Bonnie Garland: The Yale Student Murdered by Her Ex-Boyfriend

Who Was Bonnie?

Bonnie Garland was born in New York in 1957. She was the first child of Paul and Joan Garland, who eventually had three more children.

Bonnie came from a highly educated family. Her father Paul was a Yale graduate who finished second in his class before attending Harvard Law School. He was very interested in South American culture and eventually moved to Brazil, where he started a law firm that grew to employ 50 attorneys.

Bonnie's mother Joan was also well-educated, having earned a master's degree from Sarah Lawrence.

Bonnie was a bright, ambitious young woman who attended Yale University, one of the most prestigious schools in the country.

Meeting Richard Herrin

Bonnie met Richard Herrin at Yale in 1974 during a campus event called "Bladder Ball."

Bladder Ball was a Yale tradition where students would inflate a six-foot ball (called a "bladder") and teams made up of various campus organizations would compete to gain control of it using any means necessary.

The event was held once a year on the Saturday before the Yale-Dartmouth football game. However, it eventually became too unruly due to students drinking alcohol beforehand, and after years of trampling, vandalism, and injuries, the administration banned the event in 1982.

But it was at this event in 1974 that Bonnie and Richard first met.

The two began dating, and their relationship continued for several years.

The Troubled Relationship

As time went on, Bonnie and Richard's relationship became troubled.

By July 1977, Bonnie had decided she wanted to see other men. She was 20 years old and wanted to explore her options.

On the night of July 6, 1977, Bonnie and Richard were in her bedroom at her parents' house when they had an emotional discussion about their future relationship.

Bonnie expressed to Richard that it was her desire to see other men.

At some point after the talk, Bonnie fell asleep.

The Murder

After Bonnie fell asleep, Richard sat awake watching the Tonight Show and thumbing through an issue of Sports Illustrated.

Then he suddenly decided what to do about this failing relationship: he would kill Bonnie and then kill himself.

Bonnie's family lay unsuspecting in their own bedrooms as Richard crept through the house and down the stairs to find a murder weapon.

He grabbed a claw hammer and wrapped it in a towel, then returned to the upstairs bedroom where Bonnie was fast asleep.

At first, he left the hammer wrapped in the towel in the hallway while he checked to make sure Bonnie wasn't awake. Then he brought the hammer into the room and bludgeoned Bonnie to death while she slept.

The Aftermath

Richard Herrin was arrested and charged with Bonnie's murder.

The case sparked national debate about domestic violence, obsessive relationships, and the justice system's handling of "crimes of passion."

Bonnie Garland was a bright, ambitious 20-year-old Yale student with her whole life ahead of her. She was a daughter, a sister, a friend.

Bonnie Garland deserved to live. She deserved to chase her dreams, to fall in love safely, to grow old. Her story is a tragic reminder of how quickly love can turn to violence—and why we must take domestic violence seriously.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I'm doing well. I am sleepy. I'm experiencing the Friday sleepies. It's a weird weekend. When you have a, it is holiday Thursday. Mm-hmm. And then Friday is kind of like that.

Like it feels kind of like a Saturday today. Mm-hmm. But it's not. And we had, Wednesday was my son's birthday, so my husband was off. Yes. And then Thursday and then, so then today is like Monday, is it? What's happening? Is it Monday? Yeah. It's like we get second weekend. So I am [00:01:00] excited about that. Yeah. So yeah, we're in it for the long weekend and that is kind of exciting to think that even after this day we have two more days of quote unquote free time.

Absolutely. You know what we haven't done in a while, Mandy, and we should do it more often, is to remind people, if you are listening and you're liking the show, please hit follow or subscribe in January. I think everyone like. Got an update on their Apple, especially their apps, and a lot of people lost their subscribers.

Yes. And that means a lot of people might not even realize that they're not subscribed anymore. It might just, you know, see our name or search for our name on a Tuesday. So if you have it, we would love it if you subscribed, we will do our best to make sure it's worth your money, which is $0, by the way. So, um, for every single penny for doing quite good.

And if you like it for $0 and you're enjoying it, please feel free to leave a review. Mandy reads those and when they're super nice, she sends them to me. Sometimes she [00:02:00] sends me the bad ones, but I think for the most part, she keeps those to herself. I do. Yeah. So all that to say, please subscribe to the podcast if you are not already subscribed.

So, sorry, everyone. No. Um, okay, so we're gonna get right, we're gonna, well, I'm saying right into it as if we haven't already blabbered on for a while, but we're gonna get into the story this week. This one is truly unbelievable. It is really like Mandy like sent me a note basically saying like, let me know when you're done looking over at what you think.

'cause some, you know, kind of giving me a hint and it was 10 times worse than I thought it was gonna be. As far as, as you go along, you'll see what we mean, but yes. Oh my gosh, yes. So if there's one thing that I really don't understand, it's the life of an Ivy League student. I am neither smart enough nor rich enough to have ever had to think about fitting in at a place like Yale.

And sometimes I kind of do wish I was because I feel like I missed out on some of the really amazing traditions there, like the annual Halloween concert [00:03:00] put on by the Yale Symphony Orchestra, which sounds absolutely lovely, and the excitement of a game of bladder ball. Which sounds kind of funny. It feels like a game you play when you're pregnant, like near the end of pregnancy.

Absolutely. Does. Like you're always playing bladder ball. It absolutely does. This game actually ended in 1982, but it was pretty interesting. So this is a game that Yale students would play once a year at 11:00 AM on the Saturday before the Yale Dartmouth football game. So basically they would inflate a six foot ball, think like giant beach ball, or they actually would call it a bladder, which makes me even more just, I so confused.

I can't call it a bladder. It's a ball. It's looks like a beach ball. Uh, okay. But they would inflate this giant ball and then there were teams that were made up of the various on-campus organizations like the campus radio station, the campus magazine, et cetera. And these teams would use any means necessary to gain control of this giant six foot ball.

So eventually though this event [00:04:00] got way too unruly, as you can imagine, due to students drinking alcohol before, uh, they would play and. After several years, it devolved into more of an annual disaster that included trampling, vandalism, and many injuries. So the administration finally put an end to this and banned the event almost 30 years after the tradition started.

But it was on the day of this event in 1974 that Bonnie Garland first met Richard Herron, and since they met at Yale, it goes without saying that these two were both cut from a different cloth. Bonnie was born in New York in 1957. She was the first child to her parents, Paul and Joan, who eventually had three more kids.

Bonnie's dad was a Yale graduate who finished second in his class after writing his thesis on Spanish intellectual history before heading off to Harvard Law School, which he eventually graduated from. Paul was very interested in South American culture. So after law school, he moved to Brazil where he started a [00:05:00] law firm that soon grew to employ 50 attorneys.

