Speaker
Ash Kelley
Appearances over time
5 episodes
Episodes
5
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Blanche Taylor Moore holds the distinction of being the oldest woman on death row in North Carolina.
Dwight Moore's toxicology results showed arsenic levels 20 times the lethal dose, the most ever found in any living person in the history of UNC hospital.
Mark Maples, 15, was the first person to die at Disneyland after being thrown from the Matterhorn Bobsleds in 1964.
The Matterhorn Bobsleds, opened in 1959, was the world's first tubular roller coaster, a revolutionary design for its time.
Blanche carried on a near-openly public affair with her Kroger boss Raymond Reed for nearly 10 years before his wife divorced him.
As of the episode's recording, Blanche Taylor Moore is 93 years old and the oldest woman — and likely the oldest person — on death row in the United States.
Thomas Cleveland, 19, was struck and killed by the Disneyland monorail in 1966 after sneaking into a graduation-night event by scaling a 16-foot fence and hiding on the tracks.
When Raymond Reed's body was exhumed from Pine Hill Cemetery, the medical examiner found arsenic in his liver, brain, kidneys, muscles, bones, and stomach at levels within the range of potential lethality.
An anonymous listener encountered both a creepy man who asked her to photograph him nude AND a black bear on the same night; the bear passed peacefully while the man was deeply unsettling.
Blanche's father died showing classic arsenic poisoning symptoms — paralysis, burning sensations, bloating — but was ruled a heart attack due to emphysema history.
On Christmas Eve 1998, an 8-pound iron cleat from Disneyland's Columbia ship sheared off and struck visitors, killing Luan Phi Dawson and permanently injuring his wife.
James Taylor died at 45 with symptoms — hair loss, blistering, facial swelling — completely inconsistent with the heart attack listed as cause of death.
The medical examiner concluded that Blanche's husband James Taylor died as a result of arsenic poisoning, despite his known underlying heart disease previously being cited as the cause.
The Whizzer at Great America logged 11 reported injury incidents before 1979 due to a braking system that repeatedly failed to engage properly.
After legal fees, Blanche Taylor Moore's settlement with Kroger left her with approximately $100,000, temporarily solving her money problems.
Behind the persona of a sweet, churchgoing Southern lady was North Carolina's most cunning alleged poisoner. Blanche Taylor Moore is the oldest woman on death row, and Part 1 of this case is just scratching the surface.
James Taylor told Blanche his throat was too sore to eat dinner. She brought him ice cream. Within an hour he was writhing in agony, describing the feeling of something clawing out of him from the inside. Blanche made up the couch and went to sleep.
When Blanche found her husband dead, she called his relatives, her daughters, and her affair partner Raymond Reed before she called an ambulance. The order of those calls is its own kind of confession.
Two separate fires at Blanche's home within months of each other, both yielding insurance payouts. The second time, a single candle was burning on the closet floor. Both times, she blamed an unseen pervert prowler she couldn't describe.
Raymond Reed developed a painful blistering rash, numbness in his arms and legs, burning stomach pain, and was eventually misdiagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Five months after his symptoms appeared, he was dead. The syndrome's symptoms look a lot like poisoning.
Raymond Reed kept his antique coin collection and silver bars in a home safe, intending them for his sons. After his death, Blanche handed the sons the key. The safe was empty.
Newly divorced and reassigned to Burlington after a church affair scandal, Reverend Dwight Moore gave his first Easter sermon in 1986 — and immediately caught Blanche's eye. He had no idea who she was. That was his biggest mistake.
One week after initiating sex with her boss Robert Hutton in his office to extend her medical leave, Blanche filed a $13.8 million sexual harassment lawsuit against him and Kroger. He was a genuine pig — but Blanche weaponized it.
P.D. Keyser preached primitive Baptist gospel, gambled, drank, spent wages on young girls, and still inspected his daughters' modesty. Growing up in that household meant Blanche never experienced stability — only control dressed up as virtue.
Paralysis, burning extremities, aggressive bloating, garlic breath without having eaten garlic — every textbook sign of arsenic poisoning was present when P.D. Keyser died in 1966. His nomadic lifestyle and a busy hospital meant nobody connected the dots.
Most horror-comedies make the horror itself the punchline, which waters everything down. Victorian Psycho and the TV show Widow's Bay pull off the rarer trick: the comedy and horror exist independently, each at full strength. Paul Tremblay says he struggles to name many films that achieve this.
Paul Tremblay spent 30 years as a high school math teacher at a Catholic boys' school before finally going full-time as a writer. The day job was his safety net — it let him write weird books without financial pressure and say no to publishers when he needed to.
Paul Tremblay was one of the first four plaintiffs to sue OpenAI on behalf of writers, alongside Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Cadre. He calls any writer using AI a 'scab' — because AI trains on stolen books and produces work with zero human connection.
A man in a vegetative state signs his body over to a Silicon Valley tech giant, which then implants AI and nanobots to remote-control him like a video game character. His estranged daughter is hired to 'Weekend at Bernie's' him across the country. It's part satire, part nightmare.
Raymond Reed paid for everything, complimented Blanche endlessly, and doted on her morning to night on a Florida vacation hoping to rekindle their romance. She told her psychiatrist afterward that she just felt guilty having to tell him not to come over.
Analysis
What they talk about
- True Crime 45%
- History 21%
- Society & Culture 18%
- Comedy 8%
- Health & Fitness 5%
- Arts 3%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
