the surgery, Dwight started talking about the wedding again, but Blanch insisted he was too well to think about that. Which I think we don't need to talk about why we don't need that. She might have been right. But he was insistent that they at least kind of restart any kind of preparation. But unfortunately, before they could get to that, Dwight's doctors found another mass in his X-ray during a follow-up visit. Initially, they expected to find evidence of some kind of intestinal problem. But when they looked at the new X-ray, they found an entirely new mass in a different area, roughly the same size as the previous one. Now, since it wasn't possible for that original mass to have worked its way back up to the original spot, they knew it was different. But since it wasn't long enough after the initial surgery, they couldn't do another surgery. They can't just open, they can't just keep opening you up. So after the follow-up appointment, they kept an eye on the mass. But since Dwight's symptoms seemed to have improved a little bit, they weren't as concerned. Then and winter, as the new wedding date approached, Dwight's previous symptoms appeared with a ferocity that he had not yet experienced. Blanche rushed him to the hospital. He was admitted immediately and hooked up to a ton of machines to monitor his very erratic vital signs. By that time, there was fluid amassing in his lungs, and he was experiencing painful diarrhea and vomiting a "milky foam." So once he was stable enough for surgery, his doctors opened up his intestines for a second time, and for a second time found absolutely nothing. No mass, no blockage, just irritation. This is horrifying. It really is. So he managed to recover much faster than he had before, and he was able to be discharged after two weeks in the hospital. But at that time, he had the opportunity to consider his relationship with Blanche. It occurred to him that she hadn't been as present at the hospital as she was the first time. It's weird, because he got better when she wasn't there. Weird. Also for that matter, she didn't really seem as committed to being his nurse during what was expected to be another long recovery. Now that he was out of the hospital. Now he's just thinking like maybe she doesn't want to be there for me anymore. He's not thinking the worst. So he decided not to bother Blanche with his recovery for the second time, and instead he took up his sister Nola on the offer to come stay with her and her husband. To his surprise, when he told Blanche his plans, she kind of seemed defended. She was like, you can't, you don't think you can rely on me? No. And he was like, well, you didn't seem interested at all. So I thought I was like taking something out of your plate or off your plate. But she was like, whatever. Okay. So he went to stay with this. I have to like try to survive this like Jesus. Also bind you. This is his fiance. Yeah. Like he's like, okay, I'm sorry for bothering you with my intestinal issues. Damn. So I feel bad. I feel so bad for him. During the weeks that he was with his sister, Blanche never visited. And she barely, I don't, she didn't call him he called her my god. They only spoke a handful of times when he called. And each time Blanche was distant or dismissive. So Nola, his sister and her husband kind of read these like Blanche's behavior assigns that their relationship was on the decline. And yeah, probably weren't going to get married. But Dwight assumed it was just Blanche's personality. He was like, that's just how she is. - Very forgiving. - Yeah, better people than he's very forgiving. - If he was overly optimistic, it might have had something to do with his speedy recovery. Because not only was he healing quickly from the surgery itself this time, but all of his other agonizing symptoms also seemed to be clearing up because he was staying with his sister and Blanche wasn't visiting exactly. - As far as he was concerned, though, everything was on track to getting back to normal. And maybe they could get married. - Oh man, it's poor man, run away, I know. So by February 1989, the last of Dwight's symptoms had faded and he was finally feeling like himself again. And now that his illness was behind him, he really was so excited to get back to Blanche. He really missed her. - That's so sad. - And March, he got a call from his son, Doug, inviting his dad to come to New Jersey and visit and meet his new grandchild. Dwight could not have been more excited. But before making plans to travel, he talked to Blanche and he said, "I really want you to join me, like I want you to meet my grandchild." But as my wife, I really want to marry you. So with all the talk of marriage they'd been through and all the times that Blanche had declined or just put him off, he expected her to have some other reason why they couldn't get married this time. But to his surprise, she accepted the invitation. - It's 'cause she's not done yet. - Yeah. - Now rather than go through with yet another potentially frustrating experience of planning like a bigger wedding, only to keep pushing it back, they did get married in a very small ceremony on April 19th with Dwight's friend