Bonnie's mom. Joan was also well educated having earned a master's degree from Sarah Lawrence in human genetics and later earning a second master's in social work at Columbia. Bonnie spent most of her younger years growing up in Brazil, which helped her become multilingual. She spoke English, Spanish, and two other languages.

When she was a teenager, her family relocated to Virginia and she started going to the prestigious Madeira school, which we actually have mentioned on the podcast before. Uh, we've mentioned this school in a previous episode about, I believe his name was Herman Tarau. So we actually have mentioned the school before.

So when it came up in this one, I was like, oh, I recognize that school. Nice job. But yes. But this is an elite day in boarding college. Uh, it's a prep school for girls only. So that is where Bonnie was attending school when she was a teenager. The family later moved to Scarsdale, New York, which is just outside of [00:06:00] New York City.

They lived in a sprawling tutor home in the wealthy area of Fox Hollow. In the spring of 1974. Bonnie graduated from the prep school and started her first semester at Yale. That same fall, she majored in music and took private voice lessons and sang in the Glee Club and several other singing groups.

Less than two months after she started going to Yale, Bonnie met Richard Herron, who was a senior on November 1st, 1974, Richard and a friend of his went to see a Beatles movie, and on the way home they decided to recreate a scene from Let It Be and Serenade Bladder Ball Players from the Roof of Saybrook College, which is still part of Yale.

Apparently Yale has a series of colleges on campus, which I didn't know. It's not just Yale like you can go to. I don't even know. Another example, you can go to Saybrook College or this one, or whatever other one there is there, um, which I did not know, but it's like a little community of colleges. [00:07:00] So at around 2:00 AM Bonnie and some of her friends walked by Robert and his buddy, and they decided to join in the fun and start singing with them.

Well, Bonnie and Richard started getting really close and they were singing in unison, and their friends that were there said the sparks just flew. And it was a magical moment From that point on, Bonnie and Rich were an item. Unlike Bonnie, Richard didn't grow up in the lap of luxury, but he was extremely intelligent with an IQ of 150, which we still don't know our IQs, but I guarantee nope.

Speaking for myself. Mine is not anywhere close to that. Right. So he was the son of a Mexican mother and an Irish father who actually abandoned the family when Richard was just three years old. His mom later went on to remarry. Richard grew up in LA and he went to Lincoln High School where he played football and basketball and was a leader in student government.

He was always pleasant to the point that no one ever saw him angry. He really wasn't the type to be involved in drama or in fights. [00:08:00] He spent his summers and weekends helping out in his stepdad swap shop, and he went to mass with his mom every Sunday at 7:00 AM Bridger was the valedictorian of his high school, graduating class of 415 students.

He applied for Yale along with 8,681 other students who applied that year, and he was only one of 1019 men accepted. Not only was he accepted, but he went to Yale on scholarship. When he entered the program, he began studying geology. However, something changed when Richard started going to college. His academic performance took a downturn, and in the four years at Yale, he only earned one A, but that didn't really seem to bother him, which seems like a big difference from high school valedictorian to now.

Barely, you know, getting one A and you're at this college on scholarship. That seems like a huge difference. Yeah. But Richard told his friends, quote, I'm a geology major. There's no one less competitive at [00:09:00] Yale than a geo major, and I'm a C student in geology. End quote. But it's not that Richard was just blowing off academics.

It was just that he had other things He wanted to spend his time and energy on things like intramural sports Catholicism, the Chicano group on campus, and playing his guitar, watching midnight horror movies and lazy brunch dates with his friends. Making the best grades in the class just wasn't a top priority.

It was during the fall of his senior year of 1974, when he met 17-year-old Bonnie. The relationship became serious almost immediately. Bonnie was really smitten with Richard. He was tall, handsome, musical athletic, and really fun to be around. On top of that, he adored her and he told her so all the time.

It was really a change of peace for Bonnie compared to the boys. She had grown up knowing Bonnie's parents, however, weren't such big fans of Richard. After meeting him for the first time, Bonnie's dad described him as a quote, slovenly in appearance, [00:10:00] slovenly in manners, difficult to talk to and physically unattractive.

Tell us how you really feel, dad. No kidding. I'm just like, I feel like that's such a dad. Straightforward. Like straight up, right? That's how your dad feels about this guy. Absolutely. So in March of 1975, Bonnie brought Richard home for spring break and he really didn't make a much better impression than either.

He was pretty closed off and he even avoided conversations about topics. He should have been comfortable and excited to discuss things like rocks. He was a geology major after all, but even when he finds out that Bonnie's mom collects minerals and geodes, he kind of acted like he had nothing to contribute to the conversation.

I will say at this point in the story, I'm thinking. Is he faking his, like is he not even actually a student because, well, he said he is a C student. There's true, I mean, he basically has admitted that like getting a geology major at Yale is like not very impressive. And I mean, maybe he wasn't taking [00:11:00] his glasses on that.

Seriously true. But it does make you think like, oh, he just must not even be in classes at all. And apparently maybe, maybe not. Maybe. Yeah, I know, maybe he wasn't after the visit, Bonnie's parents hoped she would come to her senses and that when Richard graduated in the spring, that would be the end of it.

But unfortunately things did not play out that way. In April of 1975, Joan got a call from Bonnie, who was apparently now failing two of her classes and things really weren't looking good. Richard was also failing a class and he wouldn't be able to finish his thesis on time. So Bonnie suggested that she could just attend summer school while sharing Richard's rent an apartment with him.

Joan later said that she was just thunderstruck by this whole thing. Bonnie had just turned 18. As we've mentioned before, she has lived a very, very, very sheltered and privileged upbringing. She has gone to like day boarding school for, you know, this prep school. She hasn't been [00:12:00] exposed to a lot. And here she is having this, you know, now she's already struggling at her first semester at Yale, right?

And she's like, I know the solution. Let me move in with my boyfriend. So her parents are like, whoa. Absolutely not. So during Bonnie's first term at Yale, she got one a, two B's and a C. But after Richard came into the picture, she had a C, two D's and an F. So her parents quickly vetoed this plan to live with Richard, and to their surprise, Bonnie actually didn't fight them about it.

Her mom actually later said she thought Bonnie may have been slightly relieved that her parents Right. Kind of said no to that. Which also makes sense because as an 18-year-old you can see how she might not know how to tell Richard, yeah, I don't wanna do that. Her mom said she kind of got the sense that she might have been a little bit relieved that she kind of got got out of that one.

Right. But Bonnie and Richard did stay together as a couple, and she did finish out her terrible second semester, and then she went off to South America with the Glee Club before she [00:13:00] started summer school. Richard stayed behind to focus on finishing his own thesis, so he would actually have a chance at graduating from Yale.

