Twice Dead: The Tragic Tale of Becky Thomson

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0:48 Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is advised. It was just before nine pm on September twenty fourth, nineteen seventy three. Eighteen year old Becky Thompson Brown grabbed her keys and asked her eleven year old half sister, Amy Burridge, if she wanted to come along for a quick grocery run, just a routine trip to the thrift Way store in Casper, Wyoming, a quiet town of fewer than forty thousand people back then, where a visit to the market meant bumping into neighbors and exchanging small town smiles.

1:35 The sisters drove Becky's Ford station wagon to the store at twelfth in Melrose. Inside nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just two girls scanning the aisles for dinner ingredients. But when they stepped back outside, one of the car's tires was flat. They didn't know it had been slashed. They didn't know that the two men parked beside them, Jerry Jenkins and Ronald Kennedy, were the ones who did it. The men offered to help, playing the part of friendly strangers. In reality, they were circling prey. The tire was never the point. It was a trap. Within minutes, the girls were abducted. The men were drunk and dangerous. Jerry Jenkins, heavy set and slow eyed, drove. Ronald, twitchy and wild looking, sat in the passenger seat and began to terrorize the girls as the car veered away from town. At first they headed towards the looming shadows of Casper Mountain, then deeper into the darkness toward Alcova Lake. Hours passed, then came the Fremont Canyon Bridge, thirty six miles southwest of Casper.

2:47 That's where the real horror began. Amy was dragged out first. Becky screamed, was held back in the car by Jerry. She didn't know her little sister was being led to the edge and thrown. Later, a coroner would testify that Amy likely struck the canyon wall head first before falling into the river below. Her spine shattered, her brain was pierced. She died in seconds. Becky, still trapped, was next. The men raped her. Then when they were done, they took her to the bridge, the same one Amy had just been tossed from. They talked about making sure she didn't survive, and then they threw her over. But Becky did survive.

3:35 She slammed into a rock ledge, then bounced into the icy water. Broken, bleeding, she dragged herself to the shore, and there, in the pitch black, she lay. She covered herself with her own waist length hair and stones to keep from freezing, nude from the waist down, bones shattered, She waited for dawn. When the sun finally rose, Becky clawed her way up from the embankment inch by inch until she reached the top. There, lying in the dirt, she flagged down an elderly couple, and that's how Becky Thompson Brown lived to tell the story to the outside world.

4:17 It seemed that Becky had survived. In one sense, she had, but in another sense, Becky died that day too with her sister. It just took longer for her death to play out. The arrest came quickly, the jury didn't waiver. Ronald Kennedy's lawyer pleaded insanity. Jerry Jenkins defense tried to shift the blame. Neither tactic landed. Both men were sentenced to die, but death never came. In nineteen seventy seven, though Wyoming Supreme Court overturned the sentences, the US Supreme Court ruling forced the state to reduce them to life in prison. They lived behind bars, while Becky lived with what they had done. Her testimony had helped steal their fate in court, but the scars that left behind didn't fade in the years that followed. Not for her, not for her family.

5:15 Our family was shattered. Tony Kay says Amy and Becky's mother that was in an interview with the Star Tribune. Amy was our little clown and our happiness. She kept us all together. When Amy was ripped away, everything began to unravel. Amy's grandfather, a man named g. O. Burridge, couldn't pair the loss. His son, Jeremiah, says the heartbreak killed him. Quote they killed three people, Becky, Amy, and my father. Becky's death was more prolonged on the outside. She moved forward. She got a job at the Casper Police Department. Later she worked in radio advertising Kvoc and Kate. She got married, had a daughter. To the world she was surviving with the pain followed her. Her friend Lisa Eisnaggel remembered Becky's warmth, her pranks, the way she laughed until she cried. But she also remembered the day Becky first revealed who she really was and what she had lived through. There were no tears. Becky just told the story, stonefaced, calm, almost clinical.