Reverend Jim Rosser officiating. With all the chaos of the doctors and hospitals in the recent months, there wasn't time and there really wasn't money for a lavish honeymoon. So they decided to consider the trip to New Jersey their honeymoon. The next day, Blanche and Dwight got into his car, they drove to visit Doug, finally as husband and wife. Now, shockingly, the visit to New Jersey passed without incident. And after a few days with Doug's family, Blanche and Dwight were on the road headed back to North Carolina. For several weeks at this point, Dwight had been symptom-free, felt like he was finally getting his life back, got to meet his grandchild, hang out with his kids, no issue, but that all came to an end on the trip back home. While they were on the Cape May fairy, Dwight was standing by the railing and he was just looking out at the water and all the sudden he got hit with a super intense wave of nausea. At first, he was like, okay, maybe I'm just seasick, but yeah, within a few minutes, there was no point in denying the obvious. As soon as they got home, he went to lay down. And the next morning, he was feeling slightly better. The next that same morning, he visited some parishioners, he returned home, he put on his gardening clothes, he went out to spray the weeds in the dandelions with weed killer around noon. Blanche returned home from shopping and she called Dwight into the house to have some lunch. She made, she picked up chicken sandwiches on the way home. - No, don't eat what she's giving you. - No. - Over lunch, he listened to Blanche talk about the plan she had to fix up their small house. And then, without any warning, Dwight stood up from the table and projectile vomited so violently that the force struck the far wall. - My God. - He literally projectile vomited across a room and hit another fucking wall. - This is torture. - It is torture. It's slow. - Like this is slow and it's-- - It's so torture. - Yeah, this is awful. - It is. - So when that finally stopped, he fell to his knees, then flat on the floor face down, which like, I would never allow my husband to fall on the floor face down while he was vomiting. I'd be right there holding him, but he vomited again face down on the floor. Throughout that entire vomit stream across the room and then when he fell to the floor, Blanche never stopped talking about hanging curtains and blinds and fixing up the house. Even as she finally helped him get off the kitchen floor and walked him to the bedroom, she was just going on and on about home renovations. Despite the full blown fucking crisis unfolding before her, she's an evil, evil lady to be able to be that removed from a situation that I think we all know she created inhuman. - Yeah. 'Cause even if she didn't create that, obviously she's on death row. - Yeah. - But even so. - Even if she didn't create that to be that insensitive to the suffering of someone you are claiming to love. - Someone you're married to. - Is inhuman in a way I cannot comprehend. - No. - Like, that's so scary. - It is. - To think of this man just suffering like that for so long, and she's not only indifferent, but she's just like, it's not even. - It doesn't hit her in any way. - No. - Yeah, not at all. - Like, that's horrifying. - That's so brutal. - That's so sad. - This is brutal in such a different way than what we usually see with these kind of things. - And like violent and very violent and very gruesome. - 'Cause it's like slowly killing somebody and watching it all happen. - For months and months and months and months. - Truly shit. - It's remarkable that he made it through some of us. - Oh, now the next day Dwight went to the ER, but found little help there. The attending physician consulted with a doctor who originally diagnosed Dwight with the bowel obstruction. And after hearing the whole story, he just prescribed medication and sent him home. But it's like, guys, something is wrong here. Later that night, Blanche was sweet enough to make Dwight some soup. But then he became violently ill. - Oh my God. - Almost like the medication wasn't in his system at all. He begged Blanche to take him back to the hospital. And once there, it was a repeat of the day before. The doctor looked him over, discharged him with medication. Dwight begged the doctor to please admit him. He was like, "No, something more is going on here." But the doctor told him he didn't have time to do the required work of referring him to another doctor. So he had to go home. - The healthcare system. - I was literally just gonna say, healthcare in America, everybody. - Yeah. - People in other countries are probably like, what the fuck? - They're like, how the fuck did this happen? - Like, yes, we are asking the same thing. How the fuck did this happen? - This same thing is probably happening right now. - Yeah. - Let's speak. - 2026, and it's probably still happening. This is, that's fucking ridiculous. - To look at somebody and just be like, "Yes, sorry, I don't have the time." - Oh, okay. Like, what the fuck? - Yeah, it's such a awful system. - So that night, he's discharged again. The scene replays itself all over again. Blanche made Dwight