MURDER IN THE MOUNTAINS-Michael Crisp

after a decade's long investigation. It featured an amazing array of twists and turns, including a sensational trial and a controversial verdict. The case remains unsolved to this day. Muriel's murder is considered the most bizarre and confusing case in the annals of Eastern Kentucky crime. The book that was featured this evening is Murder in the Mountains, The Muriel Baldridge Story with my special guest journalist and author Michael Crisp.

Welcome to the program, and thank you for this interview. Michael Crisp.

United States regarding a school bus. And while I was making film, Throughout the course of the interviews, I had several people that I interviewed tell me that although their town was known for this horrific accident in nineteen fifty eight, the town was also known for a very bizarre, unusual, strange murder and subsequent investigation that happened just nine years before in the same town there in nineteen forty nine.

So the case really fascinated me quite a bit as I was making the school bus wreck film, and then about a year ago, I decided to start making a documentary film about this nineteen forty nine slaying, and a few days into the process, the family of the murder victim contacted me and said, we fully support your project. However, we feel it would be a little bit more tasteful if you wrote a book about it as opposed to

doing a documentary film. The reason being was the documentary film film that I did about the best wreck, it won some awards, It did really well, It was extremely popular it played theatrically, and there was probably a period of a year where you really couldn't go through Appalachia or go through Kentucky without seeing the film in some sort of theater. So they thought it would be a little bit more tasteful to the murder victim's memory and to the family, especially that still survives, if we.

able to have this book become a reality. So we're very thankful for her support.

what Prestenburgh is really like. It's give us, maybe even leave in a brief history, but give us what Prestenburg in nineteen forty nine Prestinsburg was really like before we introduced the main character of this incredible tale.

Appalachia in general, mainly have Irish ancestry. They're very smart, they're very hard working, and they're very tight knit. And so in that particular time period, you had a very small community that everybody pretty much knew each other. But the time period was also interesting as well because World

War Two had just wrapped up four years prior. There was a sense of relief and a restoration of innocence in that community, and people were just happy and they were looking forward to the future ahead, and little did they know that such a traumatic event would change their lives forever.

There was a restaurant nearby, a bath house nearby. Hundreds of people would come in and out of town each day, and coal was a big industry there too, and so the coal would come in and out on these railway cars. And that's the railway plays a big role in the story because, first off, a lot of the people that are connected in the story, a lot of the main people were there because of the railroad, and if they didn't work for the railroad, they had some sort of

indirect connection to it as well. And then the very famous bridge which still stands today that Merle was killed underneath. That bridge was constructed basically by the railroad because at that time the railroad was a private company. It was very big, it was making quite a bit of money, and they needed a bridge to connect the two different sides of the town across the river. So the railroad was huge during that time.

background like? What was her life really like?

her murder, she was seventeen years old. She was a cheerleader for the Prestonsburg High School and she was just she was somebody that we've used this phrase before, but everybody that's ever been in high school has always had a classmate or a friend like Merle Balbridge, who happens to be considered the prettiest girl in school, the most vivacious, somebody who's not only smart and funny and has a good sense of humor, but somebody that's popular with pretty

much everybody in high school. And that's who Merle was. And her family was wonderful. Her brothers and sisters were very supportive of her and looked over her quite a bit. Especially her sisters. Her mom, I believe, was pretty much a stay at home mom, as most of the women

were at the time. And her dad, his name was George Baldridge, and George worked for the CNO Railroad, And in this particular spot of geography in Prestonsburg, the CNO Railroad depot station was just across the street from where Merle lived, just probably maybe fifty yards away. And then the infamous bridge where underneath that that the murder took place, was just perhaps one hundred and fifty to two hundred

yards away. And all of this was in an area called West Prestonsburg, which was essentially Prestonsburg, and that really sets the tone and the setting for where all of this occurred. But she was a wonderful young lady, and it's a shame that her life cut short so soon.