6:29 She once described how she clawed her way up that canyon, how her stomach was falling out as she crawled back to survive. Lisa said it was unbearable to hear. Quote it was just so harrowing to hear. You just want to take her in your arms and say, oh my gosh, let me do something. Becky carried survivor's guild like a second skin. Dave Devalla, a former police investigator who remained close to Becky, close enough to give her away at her wedding, said quote. She was troubled that her sister had died and she hadn't. But her torment didn't stop in the past. It crept into the present. Year after year, Each time the Pearle board considered releasing one of the attackers, each notice from the state reopened the wound. Becky was haunted by memory, by guilt, by the sheer injustice of it all. Tony, the girl's mother, said quote.

7:27 It's a sad commentary. Becky worked hard, and. His meaning, Ronald Kennedy's. Subsistence came out of her taxes. Eventually, Becky's pain started showing on the outside. She battled alcoholism, a battle she was losing. Her marriage ended. She worried constantly about money, especially how to support her daughter. Veil then came July thirty first, nineteen ninety two. Becky drove out to the place where everything changed, the Fremont Canyon Bridge. She brought Veil and the man she was dating. She just said she had to go there, the man told the Associated Press shortly after he gave the interview on the basis that his identity be kept confidential. Quote.

8:21 The more I told her not to go out there, the faster she went. Becky stood on the same bridge, above the same river where she had once been thrown. She cried. The man picked up Veil, her daughter, and carried her back to the car. Whatever Becky was about to do, her daughter shouldn't see it. No one knows if she jumped or slipped. But when she fell that second time, it was fatal. Lisa doesn't believe it was suicide, not completely. Quote. I'm not going to say she wasn't contemplating it the way everything was caving in on her, but I don't think she that to her daughter.

9:02 Still, Becky Thompson Brown died the same way she was supposed to die nineteen years earlier, only this time nothing could stop fate. We're gonna take a quick ad break. If you want to skip the ads, support the show on Patreon dot com slash tapes from the Dark Side We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. Dave Dovallo was working security at the Central Wyoming fair and Rodeo. When the call came in there been an incident at the Fremont Canyon bridge. He was already en route when he heard who it was quote. I knew immediately who it was.

9:44 The survivor who had once defied death from that very bridge nineteen years earlier. Little about the place had changed. Fremont Canyon still yawns open below the steel frame, sheer granite walls, facing one hundred and twelve feet into the North Platte River. It's green waters eerily still. A chain link fence now runs along the edge, but it offers more warning than safety. Over the years, people have come to that spot, some out of curiosity, some for answers, some to mourn. One of them was Wyoming Representative Gerald Gay, a Casper native. Last year he approached county commissioners with a quiet proposal. A memorial bench, not a plaque, not a monument, just a simple stone seat cut from the same red granite as the canyon itself etched into it remember September twenty fifth, nineteen seventy three. No names, no explanation.

10:46 He calls it a curiosity, not a tribute, something that might catch a traveler's eye and make them wonder what happened here? Who was lost? Because the truth is of the four people who drove to that on the night of September fourth, nineteen seventy three, only one is still alive. Ronald Kennedy, now in his late sixties, remains behind bars and rawlings, Wyoming. He has repeatedly refused to speak to the press. Jerry Jenkins, the man who drove the car and took his turn in the horror, died in prison in nineteen ninety eight. He was fifty four. Amy and Becky are buried in Casper. Few family members remain in town now, but the graves are tended. Friends still leave flowers, still whisper prayers. Their mother, Tony Case, lives in Bakersfield, California.

11:40 She's eighty years old, widowed alone now except for her dog. Becky's daughter, Veil, is grown, married, living in Chicago. Tony says they're still close. She thinks about her daughters every day, not always with tears, but always with weight. It's not in an easy life, she said, for her or the rest of the surviving family members. Then she paused, not with bitterness, but with truth. Quote, we're serving hard time. For a lifetime. Tony thinks that the alcohol gave her a false sense of courage to face her fears. Quote. Maybe she thought going there would help her get past it.