soup. He ate it almost immediately. He became violently ill. Begg's blanched to drive him to the ER for, and what is this the third time? She begrudgingly agreed to do so. That's the other thing. She was like, "Oh, he had to beg her to drive him." - My God. - This time, though, he insisted that they drive 40 miles to North Carolina Memorial Hospital. Unfortunately, the doctors there at the new emergency room were no more sympathetic than they had been at the last hospital. - 'Cause this is disgusting. - And they did the exact same thing. Medication, go home to rest. That's horrific. - And it's like, guys, it's well done. - Clearly something medication is not doing anything. Two days passed, and by that Friday morning Dwight was barely able to move or stand up, and he was just in constant pain. - That's awful. - True agony. - Yeah. - Blanche dismissed his complaints for hours, but eventually relented and drove him back to the hospital. - That's right. - This time, the attending doctor took one look at him and immediately admitted him into the ICU. - Finally. - It's sad. I love, I've had great experiences with doctors and everything. - Yeah. - But I've heard these horror stories where some of them don't have the time and they're overworked. - Yeah, I was gonna say, it's not even that they don't care. It's that they can't care. - Exactly. - You know what I mean, which is even-- - 'Cause they're so overlorded. - I mean, because they're understaffed, they're underfunded, they're not supported, they're working these long hours. Like, the healthcare system is fucked in this country. And meanwhile, we have a trillionaire that can fix it all. In the blink of an eye, are you that boy? Yeah. - Now, once he was finally settled in the hospital in the fucking ICU, the intensive care unit. They don't just throw anyone in there. - No, it takes a lot to go to the ICU. Dwight became the responsibility of Dr. David Wands, a third year fellow in the cardiology department at the University of North Carolina. Now, unlike some of the other doctors who'd seen Dwight, Wands was young, and he was very eager to prove himself on a complicated case that had baffled other more seasoned professionals. - Honestly, best case scenario. - It really is. So the day after-- This is where it starts to remind me of a pit episode. The day after admittance, Dr. Wands sat down with Blanche, who was more than happy to fill in the details of her husband's medical mystery. She gave Wands a list of medications that Dwight had been on and tried to remember anything he had eaten right before becoming sick this time. And she also mentioned that he had been out in the garden spraying the weed killer. The mention of gardening got Dr. Wands to think that Dwight may have been inadvertently poisoned. Blanche told the doctor she didn't think that could be it, but she still agreed to return home and gather up all the pesticides they had in the house and come back with them. As soon as she left, Dr. Wands ordered a full toxicological workup for his patient. - That is. - Yeah. So Blanche arrived home that afternoon to the phone ringing. It was Debbie on the other end calling to check on her father. Blanche she'd nonchalant and said her dad was in the hospital but don't worry, it's just for some tests. - Oh yeah. - It was fun. - She said it's really just because he didn't trust the other doctors. I'm like, no, but she's been admitted to the ICU. - Yeah. - Like wow. - Not telling his children that. - Well luckily. - Bucked. Debbie still wasn't comfortable with Blanche after her experience with the whole shopping thing. And there was something. in Blanche's voice that made Debbie suspicious. - Oh, she knows. - So after hanging up with Blanche, Debbie called a friend who was more familiar with the hospital systems and explained that she was hoping the friend might be able to call the doctor and ask the right questions to get some answers here. So Debbie's friend called and left a message for Dr. Wands who returned the call a few hours later and absolutely insisted that Debbie and her brother should get to the hospital right away because they weren't sure if her father was going to make it. - Oh my God. - Yeah, that's how down bad he was. - Absolutely. - Again, he's in the fucking ICU. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - Now Dwight continued to deteriorate over the next few days to the point that death seemed inevitable and frankly imminent. The doctors could not figure out what was happening and they were powerless to do anything more even slow the progress of whatever was killing him. Then on May 13th, they got the break they needed when the toxicology report came back in. If there had been a different doctor on when the results arrived, maybe they would have dismissed the results as an anomaly or a false positive who knows. But this time the results came to that young hospital in turn who took one fucking look at those results and was shocked that so shocked that he couldn't help but show everybody. Dwight's results showed a level of arsenic in his system that was 20 times the lethal dose. - Oh my God. - 20 times the lethal dose. According to author Jim