Things I Want To Know
Ever wonder what really happened — not the rumors, not the Netflix version, but the truth buried in forgotten police files? We did too.
We don’t chase conspiracy theories or ghost stories. We chase facts. Through FOIA requests, interviews, and case files scattered across America, we dig through what’s left behind to find what still doesn’t make sense. Along the way, you’ll hear the real conversations between us — the questions, the theories, and the quiet frustration that comes when justice fades.
Each episode takes you inside a case that time tried to erase — the voices left behind, the investigators who never quit, and the clues that still echo decades later. We don’t claim to solve them. We just refuse to let them be forgotten.
Join us as we search for the truth, one mystery at a time.
Things I Want To Know
Helen Spence's Fight for River Justice in the Arkansas Delta (repost)
As we wade through the waters of historical intrigue and cultural legacy, Denise Parkinson joins us to share the stirring story of Helen Spence, an emblematic figure from the Arkansas Delta of the 1930s. Amidst the ebb and flow of the White River, we uncover the essence of the houseboat communities, reflecting on the robust and resilient spirit that has weathered through displacement, government intervention, and the persistent currents of social justice. The life of Helen Spence, etched against this dynamic backdrop, emerges not just as a tale of personal vendetta but as a broader narrative of the cultural divide within Arkansas, spotlighting the hushed stories of river communities and their unintentional brush with legendary outlaws.
The episode takes an unexpected turn into a courtroom drama, tinged with the humor of a stuck gun in a tense situation, as we trace Helen Spence's journey from her infamous act of revenge to her somber stints in prison. Your heart might race as we recount her escapes, shaped by her riverine upbringing, and the dark shadow of a 1930s trafficking plot. Denise's personal anecdotes and a deep-dive into the Spence saga reveal how regional history is often a complex tapestry of human strength and the darker facets of human society, including the exploitation and marginalization of women like Helen.
Lastly, the episode casts a critical gaze on the contemporary struggles within the film industry, highlighting my own experiences trying to illuminate Arkansas history through the lens of documentary filmmaking. Despite the challenges posed by gatekeeping and media blackouts, the conversation is imbued with determination and the hope that alternative pathways can shine a light on the rich narratives that course through the heart of the Arkansas Delta. Join us for this enthralling exploration, where the undulating tales of the past ripple into the present, and the echoes of justice and recognition resonate through time.
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Things I Want To Know
Where two stubborn humans poke the darkness with a stick and hope it blinks first. If you know something about a case, report it to the actual police before you come knocking on our door. After that, sure, tell us. We’re already in too deep anyway.
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Hey guys, this is Andrew from Things. I Want to Know. If you like the podcast, please leave a five-star rating. Don't really know why this is important, but it is, so let's get the voice out.
Paul G Newton:Also, don't forget to check out the podcast Paul G's Corner, a podcast where everyone gets a voice In the 1930s there was Bonnie Parker, al Capone, dillinger and Babyface Nelson, but one character from the South has garnered the attention of a filmmaker and a storyteller and many more people who are interested in this true crime tale. Today we have questions about the 1930s killer, helen Spence. We're joined by our esteemed Denise Parkinson, who is from South Arkansas and has created quite a bit of content about it. Denise, how are you doing today?
Denise Parkinson:Very well and thank you all for having me.
Paul G Newton:Nice, nice. Now tell us a little bit about your project, what you've you got? A book and a movie and all sorts of good stuff. Uh, just walk us through what's going on thank you for the opportunity.
Denise Parkinson:Yes, daughter of the white river was published in 2013 so daughter of the White River is the book. Yes, it's actually called Daughter of the White River. Depression Era, treachery and Vengeance in the Arkansas Delta.
Paul G Newton:Nice.
Denise Parkinson:Because there was quite a lot of that going on in the Depression.
Paul G Newton:Well, it's kind of every day in the Arkansas Delta. Even today, I think there's nothing there, man.
Denise Parkinson:That's exactly what several people have said to me. When I've interviewed octogenarians over the years. They would say well, there's always a depression in Arkansas.
Paul G Newton:It's called living in the South. It's true.
Andrea:The northwest corner is so very different than over towards.
Paul G Newton:Yeah, well, and I said, some listeners will know that I, my father, is from stuttgart, which is how far away from where this incident happened oh, it's in the same county, it's in arkansas county, so it's about yeah 30 miles away from where most of the storyline took place yeah, and so I.
Paul G Newton:I grew up going there four or five times a year for a week at a time and I mean, I'm very familiar with the area and you know people are people. But some of the barbecue was good and some of it is probably. I don't know if that was the way they kept dogs under control or what. It wasn't very good at all.
Andrea:Oh my gosh, Don't scare everybody. Yes, tell us a little bit about your.
Paul G Newton:We've got a little bit of a lag on our time, so we've got about a 10 second lag, maybe a five second lag between you hearing us, and that's OK. But I just let the audience know why. There's some kind of weirdness going on, because I don't edit these things. I leave it up as an actual conversation and it just makes it more natural. So a little bit of a hesitation in her hearing us today. But walk us through. What made you even begin to be curious about Spence?
Denise Parkinson:All righty. Helen Spence was unknown to me completely, Even though I spent a lot of time in Stuttgart. I have family cousins there in Stuttgart, but I mostly spent time on the White River at Clarendon, which is up the river, home to a woman named Helen Spence. That I found when I went looking for my own family history because we were houseboat people at Clarendon and the government destroyed our houseboat. And then my great-grandmother was in another houseboat on a different levee near Pine Bluff, the Arkansas River levee, and the government destroyed her houseboat there and evicted her from there as well. And it really. How was that?
Denise Parkinson:even possible Because people consider river people to be river rats, and that's.
Paul G Newton:Well, explain to us a little bit about living, the living on a, on a boat in the river.
Denise Parkinson:I'm, I'm, I'm, unfamiliar well, these are okay, I'd like to know a little bit more about that these are shandy boats, and this is why I'm so glad that I get a chance to talk to you and andrea, because very few podcasters in arkansas have have to me.
Denise Parkinson:The ones that have, I'm overjoyed because most of the podcasts have been from both coasts, interested in houseboat culture and river culture. So our family had lost everything and it really messed up my family, and so when I grew up, I couldn't understand why my family was so just completely destroyed, and so I decided to find out what happened on the river and I found a historian here in Hot Springs where I was living, and I introduced, called him up out of the phone book, heard about him, sought him out, and then we became great friends, and he not only gave me all the secrets of the river that he knew, he told me about Helen Spence, and I made a vow to him that I would continue his work to clear her good name, because he passed away in 2015. So his story is in the book. His name is Mr Brown, lc Brown, lemuel Cressy Brown, and he was friends with Helen Spence in Arkansas County.
Paul G Newton:Oh, he was really friends with her.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, she was older than him but like they were all together on the river, their families were close. He had an uncle with a houseboat.
Paul G Newton:That's cool. So how did these people end up on the houseboats?
Denise Parkinson:They preferred it that way because back when the settlers were coming across, the Lower White River was the most fertile area, but this was like 100 years before any of the dams. So there would be the rise and the fall of the water that they built from the materials at hand floating these homes on Cyprus. That rose and fell with the natural cycles of the White River and they had land along the sides where they grew gardens and farmed and kept livestock and they basically had. The river was a road, so there were grocery boats, so there were grocery boats, there were delivery boats.
Paul G Newton:It was like you could that sounds kind of fun actually yeah that sounds kind of fun.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, they preferred living on houseboats because they wanted to be as close to the river as possible, because it was central to their identity, because they were multi-ethnic to their identity, because they were multi-ethnic. These are people from all over Europe and Italians and Germans that kept their language, and you know a lot of Germans in Stuttgart. Well, some of those folks were river people.
Paul G Newton:Yeah.
Denise Parkinson:And African-American descendants, native American descendants. It was like a big you know melting pot on the river, but because they identified with nature and the river and called themselves river people, they were a cohesive community.
