Speaker
Britt
Appearances over time
2 episodes
Episodes
2
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Just two days after Alberta's murder, Detective Lancaster discovered that key fingerprint cards from her rental car had been thrown in a trash bin in the Louisville PD fingerprint lab. The most critical prints — from the left door window — were never recovered. Sergeant Miller, the last person with them, was never questioned.
A group of boys walking along the Ohio River found Alberta floating face down at dawn on August 5, 1965. She'd been beaten, put into the river alive, and drowned between 2:30 and 4:30 AM — shortly after Gladys watched her drive away.
Alberta O. Jones was Louisville's first Black female prosecutor, the first Black woman to pass the Kentucky bar exam, and a civil rights leader who helped register 6,000 Black voters. She negotiated Muhammad Ali's first professional contract and was actively dismantling racial barriers when she was murdered at just 34.
Alberta's rental car was found two miles from her body with blood covering more than half the backseat, her upper dentures on the floorboard, bloody newspaper fragments, and brick pieces — plus 51 miles on the odometer that no one can account for.
A couple was woken at around 2:00 AM by screams and saw a man dragging a woman toward a white or light-colored Ford, where another man reached out and pulled her inside. The car sped west toward the river — directly toward where Alberta's body was found.
More than 40 years after the murder, the FBI matched a surviving fingerprint from Alberta's rental car to Arthur Porter III, a Louisville teenager in 1965 whose father owned the funeral home that handled Alberta's body. He failed a polygraph at the highest deception level — but was never charged.
Arthur Porter III told investigators that his two closest friends that summer had fathers who both worked for Louisville PD — one was a sergeant, one a major. Ashley Flowers wondered aloud whether these connections explain why fingerprint cards from Alberta's car ended up in the trash.
Alberta managed a trust holding 15% of Muhammad Ali's boxing winnings, money he couldn't access until age 35. She allegedly refused Ali's requests to funnel money to the Nation of Islam — and a detective investigating that angle was threatened that his wife would be put in the river if he didn't stop.
The entire basis for Alberta's late-night visit to Gladys was a new wig. Gladys said Alberta left wearing it. But Alberta's body was found without a wig, and it wasn't in her car or purse. Alberta's family always suspected Gladys was paid to lure her out.
Alberta Jones didn't want to go out that night — she'd been scared and cautious for months. Her hairstylist friend Gladys guilted her into a late-night visit with a wig fitting and a guilt trip about getting 'snobby.' Alberta left between 1:30 and 2:00 AM and was never seen alive again.
Three years after Alberta's murder, children found her purse tucked into a steel brace on the Sherman Minton Bridge. Its contents showed no weather damage despite years of exposure to Midwest elements — suggesting someone placed it there recently, wanting it to be found.
A senior Louisville police officer knew that Gladys had called Alberta, that she came over, and that they went out to eat together — all before he had spoken to Gladys or any member of Alberta's family. Nobody in the investigation seemed to think that was as strange as it was.
Two bakery workers saw a white car stopped at the center of the Sherman Minton Bridge at 4:35 AM on the morning of Alberta's murder — with a marked Louisville police car stopped directly behind it. No officer ever came forward to explain what they were doing there.
In the months before her death, Alberta's car was deliberately scraped, her phone was tapped, and two white men showing police badges followed her sister while she was driving Alberta's distinctive Thunderbird. The government was actively surveilling civil rights leaders at this time.
Despite a massive case file, Alberta O. Jones's murder remains unsolved after 60 years. Blood samples gone, fingerprints destroyed, a jailhouse confessor stabbed before he could talk, and a detective threatened away from the most promising lead. Someone powerful wanted this buried.
Analysis
What they talk about
- True Crime 67%
- Government 33%
Connections
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