Schoetz, who again will link his book in the show notes, it was the most arsenic that had ever been found in any living human being in the history of the hospital. - Wow. - Enough to kill a large mammal. - Wow. - Enough to kill a large mammal is crazy. - That's nuts. - I'm literally picturing a bear that literally like like 20 times the lethal dose, how the fuck did this man survive? I mean, he was suffering like holy shit. Like we can actually even put into words how much he must have been suffering and it. - Now, thinking that had to be a mistake, Dr. Mons called the lab, but they insisted that there was no mistake. They themselves were so shocked that they triple-checked the results. - Wow. - Yeah, 'cause I mean, I'm sure they never saw that before. - No. So is that only everything started to make sense? - Arsenic tends to behave like a chemical, but it's actually a heavy metal. So when they looked at the x-rays over and over, what the doctor, the original doctors thought was a bowel obstruction was actually arsenic that had pooled in dweights and testes. Because it's a metal, the x-rays didn't penetrate the pool of arsenic. - So that's why it looked like a metal. - That makes sense. - It also explained why when those original doctors cut into him to remove the mass. - There was nothing mass. - Arsenic will work through a person's system in a matter of days and would have been gone by the time the specialist followed up. - God damn. - This young doctor, a fucking winnerly damn. - So the test results were the critical missing piece of the puzzle, but while they may have been the key to solving the medical mystery at hand, they now raised a new question. How the fuck did the arsenic get there in the first place? - I'm sure we're stuck. - I know. - No, you're stuck. - Yeah, I have an idea. - Maybe. - Yeah, it's gonna be crazy. - Now after asking the family members to step out into the hall, Dr. Wands set right now right down next to Dwight's bed and explained what he found and asked that very question. He was like, how do you think this got into your system, buddy? - How'd you get so much arsenic? - Dwight was still in bad shape, but he had regained consciousness and appeared to be improved enough to think and talk. He told Dr. Wands that he'd been spraying weeds that afternoon just before lunch, so he thought maybe that was it. But the doctor was like, no, no. No household chemical contains that amount of arsenic. And if the heavy metal had been the problem all along, that meant that he would have had to have been consistently consuming it for almost a year. - So like, who's feeding you arsenic? So Dwight? - Who's feeding you? - Yeah. Dwight would spend more than a month in the ICU, luckily, steadily improving as the arsenic just worked its way out of his system. Given the unusual nature of the circumstances though, he was moved to an isolation unit and assigned a sitter. - Wow. - So that meant somebody was in the room at all times, day and night. - Wow. - At no point could his family or hospital staff be allowed in that room without that sitter there. - Wow. - Because they knew somebody's gonna get in here. Somebody in your fucking circle. - And they're gonna give you more arsenic. They're gonna finish off the job if we leave you alone. - Exactly. - That's actually terrifying. - Isn't it? - Oh my God. - So Wands and his supervisors contacted the police to report their findings, but the department was small and overworked. So they left a message and they waited for a return call. - Is anyone doing their job besides Dr. Wands? - No. - Several days passed with no word back. So they decided to call the state bureau of investigation. A few days later, the case was assigned to investigators, Dave McDougall and Phil Ayers. The first thing that the investigators did after speaking to the doctors was obviously to interview family members and people in Dwight's circle. Pretty much everybody was fucking baffled by this situation. Like they were like, I don't know how that amount of arsenic got into him. But Blanche seemed the most invested in them being wrong. She dismissed the idea that anyone would try to kill Dwight. And instead she insisted, no, it must have been the chemicals that he used on the garden. She even went so far as to say that after spraying the lawn, Dwight wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and she then used that towel to dry her face and had a bad reaction. - I doubt it. - But when she was reminded that the poison would have to be legitimately ingested, she came up with a new story about Dwight possibly having eaten tainted grapes just before their trip. But the doctors were like, no, he wouldn't ingest 20 times the lethal dose of arsenic by eating a couple of grapes. - And it's a good try. Being someone who knows absolutely nothing about this, trying to tell people who know absolutely everything about this that they're wrong. - She thought that she could out fucking smart eating because she always found a way to get what she wanted, usually by exhausting people. - But hey girl, you fucked up. - You done fucked up. 