Paul G Newton:Everybody worked together because it was the only community that has what you're saying.
Denise Parkinson:A rising tide lifts all houseboats yeah.
Paul G Newton:Hopefully not too far. I woke up in Arkansas County, but I went to bed in Newton County. What's going on? So, but all right, you know, it actually does sound kind of what do you think? I mean, that sounds kind of fun, don't you it?
Andrea:does sound fun. I'm just thinking like did they just prefer to stay on the river because the the lands would flood and it was just easier to be mobile?
Paul G Newton:what's it do in louisiana?
Andrea:I mean to me that makes sense.
Paul G Newton:I mean, if you're living in that area and it floods into the rise and the fall of the river, I mean it makes sense to be make sure you got some good chains, that's all you know, have some security, not having your house washed away, I mean yeah, yeah, I mean it sounds like a lot of the, a lot of the bayou folks down in the south south louisiana too. They do kind of similar stuff it sounds very carefree, I mean it's characteristic of what is known as a riparian culture.
Denise Parkinson:So it is going on even today somewhat in Louisiana.
Paul G Newton:What's riparian culture?
Denise Parkinson:On the riverbank.
Paul G Newton:What's a riparian culture?
Denise Parkinson:On the riverbank, that's what that means.
Paul G Newton:Okay, cool.
Denise Parkinson:And the thing is Andrea, one of the.
Paul G Newton:It sounds great.
Denise Parkinson:Well, one of the reasons that they wanted to be on the water is because they had a sustainable culture where they hand-gathered mussel shells freshwater mussels from the riverbed and then there were a series of button factories all up and down the White River, which is the longest river, you know, and so they were in Des Arc and Brinkley and Duval's Bluff and New Clarendon, all these little button factories. But it wasn't like an industrial factory, it was like a gazebo where people sat around a table and punched out button forms from shells by hand.
Andrea:Huh, I did not know that.
Paul G Newton:Yeah, Buttons are very hard to come by. I don't know what about 1870, 1880?.
Denise Parkinson:Well, the mother of pearl buttons were so plentiful and the river people were so successful with their sustainable industry that the United States Army had a contract with Arkansas to purchase these mother of pearl buttons for Army uniforms of World War I. After World War II then the rise of plastic and the dams spelled the end of that.
Paul G Newton:Bakelite, so they were having a thriving community. For years Everybody was. They kind of held their own together. They had their own kind of like river law. I guess from what I can tell Is that is that how. How did the law and order work on the river Well?
Denise Parkinson:it was called river justice, which was an eye for an eye, and dry lander justice was what went on in the courtroom, which was not the same, and the reason that Mr Brown was so close with Helen Spence was because Mr Brown's father was the only deputy sheriff for Arkansas County that the river people would allow to come down to their area because they had that's quite common actually.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, and they had an uncle Archie that lived on a houseboat. And they had an uncle Archie that lived on a houseboat. So the family was, you know about, evenly split between farmers and river folks.
Paul G Newton:Yeah, so they let him in because it's like they kind of knew him. That makes sense. I think you know he's not 100% trustworthy, but he's more than that other dude Right.
Andrea:I mean this is the stuff they should be teaching the kids for Arkansas history, versus the stuff they're teaching now. No offense, I mean my daughter would be more interested in this than what she has to learn in Arkansas history now.
Paul G Newton:Yeah, absolutely.
Andrea:I agree.
Paul G Newton:So this story that you've worked so hard on and maintaining the legacy, Now are these people related to you?
Denise Parkinson:That's a good question. I actually asked your cousin Billy if he could help me find out. We kept turning up.
Paul G Newton:Oh, yeah, and Billy Rabenick is the man that put us together today. And Billy Rabenick, like I told people even though, believe me, you don't have no Cajuns in here, no, I have Rabenicks and go on from there. Yeah, we go all the way down in South Louisiana he's put us together today and we all want to thank him for putting us in touch with each other, because we didn't even know each other existed. And Denise makes films, I make films. Cool. Who knew? And it's a good story.
Denise Parkinson:I hope to see each other existed in. Denise makes films, I make films. Cool, who knew? And it's a good story I hope to see really next Sunday when we take our documentary of our book, of my book, down to Stuckart, cause that's where Billy's hopefully going to be able to see the film that he helped make, cause he did some really interesting research.
Paul G Newton:Nice, Nice. Yeah, he was researching family trees. He's like oh yeah, and it turns out and we'll get into that later, so we just need to follow the storyline for a second here, I guess.
Andrea:I want to jump to the end, but I can't do that.
Paul G Newton:So you were talking to this gentleman, this historian, and he introduced you to Miss Spence. I always get it wrong because my brain doesn't work. I have to go get a new brain eventually. But you know it was on recall for years, but then they ran out of parts, so anyway, the sword. So Helen Spence, she's. Oh my gosh, why, why in the world is this guy on the kick about Helen Spence?
Denise Parkinson:Well, she was his good friend. And river people, if they make a promise, even if it takes 50 years or more, they will keep that promise. And so Helen Spence was basically. According to my research over the years, I'm convinced that she's the actual real life prototype for Charles Portis' character, Maddie Ross. But because Helen Spence was a beloved child of the river and was considered a river rat by drylanders, when Maddieoss avenged her father, she was treated like a hero and when helen spence avenged her father river justice she was thrown in jail and tortured and murdered andrea and I need your help.
Paul G Newton:If you like our episodes, please give us a five-star rating and a review. Not sure exactly how that helps us, but it does and it makes people want to listen when they see that five stars and a good review from you. So go to wherever you're listening to your podcast apple, itunes, spotify, iheart media, wherever and hit that five stars, wow.
Denise Parkinson:So what's the tale of this lady? Can you walk us through it? Yeah, so she was born on a houseboat on the White River around the Clarendon area and then, as she was growing up, floated down with her family, which was her father, her stepmother and her disabled sister. Her sister had had childhood polio, but they kept her on the houseboat and cared for her. And Helen's father was named Cicero Spence and he was a very wise person that a lot of people came to for advice, and that's who Mr Brown's father, sheriff Lim Brown, would always go and talk to Helen Spence's dad, cicero Spence, whenever it was time for somebody on the river to go to a summons, to the courthouse, and they always turned up.
Paul G Newton:So that's, he was the sheriff.
Denise Parkinson:You're right. And so LC was a little boy when he played with Helen. He was like four, five, six years old, and what happened was Helen and her stepmother witnessed the murder of Cicero by a dry lander who came in from outside. He came in from Rosedale, mississippi, and your cousin, what was he doing?
Denise Parkinson:That's where your cousin came in. Everyone on the river thought it was just a fishing trip and the guy decided to rob Cicero Spence and in the process he shot him and dumped him over the side of the boat. That's what was understood by the river people. But your cousin, Billy, came in after my book came out and did some research and found out there was always this back and forth between Rosedale and the records that I was able to study from the court records of that time in Arkansas County. There seemed to be a lot of back and forth with people from Rosedale, Mississippi, to the Lower White River and Billy came up with some information that led us to think there might be a timber connection, that the timber companies were hiring mercenaries to run the river people out so they could have access to all that cypress.
Paul G Newton:And the river. People were like that sounds like some kind of weird. That sounds like some kind of weird conspiracy theory that Alex Jones would come up with or something like that. But at the time and place that these people were living, that happened a lot, I mean even in presidential politics. Woodrow Wilson he sent his thugs in to break up union lines and they didn't work for Woodrow, but they did, and everybody knew it. It was just really hard to prove, but it's in our history books, but they teach us that when we're in school. So for anyone who's listening and thinks, oh, that's just crazy, no, no, no. At the time, this is something that they did.
Andrea:I mean it makes sense for the time that this takes place. I mean it makes sense for the time that this takes place.
Paul G Newton:I mean, yeah, it's not unheard of for companies or government to do this kind of, to actually send a mercenary force out to kill a bunch of people. They just did it and it's like good luck finding who did that.