Richard did some weird things while Bonnie was gone in South America. He built a literal shrine to her on a nightstand next to his bed. And when I say shrine, I mean like the nightstand was covered in photos, stuffed animals, presents, candles, books that Bonnie had given him. He just really missed her a lot, and this is the way that he was coping with that.

But he did get his thesis done and he graduated from Yale later that summer. Bonnie came back from her trip in early August and later that month Richard left New Haven and moved to Fort Worth, Texas to go to graduate school at Texas Christian University, where he was planning on continuing his studies in geology.

Bonnie's mom. Joan was relieved when Richard moved away and assumed that the romantic relationship between him and Bonnie had officially fizzled [00:14:00] out. Little did she know it hadn't. Bonnie and Richard kept in touch through writing letters and they visited anytime they could. Richard would write things in his letters like, my only joy is seeing your picture and thinking of you, and I'm living every second for you.

They talked about marriage, and Richard even encouraged Bonnie to accelerate her studies and graduate in three years instead of four, so that they could get married sooner, which. Pump the brakes. Like she barely survived her first. Yeah. Ses two semesters at Yale. I don't know that jumping into accelerated coursework is, I know a wise idea.

Unfortunately, things were already starting to fall apart about a month into being separated from each other. Bonnie said it was starting to feel like Richard was just a voice on the phone. She said Richard was acting more possessive and suspicious, which Richard actually agreed with. But he blamed this on the fact that he had been hurt by a previous girlfriend [00:15:00] who didn't wanna take things to a more serious level with Richard.

And he felt he had been deceived and lied to by that woman. So he was now scared of what would happen since Bonnie had this new freedom. That's scary in itself, him calling it her new freedom. Yes. 'cause that makes it sound like she was definitely trapped with you, sir. And he was really right. Bonnie was already entertaining another man.

It was another Yale student who like Bonnie was already in a relationship with someone else. At some point, Bonnie started talking about breaking things off completely with Richard. She just felt that he really wasn't ambitious enough and there was something missing in their relationship, but she wasn't sure just what the guy she had been seeing asked her why she just.

Didn't tell Richard that she was dating him, but Bonnie said she was just afraid of what Richard's reaction might be. In December of 1975, Bonnie ended things with her side boyfriend. By that point, Richard had developed a habit of calling her on Saturday nights, always when she was out doing something else.

And when she would return [00:16:00] home at 3:00 AM she could almost count on the phone ringing. When she returned to the house, Bonnie once joked to her friends that she thought Richard had ESP. So from that point on, Bonnie continued dating Richard, but it was mostly kept secret. She didn't discuss this with her friends or her family.

One of the singing groups Bonnie was in was called Proof of the Pudding, and it was made up of women who talked openly about the relationships and other girl talk with each other. But Bonnie kept pretty reserved when it came to talking about Richard. Bonnie did bring Richard around when he was in town, but it was often really awkward.

One time he came to a rehearsal and just sat by the piano and stared at Bonnie. Later they went out to dinner as a group and he just sat there and stared at her and didn't even participate in the conversation or laugh when something funny was said. So weird, but it would get on my last nerve to be like, I brought you here.

No one really likes you and you're doing nothing to help this situation. You're just sitting there staring. Mm-hmm. Blankly. That's even weirder. [00:17:00] Yeah. Yes. So as Mandy's saying, everyone else thinks it's weird and that he was weird, but no one really talked about it and nobody had any idea that Bonnie was only staying with Richard because she worried he would crumble if she left in the summer of 1976.

Bonnie didn't see her parents very much, but her long distance relationship with Richard continued. Bonnie had actually relocated to Fort Worth and she was working as a babysitter so she could be closer to him. When she came back to visit, she seemed depressed and her mom asked why she wasn't happy if Richard was so great.

For whatever reason though Bonnie stayed with Richard, it's very possible that her lack of experience with relationships and her sweet nature of not wanting to hurt Richard's feelings led to, you know, her continuing this relationship. And meanwhile, Richard is adamant that he wants to marry Bonnie as soon as she graduates.

So she actually did end up starting that accelerated program in the fall of [00:18:00] 1976. But as I was kind of getting into before, she was struggling already before that. And this was extremely stressful, um, for her to take on. Yeah, Bonnie actually had to quit her private singing lessons and she dropped out of all of her singing groups to focus on her five and a half courses each semester that fall on Bladder Ball weekend, which is their anniversary weekend.

Richard went back to visit Yale and uh, see, to see Bonnie and celebrate. Everything was going really well until the Saturday night dance, and that's when the couple ran into an old friend of Richard named nata, and Nata also happened to be friends with the guy that Bonnie was briefly seeing on the side earlier that year.

The guy who already had another girlfriend of his own, and it didn't really go anywhere with Bonnie. At some point during that night, NATA made a joking comment to Richard that she hopes he's been keeping an eye on Bonnie, but Rich immediately got very serious and he [00:19:00] grabbed Nata by the arm and demanded that she explained what she meant by that.

You know, why did she say that? And he told her that he wanted her to keep an eye on Bonnie while he was gone and let him know if there was anything quote unquote going on. So Natta later said that Richard was very intense in that moment, and she told him she didn't actually know anything. It was all kind of just like a joking thing, right?

She apologized for upsetting him unnecessarily and. You know, thought maybe it was just a one-off thing, but the next morning they all went to brunch and Richard once again mentioned this, that he was very concerned about what Bonnie was doing when he wasn't there and wanted NATA to keep, you know, keep an eye on her when he wasn't able to be there.

Richard and Bonnie spent Christmas of 1976 at Bonnie's home with her parents, much to their disliking, but Joan said it was either let Rich come to Christmas at their house or risk the chance that Bonnie would just take off and go to Los Angeles for the holiday and spend it there. With Richard, [00:20:00] they obviously wanted their daughter home for Christmas, so they felt they had no choice but to allow Richard to tag along.

Totally get that you do what you have to do to have your kid absolutely. Make, make sure they're safe and all of that. Absolutely. Bonnie and Richard visited various grad schools during the Christmas holiday break and talked about the idea of going to the same school after Bonnie graduated from Yale, but.

Not surprisingly, the accelerated coursework at Yale was not an easy thing for her to take on, and by January of 1977, obviously less than a year into this accelerated coursework, Bonnie was extremely stressed. She actually stopped going to class and she told her parents she was gonna take a leave of absence while continuing her voice lessons and singing with the Glee Club and proof of the pudding.

Bonnie wanted to take some time for herself, and her parents were actually okay with that because they assumed that included taking a break from Richard, but of course they were wrong. Bonnie ended up taking a nine to five job as a babysitter in New Haven and moved into a [00:21:00] cheap basement apartment. She could have moved back home with her parents, but she didn't want to because they're not happy that she's still seeing Richard.