time in terms of serial killers and psychopathic killers and the knowledge of what some people were capable of, and so people weren't as afraid and we're more trusting. Because I think this is important because when this happens in this day and age we were, with our cell phones and how connected we are, this might not have happened

the same way. So we have to account for that for our audience that it's nineteen forty nine, and so the response to things that we would sing think might be susues or rais suspicions didn't do so in nineteen forty nine.

country had. And when you picture the TV show Happy Days, and regarding how innocent it seems and how you know, you just couldn't imagine anything this monstrous occurring. That makes it even that much more surreal. But something like this could have happened in such a small community during that time period.

very nice. She's dating quite a bit, but she does have one boy from another town that she's dating much more seriously, and they also over the last few weeks leading up to the murder, had also become secretly engaged, and so she was really living just a great life for what an American teenager would be living at the time.

And on the evening of the murder, I believe it was a Monday night in June of nineteen forty nine, she and her girlfriends decided to go out and do a handful of activities before she would return home that evening, and of those activities, one of them included going to see a movie at the local theater there on Main Street. She also with her girlfriends, went to see a softball game that was being played down sort of near their school.

But the most infamous thing that they did, and no one thought it would be infamous at the time, was that she and her girlfriends attended a carnival that was traveling through town. So during the carnival, they've spent probably about an hour or an hour and a half down there, and they didn't really have any unusual or strange encounters while they're.

to cross the bridge in the darkness. It's now about ten fifteen pm and it's time for her to cross and go back home to her house. Some of the girlfriends offer and say would you like us to walk across the bridge with you, and she tells them no, thanks, I've done this a thousand times, you don't have to come with me. I'm okay. So they keep walking. They let her cross by herself, and that's the last she's

ever seen alive again. A few minutes later, some of the neighbors in that particular neighborhood, here's some screams, but they don't think anything of it. There's a hospital that's nearby, and at that time, it was kind of routine as patients were being brought into the hospital that they might be moaning or they might be screaming. There's also some dogs in the neighborhood, so some of the neighbors passed

off those screams as perhaps a neighborhood dog. And then night comes and go, and then in the morning, on the river bank, around six am, a truck driver driving across the bridge looks down and spots a clump of clothing that looks suspicious to him. He parks his vehicle, goes down to the river bank and turns out it's her body. And then that sets off a chain of events that is just so incredible, it's just hard to even describe.

another girlfriend's house. And these were the parents knew that she was that evening spending time with a handful of other very respectable young women, and if something had occurred to where she could have stayed over with one of them for whatever reason, that that would have been accepted. So I believe that's what happened in that case.

take us. Sorry for the interruptions, but what happens after the discovery by this person.

to find the killer. But at this time, we had a whole lot of onlookers arriving first before any law enforcement arrived. It had rained a little bit the night before, so the area was already kind of muddy, and so now you have all these townsfolk coming down to see

what's going on as the law enforcement are arriving. But some of the initial clues that the law enforcement find and one of the first people on the scene from the law enforcement side of things is the county coroner and his name is Brady Shepherd, and mister Shepherd finds a handful of things that are definitely of interest. There is a fifteen inch lead type that's a few feet away from her body, and so that's immediately believed to be the murder weapon. There is an uprooted peach tree

that is there on the river bank. There are signs of struggle where the peach tree is. It looks as if Merle was involved in an altercation with her attacker and uprooted the peach tree by hand as he was trying to throw her body into the river. So apparently he killed her there on the river bank and then tried to get her out into the river, but was probably scared off by porch lights being turned on in the area and maybe some area when she screamed that

might have scared some people as well. And a few feet away also was a empty whiskey bottle, and that also would lead to a, you know, an interesting direction that the case went to after as well. There was a strand of pearls also on the peach tree that was beginning that was believed to belong to her too, And so that was pretty much how the crime scene worked that morning, and and and from there things even got stranger.

aunt that was visiting from out of state. And at the time, Merle had three brothers and three sisters, but all of her siblings had already moved out of the house, most were married and living fairly nearby, and so during the time over the summer when she was killed, she was living with her mother and her father, and they had also had a couple other younger relatives come in to stay because one of their parents was going through a divorce, and I believe one of their parents was

one of Merle's sisters. So it was a pretty small household at the time. But this visiting aunt came in and when Merle put on a dress for going out that evening, brought out a strand of pearls and said, this would just be perfect for the dress, and rather than me have them tonight, I'd like to give them as a gift to you and have her put them on. And so she did, and ironically, those were the pearls that were found in the uprooted peach tree that night.

be the thing that the murder weapon. They had the pearls that were laying on a twig or tree or something right there. So what really wasn't robbery? What was there summation from and what kind of evidence given its nineteen forty nine and there's no real no technology. What did they have and what was their first summation conclusion, if there was any at all from that initial crime scene investigation?