'Cause here's the thing. Her strategy would work when she dealt with store clerks with the children of romantic partners that she had probably killed and strangers. But one group that that's not really gonna work on is fucking law enforcement. - Exactly, and it's like babe, you have a whole drag path behind you of men that have gotten violently, irrevocably ill and then died. - More than you think. - Yeah, I imagine. - Not just men. - Oh, I'm sure, oh, okay. - All right. So the deeper doctors and investigators dug into Dwight's case, the more theatrical and over-emotional blanche became. She fought with the doctors in the ICU about not getting to be alone with her husband. - I feel like there you go. - She accused the nurses of administering the poison and she came up with an endless number of new theories as to how the arsenic got there in the first place. - Oh my God, I could never be around this woman. - She also though, like it was great that she was doing this because she couldn't have been more suspicious as she tried. - Yeah, that's true. - Now once Dwight was well enough to speak with the investigators, they sat down for a lengthy interview. Dwight couldn't think of anybody who would have wanted to kill him. He didn't think he had any enemies. They asked if he had life insurance though and he said, yeah, but hardly enough that would make him murder worthwhile. Like I'm not worth millions. - Yeah. - Then they got to the question of former spouses. Dwight was honest and he said, I have an ex-wife, our marriage ended because I had enough air, but we remained on good terms. Like she wouldn't poison me. And also I don't think they really saw each other all that often. - Like when they talked to Debbie, they were just kind of like we all put it in the past or just moving forward. - Yeah. - Doing her own thing. Honestly, they handled it in the most healthy manner I could imagine. - They really did. - As a family, to be honest, they're like very impressive. - It really is. So as for Blanche, she had been married but her husband died of a heart attack. - Oh yeah. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - There was also her friend Raymond Reed who died of something called Guillain-Barrese. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - So this was the first time that the agents had heard Raymond's name, but that wasn't what immediately jumped out to Agent McDougall. It was actually the mention of Guillain-Barrese syndrome. While most agents probably wouldn't have been familiar with that, McDougall had a family member who had it. So he knew a little more than the average person. And most importantly, he knew that it's rarely fatal and it's usually manageable with the right treatment. - I also thought that. - Yeah. - So in the first few weeks of June, the agents started digging into Blanche's past and they were surprised to learn not only did her husband James and her longtime boyfriend Raymond Reed die under unusual circumstances, but there were two other people relatively close to Blanche who had died also under suspicious strange circumstances. Her father, PD, and a former coworker. - A former coworker. We didn't hear about that till now. - Yeah. So about a week into June, the investigators returned to Dwight and they had more questions about Raymond. As far as Dwight knew, Blanche and Raymond were just coworkers, friends at most. But the detectives corrected his understanding of Blanche's relationship. And for the first time, he got the full view. A few days later, Dwight confronted Blanche about her relationship with Raymond, which also must have been fucking like, you gave me all this shit for maybe honest with you about my past. - And this is what you were out there doing. - You were the same past. - Yeah. - Little almost exactly the same past. You were cheating on your husband with a man. and you worked with for over a decade. - Yeah, except yours also includes suspicious deaths that are all around you, so I think yours is worse. - Yeah. According to Dwight's sister, Nola, she said, he told Blanche that she had betrayed him about Reed and said, "I won't be able to trust you again, regardless of how the investigation turns out. This marriage is over." - Good for him. - Now the end of Blanche and Dwight's relationship was just the first domino to fall. In mid-June, McDougal and Ares got a warrant to exume Raymond's body from the Pine Hill cemetery. - Oh, when the body was examined. - But she didn't think that was gonna happen. - No. When the body was examined, the medical examiner did find trace amounts of arsenic and Raymond's liver, brain, kidneys, muscles, bones, and stomach. - Holy shit. - According to the coroner, the levels were quote, "greater than could be explained by a simple environmental exposure and are within the range of potential lethality." - And that's after he's been in the ground for a little while. - For years, yeah. The discovery only strengthened what the agent said already come to suspect that Blanche had been the one to administer the poison. Based on the new evidence, a superior court judge ordered the exclamation and autopsy of James Taylor's body in early July or her husband. And a letter to the district attorney, the medical examiner