In March, Bonnie and some of her friends from Proof of the Pudding went out to happy Hour at St. Anthony's Hall. After rehearsal there, Bonnie met a man who sang for the Yale Wiffin Poofs, the world's oldest and best known collegiate acapella group. Also, they're known as the Whiffs. Have you ever heard of the Whiffs?

No. I'm not. Like, I don't follow collegiate acapella. No. Wait, hold on. Here comes treble Andy from the office he was in. Uh, not Bernard. What was co uh, co No, it starts with a CI know this college, it's a very, it's a New York. Oh my gosh. Cornell, what is it called? Columbia Cornell. Oh, is it? He was in Cornell's.

Yeah, I got it right on the first track. Trouble. Yes. So besides that, I know nothing about, so I only know about fake acapella groups. Um, [00:22:00] so and so this man that she meets, he's chosen to remain anonymous, so we're just gonna refer to him as John for this episode. So John and Bonnie hit it off and they start seeing each other after this.

And eventually John helps Bonnie finally make this break away from Richard. In May, Bonnie toured around Europe with a glee club, and during this trip she became a lot more serious with John. Richard was sending letters that Bonnie was getting at every stop, but after a while she just stopped opening them.

At this point, she's completely over it and she doesn't wanna be in any type of relationship with Richard, but she wasn't sure how to finally end things once and for all. So Bonnie keeps putting off telling Richard that she wants to end it because she had played out all the what ifs and she really did not know what to expect.

So John, this new guy, she's seeing warns Bonnie that Richard would be waiting for her when she returned to the States. He even said he could see Richard showing up to the airport, but Bonnie insisted that Richard wasn't dangerous and he wouldn't hurt her [00:23:00] or anyone else on the tour's. Last stop in Norway, Bonnie mailed a breakup letter to Richard, which he received as he was packing to move to Washington DC where he was going to attend the PhD program at George Washington University.

Richard got this letter and he was devastated and said he couldn't imagine a life without Bonnie, or as he called her his Bonnie. Beautiful. So he drops everything and he flies to New York to quote unquote reclaim her without her knowledge. Of course. So basically the same thing John said was going to happen is basically what he decides to do.

Yeah. So for the 4th of July weekend, Bonnie asked her new boat John to join her at her parents' house to celebrate. So Joan Bonnie's mom was ecstatic to see Bonnie so happy with John. She felt like her zest for life was back, and the general mood around the house was heightened because of John's presence.

Joan said that he was a delight to be around and he and Bonnie were very clearly happy and enthusiastic together. [00:24:00] On July 3rd, Bonnie's dad, Paul took John and Bonnie out sailing while they were out, Richard called her parents' house looking for her, and Joan told him that Bonnie wasn't there and would be out boating for a few hours.

Richard told Joan that he was actually in town at Hartsdale Station. At that point, Joan told Richard there was another young man staying there, which of course really seemed to upset Richard. So Joan invited him to come over for lunch. Richard told Joan, he felt ashamed and humiliated and said that he had only come there in person because he thought that if he'd just called Bonnie would hang up on him.

But he said, you know, he wouldn't want her back out of guilt. But he was kind of just fighting all of these emotions he was feeling. So he put a letter on Bonnie's bed and he left. In this letter, he wrote that he realized he hadn't been around enough, and he said, quote, I will never, never leave you again.

As Richard was leaving, he said to Joan, I hope to see you again. [00:25:00] On July 4th, Richard called Bonnie and said that he actually did wanna see her in person. By that point, John had already left, so Bonnie agreed to meet, even though her parents really didn't want her to go, Bonnie told them she just wanted to let Richard down gently.

Bonnie's parents were happy that this nightmare with Richard was seemingly coming to an end. So they agreed to let Bonnie go meet up with him on one term, and that was that Richard must leave Scarsdale on Thursday, July 7th, so that Bonnie could get ready to start summer school at Columbia that following Monday.

Her summer school performance was extremely important because it would be determining whether or not she would even be able to go back to Yale in the fall. On July 5th, Richard returned to Scarsdale, and on the sixth he and Bonnie drove to New York City so she could register for summer school. When they got back, Joan asked Bonnie if Richard had secured his plane ticket to go back to Texas yet, and Bonnie said that he hadn't, but she was gonna talk to him about it.

[00:26:00] At that point, Joan went downstairs and left a letter on Richard's bed, and she was essentially in this letter pleading with him to just leave Bonnie alone. After this, she wrote quote, this is Bonnie's third academic crisis. You haven't been helpful in the first two. She needs to do well in this course.

If you have something to say, please write whatever happens between you. It can wait until after summer school. Please help her this time. It's unknown whether Richard actually read this letter or not. On the night of July 6th, Richard and Bonnie were in her bedroom when they started having an emotional discussion of their future relationship.

Bonnie expressed to Richard that it was her desire to see other men. At some point after the talk, Bonnie fell asleep for the last time. And we're gonna get into what happened after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. So before the break, we're discussing this time that Richard is at Bonnie's parents' house.

He and Bonnie have had this [00:27:00] conversation. Bonnie's now said she doesn't want to be in a relationship with him. She wants to see other men, and at this point in the story, she has gone to sleep. So after she falls asleep this night, Richard sat awake watching the Tonight Show and just thumbing through an issue a sports illustrated, when he suddenly decided what to do about this failing relationship he had with his beloved Bonnie.

Beautiful. He had decided to put an end to the heartache by killing Bonnie and then killing himself. Bonnie's family laid Unsuspectedly in their own bedrooms as Richard crept through the house and down the stairs to find a murder weapon. He grabbed a claw hammer and wrapped it in a towel and returned to the upstairs bedroom where Bonnie was fast asleep.

At first, he left the hammer wrapped in a towel in the hallway while he checked to make sure that Bonnie wasn't awake. Then he brought the hammer into the room, put it under her bed for a little while until he was satisfied that she was fully asleep. After a few minutes, Richard began his attack. He struck her repeatedly in [00:28:00] the head and throat, leaving a very gruesome crime scene behind.

After Bludgeoning Bonnie in her sleep, Richard stole one of her parents' cars and drove around aimlessly until he eventually got on the New York State throughway when the car was just about out of gas. He pulled off the highway and stopped in front of a church about a hundred miles north of Scarsdale.

Richard got out of the car and sat on the steps of the church for two hours, contemplating what he should do. Eventually, he worked at the nerve to ring the rectory doorbell. A priest answered the door and saw Richard bloody and disheveled wearing only pants, no shoes and no shirt. Richard seemed confused and distraught, and he blurted out that he had killed his girlfriend and was planning to kill himself, but he was afraid to end his own life.

So the priest listened to Richard for a little while and then called the police. Richard was arrested and he was extremely emotional. When he talked to the police about what he had done. He told them he had ripped the interior mirror off the car and planned on breaking it so he could slit his wrist and lock himself in the trunk, [00:29:00] but he was too scared to go through with it.