There wasn't really a direct correlation between most of the evidence and who that they would go after as far as initial suspects, but one of the first suspects right from the get go, just a few weeks into the investigation, was a male friend of hers that His name was Donald Horn, and most people in town knew him by the nickname Dutney, and he, on the afternoon of her murder, took a bus to Texas, and after learning that she had been murdered, just about a day or two later,

he told the local authorities in Texas that he was

wanted in connection for questioning with her murder. So in Kentucky there was a big fervor, especially there in Prestonsburg, that he was perhaps the perpetrator and that he was confessing, And so the governor at the time extradited him from Texas and brought him back up here, and so for a while it looked like that we had the murderer and everything would be fine, But once he got up here, it turns out he saved his bus ticket bust for the ticket down there to Texas, and it exonerated him,

and so a lot of people in town were pretty upset, especially because he had kind of used the murder to parlay a free ride home back to Kentucky. He didn't truly confess to it, but he sort of left it open ended to where he could get a ride back. So after that, then began on the carnival workers, because at the time in Prestonsburg in nineteen forty nine, it was so tight knit. Many people were thinking, there is no way a member of our community could have committed

this crime. It has to be a stranger, and the strangers in town are from the carnival. So the focus went immediately to the carnival workers, and then for a while it looked like that was going to be a pretty hot lead. A lot of activity, a lot of interesting things occurred with the carnival workers during the summer of forty nine that were the target of the investigation.

they do nowadays. So out of the carnival workers, there were two people that were very interesting to police at the time. There was a man who was twenty four years old named Bill Gamble and his young friend who

was fifteen years old named Olan Collins. And turns out Olan Collins, the fifteen year old, after a few days of the investigation, decided to tell the authorities that he witnessed twenty four year old Bill Gamble kill Merle Baldridge while they were I believe, driving across the bridge and he witnessed her being drugged down to the river bank and that he saw Bill Gamble do this. So within a day or two, the town is in an uproar.

They believe they have their guy. Bill Gamble is brought up to Cincinnati for questioning and even signs a confession. And now it's official. Here. It's just a couple months into the investigation, and it looks like we've got our guy, and everything is all set, and then some really strange things happen. Bill Gamble a day or two later says his confession that he signed in Cincinnati was coerced by threatening police officers, so he decided to recant the confession.

And then a day or two after that, young Owen Collins says, I made all of that up, and I was just you know, just you know, expounding on the story and just wanted to make all of this up.

So it was really suspicious. During the investigation, turns out the older gentleman Bill Gamble was in he was working for the carnival, just like Owen Collins, but he was under suspicion for kidnapping a husband and wife fairly recently, just a few weeks prior to this crime that I believe was in Virginia, and the car that Bill Gamble had was tied to that couple. It looked as if that couple owned it. The couple still had not turned up,

they were still missing. And Bill Gamble was a big, tough guy that had quite a bit of a criminal record. He initially sounds like the type of person that would do something this bad. Two a young girl, and he's also somewhat in her age reign, with her being seventeen and being twenty four, and so it looked as if everyone had their guy. But then when the confessions and the testimony were recanted, the grand jury at the end of the summer decided not to seek any type of

indictments or formal charges against either gentlemen. So by the end of the summer, three to four months after the crime had been committed, it was completely cold again.

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He insisted that the murder was that the murder weapon was a hammer that was kept in the car underneath Bill Gamble's feat And I think such a focus on finding the hammer sort of discounted the lead pipe as official evidence and sort of made a lot of people wonder how much doubt and credibility these two witnesses were providing.

