The Poet | 5. Breaking Point
episode
The Binge Crimes: What Happened to the Harrisons?
39 min
4 speakers
5 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
If you want a deeper look behind Cut, Color, Kill, now is the time. Join our free newsletter at patreon.com slash thebinge and you will get exclusive story details you can't get anywhere else. Again, join me at patreon.com slash thebinge.
Listen to every episode of The Poet ad-free right now when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else, get exclusive bonus episodes, and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know, this episode deals with mentions of self-harm and suicide. Occam's razor. It's the problem-solving principle that if you cut away all the complicated explanations for something, you'll be left with one simple answer. And that's usually the truth. Wichita's police chief, Richard Lemunyan, had taken all 14 case binders home for the long weekend, poured through the evidence, read the reports.
He looked over every suspect, and one by one, he ruled them out until there was only one possibility left. Maybe it was the anger he felt from the poet threatening his wife. Or maybe it was because he had intentionally held himself at an arm's length from the case that he could see more clearly. But there it was, the answer that had been evading his police force for three long years. He had arrived at the simplest solution, and he was pretty sure he was right.
Yeah, he comes back Monday morning and he schedules a meeting for 16 officers.
That's Gene Stone, the journalist and author who later wrote a book on Ruth's case. The 16 officers all gather in the basement of the courthouse. Lemunyan walks his staff through his evidence. Clue number one, the abduction. After Ruth's kidnapping, police went to investigate the area by the river where she escaped her captors. She said they'd taken her sweater and shoes and followed her when she ran. The police found her sweater and her shoes there, but only one set of footprints. Clue number two, the house. It seemed impossible that the police had spent that much time surveilling the house and gotten nothing.
Ruth lived on a dead end, and yet nobody ever saw anybody going near their house.
Gene Stone again.
And then eventually they put a recording camera in the backyard, and when they did, the poet never appeared in the backyard again.
Only the Finleys and the police knew about the camera's existence. Clue number three, the classifieds.
Ed had been putting classified ads in the paper to try to lure the poet out, and there were always responses to it. But when the Finleys went on vacation, there were no responses.
For LaMonion, the footprints, the camera, the classifieds, it all adds up to one conclusion. And he sits down, he just says right out there, We know who the poet is. The poet is a Finley. It's Ed or Ruth, or it's both of them.
From Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media, I'm Rachel Brown, and this is The Poet. Episode five, Breaking Point. Lemunyan's theory drops on his officers like a bomb. There are so many unanswered questions. Could this couple have been pulling the wool over everyone's eyes for three years, even with officers stationed inside their house? Their fury is palpable.
I was really, really angry. all the time that I had spent, all the time that the other detectives had spent, and it just had been for nothing.
Richard Vinro had spent years of his life on this case, working overtime, dissecting poems, even going undercover to try to find this monster.
I felt like I was... Just manipulated. I thought that, you know, it was a game that was being played.
Mike McKenna, too, was furious.
So much manpower, so much time, so much energy of everybody. You work on these cases, you put your heart and soul into them, trying to help these people, just to be hoodwinked.
He'd been raising his concerns, but no one had listened to him. This was vindication, but it wasn't sweet.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–7:37
2
How did Wichita’s police chief narrow down suspects to one theory?
7:37–15:05
3
What three early clues pointed to the Finleys as possible perpetrators?
15:05–23:18
4
How did the department react when Lemunyan announced the Finleys were the poet?
23:18–35:08
5
What did the 24-hour covert surveillance of Ruth and Ed involve?
35:08–38:54