12:24 No one will ever truly know what went through Rebecca's mind in those final moments on the bridge, But in the days, even the hours leading up to her death, there were signs, subtle, chilling echoes of what was coming. Just a week before, she bought a copy of Ode to Billy Joe, a film about a young man haunted by abuse who ultimately leaps from the Mississippi Tallahatchie Bridge. Becky didn't just watch it once. She watched it four times. Each time she wept. Her boyfriend remembers asking her why, she told him quote it reminds me. When he pressed her, she simply added, I like to cry. But behind the tears there was something far more complex, a fear that never let go. Becky had testified against the men who had tried to kill her, Ronald Kennedy and Jerry Jenkins.

13:19 In court. She pointed them out. She stood strong, even as Kennedy locked eyes with her and drew his finger slowly across his throat, a silent promise of revenge, and Becky believed it. She lived with the constant fear that they'd find a way out, that one day the prison gates would open and they'd come looking for her, And maybe that fear never really left. Becky's ex husband thought that Becky chose to jump that day. Quote. She always thought that she should have died and not her sister. I just think that she was to the point where she gave up. The reason she went back to that bridge was because we're sister to be with Amy.

14:04 When it was all over, Becky's ashes were laid to rest, not in some distant cemetery, but right where she wanted to be buried, on top of Amy's casket, Island Cemetery in Casper. Over five hundred people came to say goodbye, to mourn her, to honor her, to remember. Before we officially end today, I thought it'd be interesting to take a listen to the trailer from the film Owe to Billy Joe. This is the film that Becky watched four times before her incident on the bridge. Suicide or accident, whatever it might have been. This film is about a young man who was haunted by abuse, who jumped from the Tallahatchie Bridge in Mississippi.

15:04 It was a third of June, another sleepy dust adel. Today what the song didn't take? The movie will show you. Bobby Gentries ode to Billy Joe is now a movie day. Billy Joe McCallister jumped up. The teller jiby. That afternoon. Mister Harley. Hi, I'm Billy Joe McAllister. Good morning, mister mss Harley, I'm Billy Joe McAllister. You may remember me. That's something wrong with that boy by now. Your papa surely knows who I am. Oh, he knows who you are. You just don't know what you are. No, I screamed no, and then I heard my own voice saying yes, yes, yes, and no no, no, no no.

15:57 You were up late last night reading. The Good Book? Oh yes, mommy, who was a good book? Girls? Growing Up Benn featured some very strange ideas too. Here we are the second half of the twentieth century, the twentieth century, Mississippi. I get to hear wording how are you girl? Thirty two. D cut, I love you. It seemed like no good ever come to nobody on this bridge. Now, years after the whispers and the rumors the Tallahatchee River gives up its secrets.

16:38 In me, I spent a lot of time beckings, I was a bone chop, don't read. And drop the men to the muddy water of the Telesion. But the song didn't tell you, the movie will show you. Bobby Gentry is legendary ode to Billy Joe. The song is now the movie. A reminder that one of our most graphic episodes ever to date will be airing on Patreon exclusively later this month.

17:24 You can join at patreon dot com slash Tapes from the dark Side. Thank you to our newest Darksiders Holly Huckle, Nancy R. Rosie sixteen who joined for a year, which means she saved a couple of months, Philzie Hans, Kirsten ka Celeste and junkkil Hittelsen Hope I said that one right. Also, thank you to Alison Barkley, who is our secret Tier member. Thank you so much for your generous donation. Truly, every dollar makes a huge difference to the show. Oh. Thank you to Augusta Trevororum for original music during this episode.

18:06 Thank you to Julia Prauds of the Los Angeles Times for their article related to this incident. If you want to get in touch with us, you can follow us on Instagram at the dark Side Pod, where you can send us an email. Tapes from the darksidepodat gmail dot com, and until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. A Darkside st