And at the time, there wasn't much credence or strength being given to a lot of the physical evidence during the grand jury hearings, and they were really focusing more on the witness testimony by Gamble and Collins, and that turned out to just not be credible enough to get an actual indictment. And in many instances, even today, witness testimony without any really good concrete physical evidence just sometimes just isn't that strong when it comes to trying cases, right, well, I'll.

perpetrator has not been caught. So there's a lot of and as you mentioned earlier, car doors are now being locked, houses are being locked. More lights are staying on at night because they feel a murderer is in their midst. There's no guarantee this guy isn't a serial killer. Maybe

he's lurking around and it's scaring everyone. So January rolls around, and then, to everyone's surprise, after the case seems dormant for weeks and months, a couple of arrests are made, and they're made with a couple of gentlemen who are older than the typical suspect that you might expect in

this type of case. And the two men that are charged include a sixty year old gentleman, Lawn Mowles, and Lawn is a prominent school board member and at the time, if you were a school board member in eastern Kentucky, it was just like being on the city council. It was a very powerful position. You had a lot of weight in town. It was a really good position to have.

And Lawn also coincidentally worked at the depost station across from Merle's house, and he was George Baldridge's boss, Merle's dad, so he knew the family really well and worked across from the house there at the depost station at the Cno railroad. And one of Lyn's best friends was a gentleman named E. K. Dotson who had a house close to the railroad, and he was also indicted because they believed that he had something to do with the murder

as well. So then that set off an interesting chain of events involving just more bizarre investigation situations and other different things leading up to a sensational trial that spring. And there were probably two main reasons why Line was thought to be such a strong suspect in the case. Lawn was quite the drinker, and he was one of the few people in town that drank a particular brand

of whiskey called Four Roses. And the bottle of whiskey that was found near Merle's body, and granted it was maybe thirty to fifty feet away from her body at the time she was found, was an empty bottle of Four Roses, so a lot of people thought, hey, this Lawn Moles may have something to do with it. Even though it did kind of appear where the bottle was that it could have easily been just thrown off the bridge a few days before or something like that, but

it was still relatively close to her body. The second thing was was, even though he was sixty and respected member of the community but still a little bit of a drinker, he had a reputation of someone that would leer at young ladies and be very fascinated with young girls, especially pretty young girls, and he had a bit of a reputation in town, especially there also at the railroad station, that he had kinds of crush on Merle, even though

she was so young. It was rumored that he had frequently looked forward to times when her and her girlfriends

would come home from school or leave from school. He had a clear view through his window at the office at the depostation of seeing them, and many times she would come over to use the telephone there at the depost station, and she knew Lan through her dad, and she would sometimes get up on his desk and maybe flirt with him just a little bit in a very innocent way that girls at that age will sometimes do, or at least he turned interpreted it as flirting, and

she would use the telephone on occasion, and that was a moment that apparently he really looked forward to whenever he could be that near to her. So those were a couple bits of I guess circumstantial evidence that helped lead a lot of people, especially Merle's family, into believing that he was one of the main perpetrators in the case.

his connection was. As I was mentioning, sure got.

area extremely well because it was dark. I don't recall if there was a full moon that night, but whether there was or not, it was dark and on this river bank there were a lot of twists and turns and alleys and areas on the hillside to where you really had to know the area to be able to efficiently escape or even bring someone down there to try and do harm to. In his backyard is where some footprints that led from the crime scene went up between his house and his backyard and one of the other

neighbor houses. So it looked like that if he had committed the crime, he decided to flee in the general direction by his house, which you would sort of make sense. That would sort of make sense if you get into a killer's mind, where would they be wanting to go initially, maybe try and go home if they're thinking clearly, and

he lives so close to that area. But there was so much more circumstantial evidence against Lawn Moles, more so than E. K. Dotson, that even though they were thought of as being in cahoots and could have done this together, more focus was shifted on Moles. And that's the situation that was going on during that spring of nineteen fifty.