wrote, "There is considerable speculation in regard to whether Taylor might have died of causes other than his known underlying heart disease." And the autopsy result showed similarly high levels of arsenic in his remains. - Jesus, this is, she's a fucking beast. - The coroner told the press, given the historical circumstances, the autopsy findings and the toxicological results. It is my opinion that Mr. Taylor died as a result of an episode of arsenic poisoning. - Whoa. - A few days later, on July 18th, 1989, Blanche was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder for the deaths of Raymond Reed and James Taylor. And one count of assault with a deadly weapon for the poisoning of Dwight Moore. - Wow, good. Her arrest kicked off a frenzy. And it seemed that anyone who had a friend or loved one die of suspicious circumstances sought to connect them to Blanche. Sheriff Richard Fry said, "It's impossible to pin down the numbers. People are calling us and giving us information and we're checking on things one step at a time." The bodies of PD Kaiser, her father and Blanche's former mother-in-law, Ila Taylor, were also exhumed. Many autopsy found that they each died with elevated levels of arsenic in their systems. But unfortunately, by the time they were exhumed, the amount wasn't sufficient enough to say if it was the cause of death. But there was the fact that it was there. - I mean, I think we can all. - Yeah. - Look at that. - Okay, I can be here. - Yeah, seriously. Outside of the investigation, Blanche's arrest came as a shock to a lot of people who knew her. - Yeah. - Yeah. Her daughter Vanessa told the press, "My mother is a very good woman." She flatly rejected the accusations, which it's your mom. - Yeah, it's her mother for you to believe. - Yeah, I can understand that completely. - Blanche's sister-in-law, Doddy Kaiser said, "The newspapers have made it very hard. "We don't understand how all this could have popped up. "It's a puzzle." - I mean, yeah, for sure. - But not everybody was entirely puzzled or surprised by her arrest. And talking to reporters, one of Dwight's family members, remembered that Blanche quote, "Projected herself very, very well at first, "intelligent and thoughtful." But after a while, the family started to see another side of Blanche that was concerning. She seemed to lie about a lot of things. And eventually they weren't sure what she was lying about and what was true. Now from the moment he stepped in to represent her lawyer, Mitchell McIntyre, insisted the investigators had gotten every last thing wrong. The prosecutor on the other hand felt very confident that the agent's not arrested the right person. How many fucking people in your life are gonna get exhumed and show signs of arsenic? - That's everything. You gotta look at what's happening here. - Regardless about how McIntyre felt with his clients in a sense, the growing media interest in the story of the good Christian woman who was now a black widow was just as concerning as any evidence. By August Dwight had recovered enough, luckily, that he was able to speak with the press. And he was characteristically compassionate. Despite his full awareness, now that Blanche had allegedly tried to kill him, he said, "I have great sorrow for what she's gonna have to go through "and I have great compassion for her wellbeing." - Wow. - Which I kind of love. - He was just like, "I'm a better fucking person than you." - Well, and he was literally like, "Yeah, you're gonna have to deal with this, "and I'm sorry for that, but I'm gonna go move on with my life." - He did tell reporters though that he hoped to speak with Blanche and maybe even visit her in jail. - Ooh. - When he was asked whether he intended to file for divorce, he said, "Now just doesn't seem like the right time "to handle that." - This is just me. I feel like now is a great time to handle that. - I would get those papers signed real quick. - That would be my moment. - I feel like you've been granted the speediest divorce of all time. - Absolutely. Who really knows? - I don't know how my idea starts, but. - But now seems like it's good a time, it's any. - Yeah, no. - But I'm not there, so. - Who might I say? By the time Blanche's trial arrived in October of 1990, Mitchell McIntyre was the picture of confidence, which is shocking. - Wild. - He wanted the public to see his client as a good Christian woman who had come from hard beginnings, spent most of her life taking care of the men around her. - She was the woman he said who was brave enough to take on a large grocery chain. Speak up for all the women who had been abused under her male supervisors. She was not a killer. - Two things can be true, it wants to. - Also, she wasn't in that to stick up for other women. She wasn't it for money. - But if you're gonna play that game, it's like, she could have done that. - That's not me. - You could really exclusive things. You can do both of them. - You can. - Get you a girl who could do both. - Except maybe don't. - No, don't, don't do that. - So if Mitchell McIntyre's position was that his client was a long suffering selfless woman, the prosecutor Warren Sparrow. - Warren Sparrow. - I read that name and I said, bitch, who are you? - That's a novel name. - Who are you Warren Sparrow? - Warren Sparrow is the protagonist in a like, but he's morally great. - I feel like in the best way. - But I want him to be. