138: The Ken and Barbie Killers & the Cocoanut Grove Fire
Let's Go To Court!
Let's Go To Court!
4.8 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2020
⏱️ 143 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the early 1940s, Boston’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub was *the* place to see and be seen. The club owner, Barnet “Barney” Welansky, was a sharp businessman. He ensured that the club was beautifully decorated with blue satin hanging from the ceilings, heavy drapes, and support columns that were made to look like palm trees. He also kept a watchful eye on the finances by ensuring that no one left without paying. He locked almost every exit and covered windows with draperies. On November 28, 1942, the Cocoanut Grove gained the horrific distinction of becoming the deadliest nightclub fire in American history.
Then Brandi brings in her sister, Kaci, to tell us about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, aka, the Ken and Barbie Killers. In the late 80s, the people of Scarborough, Ontario, were on edge. There’d been a string of rapes in their community, and all anyone seemed to know about the rapist was that he was blonde and in his twenties. On little more than hunches, two women called the police to report that they suspected Paul Bernardo as the perpetrator. The women were right, but it’d be years before Paul faced justice.
And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.
In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
The documentary “Six locked doors: the legacy of Cocoanut grove”
“The Cocoanut Grove Inferno” by Jack Thomas for the Boston Globe
“Grove Owner Starts 12-15 Year Sentence,” The Boston Globe
“Court Upholds Prison Term in Night Club Fire,” Universal Press
“Night Club Owner Guilty In Boston,” The New York Times
“The Cocoanut Grove Fire,” BostonFireHistory.org
In this episode, Kaci pulled from:
An episode of Autopsy from HBO “Autopsy 8: Dead Giveaway”
“Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka” by Marilyn Bardsley, The Crime Library
“Karla Leanne Homolka,” Murderpedia.org
“Paul Kenneth Bernardo,” Murderpedia.org
“Karla Homolka,” Wikipedia.org
“Paul Bernardo,” Wikipedia.org
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello Albert Einstein here. Today I've popped into Dev's cafe. He's one of many business owners |
| 0:07.3 | who are already using a smart meter to feel more in control of their budgeting. A smart meter helps |
| 0:13.4 | you track your energy use and costs over time. So you know how much you're spending on your energy |
| 0:19.3 | bills. Meaning less time guessing and more time to focus on the other important... Do you want milk |
| 0:24.3 | with that? Pits of your business. Such can a smart meter today. A legibility may vary consumer |
| 0:29.2 | action required. One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. |
| 0:36.4 | I'm Kristen Caruso. I'm Brandy Egan. Let's go to court. On this episode I'll talk about the |
| 0:42.4 | coconut grove fire. And I'll be talking about the Ken and Barbie killers. Or will you? Will I? |
| 0:49.7 | No! Brandy why won't you be telling us this? Because I'm brought Casey to do it! |
| 0:58.0 | Hello! Hi guys! Now who's Casey? Casey's my sister. We've talked about eight million times on this podcast. |
| 1:05.2 | I'm pretty sure I've been mentioned before. So Casey, amazing sister that she is, was like I'm |
| 1:12.9 | gonna write a case up for you so that one week you can take a week off you know because you |
| 1:17.0 | have your hands full with London and whatever and you can just present the case that I write for you. |
| 1:21.0 | And I said I said no if you're gonna write the case you have to come on and do it. The real story is |
| 1:27.2 | that I've been telling her to do this case since the podcast started it. And I figured if it was |
| 1:32.2 | gonna get done I was gonna have to do it. Casey and I texted this week and she's like I've been |
| 1:36.6 | telling her about this and I was like yeah! She's so tiring that Brandy I tell you! |
| 1:43.7 | No we've got to talk about something. What do we want to talk about? Well the fact that right now on |
| 1:48.4 | our Patreon there is a video of us reading my elementary school diary. We didn't read it. You read |
| 1:56.0 | it and I watched it all over. It's a very interesting. Yeah Casey just got to get a sneak peek of it too. |
| 2:07.9 | Um yeah so folks that's available at the $7 level on our Patreon. Also at that level you get a |
| 2:14.2 | bonus episode every month you get into the discord which is like a 90s chat room you get a sticker |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Let's Go To Court!, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Let's Go To Court! and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.