wife Julia Gotzy. And turns out that a few days after Lawn and Ek are arrested, mister and Missus Godsey come forward and they decide to tell the tale of what they remember that evening, and one of the things that they remember was that lawn Moles, along with E. K. Dotson, made at least three and possibly four trips to their place of business to purchase alcohol, and on most of

the trips they were purchased thing four Roses whiskey. So on the first trip or two I believe one of the first trips occurred around ten PM, and they did purchase some of that brand of whiskey. And then later on that evening I believe, around two or two thirty am, turns out that Missus Godsey remembers that he had changed clothes for some strange reason. So that was kind of unusual why lawn Moles would have changed clothes in that

particular timeframe. And then finally they made another trip later on in the morning, and during that trip they decided not to buy any whiskey, but lawn Moles was there just asking the bootleggers, has anyone else here tonight bought any of this particular brand of whiskey, which raised their suspicion that once the authorities were coming by and looking at somebody who might be tied to this four Roses whiskey, that's kind of unusual that they would come in just

to ask that question. So it raised quite a bit of suspicion at the time.

probably investigators lead some folks to you. But if you're innocent, it's an extremely rough situation should you have to try and explain yourself out of that. Any Ways, it's kind of pays to be popular in situations with the brands that you a choose in situations like this.

that was kind of suspicious. But there was also another witness that came forward that claimed just perhaps maybe two or three days after the murder, that Lawn Moles came to him to have him change the seat covers in his vehicle, and so the guy did the work on Lon's car change the seat covers remembers an unusual stain in the headrest of one of the in one of

the seats. I believe it was a back seat, and in retrospect he wondered if that could have been blood, but it was a really unusual stain, and so Lon had him changed the seed covers. Well. A few days afterward, investigators taught to the gentleman. He starts mentioning the story, and then word gets back to Lawn Moles that this guy is talking about that, and so then LN goes to that guy directly at least once or twice and says, you know that did happen, but I believe you're mistaken

about the date you change those seat covers. For me, about two or three days before the day of the murder. And that guy is saying, no, Laan, it was two days after I remember vividly. So Lawn again is being pretty suspicious about trying to alter a witness testimony and find out quite a bit about the murder from some of the other witnesses and from some of the other investigators.

tuned in the radio station, and she verified it. And not only did she say that he was home at nine thirty and basically never left and the murder was committed at about ten fifteen, so Long said that he

was in best sleep when that was going on. She also had one of her sisters and another neighbor over there right around that time, right around nine thirty, and those neighbors verified that they didn't see his car out after that after nine thirty PM, and they even one, if not both of them interacted and spoke with him in that nine to nine thirty period when he was home.

So if he had been able to commit the murder, he would have probably had to sneak out of bed while she was sleeping and go back out at about ten o'clock, which is conceivable he could have done that. But one of the things that really assisted him was his wife and sister in law during the trial came forward and said that he was definitively there at home, and there's wasn't a way he could have done that.

assumption that may have happened? Why would these people lie if they did indeed lie.

affected his pension and her ability to live the life that she was accustomed to as well. So that was pretty much the main motivation. We thought, if he had indeed done this, or if she wasn't sure about what she was testifying about, that that's probably what happened.

could help preserve their reputation. So the fact that his sister in law and who was her sister, came forward with that information in many ways raised some suspicion because a lot of people felt that those were false testimonies brought about by people that just wanted to keep law safe and had his reputation intact.

that they might be lying. They weren't. They weren't really dealing with these people very harshly, given the prominence that they had in the community.

other people's eyes. She was definitely a woman that really cared about public perception of her and her family, and so that even kind of leads more people to believe okay, that gives her another very reasonable reason to go ahead and say something like that in order to protect him. But the police at the time, they really didn't delve

in much to her story. They weren't able to really attack it or investigate it that well, because also it was a good story with regard to there wasn't a whole lot of holes in it, and there weren't a lot of other witnesses that could counter react at she with her being an invalid, and with her there at the house and not getting around much. A lot of people knew that she was at the house. That was a given on the night of the murder, and it

was basically her word against other people's words. And with regard to that, they would give a whole lot of credence to that.

the trial in May of nineteen fifty. The trial lasts about a week and the authorities decide to try the two men separately, and because they believe they have a lot more evidence against lawn Moles, they try him first, and after about a week the case goes to the jury and less I believe the figure in the book says fifty three minutes. Within fifty three minutes, a verdict is return So everybody is holding their breath, wondering what's going to happen, And sure enough, the verdict is innocent.