Andrea:Probably some way that they do it now, just in a different form or fashion or paper.
Paul G Newton:Now they kill you financially.
Andrea:Yeah, back then they kill you physically paper now.
Denise Parkinson:They kill you financially yeah, back then they kill you physically or kill the reputation of your company.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, well that's interesting that you bring that up because actually what the united states federal government did later was achieve the same result that the mercenaries of the timber companies were doing, because the government created all these wildlife refuges all up and down the best bottomlands where all my people were, and evicted everyone and were burning and sinking houseboats right up through the 1990s. Wow, Wow, really yeah there's like a houseboat graveyard. That's down there if you go further.
Paul G Newton:I want to talk about reparations. You want to talk about reparations? That's, rep, that somebody needs to pay reparations for that. If they didn't pay them and they just went in there and got rid of them because they're on now. Quote unquote public land. See, that's what it is. The the rivers, I think 100 feet from a riverbank, wherever that riverbank is at that point in time, is public government land. If it's a navigable river, that's the way the law is. Now there's guys in Nevada that get their land taken away from them because there's a creek that becomes deep enough to navigate once a year.
Andrea:Wow.
Denise Parkinson:Well, that's exactly what happened. Y'all, all the people that were on the river and have land that they farmed and used adjacent to where they had their houseboats. The government came and paid them I think it was 25 cents on the dollar and took their land. Yeah, and there's nothing you can do about it A damn thing Except write a book and make a movie. Those were.
Paul G Newton:Congress once man yeah.
Andrea:This is true.
Paul G Newton:So somebody came in and killed Cicero Right, and that didn't go over very well, did it?
Denise Parkinson:No, and the reason. I think that my research showed that a lot of the stories that lined up said that Helen Spence had seen it happen, so that's how I wrote it in the book. Ada was taken aboard the boat after Jack Worles, which was the name of the guy.
Paul G Newton:Who's Ada?
Denise Parkinson:Ada is Helen Spence's stepmother. Helen Spence's real mother died when she was a toddler, and when you asked me before if I was related to anybody in this story, there is a ghost of a chance that I could have been related to Helen Spence's mother through my maternal grandmother's ancestors. Her name was Ellen Woods. Well, you could go down the rabbit hole forever, but we're all cousins in the river.
Paul G Newton:Oh yeah.
Denise Parkinson:So what happened?
Paul G Newton:Well, in South Arkansas, people really need to realize too that there's only there's now there's only three million people in the state of Arkansas, in the entire state. Most of them reside in Little Rock, northwest Arkansas. That includes Fort Smith and Jonesboro and a tiny bit of it in Texarkana. The rest of it is just wildly unpopulated. And Stuttgart has five thousand 000, maybe 8 000 people at most, uh, and that's like the biggest town down there, just about so we're going, of course we're all related to each other there's not much there's.
Denise Parkinson:There's not much pickings well, there there used to be, there used to be, a ton of prosperity. I'm bringing an exhibit that I curate that shows the level of individual prosperity in the Delta before all the land grabs and the plantation mentality took hold and you had all these, you know, thousands and thousands of acre farms that just squashed the family farm out. And Stuttgart is, you know, they're Riceland rice.
Paul G Newton:But Arkansas the.
Denise Parkinson:Delta feeds the world, but yet the Delta has been purposely depopulated and our infrastructure of the river, people, bridges that were built by the river people, like the one that used to mark helen spence's birthplace and where my family's houseboat was, the government blew it up. When we were making our movie, they blew it up wow you gotta see it.
Denise Parkinson:You get pictures of it, oh yeah we got the only footage because the state did not announce it through a press release as required by the Arkansas Annotated Code. They used $11 million of taxpayer money to destroy a bridge that the river people built, just for petty politics.
Paul G Newton:Send me the link. Petty politics. Send me the link to that footage if it's online, and I I'll put it on the page.
Denise Parkinson:I sent you my movie.
Paul G Newton:I mean that's interesting. Well, I can't post your entire movie to the page. No, I'll try to find it.
Denise Parkinson:It's in a hard drive and I'll try to send it.
Paul G Newton:Here. Don't pay for the movie, Just watch it free.
Denise Parkinson:Oh, I've been sending my movie out to people to watch free because I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
Denise Parkinson:But there have been so many dry landers and people that are not from the river that have either tried to block or sabotage or steal Block, sabotage or steal my copyright and my life's work Because I've been working on this since 2010 12 years well, actually, the first article I wrote about river people was in 1997, when I was an editor at the arkansas democrat gazette, and it was all about mussel shelling, because I was up around Possum Grape, one of my favorite names and there were giant piles of mussel shells, so they blew up the bridge, but you said toad suck and that reminds me of the ferry. I want a ferry. I want a ferry where the bridge was destroyed. They need to give back.
Paul G Newton:That would be cool.
Denise Parkinson:The Helen Spence Memorial Ferry.
Paul G Newton:Well, there's a houseboat In Mississippi. They've got an abandoned casino riverboat that got sunk and it's now shown back up. That would be cool. We shown back up. You know that would be cool. We should buy that. You probably get it for nothing.
Andrea:What would we do with it and how would we get it here?
Paul G Newton:I wouldn't do anything with it cause I wouldn't buy it. But somebody should buy it, Right? But I mean, why would we could not get it here? There's not a navigable riverway.
Andrea:No, I mean, I guess way. No, I mean, I guess we could take mississippi to what's the arkansas down port smith, arkansas river? I have no idea. I have to get a map anyways. So tell us some more about miss helen spence yes, ma'am.
Denise Parkinson:So helen was beautiful. She was gorgeous. I call her the coco chanel of the river because she sewed, like my river grannies. She sewed all her own clothes and she could tap lace. But she could also shoot like a sharpshooter, because Cicero, having no sons, had taught Helen and her sister all his survival skills. And so Helen was a tomboy. But she was also a gorgeous young lady and very fashionable.
Denise Parkinson:And when Jack Worralls shot and killed her father, ada ended up being taken by him and he pushed the boat away and Helen was discovered floating downriver in shock and Jack Wurls raped and beat Helen's stepmother and she died a few days later in the Memphis hospital, died a few days later in the Memphis hospital. And then Helen was orphaned completely because some cousins came and took her disabled sister who could not walk, took her back with them to Oklahoma. So Helen Spence was completely alone and she was in the throes of deep grief and she was staying in protective custody with a local sheriff and his wife in DeWitt, arkansas. And when the trial happened she was wearing a beautiful red velvet suit that she had sewn herself, she had a white rabbit fur muff and she sat right down front and when it looked like Jack Worralls was going to get off with killing her father because they had not located Cicero's body yet. So whatever the legal term for that is, there was a chance that Jack Wills.
Paul G Newton:Heaviest corpus Right.
Denise Parkinson:There was a chance that Jack Wills would get off. And she stood up in court and pulled the pearl handled ladies pistol that she pistol that she had hidden inside her firm ruff and shot Jack Orles in the chest four times. In such a tight pattern you could put a hat over it.
Paul G Newton:Wow.
Andrea:Wow.
Paul G Newton:And Billy did a little research and he found that my grandmother's uncle was his attorney, standing right there next to him oh well, it's a good thing she was such a good shot, because nobody else was in any danger.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, fortunately, as my uncle, I would still be here, but I might miss a couple of cousins well, I found I have found two long lost cousins in the course of making this film and they both helped me with making the film.
Paul G Newton:Nice so, but they obviously she's in court, so she immediately gets arrested, right.
Denise Parkinson:Sheriff limb, elsie Brown's dad came up to her and she handed him the gun and then they whisked her off to a side room and sheriff limb couldn't get his hands to stop shaking and was trying to get the gun open to get the bullets out. And helen spence just said here, let me help you, it tends to stick and snatch the gun out of his hand. And then all the judge and the deputies and everybody dove under the table and she said it tends to stick.
