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Just a quick heads up to let you guys know
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that we have bonus episodes available on Patreon. If you
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access to our bonus series called Night Terrors. That's over
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fourteen new bonus episodes that are not available anywhere else,
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and I'm actually working on the fifteenth right now. It's
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going to be on a man named Ian Watkins, and
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it's going to be quite horrific, one of the most
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brutal and shocking cases we've ever covered. So if you
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want to get access to that and just help out
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patreon dot com slash Tapes from the dark Side, Thank
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you so much.
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Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality.
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Listener discretion is advised.
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It was just before nine pm on September twenty fourth,
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nineteen seventy three. Eighteen year old Becky Thompson Brown grabbed
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her keys and asked her eleven year old half sister,
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Amy Burridge, if she wanted to come along for a
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quick grocery run, just a routine trip to the thrift
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Way store in Casper, Wyoming, a quiet town of fewer
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than forty thousand people back then, where a visit to
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the market meant bumping into neighbors and exchanging small town smiles.
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The sisters drove Becky's Ford station wagon to the store
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at twelfth in Melrose. Inside nothing seemed out of the ordinary,
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just two girls scanning the aisles for dinner ingredients. But
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when they stepped back outside, one of the car's tires
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was flat. They didn't know it had been slashed. They
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didn't know that the two men parked beside them, Jerry
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Jenkins and Ronald Kennedy, were the ones who did it.
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The men offered to help, playing the part of friendly strangers.
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In reality, they were circling prey. The tire was never
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the point. It was a trap. Within minutes, the girls
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were abducted. The men were drunk and dangerous. Jerry Jenkins,
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heavy set and slow eyed, drove. Ronald, twitchy and wild looking,
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sat in the passenger seat and began to terrorize the
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girls as the car veered away from town. At first
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they headed towards the looming shadows of Casper Mountain, then
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deeper into the darkness toward Alcova Lake. Hours passed, then
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came the Fremont Canyon Bridge, thirty six miles southwest of Casper.
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That's where the real horror began. Amy was dragged out first.
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Becky screamed, was held back in the car by Jerry.
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She didn't know her little sister was being led to
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the edge and thrown. Later, a coroner would testify that
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Amy likely struck the canyon wall head first before falling
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into the river below. Her spine shattered, her brain was pierced.
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She died in seconds. Becky, still trapped, was next. The
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men raped her. Then when they were done, they took
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her to the bridge, the same one Amy had just
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been tossed from. They talked about making sure she didn't survive,
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and then they threw her over. But Becky did survive.
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She slammed into a rock ledge, then bounced into the
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icy water. Broken, bleeding, she dragged herself to the shore,
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and there, in the pitch black, she lay. She covered
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herself with her own waist length hair and stones to
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keep from freezing, nude from the waist down, bones shattered,
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She waited for dawn. When the sun finally rose, Becky
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clawed her way up from the embankment inch by inch
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until she reached the top. There, lying in the dirt,
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she flagged down an elderly couple, and that's how Becky
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Thompson Brown lived to tell the story to the outside world.
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It seemed that Becky had survived. In one sense, she had,
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but in another sense, Becky died that day too with
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her sister. It just took longer for her death to
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play out. The arrest came quickly, the jury didn't waiver.
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Ronald Kennedy's lawyer pleaded insanity. Jerry Jenkins defense tried to
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shift the blame. Neither tactic landed. Both men were sentenced
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to die, but death never came. In nineteen seventy seven,
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though Wyoming Supreme Court overturned the sentences, the US Supreme
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Court ruling forced the state to reduce them to life
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in prison. They lived behind bars, while Becky lived with
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what they had done. Her testimony had helped steal their
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fate in court, but the scars that left behind didn't
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fade in the years that followed. Not for her, not
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for her family.
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Our family was shattered.
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Tony Kay says Amy and Becky's mother that was in
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an interview with the Star Tribune.