He gave the police chief Bonnie's name and address the police in that area. Then started trying to get in touch with the Scarsdale police back at the Garland home. Paul and Joan were totally unaware of the horror that had taken place inside their home overnight. That morning, Paul woke up and went to work at his New York City office as he did every day.

It wasn't until around 7:00 AM that authorities got in touch with the Scarsdale Police Department, and three officers were dispatched to the Garland home to check on things there. Joan came to the door and officers asked whether she had a daughter named Bonnie and if so, they wanted to know if Bonnie was there.

Joan rushed to Bonnie's bedroom to confirm that her daughter was home, but instead she found an indescribable scene. Bonnie was unrecognizable after the brutal beating she sustained that left blood and other tissues splattered around the room, but she was clinging to life and gasping for air. Bonnie [00:30:00] was taken to a hospital and her father was called at his office to come as quickly as possible.

He left immediately and went to the hospital where doctors were performing emergency operations to try and save his daughter. In the meantime, Richard was being transported back to Scarsdale. Officers told him that Bonnie in fact wasn't dead, which seemed to surprise Richard. But at the same time he did seem happy to hear that she was still alive.

Richard wrote a full confession detailing what he had done. He said in this confession quote, knowing I couldn't have her exclusively knowing that I didn't wanna share her, knowing that I didn't wanna live without her, I entertained the thought of killing her. He described how he found the hammer, wrapped it in a towel and checked multiple times to make sure Bonnie was asleep before beginning his murderous assault.

Back at the hospital, surgeons were working on Bonnie, who had suffered three to five separate wounds to the head. She also had a black and [00:31:00] blue mark on her neck, and she had no blood pressure and no pulse. Sadly, these operations were not successful, and Bonnie passed away at 10:38 PM on July 7th. Her parents were both by her side when she died.

Richard was immediately taken to jail and indicted for second degree murder, which to me was kind of surprising since he has admitted that he thought about this plan and even took steps to ensure that Bonnie was asleep, meaning he had multiple moments to think this through and change his mind. Seems like they could have easily argued first degree murder, but evidently New York does have very strict laws on what counts as first degree murder, and that part actually did not surprise me as much.

Uh, Richard entered a plea of not guilty by reason of temporary mental defect. Richard actually did have some support. Believe it or not. A friend of his who he was with the night before the murder went to visit Richard after his arrest. At first, when Richard saw his friend on the other side of the booth, he started to run away, [00:32:00] but then he looked at him and he started crying.

The friend said it was very awkward seeing Richard. He was very down and out and said he didn't feel he deserved people to come visit him. He referred to himself as an animal and said he didn't deserve to live others who had always liked Richard, and always knew him as a peaceful person, found it hard to hate him even after he admitted to murdering Bonnie.

It was really just beyond everyone's comprehension. Those who knew him though said they felt there was no reason for two lives to be ruined, and they thought Richard was still capable of contributing something great to society. So they all put their energy into his redemption. No disconnect. I'll just keep going.

I'll just keep going. Yeah, so what happened next is what Bonnie's parents later referred to as the second assault. A week after the murder, Richard's old roommate from Yale asked his other friends to write supportive letters that could be used in a bail campaign. These were people who had known Richard in la, but most of them [00:33:00] were Yale graduates and faculty.

Among those who wrote a letter, was a congressional aide, a Yale classmate who was a special assistant to President Carter and the Yale Dean Martin Griffin. Okay. Additionally, 19 members of the Christian Brothers community of Albany offered to shelter and supervise Richard at their monastery. During the pretrial period, Richard's lawyer eventually compiled a bail application with all of this material, and the judge who reviewed the application described it as, quote, the best I've ever seen.

Richard was granted bail of $50,000. His friends and family raised 11,000, but then a pediatric cardiologist at Yale who had never met Richard, was taken to the jail to visit him. This woman said that she got the impression that Richard was close to suicide, and she felt that she could avert that. She said tragedy compounded, makes no sense.

Shockingly, the woman pledged her home as surety, and [00:34:00] on August 11th, Richard was bailed out of jail. This blows my mind because literally never met the guy. Never met the guy putting up her home. To get him out of jail. What is going on in this story? Listen, I watch Inmate to roommate and lots of people do this kind of thing.

It's very, very wild. But this makes no sense. This like professional woman who's never met him. This doctor is saying he just killed her. I mean, this, this isn't like 30 years ago, and he's been whatever, right? He's, he's served his time. This is like waiting to see if he's going to be convicted of murder.

Right. This, he's already admitted to it and you're letting him into your house. I, I'm not, and who is this person? That's why I couldn't figure out, there's not a lot of information about exactly who she was or why she was even visiting him. She's a pediatric cardiologist, so I can understand why there would be medical professionals going to visit him.

Sure. But why was a pediatric cardiologist brought to the jail to even see him like ID [00:35:00] how, what's going on here? It just doesn't make any what's happening. It's absolutely wild. Yeah. So after Richard was released, thanks to this. New friend, uh, he went to stay at the Christian Brothers monastery. Bonnie's parents were terrified for their own safety with Richard out free, but the Christian brothers decided that they didn't need any additional security at the monastery for Richard, because as they put it, quote, our security is God.

Richard was permitted to work in a religious bookstore, and he even attended state university classes under a false name for a while. Can you imagine finding out that the guy that you're buying books from or in class with waiting trial for this horrific, he murdered a college student? Oh, a crime? Yeah.

Yes. Oh my gosh. It's horrifying. So Paul and Joan Garland were dumbfounded that authorities actually released a confessed murderer with no psychiatric examination just 35 days after he murdered their daughter. To them it seemed [00:36:00] extremely reckless, and I would also add disrespectful for sure. They don't even know fully what's going on here.

They don't have the full story, and they're like, sure, here you go. You can just go out and live in a monastery and work in a bookstore. It, it's crazy. So Bonnie's family also did not agree with the stance that the Christian brothers took that, you know, Richard is just a fallen brother who doesn't need extra security, because to them he's a vicious and unpredictable man who, for all they know, could return to Scarsdale to kill again.

Absolutely. The garlands were truly living in a nightmare. Their 13-year-old daughter was afraid to even be alone in her own home, and the whole family had started therapy. Paul, who normally would travel up to a hundred thousand miles a year for business, was unable to even leave his family alone for one night after what happened to Bonnie.

Paul was particularly full of rage over the whole sense that Richard had all these Yale connections and he was getting all this support from the church, which could easily influence a judge in the future. When it came time to [00:37:00] answer for this crime, so many people had already spoken up for Richard or done things to support him, that it only made sense there would be a huge circus at his trial.