Paul G Newton:That's hilarious, Don't worry about it. Come over here, Look here. I tend to stick and it was like oh shit.
Andrea:You're giving the criminal back the gun. Go blow everybody away. That's funny, that's hilarious.
Denise Parkinson:We had fun filming that scene, but yeah. So Mr Brown knew what was happening, because not only was his dad in there and came out and told him everything that happened, but Mr Brown was playing kickball on the court square with a bunch of kids because it was like a holiday. There were so many people there at the DeWitt Court Square to see the trial of Jack Wuerl and she brought River Justice into the courtroom and that's when everything started getting crazy, and so they whisk her away to jail.
Paul G Newton:What do they do?
Denise Parkinson:they were going to wait for the grand jury to decide if she was going to get a lesser charge of manslaughter.
Denise Parkinson:She was only 17 years old when this happened oh, she's just 17 and so there was also an election year going on, so the governor kept hinting that he was going to pardon her if he got elected. So she was allowed to basically live and at the sheriff and the sheriff's wife in DeWitt where she had stayed earlier. And then she got a job at a local cafe in DeWitt and was doing so well that the county judge allowed her to move in with a lady named Ina Mayberry, the wonderful Arkansas name.
Paul G Newton:That's a very Southern name right there, ina Mayberry, it's like.
Denise Parkinson:OK, she's from Arkansas.
Paul G Newton:Yes, the wonderful Arkansas name. That's a very Southern name, right?
Denise Parkinson:there, ida Mayberry, it's like okay, she's from Arkansas, yes, and they lived there and worked in the. There was a little place to our apartment on top of this little cafe and Dewitt and she was doing great and right before they decided her fate with the uh legal outcome, the manager of the cafe turned up dead, shot with his own gun and helen was the prime suspect oh no right. So they took her in again. Why was she the?
Denise Parkinson:prime subject well, because she had just shot jack worlds, a few months before, in front of the whole county oh so they.
Paul G Newton:But she had a reason to shoot that guy. It's a reason to shoot this dude.
Andrea:And do we know, did she shoot him for sure?
Denise Parkinson:I, that's a funny division between river people and dry landers. River people all line up and say anybody could have killed Jack Worrells. The word was in arkansas county he needed killing because he was such an offensive. Oh, did I say jack warhols? I'm talking about the cafe guy yeah, jim bohatz the cafe guy he was another man that needed killing jim bohatz was his name, and, uh, nobody could stand him. He needs killing.
Paul G Newton:Well, it's killing.
Denise Parkinson:Well, he was just awful he drove this flashy car.
Paul G Newton:I go in there, yeah.
Denise Parkinson:And he put his hands all over all the women that worked at the restaurant and he was just a loud, obnoxious, hateful person.
Paul G Newton:Oh, do it get no, my grandfather Donald Newton. If this boy would have grabbed my grandma up, donald newton would have he that he'd been serving his ass in the for the steaks later that day, because there's no way that you touched my grandfather's wife, he'd soon kill you. Just look at you. No way, I don't see. I don't see how he lived as long as he did, and that's why the case went cold.
Denise Parkinson:They they investigated. Helen Spence was brought in. I did not do it. I did not do it, but there were people that were dry landers who claimed that.
Paul G Newton:Did you ask my pep? Oh she did. I'm sure my grandfather went in there to that restaurant.
Andrea:Probably.
Paul G Newton:I mean yeah because he was rich. You know, he's one of the richer guys because he owned a junkyard. So if he had touched, if he had touched my grandma oh my God, like a chicken, and everybody would show my. My great uncle's name was Chicken because he ran really fast and had really thin legs, so they called him Chicken and him my grandfather. This is 30, so they'd be young men. Oh yeah, they would have killed him. He would have already been dead.
Andrea:So, in other words, this guy at the cafe has a long list of people who want to shoot him.
Denise Parkinson:Right, that's basically what it boiled down to. The case went cold because it was like one of those Agatha Christie type stories where everybody wanted him dead and anybody could have done it.
Paul G Newton:But Helen maintained that she did not. She probably didn't, more than likely.
Denise Parkinson:But it does come back.
Paul G Newton:I don't know, if he was molesting her, if he, if he was molesting her, he might have got shot, because they don't river. People are like the hill people, they don't put up with that.
Andrea:Yeah, I'm getting to say if he's like touchy feely, a bit inappropriate, she'd probably if she shot a guy in open court.
Paul G Newton:I mean shoot him Absolutely. She's 19, 20 years old.
Denise Parkinson:No, I don't think and jim bohatz was shot with his own gun and his big, flashy fancy car with the running boards. Um was parked under this oak tree at this makeout spot on the edge of dewitt. That I've actually been to, and well, I didn't go there to make out, I went there to see where he was gonna say hey, what kind of movie is this, very this is a very educational.
Paul G Newton:The only explosions in my movie are the ones caused by the government. Yeah, but the okay, that's funny. I'm gonna recover from that one anyway. Um so she, they, anybody could have killed this dude. We don't know who did what and they blame her because she's around, but they couldn't prove nothing, so let her go so what happens to miss helen?
Denise Parkinson:well, she ended up getting a very much shorter sentence for manslaughter. They had threatened to send her to the electric chair. In fact when she shot, jack worlds and all these reporters were in the courtroom because they had been in the area to cover the the very first food riot of the great depression, which was in nearby England, arkansas. So they came over to I didn't know this. I didn't either, until I started doing research for the book wow, england, arkansas.
Paul G Newton:I drove through there all my life because that's how you get from here to here, to stuttgart and england's a little bitty town with a railroad. Lots of cotton, uh, it's interesting. So what? So they were involved? Were they involved in the food riot?
Denise Parkinson:The, no, the, not the river people. The river people never got hungry because they were down on the river. It was the poor.
Paul G Newton:There's lots of gar in that, in that river.
Denise Parkinson:Oh yeah, you know it, I've seen some, but I got pictures of my grandfather with the gar as big as the boat.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, he said you, you go get them and you'd have to shoot them when you get them in the boat, because you gotta take your 22 with you, because they just sink your boat yeah, the first gar I ever saw was on the white river and it was as tall as I was, but I was only about four years old at the time, but it was still a big gar and it was very impressive. But, um, so england arkansas was the bread basket back in the day, but we're talking about 1930. 1931 was when the trial took place and it was starting to become winter. It was january of 1931 that the trial took place of Jack Wills and she shot him and all she said to the reporters was well, he killed my daddy because she was doing what she had been raised to do in river culture, which is protect, and he was the sheriff of the river people.
Paul G Newton:Basically they all killed the sheriff of the river people.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, that's why I think Jack Wills was an example out of him and what happened to Ada? To terrorize the other river people. But she got sent to the Arkansas Women's Prison on a lesser charge of manslaughter and was paroled before the end of her two year sentence. And that's when the Jack Worrells excuse me, the Jim Boharts, the guy that was killed that ran the cafe it was, you know, slave labor host squad type thing over north of she was paroled and she took a job at a restaurant in Little Rock that they gave. The next thing. You know she's confessing to killing Jim Bohatz, the cafe guy, and nobody can figure out why. And she gets sent back to the pea farm and that's when they start to torture her.
Paul G Newton:Now it took years to find out why in the world do they have this? Say again why did they have their sights set on her for this?
Andrea:But she confessed. Why would she confess? Would she just want to go back to prison because she felt comfortable that way, or what?
Denise Parkinson:These are all different times, man, people, no Miranda warnings, none of that stuff had no rights but she voluntary went in the police station and made probably after getting her ass kicked at the detect at the police station what happened was a photograph that shows her, uh, in a very fancy dress, but because she had been, uh, been paroled not to work in a restaurant, it took my book coming out and us going and meeting with a bunch of people in the community where the pea farm used to stand, because it's a very strange place 200 acres, now it's a subdivision but it's unfinished, there's no sidewalks, but all the streets are named for women prisoners.