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, you always want them to be morally great. - His mother made a great choice. - Yeah. - And he had a different story to tell. He was the prosecutor. - And his opening remarks, he told the jury, this trial is about secrecy. It's about pride, good and evil. It's about a woman who took on the power of deciding who she'll live and who she'll die. - Yeah. - Over the span of several weeks, the prosecution called dozens of witnesses. Doctors, nurses, they called Raymond Reed's family, friends, co-workers at Kroger, Stevie and Ray Reed, each testified about Blanche's attempts to swindle them out of a third of their fathers estate. - Yeah. - The medical examiner and we'll all laugh together. - Dr. Butz. - Oh, we've had him before. - We have, I bet. - Yeah. - He spent hours explaining how arsenic poisoning manifested and could be mistaken for other diseases. And most crucially, Dwight took the stand and gave an account of his relationship with Blanche, and also the agony he went through. - True well-being poison. - True, he has a harrowing tale to tell. - Also, I would play the fucking lottery after being served 20 times the lethal dough in the book. - And some days of agony through it. - Yeah, I can't speak, argonis. I just said it's gonna arsenic. - Whatever it is. - But in living, among other things, he testified that after entering the hospital for the last time when it became clear about the doctor's suspected foul play, Blanche insisted on cutting his hair. He testified, I could barely lift my hands off the bed. I was so swollen, I was on a ventilator. - I know why she did that though. - Yep, Prosecutor Sparrow suggested Blanche had done this because she knew arsenic could show up in a person's hair long after they died. - That's diabolical as fuck. - He couldn't even lift his hands off the bed, and she was ready to give him a haircut. - She's ready to chop his hair off, so. - You're an evil cunt for them. - Yeah, truly. - On November 7th, Blanche took the stand in her own defense, which was quite a choice. - Yeah, certainly is. - She gave more than two and a half hours of testimony. She gave long, rambling answers to her own attorney's questions. - That's how you win over a jury. - Yeah, they waste their time. - They love long, rambling answers. - They love it. - She became particularly heated when she was confronted with evidence or testimony that implicated her in Raymond Reed's death. - Yeah, evidence is rough. - Yeah, it is. At various points, she betrayed her attempt at a calm demeanor, like when she just yelled at the assisted prosecutor in the middle of her own testimony. - Whoa, yeah, a choice. - The defense had clearly been hoping to humanize her, but according to the press, jurors often stared off into the courtroom during Blanche's testimony. - Exactly. - Nobody wants to hear that. - You want some quick, snappy to the point, give the information and get the fuck out of there. - Well, and it's like, you know your client. - Yeah. - I'm sure you've seen how she acts. You really want to put that girl on the stand for two hours, two and a half hours? - Are you sure you were on her side? - As Tatiana would say, choices. - Choices. - A Blanche's defense hinged largely on her stated belief that a man named Garvin Thomas had killed Raymond Reed. - Garvin. - Garvin Thomas. She presented a letter of confession that she had received from Garvin himself while she was in jail as evidence of her innocence. - A letter from Garvin, you say? - Yes. - Okay. - The prosecution, though, contended that there actually was no Garvin Thomas at all. - What? - And that Blanche herself had written the letter of confession, and it was she who killed Raymond Reed. - That's shocking. - Crazy. Sparrow asked the jury, "When you can find all the evidence, "what hits you directly in the face?" - Everything. - This is not circumstantial. This is direct and powerful, scientific evidence that points unerringly at the defendant. - Bravo. - Like, I just like, we dug up everyone she was ever involved with anyway. - Connected to it anyway. - And they all have arsenic in their systems. - Yes. - Why are we even here? - And I don't know if you heard that. We dug them up, meaning they all died. So. - Thank you. - Can we just look at what's going on here? Is everybody ready? - Come on. - Now in the end, the jury obviously found more in Sparrow's case overwhelmingly compelling and his name. On November 14th, 1990, after just a few hours of deliberation, they emerged to find Blanche Taylor Moore guilty of the first degree murder of Raymond Reed. Could the first trial was just for Raymond? - Oh yeah. - When the verdict was read, Blanche was overheard whispering, "I can't believe it." - Really? - You can't? - The verdict was obviously a huge relief to Raymond's friends and his family, but the jury's finding left white more with a sense of sadness. Not just for Blanche, but