And people did continue to support Richard as his trial approach. The Roman Catholics, St. Thomas Morehouse on campus raised over $30,000 in funds for his defense, which would be around $150,000 today, which is wild. Like literally what? The college is like, I know, I, it's, it's wild. And because Bonnie was also a student there, so that's what I'm like, right.

What is happening? Like, I understand, like, I don't understand rallying around Richard and raising all these funds and like Bonnie was also a Yale student, so how come the university isn't rallying behind her family? It just, it's really strange. Blows my mind. Yeah. So Richard's trial began in White Plains in May of 1978.

He was pleading not guilty by a reason of temporary mental defect. So. That means that he was admitting that he did kill Bonnie, but the question [00:38:00] the jury had to answer was whether or not he was criminally responsible for her death. So they actually had four possible verdicts in the case to consider.

They had the option of guilty of second degree murder, not guilty, not guilty by reason of mental defect or disease, or guilty of the lesser charge of first degree manslaughter. Prosecutors argued that the defense's case was just a smokescreen of mental disease and emotional upset, but that the murder was planned, calculated, and premeditated.

The priest Richard confessed to hours after the murder testified that Richard told him he murdered his girlfriend, and then described how he beat her with a hammer. The police chief that arrested Richard and took his confession was also put on the stand, and he explained that Richard behaved in a normal, coherent and cooperative manner in the eight hours after the murder.

This was meant to show that Richard wasn't quote unquote crazy like the defense was trying to make him out to be. The surgeon who operated on Bonnie testified [00:39:00] about the extent of her injuries, and we didn't get into it, but we both know it was extremely, truly ly horrific. Very graphic. Yeah. So lastly, they had three psychiatrists testify that Richard was not suffering from psychosis at the time of the murder.

Richard's defense was that he was temporarily insane at the time the bludgeoning took place, and therefore he could not be held criminally liable. They also said that if he wasn't insane at the time, then he should be found guilty of manslaughter due to the extreme emotional disturbance. The defense said Richard disassociated from his actions, feelings, and thoughts when he murdered Bonnie.

They described it like shell shock when he was rejected by Bonnie. They further argued that the relationship between the two of them grew to the point that they were mutually dependent on each other, so it was very hurtful to Richard when Bonnie ended things. Poor guy. Boo-hoo. Yeah, they said he contemplated suicide when he got the breakup letter and even brought a rope to hang himself with when he went to New York to try and change her mind.

While visiting [00:40:00] Bonnie that week, all the tensions of the previous few months were still there and they had a number of intense talks. Richard was like a volcano just waiting to erupt. They said once he decided he had to kill her and then himself, he was like a robot and acted without any emotion at all.

Which, just to jump in here for a second, how if he did not take his own life, if he's doing this robotic thing, so he is able to take her life, but then when it comes to the part with him. Robot got turned off now brain switched back on. Right? That, yeah, exactly. That's very convenient. So the defense had several mental health experts testify about Richard's mental state, with one claiming that his decline started in February of 1977, when Bonnie hung up on him during a long distance call, and then he gradually fell into a psychosis that ultimately led to him killing Bonnie.

Two of the experts said that Richard had a borderline personality with fears of abandonment and insecurity. He made Bonnie the center of his universe and just couldn't fathom life [00:41:00] without her. I just, honestly, it, I feel like thankfully we have come a long way in terms of taking women more seriously when they are trying to get out of relationships that they don't wanna be in.

Because this case, you know, as we, we've been saying it happened in the seventies, but a lot of people in this story almost are taking like a very victim blaming, like viewpoint saying like, you know, you know, excusing his behavior. But because Bonnie wanted out of the relationship and didn't want to engage with him anymore, and that, you know, if she hadn't done that, then maybe he wouldn't have snapped.

And like, that's not. Like an okay way to view the situation. But that seems to be how pretty much everyone in this story is looking at it. You know, they're like, oh, poor Richard. Like he had gotten so dependent on her to the point where, you know, he like just lost it whenever she didn't wanna be with him anymore.

Like that's not okay and terrifying in the future. So this can just happen over and over again with him, like Right. This isn't a one-off thing if that's truly this emotional [00:42:00] issue he has. Yeah. Right. Very scary. Oh my gosh. And we still have more to get into after one last break to hear word from this week's sponsors.

So before the break we were getting into what was happening in the trial of Richard Herron after he has confessed to murdering his girlfriend, Bonnie Garland. The jury is supposed to be deciding between four verdicts, including guilty of second degree murder, guilty of the lesser charge of first degree manslaughter, or he could be found obviously not guilty or could be found guilty of second degree murder, but by reason of mental.

Insanity. A lot of options there. Yes. So Richard took the stand and testified over the course of two days where he talked about his life and his feelings for Bonnie, which as we've been explaining were very intense. He explained that while Bonnie was in Europe with the Glee Club, she never wrote to him, and this caused him to have mood swings ranging from despair to hope, to confusion.

He started having thoughts of [00:43:00] terrible things involving Bonnie's death and his own suicide. Richard described the murder in detail on the stand, but I'm not gonna cover it as thoroughly as he did. As we just kind of have mentioned, it's really hard to hear some of the details. But the gist of it was that after he delivered his first blow to Bonnie's head, she convulsed and started making a gurgling noise, and Richard started panicking at that moment because he believed that she was still conscious and would be in pain and would know that it was him who was standing over her.

After hitting her several more times, Bonnie was still alive and gasping for air, although at this point she was completely unconscious. But Richard got scared that somebody was gonna hear the noises that she was making, so he fled in one of the garland's cars and drove around aimlessly until he found himself at that church where he turned himself in.

When he was cross examined, prosecutors repeatedly asked if Richard had. Decided to kill Bonnie and if he chose the hammer and if he [00:44:00] had decided to kill her when he went back to the room. Basically trying to get him to admit that he made a conscious decision to do this. But Richard just kind of avoided their choice of words and stuck to talking about things that he actually did and the way that he felt when the prosecutor asked him whether or not he intended to kill her.

When he walked into her room with a hammer, Richard said, yes, I did. During closing arguments, prosecutors told the jury that the insanity plea was an insult to their intelligence. He said that he was only suffering from the fear of being convicted, not from insanity of any kind. Richard testified that he felt nothing during the murder, so there was no extreme emotional disturbance, rage, or terror in the moment.

They also pointed out that those who saw Richard before and after the murder said that he appeared normal. But the defense clung to their theory of depersonalization and gradual disassociation that led to full on psychosis. [00:45:00] After closing arguments, the judge instructed the jury to deliberate over the four possible verdicts and to put themselves in Richard's shoes and try to see things the way he might have.

I don't understand that instruction at all. I've never heard that. I thought it was facts of the case. And you take that and you ask questions if you have them and come up with a, well, why do we put ourself in the victim's shoes? Like that's what on earth, like, did, does the judge work for Yale? Is the judge at That's why I, I don't get that, like at all.