Denise Parkinson:And it was only discovered that that's what that was after my book came out. And when I went and met with all these people they explained that the prison documents I had showed that when she was paroled, there was a man in Lone Oak County who was the head of the was paroled. There was a man in Lone Oak County who was the head of the he was the superintendent of Lone Oak County Schools during the 1930s had signed her parole bond and basically bought her from the prison, because that was what we found. Ouch, the pea farm was a front for trafficking in the 1930s. That's how they got money for the prison.
Andrea:So basically so someone paid for her parole and she was basically bought by somebody. Yes, Am I hearing that right?
Denise Parkinson:Yes, but I didn't understand what this document meant when I wrote the book. But when we got the book and went and met with all these people at these community and historical society meetings, they said here's what you don't know. The women from the pea farm were rented out. You could check them out like a book. You could buy one, depending on how much money. The guy that bought Helen Spence parole and there was an employment agreement that he signed as well paid $1,000 for her in 1934.
Paul G Newton:Wow, that's, that's, that's somebody's house, so that's I mean houses cost.
Andrea:So did she think maybe if I can confess to this murder, maybe they'll send me to a different prison. I don't have to be with this guy.
Denise Parkinson:Well she, she ran away from his plantation in Scott, Arkansas.
Denise Parkinson:He was a wealthy plantation owner because back then $1,000 was like, like you said, a house is like $35,000 or more today with inflation, but she went to the detective, I think for help, and then he railroaded her into this confession because there's a photograph in my book and you can tell by the way she's looking at this detective. He looks like something out of a Tennessee Williams. You know, big daddy, only gone bad kind of guy in a seersucker suit with a cigar, and she is giving him a look that if looks could kill, you know, I mean definitely.
Denise Parkinson:And so she went back to the pea farm because she was railroaded into that confession because she didn't want to be the sex slave of a planter on a plantation in Scott Arkansas. And that's when they began torturing her in the prison systematically. And the guy that she went to, james Pitcock he had done the same thing to another woman six years before. Winona Green was her name and she was a young, beautiful murder suspect and so he got her to. Basically, his claim to fame was I get all the women murder suspects, I'm your guy. So he had a pattern.
Paul G Newton:But it's wow, that's a detective right yeah, james pitcock.
Denise Parkinson:And so she went back to the pea farm and everything was different now she's escaped three times but she is she. She has then escaped three times that's when she became an escape artist and that's when she used her river skills, which included sewing, to do her escape dress, I'd she I'd get the hell out of there too if I was being abused.
Paul G Newton:I mean, some of the abuse that she got in the prison was what.
Denise Parkinson:Oh my God. Well, she wasn't the only one. We found actual historic documents online about Winona Green six years before. Helen Spence, especially at the pea farm, were stripped naked and spread eagled over a pickle barrel and flogged with a leather strop called the black snake. But there were a lot of other. I got her whole prison file sent to me from the arkansas department of corrections and helen spence was only five feet tall and 125 pounds, size five shoe. So yeah, was tiny, but they were beating her. They were putting her into cages and setting them out in the sun, wow, and God knows what else, but she didn't want to stay.
Paul G Newton:Cool hand, luke shit going on Do what. The cool hand Luke shit going on there.
Denise Parkinson:Well, after all of this happened, mean the everybody remembers brew baker. That was about arkansas tucker prison and cummins prison brew baker yeah, it was bad.
Paul G Newton:This bad it makes it makes a chicago prison that was mostly just overcrowded look like a vacation. A lot of these, a lot of these work farms god, you didn't want to get on one of those.
Denise Parkinson:And that's exactly where she was and the girls at the farm it was never more than a couple or three dozen women, and there was one guy that was the trustee guard, but he himself was a convicted murderer. His name was Frank Martin. So you've got the trifecta of bad guys. You've got Jack Willsall's, who killed Cicero Spence and everything set in motion. Then you've got Jim Bohat's, the wild card that comes back to haunt us, and then Frank Martin, the trustee guard, who took the rap for killing Helen Spence, shot while escaping, quote unquote, but she did make three, possibly five, escape attempts because they did actually keep punishment reports.
Andrea:Oh my Lord.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, and how she did it, andrea, was she saved the red and white cloth gingham napkins from the prison laundry, sewed them into the lining of her prison dress in such a way that it looked like a couture garment. And when they shipped the prisoners up to Memphis to send them to the brothels to make money for the pea farm, she put her dress on.
Paul G Newton:They sent them to the brothels in Memphis.
Denise Parkinson:I guess the business in the North Pulaski got slow because of the Great Depression and they took those girls where the money was and made them turn tricks to bring money back to the prison.
Paul G Newton:Wow, and they didn't get to keep any of it either, did they?
Denise Parkinson:What do you think? They were just trafficked, basically Right. And when she was killed they looked through her pockets and all she had was a tiny little broken mirror and a little lipstick and a broken comb. She didn't have anything, but what she did have was her skills and she sewed the gingham cloth napkins into the lining of her prison dress gingham cloth napkins into the lining of her prison dress. And when they got to West Memphis the bus stopped at the station and she requested to use the ladies room, went in there, turned her dress inside out and just waltzed away because she was gorgeous.
Andrea:Yeah, and she's dressed differently in a different outfit and they probably weren't paying attention.
Paul G Newton:Picks her hair up a little bit, wash her face.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah because she really was beautiful Very dark, beautiful silky black hair, dark brown eyes, very petite, gorgeous smile, Even her mugshot looks like a fashion advertisement.
Paul G Newton:How?
Andrea:did she keep getting caught to going back? Was she just not able to disappear? Or is it difficult in that time frame to well, or was it just the fact that you know she? How did it happen? They?
Denise Parkinson:always knew that she would go to the only place that she cared about, which was back to the lower white river, and so they always caught up with her. The first time she escaped, she was gone for a few hours. The second time, according to the report, she was captured. She made it all the way to the Arkansas River from the location of the pea farm in North Pulaski County, but they caught up with her at the river there. I don't know how long it took for them to catch up with her.
Denise Parkinson:After they took her to go to Memphis and she escaped from the West Memphis bus station, but they followed her route that she would take to get back to the river, and then they really started torturing her because they knew that. She knew that. They knew that she knew what they were up to and they even sent her to, like the state mental asylum and they kept her there for a few weeks. But they told the prison she is not crazy. We need space for people who are insane here, so take her back to the prison. But while she was at the Arkansas mental asylum she wrote a memoir and, being so young and innocent, she provided the return address of the prison and she sent this memoir to Liberty Magazine, where it got rejected and sent back to the prison.
Paul G Newton:So then they really, her days were numbered oh oh no, now they know all about her wanting to do this, that and the other and want to tell, oh my gosh, so how did all this? So she, she gets out is so I'm always interested. Was there a car chase?
Denise Parkinson:A car chase Was there a car chase. She got out of that bus and out of that bus depot and I don't know. We do have a wonderful Model T that I got to use for free for my friend in the film and that was so much fun.
Paul G Newton:Nice.
Denise Parkinson:So much fun. But yeah, speaking of during this time period, this was the summer of 1934. So that was when the Clyde Barrow gang and Bonnie Parker kept crisscrossing Arkansas in their quote unquote death car. So there was stuff going on that was in the news nonstop. And when they finally did catch up with Bonnie and Clyde and when they finally did catch up with Bonnie and Clyde, it was after they had crisscrossed Arkansas to get over to Louisiana and they had a stolen Arkansas plate on their car. Their bodies were taken and put on display in Dallas and sold 500,000 copies of the Dallas Morning News. And so Helen was headed for the same treatment because they began equating her with an outlaw, when she really wasn't. She was more like Maddie Ross.
Paul G Newton:She's trying to survive. I bet you a dollar that because the river folks they probably wouldn't. It be interesting if, when one of those escapes, when she finally got home, and there's Bonnie just hanging out Because that's where Bonnie and Clyde had to hang out with the people who weren't interested in dealing with the law.
Andrea:Yeah.