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Amy was our little clown and our happiness. She kept
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us all together.
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When Amy was ripped away, everything began to unravel. Amy's grandfather,
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a man named g. O. Burridge, couldn't pair the loss.
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His son, Jeremiah, says the heartbreak killed him.
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Quote they killed three people, Becky, Amy, and my father.
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Becky's death was more prolonged on the outside. She moved forward.
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She got a job at the Casper Police Department. Later
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she worked in radio advertising Kvoc and Kate. She got married,
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had a daughter. To the world she was surviving with
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the pain followed her. Her friend Lisa Eisnaggel remembered Becky's warmth,
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her pranks, the way she laughed until she cried. But
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she also remembered the day Becky first revealed who she
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really was and what she had lived through. There were
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no tears. Becky just told the story, stonefaced, calm, almost clinical.
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She once described how she clawed her way up that canyon,
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how her stomach was falling out as she crawled back
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to survive. Lisa said it was unbearable to hear.
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Quote it was just so harrowing to hear. You just
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want to take her in your arms and say, oh
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my gosh, let me do something.
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Becky carried survivor's guild like a second skin. Dave Devalla,
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a former police investigator who remained close to Becky, close
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enough to give her away at her wedding, said quote.
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She was troubled that her sister had died and she hadn't.
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But her torment didn't stop in the past. It crept
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into the present. Year after year, Each time the Pearle
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board considered releasing one of the attackers, each notice from
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the state reopened the wound. Becky was haunted by memory,
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by guilt, by the sheer injustice of it all. Tony,
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the girl's mother, said quote.
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It's a sad commentary. Becky worked hard, and.
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His meaning, Ronald Kennedy's.
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Subsistence came out of her taxes.
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Eventually, Becky's pain started showing on the outside. She battled alcoholism,
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a battle she was losing. Her marriage ended. She worried
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constantly about money, especially how to support her daughter. Veil
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then came July thirty first, nineteen ninety two. Becky drove
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out to the place where everything changed, the Fremont Canyon Bridge.
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She brought Veil and the man she was dating. She
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just said she had to go there, the man told
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the Associated Press shortly after he gave the interview on
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the basis that his identity be kept confidential. Quote.
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The more I told her not to go out there,
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the faster she went.
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Becky stood on the same bridge, above the same river
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where she had once been thrown. She cried. The man
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picked up Veil, her daughter, and carried her back to
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the car. Whatever Becky was about to do, her daughter
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shouldn't see it. No one knows if she jumped or slipped.
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But when she fell that second time, it was fatal.
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Lisa doesn't believe it was suicide, not completely. Quote.
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I'm not going to say she wasn't contemplating it the
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way everything was caving in on her, but I don't
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think she that to her daughter.
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Still, Becky Thompson Brown died the same way she was
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supposed to die nineteen years earlier, only this time nothing
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could stop fate. We're gonna take a quick ad break.
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If you want to skip the ads, support the show
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on Patreon dot com slash tapes from the Dark Side
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We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. Dave Dovallo was
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working security at the Central Wyoming fair and Rodeo. When
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the call came in there been an incident at the
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Fremont Canyon bridge. He was already en route when he
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heard who it was quote.
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I knew immediately who it was.
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The survivor who had once defied death from that very
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bridge nineteen years earlier. Little about the place had changed.
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Fremont Canyon still yawns open below the steel frame, sheer
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granite walls, facing one hundred and twelve feet into the
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North Platte River. It's green waters eerily still. A chain
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link fence now runs along the edge, but it offers
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more warning than safety. Over the years, people have come
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to that spot, some out of curiosity, some for answers,
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some to mourn. One of them was Wyoming Representative Gerald Gay,
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a Casper native. Last year he approached county commissioners with
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a quiet proposal. A memorial bench, not a plaque, not
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a monument, just a simple stone seat cut from the
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same red granite as the canyon itself etched into it
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remember September twenty fifth, nineteen seventy three. No names, no explanation.
