You'll Never Hang Me!

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Performing Arts, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 720 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2025

⏱️ 125 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Insanity (Or Not) Of Douglas Van Vlack

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Episode 377 takes a deep plunge into the story of a troubled young couple in a flight from justice that ends in great double tragedies. The second act details a sensational and contentious trial as Douglas Van Vlack’s defense team try to keep him from the gallows by telling the story of his traumatic life. The third act tells how the scoundrel tries to take matters into his own hands when the insanity plea fails. Culled from the historic pages of the Idaho Evening Times and other newspapers of the era.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Paul Pueller.com
0:03.9	Twin Falls, Idaho, November 25th, 1935.
0:15.0	Met by hail of gunfire as they attempted to stop a fugitive believed wanted it to coma for kidnapping.
0:22.8	Fontaine Cooper, 32, state traffic officer here, was shot to death and Deputy Sheriff Henry
0:30.5	C. Givens was critically wounded after 2 p.m. today. The shooting occurred half a mile east of
0:37.4	Buell on Highway 30. Cooper was
0:40.8	instantly killed by the surprise blast from the gun of the fugitive, believed by authorities
0:46.3	to be Douglas Van Vlack, 32, Tacoma. The call to the sheriff's office here for the arrest
0:53.8	of Van Vlack came from Boise after the latter had passed through the capital city.
1:00.1	The two officers approached Van Vlack's car from behind, passed it, and then alighted from their own machine,
1:07.3	according to the story of the shooting told by Chief A.C. Parker of Buell.
1:11.6	They approached the fugitives' machine on foot and ordered him to stop.
1:17.6	Van Vlack opened fire with a 32 automatic, killing Cooper instantly with a bullet in the left eye, and then felling Givens. The car then sped away toward Twin Falls.
1:31.2	An eyewitness to the shooting was Clifford Hammond, a young Buell man, who bore out Chief Parker's
1:37.2	story that the officers flagged the fugitive car and were met by swift gunfire without warning.
1:46.7	Hammond rushed back and brought Givens to the hospital here. Cooper's body was brought later to the Twin Falls mortuary. Givens was shot three times,
1:55.3	once in the neck, once in the left arm, and once in the left hand. Dispatches from Tacoma late this afternoon indicated that the call to local authorities to
2:05.8	arrest Van Vlack was based on a kidnapping charge, probably filed at Tacoma by parents of
2:12.1	Miss Mildred Hook, a 22-year-old divorcee, missing since Saturday, and believed kidnapped by Van Vlack.
2:20.3	Givens was rushed to the operating table at Twin Falls County Hospital, where surgeons indicated infection from the wounds was the chief danger.
2:31.3	A countywide dragnet was being thrown out all over highways and bridges this
2:37.0	afternoon and machinery of the State Department of Law Enforcement at Boise was invoked by Commissioner
	...

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