Paul G Newton:So you know they got to have pit stop. You got to buy some gas, need to take a bath. You're going to find somebody like the river folks or whatever.
Denise Parkinson:The river people wouldn't have put up with Clyde Barrow. The river people would not have put up. He wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes. On the levee Clyde Barrow, they were spending their times in motor pools.
Paul G Newton:I didn't mean that they were going to be there partying with them. I mean they would stop there, you know, get gas or something, keep moving, because they're not. These people aren't going to report them to the cops oh no, they'll take matters in their own hands.
Denise Parkinson:No because actually there were river people that uh had interacted with cole younger and his gang, the younger brothers yeah uh, that had been down in the lower white river area near a place called cold spring. So I have some stories in my book about that, so they were not they did not look down on outlaws yeah, they did not look down on outlaws or anything the river people, but they weren't just don't do anything bad while you're here, yeah they didn't want any drama on their water.
Andrea:Yeah, yeah so how come the river people that be like you know screw you? You have one of my own. I'm going to go um bust her out of jail because like, yeah, what would prevent?
Denise Parkinson:that like myself. Uh, these were people that traveling was. Unless it was by the river route, they didn't have cars. They didn't have cars. It was very hard, that's true. That's a good point. Even today it's so remote. You go down below.
Paul G Newton:St.
Denise Parkinson:Charles, and you feel like you're in a different primeval world.
Paul G Newton:Yeah, yeah, uh-huh, yeah yeah. It's interesting because you can go to the Stuttgart Airport, where there's still remnants of the World War II training facility that they did for the Air Force. You walk in there and the bunkers where they kept the bombs and the ammunition is still there, and the train depot where they would take the soldiers. The soldiers came in through train. They didn't come flying in. Yeah yeah, they came in through train because there's too many of them and it's all still there, or the remnants of it are there and it's like it hasn't been gone for more than 10, 15 years, but it's been 60, 70 years since those things quit being used.
Andrea:Wow, it's interesting.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, funny, you should mention.
Andrea:Yeah, funny, you should mention that I want to go see this stuff.
Denise Parkinson:Oh, I would love for you to watch the movie, and the thing about it is it sounds like it would be just the most depressing movie of all time, because this poor woman is forced to endure these terrible things and she's not an outlaw. She was a woman who knew too much and could express herself, and so once they read what she wrote, they knew that they could not let her tell her story about what was really going on behind the closed doors of the pea farm. And yeah, but the thing about tell me how.
Denise Parkinson:what I think about Stuttgart was going to tell you because Mr Brown, my friend, who he passed away in 2015, but he always wanted the book to become a movie and so I told him, I promised I would do whatever it took, so he would be really happy to know that I'm sharing with you this wild story. He told me that is not in the book because it was from his 12, 13-year-old 14-year-old years at school. It was about the Stuttgart pilot training program prior to World War II, like you were talking.
Denise Parkinson:Oh, yeah, so they had gliders okay, they were training these guys to use gliders okay and they flew a glider out over the big Creek, charlton Creek area, which is a swamp near Forks, lagru Swamp, and the glider went down and Elsie Brown found it when he was out running traps with his wolf dog. It was not a dog, it was he had a companion who was a wolf that he had raised from a puppy, and so they would go and check traps in the swamps and Elsie found the glider, crashed in the swamp with the two dead pilots and he dug makeshift graves and buried those pilots and tried to get brush and hide the glider because he didn't want anyone to think that river people had shot down a plane he was trying to protect oh, wow and so he goes to school which was a one-room schoolhouse and he's like in the eighth or ninth grade.
Denise Parkinson:And here comes the military, to the one-room schoolhouse and they, they had found out.
Paul G Newton:Looking for their glider.
Denise Parkinson:Well, they had found out that LC Brown was the best tracker, and so they wanted to talk to him. And when he wouldn't tell them anything he just would not talk they started threatening him. And then, when they couldn't threaten him, they started threatening to have his father's retirement from World War I taken away. And that's when which they couldn't have ever done Well they were trying to scare a kid, you know, into doing what they wanted.
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so the teacher came to the military men and pushed Elsie out of the way and said look here, you're never going to get anywhere with this boy. Take him home, talk with his father, work something out. You're not going to get anywhere threatening him. So they did that.
Denise Parkinson:And the dad told Sheriff Lim, told LC, show him what you found. Nobody's in trouble, it was an accident. No river people are going to be punished. Nobody shot it down. So he, lc, took Wolf and the two military guys into the swamp and they were real nervous to be walking through a swamp with a wolf.
Paul G Newton:And Elsie said and a kid with those had a shoe.
Denise Parkinson:Right and Elsie said that he was so PO at these two guys for being so heavy handed that he led them around in circles for four hours even though they could have gone to the plane in like 20 minutes.
Paul G Newton:So how did this lady's story end?
Denise Parkinson:Helen Spence's story ends in a hopeful way because, even though she was shot while escaping, she met people on the road that remember her to this day their descendants. We interviewed two families that were the last ones to see Helen as she walked down the road. She just basically climbed over a fence one day after they had beaten her and done everything they could do to try to kill her, and she kept. She was on digitalis, that's how bad off she was, but she just kept going and they sent a posse after her and it's not for certain who pulled the trigger? Because Frank Martin took the rap. Who pulled the trigger? Because frank martin took the rap.
Denise Parkinson:But frank martin had a shotgun and helen spence was shot with a pistol, shot an execution style, shot behind the right ear in front of two women oh wow in front of two women that were a niece and and an aunt, that were hanging clothes on the line on car Carmichael road by a well, and they had just given Helen Spence civilians her last drink of water. And after I made the movie I found out I went to school with their great great niece.
Paul G Newton:It's all connected, oh wow, so they and she. She was literally shot behind the ear.
Denise Parkinson:Yes. And then, even worse than that, after these two nice ladies put a sheet from the line to cover her body, some newspaper men or people from the prison came up and ripped open her blouse and shoved a pistol down her handmade bra to make it look like she was dangerous, that she had come 10 miles through the woods in the middle of the night with a giant pistol between her in her cleavage, which was after she was dead.
Paul G Newton:Oh wow, they took a picture of it so everybody could think she had this big old gun that she's running around with Like how she's going to get a gun when she's in prison.
Andrea:I mean really, oh, that was it.
Denise Parkinson:They said that she had stolen it, but it was all a setup.
Andrea:Yeah, did anything positive come out of this, like was there any prison reform because of what happened, or anything?
Denise Parkinson:The warden and her husband both lost their jobs, which was the worst that could happen to you in the Great Depression. Well, it was the women's prison. Yes, the woman who was the warden.
Paul G Newton:Oh, we've got a really great actress in our film that portrays her kind of like a southern version of Nurse Ratched.
Denise Parkinson:You know, oh okay, she's very effective. You make Andrea mad enough.
Andrea:So the warden I'm not that kind of nurse.
Denise Parkinson:No, she's scary, and there were actual medical tortures taking place in the prison. I just don't like to talk about it, but that is part of the horribleness of the system.
Paul G Newton:I think we really need to do some more research on this prison system thing that they got going on. I'd like to delve deep and to see what's going on with that and what legislature legislatures did to make that stop and why they tore it down.
Denise Parkinson:They tore it down to the ground after the scandal of the cover up of Helen Spence getting quote unquote, shot while escaping because the cover up was based on prolific writer, that they put these two examples of her handwriting side by side on the front page of the Gazette. And the grand jury said this is a forgery. Someone had written on the back of her rejection slip, forged her supposed I will not be taken alive and it all fell apart from there and the superintendent of the entire prison system, a man named AG Stedman, the one that had ordered them to keep her in a cage. He had to resign. He resigned in disgrace.