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He calls it a curiosity, not a tribute, something that
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might catch a traveler's eye and make them wonder what
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happened here? Who was lost? Because the truth is of
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the four people who drove to that on the night
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of September fourth, nineteen seventy three, only one is still alive.
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Ronald Kennedy, now in his late sixties, remains behind bars
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and rawlings, Wyoming. He has repeatedly refused to speak to
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the press. Jerry Jenkins, the man who drove the car
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and took his turn in the horror, died in prison
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in nineteen ninety eight. He was fifty four. Amy and
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Becky are buried in Casper. Few family members remain in
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town now, but the graves are tended. Friends still leave flowers,
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still whisper prayers. Their mother, Tony Case, lives in Bakersfield, California.
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She's eighty years old, widowed alone now except for her dog.
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Becky's daughter, Veil, is grown, married, living in Chicago. Tony
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says they're still close. She thinks about her daughters every day,
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not always with tears, but always with weight. It's not
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in an easy life, she said, for her or the
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rest of the surviving family members. Then she paused, not
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with bitterness, but with truth.
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Quote, we're serving hard time. For a lifetime.
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Tony thinks that the alcohol gave her a false sense
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of courage to face her fears. Quote.
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Maybe she thought going there would help her get past it.
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No one will ever truly know what went through Rebecca's
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mind in those final moments on the bridge, But in
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the days, even the hours leading up to her death,
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there were signs, subtle, chilling echoes of what was coming.
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Just a week before, she bought a copy of Ode
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to Billy Joe, a film about a young man haunted
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by abuse who ultimately leaps from the Mississippi Tallahatchie Bridge.
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Becky didn't just watch it once. She watched it four times.
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Each time she wept. Her boyfriend remembers asking her why,
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she told him quote it reminds me. When he pressed her,
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she simply added, I like to cry. But behind the
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tears there was something far more complex, a fear that
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never let go. Becky had testified against the men who
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had tried to kill her, Ronald Kennedy and Jerry Jenkins.
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In court. She pointed them out. She stood strong, even
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as Kennedy locked eyes with her and drew his finger
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slowly across his throat, a silent promise of revenge, and
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Becky believed it. She lived with the constant fear that
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they'd find a way out, that one day the prison
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gates would open and they'd come looking for her, And
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maybe that fear never really left. Becky's ex husband thought
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that Becky chose to jump that day. Quote.
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She always thought that she should have died and not
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her sister. I just think that she was to the
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point where she gave up. The reason she went back
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to that bridge was because we're sister to be with Amy.
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When it was all over, Becky's ashes were laid to rest,
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not in some distant cemetery, but right where she wanted
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to be buried, on top of Amy's casket, Island Cemetery
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in Casper. Over five hundred people came to say goodbye,
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to mourn her, to honor her, to remember. Before we
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officially end today, I thought it'd be interesting to take
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a listen to the trailer from the film Owe to
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Billy Joe. This is the film that Becky watched four
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times before her incident on the bridge. Suicide or accident,
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whatever it might have been. This film is about a
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young man who was haunted by abuse, who jumped from
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the Tallahatchie Bridge in Mississippi.
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It was a third of June, another sleepy dust adel.
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Today what the song didn't take?
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The movie will show you. Bobby Gentries ode to Billy
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Joe is now a movie day.
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Billy Joe McCallister jumped up.
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The teller jiby.
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That afternoon.
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Mister Harley. Hi, I'm Billy Joe McAllister.
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Good morning, mister mss Harley, I'm Billy Joe McAllister. You
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may remember me.
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That's something wrong with that boy by now.
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Your papa surely knows who I am.
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Oh, he knows who you are. You just don't know
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what you are. No, I screamed no, and then I
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heard my own voice saying yes, yes, yes, and no no, no,
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no no.
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You were up late last night reading.
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The Good Book? Oh yes, mommy, who was a good book?
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Girls?