The family is heartbroken. A lot of people in Prestonsburg and Floyd County, just the county over where the crime committed, they were heartbroken and upset. They really felt that they needed the closure of a conviction, and it appeared lawn Moles really did have something to do with this crime. So they were flabberdasted. But just almost immediately after the verdict is returned, come a couple interesting things that occur.

The authorities and what not decide not to pursue a trial against k Dotson because they feel that they had their best case against lawn Moles and with him being found innocent, there's no way they're going to get a guilty verdict with ek Dotson. So both men are released. And oddly enough, at this time, and you would never see this in today's day and age with DNA technology, of all of the evidence that was brought into the court, there was some clothing that belonged to lawn Moles and

possibly ek Dotson, but definitely lawn Moles. They returned the clothing to him, and then the clothing and physical evidence that belonged to the murder victim, Merle Baldridge, they returned that to her family, and within about a day or two, both parties decide to burn all of the things they

that were given back to them by the authorities. Now that's rather suspicious considering if lawn Moles was innocent, why would he and ek Dotson get together one night and burn the clothes that had been given back to them

at the end of the trial. But also the most heartbreaking thing here is that because the Baldridge family was just so heartbroken by the verdict and by the fact that they just were not getting closure with their daughter's murder, the fact that they destroyed all of the evidence and the torn dress that I believe also had bloodstains on it that belonged to Merle, and this meant there would now be no way to ever have any kind of physical evidence examined that was very important to the case,

regarding victim's clothing and things that years later would be important as the advent of DNA technology became present, so that pretty much ended most anyone's hope of ever really truly solving the case unless people would have to rely on witness testimony or other means.

more into this case. But it just does remain unsolved to this day, doesn't it.

fascinated by it. Or it's other people just across the nation that feel that by reading the book they can learn a little bit more about the forties and the fifties and those type of crime investigation techniques, what to do, but more importantly, not what to do in a murder investigation.

It's a fascinating story. And I've had a handful of people tell me when they've purchased the book that they're purchasing it because they want to read all of the details and all of the facts, no matter how minuscule, because they themselves want to take a crack at formulating

a theory on who actually might have done this. And as much as we've talked about it tonight, there are so many, as you pointed out, small interesting side stories and other suspects, other confessions, other strange things that have happened in this case throughout the last sixty three years that readers that do purchase the book will have a chance to formulate their own opinion and who knows, maybe even solve this case.

the juries were that sophisticated. I don't know what I thought of before this book, but that they were just as sophisticated and come to the same kind of conclusion that most people would come to today.

innocent verdict. And a lot of the reason by that is when you try people and you're you know, you're very familiar with this, with the type of stories that you cover and that you're an expert in, and in many ways, when you rely so much, you know ninety five percent or more of your case is testimony, you're already going to have a little bit of trouble and then and some of the people that testify are bootleggers

and people like that. Even though those are fine, wonderful people that are surviving and doing exactly what they feel they need to do, they're just at that time looked a little bit down upon and juries just didn't really want to believe them. So when you get into those he said, she said situations, that's why even today, if anything had changed, they might not have even brought Moles to trial because the local attorneys may have felt that they didn't have enough to spend tax payer money and

do a trial. But at the time then they're in eastern Kentucky, it had been a year since her murder, and they had to do something, and they really did genuinely feel they had their man in Boles. And so yeah, that's a couple of interesting correlations between the cases of today and the cases of yesteryear.

listening to Murder in the Mountains with Michael Crisp. If you have a website, Michael or Facebook page that people might be able to contact you and maybe listen to the program or at least find out about it, or find out more about the book and any upcoming projects for yourself.

listeners with regard to the story. We're getting ready to do a second edition with some updates in the story, so there'll be more information about that on the website in the weeks to come.