Denise Parkinson:But the sad thing is Andrea Frank Martin, the guy who took the rap, as the supposed trigger man. When there is a question that it might have been a Brockman behind the rap, A pistol trigger pulling the trigger. He was let off on a technicality from being held responsible for shooting her and he went on to. They had cut a deal with him. So he was paroled and he was not a nice man. But here's some good river justice for you. After he had been paroled for years and had a wife and children and he was mean to all of them and had a wife and children and he was mean to all of them. He was working as a farm laborer and he went into a small town grocery in Casco that Billy sent me photographs of, Anyway, Cloud's Grocery, and there was a lady working there behind the counter and she was from the river. But Frank Martin, he didn't know that and he's always bragging I'm the one that shot the notorious Helen Spence. Well, the lady behind the counter said oh, you want a loaf of bread? Here's a different loaf of bread. It costs less but it's just as good. So Frank Martin took that loaf of bread, went home, had dinner and did not wake up the next morning and the river people always said the river got him.
Denise Parkinson:And after that Helen Spence's body was put on display in North Little Rock and again in Arkansas County and the river people came in the middle of the night, took her body to the potter's field of the St Charles Cemetery, which is where her houseboat was when she was growing up later and they buried her and now people make pilgrimages to her grave and my mentor, who's a philanthropist, who helped me with the film, she purchased a footstone for Helen Spence because the river people had planted a cedar tree at the head of her grave and that's still there and it's beautiful, and so people come to her grave and they plant flowers and they leave mussel shells on her grave and it's a place of pilgrimage.
Denise Parkinson:Because our our thing is to clear helen spence's name. Because even as recently as a few years ago, Paul, there was a state archives person, a staffer, who said at a seminar, in front of a room full of educators, that Helen Spence deserved what she got because she had been sleeping around, she had been sleeping around in a women's prison and got pregnant. She had been sleeping around in a women's prison and got pregnant when my book in my book it says very clearly that five medical professionals, including the state medical examiner, were on hand at the autopsy and they all five said she's not pregnant. So that was another red herring. So I'm just doing my best to keep my vow to mr brown and, like he vowed, just because somebody is promiscuous or seems on the outside as promiscuous one.
Paul G Newton:It doesn't apply in this case, because she didn't have chance to. She's in jail for as soon as she turned around, but doesn't make any difference, they're still a human being. And two, they're freaking. Yeah, okay, so she had, she had to do prostitution work. It's not by choice. They told her she had to do it. So I don't see why anybody should ever say that the woman sleeps around, so she's not worth it anyway.
Andrea:Yeah, that's not right, that's terrible I got one question though exactly what was the catalyst that broke this whole thing open? Because it sounds like to me I'm just thinking that if they shot her, then they've. Then how? How did the information come out that someone from the prison just have, like I don't know, a moment of, oh, we got to do the right thing. Did the ladies hold, and what actually broke? The scandal of what they did actually broke. The scandal of what they did.
Denise Parkinson:Well, here's it. Here's an example of how the old Delta saying even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while really is true, because what happened was the media had written all these stories about Helen Spence. I mean, it was from the New York Times, it was picked up by the Associated Press, so it was all over the local papers. It was all over, and back then you had morning papers and afternoon papers too, and everything was super cheap, difficult to find accounts that lined up exactly because people just started writing stuff about her like she was some kind of made-up superhero.
Denise Parkinson:But after she was shot while escaping, um, all the river people, and even the dry landers too, could see through it because it was so blatantly a cover-up, and there was just this huge outcry and all the media, that coverage that had, you know, been a two-edged sword. Back when she was still alive, it brought the house down because the, the journalists themselves were like no, no, this is yeah, they started seeing.
Paul G Newton:They're like wait what's going on and then the grand jury. Okay, yeah they heard all the real evidence, not the garbage yellow journalism. This is the era still the era of yellow journalism. In spanish-american war was not a real war, it was yellow journalism put on by pulitzer. And hearst they, they're making up headlines so that they, these guys writing for these papers, just think it's okay to do that. Cause look at Hearst did it, randolph Hearst did it.
Denise Parkinson:Well, there was never any bylines on any of these stories, no bylines whatsoever.
Paul G Newton:So consider yeah, it's cause they were false. They were made up.
Denise Parkinson:They, they were just it was a free-for-all back then because paper was cheap, because Arkansas was being clear-cut and all the pulp was going into newsprint and, uh, you know, not a lot has changed, uh, from back then to now, because now we just have lots of ions turning your screen colors so that you can see the false information that comes from everywhere, called facebook and youtube and whatever but that's where I am thankful, because check this out when I wrote this book, uh, it was back in 2010.
Denise Parkinson:I've been working on, you know, getting the film done ever since and and it's finally done, but when I was writing it, there was no podcasting. Now there's podcasting and because of people like you, helen Spence is known thanks to my audio book all over the world, but she's still not known in Arkansas, because nobody wants a river rat to stand up and tell the truth. And that's what I am I'm a river rat.
Paul G Newton:Well, you know, Andrea and I are all for it.
Andrea:Yes.
Paul G Newton:Please stand up and tell the truth. And there's, you know, there's all kinds of stories in Arkansas that people just don't talk about, and that's what we do in Arkansas. I think that's one of our fortes of social interaction is we just don't talk about that stuff around here. That's kind of a thing that comes along all the time. So where can they find your book One?
Denise Parkinson:Well, you can find it online and you can find it at, for example, in Stuttgart, at the Museum of the Grand Prairie. They they've been selling it for years and you can request it at your local bookstore. And I am in talks with a publisher for my second book, which is basically a sequel to this, which contains a lot more memories and stories from my family that were river people, and there is a funny saying on the river. I don't know if this will be bleeped out or not, but I kept hearing it.
Paul G Newton:No, there's no bleeping here. You can say whatever the hell you want, it doesn't matter.
Denise Parkinson:Well, it's funny because my film was thoroughly rejected. My book's never been reviewed in Arkansas. It was reviewed outside the state of Arkansas and called a work of regional significance. But there's been a total media blackout on my work and all the film festivals rejected it. And I'm like what's going on? I think it's a good film and I'm I'm what? Am I? A top liver? Oh, I'm a real rat. And one of the one of the guys said to me.
Paul G Newton:No, it's not that I'll tell you what he said.
Denise Parkinson:He said it's because there's two kinds of people in this world river rats and sons of bitches. Now, which one are you?
Paul G Newton:well, I, you know, I I make films. I've got for people who don't know, I've got an Emmy, seven Associated Press Awards for editing.
Paul G Newton:Awesome and I've got a 13 film festival places and wins and so on and so forth. I got a lot of accolades over it and I can tell you right now it's just getting. When somebody rejects your film depends on the film, depends on where you're putting it in, because you really have to judge the festival and the stuff that they've awarded to in the past, whether or not they're going to even let it in. And that's because it's all. I hate to say it, but it's true. It's all nepotism in this business. It's who you know. Well, that is funny that you say that, and that's just the way it is.
Denise Parkinson:That is funny that you say that, because the top two producers the executive producers of my little low budget indie Arkansas history documentary based on my book, women who won 2022's Arkansas Governor's Award for lifelong you know everything you know. I don't even know the names of these awards. The other one, she, was the 2022 Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame inductee. Those were my executive producers of my nonprofit affiliated film. So I have to wonder is it the subject matter? Because their other film that they did together, champion trees and artist journey, was an Emmy one, three Emmys.
Paul G Newton:Well, what we can do, then, is we can encourage everyone listening, which are a lot of locals. A lot of locals listen to what we're talking about, mostly up in Northwest Arkansas, but you know, billy Rabidek is obviously going to be listening, because we keep talking about him. He's like oh, you want to talk about me, I'm gonna listen anyway um let's watch where's working the movie.
Paul G Newton:Oh oh, I had to go out to boxley a couple weeks ago. I'm trying to do one on hayley zega that she got lost out there for two days and she was a six-year-old girl oh my gosh.
Denise Parkinson:And some other man, a hiker, just got lost in him, didn't hollow, I think he.
Paul G Newton:There's scuttlebutt that he was out there doing something else, so we'll have to save that for later because, that's a whole nother podcast what's going on there, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're working on that one too.
