Murder In A Reno Robbery Gone Awry
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It seemed pretty obvious that the murder of Beate Marie Voss was the unfortunate result of a botched burglary, similar to a string of others of late in Reno, but tracking down the itinerant killer would take some clever and dogged police work. Told from the perspective of Reno Chief of Police Harry Fletcher by Bob Arentz, Episode 271 is adapted from True Detective, V. 43; No. 2, June 1945 and historic newspaper accounts from the archives of the Reno Gazette Journal.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular |
| 0:02.0 | com |
| 0:03.0 | The nation's famous |
| 0:14.0 | is mystified by a strange series of robberies and the violent death of a woman without an enemy. |
| 0:23.6 | Murder in a Reno robbery gone awry. |
| 0:31.6 | By Bob Arrence |
| 0:39.9 | It was about 10 a.m. Sunday, the 17th of September, 1944, in Reno, Nevada, as Chief of Police Harry Fletcher gazed down at the body of an elderly |
| 0:57.2 | woman prone in a pool of blood on an otherwise spotless kitchen floor. The victim's scalp was |
| 1:05.0 | torn in two places, but Fletcher could see that most of the blood had come from another wound. |
| 1:15.6 | She's probably been shot, too, he remarked to Dr. Lawrence Parsons, Washoe County Medical Examiner, who is beginning his examination. |
| 1:20.6 | The woman appeared to be 50 to 60 years old. |
| 1:24.6 | Fletcher decided that she had been struck down as she entered the kitchen through the |
| 1:28.7 | back door. However, there was no sign of the weapon used, nor had the interior of the room been |
| 1:35.4 | upset by a prolonged struggle. It almost looked like an ambush. The scene of the crime was a modest, |
| 1:42.7 | well-kept cottage at 11 Bell Street, an exclusive residential district in the West's most fabulous gambling and divorce mart. |
| 1:52.0 | Big money circulated freely in Reno, and Chief Fletcher had investigated many violent crimes. |
| 1:58.0 | But this cottage was located on a property belonging to a wealthy |
| 2:02.6 | socialite in a section of the city where crime was practically unknown. He asked the uniformed |
| 2:09.6 | radio patrolman standing guard, what do you have on the case so far? He replied, she is Mrs. George |
| 2:17.4 | Voss. She works for a maid for Mrs. Laura Knight, who owns this estate. |
| 2:23.0 | Mrs. Voss and her husband live there. He's the gardener. |
| 2:28.1 | Looking through the open back door at a group of curious, silent spectators, Fletcher asked, |
... |
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