for everybody. He said in her own distorted way, I think it was easier for her to kill than end a relationship. - Okay. - Wild. Raymond's ex-wife, Linda Sykes, was similarly compassionate toward Blanche. She said, "I want to go on, "I want to go forward with our lives, "but honest to God, I hurt for her family, "I hurt for her children." - I can get behind that. - I can totally get behind that. - I can get behind that for sure. - Two days later, Blanche was back before the judge for sentencing and the jury deliberated for a little over four hours before they recommended, as we all know, the death penalty. - 'Cause she's the oldest lady on death row. - She do be. When the recommendation was made, all Blanche said was, "Oh God." As she closed her eyes and just shook her head, and we see that coming. - Babe, you killed everyone with arsenic. - You didn't think that was on the horizon? - Oh girl. - Maybe on the menu? - Like you didn't think that was a possibility? - You just thought you could kill everyone forever. You get to choose who lives and who dies? - Not now. So after accepting the sentence, the judge set an execution date for January 18th, 1991. - Spoiler alert. - Pending all appeals, yes, spoiler alert. After the sentencing and the Raymond Reed murder trial, the DA decided to drop all the other charges because she got the death penalty. Since the sentence was handed down more than 30 years ago, Blanche's appeals and various motions have been hung up in court, ultimately obviously delaying her execution. As of today, she does remain an inmate of the North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women, and at 93 years old, she's the oldest woman on death row in the United States. - What is the point? - And actually I believe she's the oldest person on death row. - What is the point? At this point, she's gonna just take it on death row. - Like that's the, like just, yeah. I mean, which I'm glad. I'm glad that she's had to sit there for 30 years. I don't know if she has the capacity to look inward and see what she's done. - But at least she isn't just like out in the world. - She's not out in the world existing, and she wasn't just killed off the, you know, I mean, like she's had to sit around for 30 years and realize the hurt she caused. - Hopefully she can. - And I hope she has figured it out. I hope it's, I hope she's been confronted with it. - You would hope so. - I really do. - 93 years old though. 93 years, and if you look up a picture of her, you're just like, that's just a grandma. - Literally, she just looks like kind of a sweet grandma. - She looks like a grandma. - But you don't think she's sweet grandma. - She looks like a grandma that you, she wasn't gonna like, I mean, she definitely wasn't gonna make you cookies. She wasn't gonna do any things to kill you. - Like I think she was gonna be that grandma that kind of like smokes things and like yells at you a little bit. - You think so, yeah. - Like she kind of gives me that vibe, maybe because I know too much about her. - Probably. - But yeah. - I can wild that. - It's shocking. - 93. - She's a scary one. - 93. - And I just picture like, I just picture Dwight laying on the kitchen floor. - Yeah. - And she's just like, so I'm gonna hang up some curtains over there and I think I'll paint some, paint some pictures on that wall. - That's what, like that alone. - And he's just projectile vomiting. - It shows you that she's got nothing. - Like she's got no compassion for any. 'Cause if you can allow that to happen next to you and feel nothing about it, that's wild. - Wild, absolutely, wild. - Woof, what a story. - What a star. - Do you have a fun fact, honey? - I do have a fun fact. So I found this one on BBC Science Focus. - Oh, that's for real. - Orcas were other animals as hats. - What? - Yep, scientists have observed dolphins playing catch with puffer fish and octopuses. - What? - And Orcas wearing dead fish as hats. And no one knows why. - I know why, it's a fuck you. - They just like to. - Yeah, it's a fuck you. - They wear dead animals as hats. - That's like on true blood. When Lorena tells Sookie she's gonna kill her and then wear her rib cage as a hat. - Yeah, she's in Orca. - And Orcas said I heard that. - Orcas are low-key fuck. - They're fucking terrifying. They are too intelligent for to be in the ocean. - No, that's why they're in the ocean. - That makes me scared. That's why I respect the ocean so much. - I don't fucks with it. - I don't belong in there. - Wow. - Yeah. - I don't know if that's fun. - They're just out there. - You have a weird idea of fun facts. - I mean, like, the visual is silly. If you make a cartoonish, but then you bring it into reality and it gets a little weird. - I immediately got a wrong answer. - So this is more of, like, a, whoa, fact. - It's a fact. - It's a fact. - Wow, yeah. - Wow, with that being said, we hope he's listening. - And we hope he'll keep it weird. - Maybe so weird that you wear your enemy as a hat. - There you go. - Still kill him. - Yeah, don't do that. - Sorry, but it's a hat. - That's a visual and a half dog. - It's a good one. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)