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Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry. How's it going babe?

I'm sitting here. I've got my winter candle going. It's the fur one, I think from anthropology the best. And what else? We've got...

I went for a fun drink today at Starbucks this afternoon. I've been making my own coffee in the morning forever now. But in the afternoons, especially when I know I'm gonna have a long day, I'll usually go get what I call a fun drink.

So usually some sort of featured item or latte, whatever. And given the time of year, I was like, you know, maybe I'm just gonna try something different. So I got the almond milk, sugar cookie latte. And I don't know if I like it or not. Can't tell. Maybe it's not the right vibe for today for this particular afternoon.

I think the issue that I have is I like the idea of having a fun drink, but I also love the taste of coffee. I love the taste of espresso. I even added a second shot or a third shot to it. But I don't know, it tastes very sweet to me.

I don't know, that's probably what you would expect. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I just have different expectations and I'm being let down by my expectations. You know, it's a common theme. I've seen it throughout my life in relationships. I just start really getting into it.

Hey, we're not here for that. Okay, last month, we did cold November. So I thought, how's about we do a little deadly December. I tried to give it a little, a little lifetime edge there. We are actually starting off the month with a horrific moita at a st. Paul.

Interestingly enough, I've actually been working on a few different stories for the month, but I hit a bit of a wall this week. I was trying to decipher like, what do I feel like talking about someone like, okay, walk away from your work, you know, you always have to, they say it for artists, but I think it's for every job. You have to walk away from your computer or whatever sometimes. And then come back to it with a different approach.

So I took a break and this was last week I was watching just for leisure this show that I've talked about on here before. It's called The Crime to Remember. And that's where I remember I used one of their episodes when I did the auto and the addict story. Remember that with Dolly Ostrich or whatever. That was a crazy story.

But so I watched that and as I was watching this particular episode, it started sounding super familiar. I'll tell you the episode in the show notes, but I don't want to say which one because I don't want to give anything away right now. But I was watching it sounded super familiar.

And then I think Georgia covered it on an episode of my favorite murder at some point. And I love my favorite murder. I've listened to them since pretty early on. And so I remembered her talking about it.

And then I searched the name of the case that I'm talking about in my emails and somebody also from St. Paul Minnesota had actually written in about it. So I was like, okay, this is a sign. This is the one we are going to talk about this week. It's a really wild story.

And also a famous movie is allegedly partially based on today's story. We'll talk about that a little bit at the end. Not confirmed.

For now, we are just going to start off our story, which begins on the morning of March 6, 1963.

34 year old housewife Carol Thompson. She is married to a successful criminal attorney. They have four children together, a son and three daughters.

And she's just having, you know, her casual morning routine husband has left for work. Kids are off on their way to school. And she is home just by herself, laying in bed, reading a magazine.

She gets a call from her husband and she goes downstairs, talks to him for a little bit. Nothing out of the ordinary. He's just confirming that he's picking up the kids from school that day.

She returns back upstairs and then moments later, she's attacked by an intruder in her bedroom. This person walks in. Obviously she's terrified.

They tell her, you know, turn around. I'm here to rob the house. They proceed to knock her out with a rubber hose. And then proceed it to take her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub to drown her.

Somehow, some way, even after this, Carol regains consciousness and she manages to escape. She runs to the front door. She tries to escape, but she can't get out.

He manages to catch up with her, proceeds to bludgeon her until she's unconscious again with the weapon. And then goes to the kitchen, grabs a knife and begins stabbing her in the neck.

...