Is the judging you? It does. It does make you wonder like, did somebody pay these like officials? Because what, uh, that is absolutely wild because then as a juror you have to be thinking. Oh, well, maybe I think he's this monster, but maybe he's not, because even the judge is telling me myself pick up his issues if myself shoes, right?

Like maybe I could see myself doing that. Like that's just the most wild instruction to give the jury. I am flabbergasted. So the jury took their time. It was four days actually before they finally came to the conclusion [00:46:00] that they were deadlocked. Nine of the jurors favored a verdict of guilty of manslaughter while three were holding out for the second degree murder as charged.

In the end, they found him guilty of the lesser charge and that he was acting under the stress of extreme emotional disturbance. One juror later said the defense hadn't really won the case, but the prosecutors lost it by not giving enough evidence to support the second degree murder charge. Bonnie's family, as you can imagine, was devastated at the verdict and they called it an injustice.

Paul said it made him stick to his stomach and felt Richard received special treatment. If Richard had been convicted of second degree murder, he would've faced 25 years to life in prison, but under the manslaughter charge, the sentence could range from one to 25 years. Bonnie's parents wanted the public to join them in urging the judge to impose the maximum sentence of 25 years, and they had over 1000 people write letters to the judge.[00:47:00] 

But just like before, Richard has his own supporters and they are willing to write letters as well. Later, the Garlands opened up more about their feelings, and Paul publicly stated that Richard got away with murder, and Joan said, quote, if you have a $30,000 defense fund, a Yale connection and a clergy connection, you're entitled to one free hammer, murder end quote.

You can understand why they feel that way. That's absolutely, it's just awful. Richard's sentencing hearing was held on July 28th. He gave a statement through tears where he asked to be severely punished for his crime, but said that he would like to one day resume his life and help others. Ultimately, he was sentenced to serve between eight to 25 years.

The judge said that Bonnie's death was an intentional, well thought out planned killing, and that regardless of his emotional state at the time, the act of killing another person is inexcusable. After the sentencing, Bonnie's [00:48:00] mom told the media quote, I don't hate Richard. If a gorilla escaped from the circus, you'd wanna put him in a place where he couldn't hurt anyone.

Richard's lawyer said his sentence was excessive and he was going to be making an appeal on the conviction. And the sentence members of the church were also upset by the sentence, and the leader of the Christian brothers said, quote, I think there are worse crimes when millions of people are going to bed hungry.

Isn't that a great crime? Something about that quote just incited the craziest anger inside of me. He's saying there's worse crimes than what Richard did to his girlfriend and compared it to people going to bed hungry. Which yes, is a terrible thing. Yes, but it is not comparable to being beat to death with a hammer in your sleep.

That's absolutely insane to even draw those two thing comparisons. The only way they could compare them is if you didn't go to bed with food and [00:49:00] then somebody be eat to death with a hammer in the middle of the night. Right. Right. Otherwise that's the only way. It's worse. Right. This spokesperson also said that he felt incarceration was barbaric, which again is really ironic because so is beating someone to death with a claw hammer because they don't wanna date you anymore.

Yeah. That's pretty barbaric. But believe it or not, there were actually people out there that kind of agreed and took the side of Richard and they felt annoyed with Paul and Joan because of how devastated and upset they were over their daughter's brutal murder. One of Richard's friends from Albany said he thinks the garlands are entitled to a certain amount of bitterness, but that time should heal.

I mean, I can't with these people. I mean, the fact that any of these people went on record saying any of this is wild, embarrassing, absolutely embarrassing. Mm-hmm. Uh, a Yale faculty member said that Paul continued to be Paul. This is Bonnie's father continued to behave irrationally even after the shock of the murder should have passed.[00:50:00] 

And he said, quote, that Paul spent too much time moaning about something that cannot return the life of his child. I, yeah. I, Nope. Mm-hmm. Nope. So Paul, who by the way, is a Yale graduate. He's an alumni, and not only is he an alumni, he graduated second in his class. So he performed very well at Yale, was so distraught over the school's response to Bonnie's murder that he actually withdrew his alumni status.

Can't say you blame him. Um, no at that point, but. I just don't understand any of this with the school backing the killer in this case. Like it makes no sense. No. So Richard actually did try appealing his conviction and sentence, but the State Appeals Court upheld both of them. After Richard was convicted of first degree manslaughter, Bonnie's parents sued him for emotional distress and monetary losses suffered as a result of psychological harm, funeral expenses, hospital expenses, et cetera.

A trial for the civil suit took place in [00:51:00] October of 1982. Garland's attorney argued that Richard should repay them for the funeral and medical expenses as well as pay for their emotional damages. Richard's lawyer conceded that he did engage in outrageous conduct and that he recklessly caused the garland's emotional distress, but that he had not done this intentionally.

Richard didn't testify, but they did present testimony from his criminal trial. After three hours of deliberating, the jury decided that Richard had not acted intentionally in causing severe emotional distress to each of Bonnie's parents. Basically, meaning he, he didn't mean to hurt them by killing Bonnie.

Like that wasn't the plan. It was just to kill Bonnie. So the jury fixed the amount of damages for each parents at $15,000 and also awarded them $10,000 for funeral and medical expenses. In total, they were awarded $40,000, which is about $130,000 today. The Garland said they were happy with the verdict and that the case established precedents for the rights of [00:52:00] future crime victims.

He added that they did not pursue the civil suit for the money and didn't care about the amount the jury decided on. He said, this has been a sincere effort on our part to seek justice. Richard appealed the emotional distress finding, but not the medical and funeral expense findings. The case went to the United States Courts of Appeal, who ended up ruling that the garlands could not be compensated for emotional distress and said that their claims were not valid because of the following reasons.

Number one, New York doesn't allow compensation for emotional distress if it was caused recklessly. Only if it was intentional. Number two, New York doesn't allow a bystander to claim emotional distress due to the harm of someone else. Wild, a bystander, they're parents. Wow. And number three, even if the state did allow those claims, if the harm results in death, then compensation is limited to financial losses specified by the state's wrongful death statute.

So it sounds a lot like, [00:53:00] just like kicking the rock down the road, you know, just putting it off to like another court to deal with it. So as a result, the judgment related to the appeal was overturned. And the court was instructed to dismiss the Garland claims for emotional distress damages. Richard did still have to pay for the funeral and medical expenses.

Boo freaking who after Richard was convicted, Paul and Jones started a campaign to ensure that he would serve his maximum sentence. Richard applied for parole and was turned down in 19 86, 19 88, 19 90 and 1992. And thanks to the Garland's efforts, state laws were changed to allow victims or their families to submit statements to the parole board.