Denise Parkinson:I love the Delta, I love the Ozarks. I used to live in the Boxley Valley, which is like heaven on earth, and we drank water out of an artesian spring at the top of a Bernie Ridge, and now I live next to a creek in the Ouachita Mountains. So I'm an Arkansas girl, I'm a forest term.
Andrea:Wow.
Paul G Newton:So if somebody wants to watch your movie, where can they find it?
Denise Parkinson:They can come to Stuttgart November 13th. Uh, but no. That's the only movie theater left in the Delta, practically is the Stuttgart twin. It took me all summer to negotiate with the out of state owner of the Stuttgart twinuttgart Twin to bring this film to the Delta, I had to raise the money to rent it up front.
Denise Parkinson:I rented the other two screenings because, like I said, we were shut out of any festival support and I did send it to festivals that I thought, based on their track record, would know what I was doing and would appreciate it. But nobody wants to hear a river rat stand up and tell the truth, and that's to this very day.
Paul G Newton:Hot Springs has a documentary film festival they might like you might be.
Denise Parkinson:Oh, that was the first place that I got lied to by, yeah.
Andrea:Wow, oh you know what they said. You know what they said. We need to do. They said gatekeepers. They said gatekeepers.
Denise Parkinson:They said you can't get past the gatekeepers. It's the gatekeepers. They won't let you reach your audience. It's the gatekeepers.
Paul G Newton:And I was like, but this is a River film and there's no gates on the levee. Well, we're going to watch it, we're going to encourage people to watch it. Well, we're going to watch it, we're going to encourage people to watch it. So we've got you in Stuttgart, arkansas, which is three and a half hours from where I'm sitting right now. But in Stuttgart, arkansas, what day is it showing?
Denise Parkinson:Yeah, you could. It's just ridiculous. R-dot is completely closing I-30 that whole weekend. So for the first time in Arkansas history, r-dot is closing I-30 between November 11th and 14th. Unless they canceled it, that was what came out in the paper the other day and on the news, so they're definitely cutting the state in half RDOT, the same RDOT that destroyed the River People's National Historic Bridge at Clarendon.
Denise Parkinson:Rdot's really going hard but we're going to be in the Delta screening it. But after stuck arts premiere it will be available as a digital download through my music composer, who's another delta girl named sj tucker and she's a goddess and she did the music, most of the music for the film. You're up in north arkansas. You probably know the other people that did music for my film. It's uh kelly and donna mahalan of still on the hill okay, yeah, I don't think I've personally heard of them so, so where is it going to be?
Paul G Newton:do you have it on a website?
Denise Parkinson:I don't know, we were trying to get a website called daughter of the white rivercom and we paid money to a drylander to create the website and he took all the money and he went off to LA.
Paul G Newton:Do you have the URL? Do you own the URL?
Denise Parkinson:We have the film, but we are going to make it available as a digital download that you can purchase in a bundle after the November 13th premiere. I've done all the premieres myself, okay, so yeah.
Paul G Newton:So where can they get the? Where can they get the download from? How can we buy it?
Denise Parkinson:Keep your eyes open for SJ Tucker. She has a digital set of digital platforms that has to do with band camp and Patreon and this and that. But if you keep track, if you start keeping track now of this marvelous singer and performer who's traveled all over the world but isn't very well known in arkansas, gee, it's a motif. Maybe it has something to do with us both being delta artists delta born artists I think it's just.
Paul G Newton:The people in arkansas are just different, because I ran into the same thing and I'm not, you know, I'm just a dude, and so it's it's. Arkansas has got its problems when it comes to art, so especially digital art, and video for you guys thing and I could do a.
Paul G Newton:I could do a whole hour on just the crap that I put up with, just being here, but it's nothing. I don't think it's personal. I think we just need to get out of the state. That's all Well. Thank God for the World Wide Web, it's just the state.
Denise Parkinson:There's plenty of people in. New York and Canada and Japan, who are huge fans of John Spence All right, so check her out.
Paul G Newton:She'll obviously. She'll probably have a link to the website or to the download whenever it comes out, and we I really appreciate you coming on and telling us this story. It's pretty, it's been pretty cool.
Andrea:Yes, thank you so much.
Denise Parkinson:Thank you, and I hope I could distract you all from you know a Sunday afternoon to think about something that it seems dark but then you realize she died 88 years ago and she was literally forgotten about for decades and decades and decades. But we are closer now to clearing her name and restoring her good name and the river people. It's like she's only been gone a few minutes. It's like she's just on the other side of a door all right.
Paul G Newton:So, andrea, I guess uh any thoughts. Any last thing?
Andrea:no, just thank you for telling us the story, learn some new things and, um, I can't wait to buy your book. Definitely like this story.
Paul G Newton:I definitely want to read more very nice well, hey guys, you don't have to you don't have to buy my book.
Denise Parkinson:I will mail it to you nice.
Paul G Newton:Well, when we're done with the recording, we'll give you the address yes, thank you, I would love that yeah, um so we've got some. We've still got some interest. This is kind of a surprise that I pulled on you, andrea, about, but about the, the river people.
Andrea:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul G Newton:You didn't know this was happening and I was like oh, no, no no, no, she might be interested. It's kind of a true crime.
Andrea:Yeah, I like true crime yeah.
Paul G Newton:But we've got some more folks coming up. Who was it now that we've got coming up again? You've got to look at the notes.
Andrea:You're supposed to write this down. Oh, come on. Come on, we've got a gentleman that's going to talk about opera. We have opera.
Paul G Newton:Oh yeah.
Andrea:Or lady, excuse me, yeah, we've got.
Paul G Newton:You wanted to know about the opera, so I was like I'm going to book an opera About Afghanistan, oh yeah, the people of Afghanistan that's right, who they really are and what they really do, and just how difficult it is to live in Afghanistan, especially during the war, before we left.
Andrea:And that's all that I remember. I know you've got three others, I just can't remember exactly what they are. There's some really interesting stuff coming up.
Paul G Newton:I'm going to start trying to find even more eclectic stuff, if I possibly can. I'm going to really get some interesting stuff. Do we want to still do any more ghosts or anything like that? Do you want to try to do that again?
Andrea:I don't know. Let's just see what we can find I don't know.
Paul G Newton:Let's just see what we can find, because you know there's lots of people out there, but it's Sasquatch I really need to put the Sasquatch together, don't I?
Andrea:Yes, I kind of want to know what is the hype on Bigfoot.
Paul G Newton:Bigfoot, the Bigfeet, bigfeet Is it a family of them or are they Bigfeet?
Andrea:I have Bigfeet or Bigfoots.
Paul G Newton:Iumb. All right, so I guess that's it, and you guys, if you want to help us out, please go to the podcasting application of your choosing at what you're listening to us on now and give us five stars. If you't give us five stars, I'm going to send um nothing because I don't know who you are.
Paul G Newton:But you should give me five stars, yeah I got gar I got a picture of my great great grandfather with that gar in his boat. It's huge, um, but give us five stars. Leave a review. That would help us out very much. Check out my website, paulgnuttoncom. It has. You can look at my photography and my video stuff. I'm not there trying to sell you something, but I will in the future because I'm trying to figure that out where I could put swag on there.
Andrea:I'm gonna have a t-shirt that says oh, my god, paul, because I do say that a lot, I do say that a lot, I do say that a lot this is do say that a lot.
Paul G Newton:This is true.
Andrea:That would be a funny t-shirt.
Paul G Newton:And some other things. But check us out and the more you rate us, the more people that rate us with five stars, the better we get in the algorithm and the more people can hear us, and I would love for more people to hear us because that's fun and I'd appreciate it. So I guess that's it.
Andrea:I think so, all right, bye.
Paul G Newton:Bye guitar solo, thank you. So go to wherever you're listening to your podcast Apple, itunes, spotify, iheartmedia, wherever and hit that five stars.
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