Then in January of 1995, Richard, who was now 40, was released from prison after serving two thirds of his sentence without causing any trouble in jail. So this part also was wild to me. I didn't actually look up to see if this is still the way it is. I'm assuming that it probably is. So New York State [00:54:00] law requires that you have to be released if you serve two thirds of your sentence with good behavior.

Like it's actually a law that they have to release you after two thirds of your sentence. So Richard serves 17 years, and that's literally so crazy to me because like if you look at that in any other, like even if someone were to be sentenced to like 50 years. If they're, if they're well behaved, they can get out in 33 years.

I feel like that's giving people a lot of time to potentially get out and still kill again. Like that does not compute for sure to me, for doing something like this to say like, well, we're gonna send you a 25 years, but if you're good, you can actually, you're, you're gonna be like, you guaranteed you're gonna be getting out in 17.

Like, yeah. So that might not be the case anymore. But in 1995, that's how it worked. You know, when he was coming up for his release, so Paul said that Richard should have been serving a life sentence and he expressed disappointment that Richard would still pretty much have his whole life ahead of him, which wasn't fair, which I agree at eight, at 40, like to get [00:55:00] out of.

He's definitely got plenty of time to go do whatever else he wants to do in life. Paul said that it was them, the garlands who were the ones serving the life sentence. After his release, Richard got a job as a coordinator at the Koro Safe Community Project, which is part of the Koro Mental Health Foundation in New Mexico.

It was a state funded program designed to keep the community safe. So naturally when the public found out that Richard was running the program, they had some questions like, why is a killer in charge of keeping the town safe, which. Valid question. Very valid. But the director of the program told the Associated press quote, in America, we give people the opportunity to start again, aren't we to applaud the efforts of individuals who have committed a crime but become successful?

I mean, yes. However, become successful in something else. Make soap or something. You can't make your face, you can't make your, did you say soap? Yeah. Make soap or something that requires you, it's true to not be the face of literally you. C Why would you make yourself the [00:56:00] face of safety when you've literally murdered someone?

Want to? Yeah. That just mm-hmm. Stay in your lane. Like understand your position now, like mm-hmm. I get if you wanna be helpful and do something successful with your life, but it doesn't have to be this, this is embarrassing. We're actually not exactly sure what Richard is up to today. Could be out there making soaps if he is alive, uh, which is likely, there's nothing on ancestry or anywhere that indicates that he has passed away.

Um, he would be 70 years old. Bonnie's parents have both passed away within the last decade. Paul died in 2015 and Joan died in 2019, but their efforts to change victims' rights still live on to this day. I can't think of a worse thing for her parents to have gone through. And I mean, thankfully they, you know, were able to be successful in getting some things changed with the way, you know, that the rights of victims and their families, you know, the way things work, right?

But nobody wants that to be their legacy, you know? Nobody wants to spend their [00:57:00] life, you know, fighting for that after losing their daughter in such a brutal way. And like, I just, I, my, I feel so bad for her family and literally everybody in the story who like supported Richard to the point of like putting their house up to get him out of prison.

Like all of that, I just, that's just like the most slap in the face thing to, to Bonnie's family that I could possibly imagine All of that. For sure. I, okay. If we're talking, his family is doing all that. You can understand how a family member would go outta their way. It's still their kid or whatever, if it was Richard's family.

But to see all these people in the community, you basically have to step over Bonnie's family to go do this. And it's, it's just wild. The thing that I can't get past is when it was basically like he's having an emo emotional distress. He had a mental breakdown, but what was it that he had between killing her and the two hours that he, you know, drives around, sits down, says, oh, I was gonna do this and hurt myself.

But I guess I'm not, now I'm too scared. [00:58:00] Where, where did that end? Right. Did it end when he killed her? Did it end when he got arrested? Like where, what's our, what's our timeline here? Because that seems a little crazy to me. I feel like we've been gaslit by the entire state of New York. Yes. Besides Bonnie's parents, I don't understand this story.

This I've The rage. The rage, the rage. It's true. And, um, I can't believe there's not a movie about this, honestly, because, especially being Yale graduates and, but even that part of the story, just the fact that everybody involved was like a Yale graduate or had gone to Yale and that Yale picked a side, so like.

Such a hard side, you know, that they didn't even try to say, well, we're here for everyone. Like they literally were like, we're taking Richard's side and throwing all of, we're gonna allow all the school's resources to go behind this. What? That doesn make sense? This is some real Florida behavior in New York.

Seriously? I didn't expect it from you, but my gosh. Okay. Full rage. Full rage. Full rage. I, I don't know how to even calm down [00:59:00] for this story. Okay, well, would you like to calm down by turning the page and moving on to lasting before we go? We can do that. Okay, we can do that. So, Mandy, not a lot of ideas this week.

Let's be honest. I know the Olympics is coming up, so we gotta do something Olympic theme soon, but that day won't be today. Okay? So we're gonna play word association involving the summer. Okay? It's the summer, it's hot as crap. We both say a word at the same time. We try to get you the same word. So count of three, first word, you have 1, 2, 3.

Sun, ocean. Okay. We're already almost there, right? We're

Okay. 1, 2, 3. Sunscreen. Sunscreen. Okay. Great game. That was really fun. That was truly wonderful. Okay. Um, okay, let's do one more. Let's do, instead we'll switch to, 'cause we just passed 4th of July. Let's do the theme being things that you can bring to a cookout. [01:00:00] Okay. And we're doing word association, right?

Word association, same thing. Okay. Okay. Ready? All right. 1, 2, 3. Hot dogs. Okay. 1, 2, 3. Catch up. I should have done that. Okay. 1, 2, 3. Mustard. Mustard. Okay.

Honestly, we're very good at that game. We are that we're getting too good at it, too play anymore, mostly because we actually have categories now. When we did it before, we were in different parts of a house, all kinds of stuff. It never made sense. Sorry about that. Before we go, I wanted to remind everybody, or we wanted to remind everybody about the True Crime Podcast training that our dear friend Hailey did.

If you're like, wow, you guys get the BO Best research and you have the most details of any show I've heard. You're absolutely right. First of all, yes. That's because we use Hailey who created the True Crime podcast training program, so I am getting ready to start it. I've wanted to [01:01:00] learn, I do research for my other show, criminality, and I'm not efficient, and so I'm excited to take it and so take it along with me.

Um. You can sign up at true crime podcast training.com. Find out more information. Haley's great. Do it. Everyone's great. We're all great. Yeah, do it. Everyone's great. Um, yeah, that's, that's it. And you can sign up there. Also, if you would like to get moms and miscellaneous after dark, um, bonus episodes, ad free early release, check out patreon.com/moms and Mysteries podcast.

All right, guys, we will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story. Have a great week. [01:02:00] Bye.