MURDERED: Alberta O. Jones

18:20Brit Prawat:He said that he was driving a white car around the time Alberta died, but it wasn't Alberta's rental, which police confirm to be true. And when they compare these brothers' prints to all of the prints from Alberta's rental, neither of theirs match any of them. And when the tipster who offered them up in the first place ends up getting, like, really scrutinized, it came to light that they only gave these brothers' names with some, like, weird scheme in mind about police helping a relative of theirs, like, get out of some legal trouble. Like, it was, like, all nonsense.

18:54Ashley Flowers:quid pro quo for the tip?

18:56Brit Prawat:I guess. It's very confusing logic. But it meant that any evidence of the brothers being involved fell apart and then police had no choice but to rule them out. Problem was there was no one else to rule in. A look at those closest to Alberta hadn't revealed a suspect. I mean, her boyfriend is ruled out. They had a good relationship. So there was like no motive. His prints didn't match the ones found in the Ford. And he was home with his mother in the early morning hours that Alberta was killed. Police also looked into people Alberta prosecuted or who were unsatisfied clients, thinking maybe someone held some kind of grudge against her.

19:33Brit Prawat:But that didn't lead anywhere either. So the theory that seemed the most plausible at the time was that this was a robbery gone wrong. Someone must have just spotted Alberta, pegged her as an easy target to take whatever money she had on her in her purse. And, you know, it's always hard to solve a stranger attack like that. But maybe one day the prints on her car would turn up a match. Or maybe they would find her missing purse. The truth was, both things would end up happening. But when they did, it didn't confirm their theories. It actually completely threw them on their head and introduced possibilities of conspiracy and cover-up.

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21:23Brit Prawat:Three years passed after Alberta's murder without an arrest or really any new updates. But then, on July 16, 1968, a group of boys playing on the lower level of the Sherman-Minton Bridge found something that changed this entire case. When they leaned over the ledge, they saw this black leather purse tucked into this like hole on one of the steel braces. And it wasn't even hard to get to or to grab. So they did. And inside was a check, key rings, lipstick, a lower dental plate and the ID for Alberta O. Jones.

22:06Ashley Flowers:Did they not search the bridge three years ago?

22:10Brit Prawat:I don't know how well they did or didn't search the bridge, but I don't think that matters because I actually don't think the purse had been there for three years.

22:21Ashley Flowers:What do you mean?

22:22Brit Prawat:But where it was, it's not like in this enclosed area or anything. It's like right out there in the open, exposed to rain, to snow, every other flavor of unpredictable Midwest weather that you can think of. And this thing, the contents in it, like it did not seem weather warm. Which makes me think someone put it there. Someone wanted it to be found.

22:46Ashley Flowers:Was it by where her shoes were tossed off the bridge or where they think they were tossed?

22:50Brit Prawat:So that's the thing, too. Both are placed or thrown from the lower level. You know that. The one that goes from Indiana to Kentucky.

22:58Ashley Flowers:But the purse is placed closer to the Indiana side. Like the beginning of the bridge. Like when you're getting on.

23:04Brit Prawat:And then the shoes were tossed on as you're getting off on the Kentucky side.

23:07Ashley Flowers:So if it was placed, like, why now?

23:12Brit Prawat:That's the question I can't answer. Like I said, there weren't many developments in this case. And honestly, it wasn't even like major news anymore. So it's not like they were close to arresting someone or like, you know, someone's trying to like lead them somewhere. So, yeah. Why now? Was someone feeling guilty? Was this a clue? Was it possible that someone was trying to subtly tell people that they needed to look back at the bridge for answers? Because there was actually a clue early on that involved the bridge in this case. A witness who saw something very strange that seemingly just got overlooked or maybe tossed aside as insignificant.

23:54Brit Prawat:But I have a hunch of why that was. So you see, within a week of Alberta's murder, Louisville police had set up roadblocks on both the Kentucky and Indiana on-ramps of the bridge. And they were stopping motorists, asking if anyone had seen anything suspicious the night of Alberta's murder. They talked to like 222 motorists in total. And one of them, a guy named Peter Baker, said that he actually was on the bridge that morning. He worked super early because Mr. Baker worked at a bakery. So he was in his truck on the bridge with a co-worker at like 4.35 a.m. And he says that he saw a white car stopped at the center of the bridge.

24:35Brit Prawat:And his co-worker, Robert Bostock, remembered it too, though he remembered it being a little closer to the exit ramp into Kentucky. Either way, they both remembered that the white car wasn't alone out there. Pulled up behind it was a marked Louisville police car. Now, they didn't see anyone outside of the cars. And remember, it's estimated that Alberta went into the river between 2.30 and 4.30. So this was like just outside of that window. OK, by five minutes, though. I know. But there were two other people that they found who say that they were on the bridge that morning, too, from like 4 to 4.30.

25:15Brit Prawat:And they say that they didn't see any cars. So it seems to be concluded that Alberta was already in the river at that point. And if this was her car, she wasn't in it.

25:25Ashley Flowers:Okay, well, who's that officer who was stopped on the bridge? Like, what do they have to say?

25:29Brit Prawat:No one ever cops to it being them. If it's real, right? I mean, then they have something to hide. But what? Now, the timing is interesting to me because if she went into the river before the car was on the bridge, then why did they go into Indiana in the first place?

25:48Ashley Flowers:And why did they stop on the way back?

25:51Brit Prawat:Right. Like throw the shoes anywhere. Like surely there was a more inconspicuous way to get rid of them. Throw them in Indiana.

25:58Ashley Flowers:Exactly.

25:59Brit Prawat:And like two cars wouldn't necessarily need to stop like for that. Right. Right. Right. It's not like you can say like, oh, the white car was like pulled over and a police officer just like stopped to see what was going on because like it looked suspicious or whatever. Because like, A, again, why isn't that officer come forward and be like, I actually pulled someone over on the bridge? B, if the officer stopped and had no idea of the situation, like they would have like seen the bloody backseat and that would have been cause for concern. Yeah. Because if Alberta is already dead, that backseat is covered in blood.

26:30Brit Prawat:If that was Alberta's car and if there was a Louisville police car stop behind it that morning, the only way this makes sense is if whoever was in the police car knows what happened.

26:41Ashley Flowers:Or was involved in what happened.

26:44Brit Prawat:And the more you dig into this angle, the more you'll realize that there is something that really stinks here. Going all the way back to the beginning, like this car tip that was dismissed. Early in the investigation, so before police spoke to Gladys or anyone in Alberta's family, There was this senior Louisville police officer who seemed to know like more than he should. So the missing person report that her family put in, it didn't name Gladys and it didn't have any details about Alberta's movements with Gladys that night. Yet this guy somehow knows about Gladys, knows that Gladys called Alberta to come over, knows that they went out to eat before he had ever spoken to Gladys or anyone in Alberta's family.

27:34How?

27:35Brit Prawat:Nobody ever really explains this or even seems to think it's like as weird as Alberta's family does. I mean, I do. Same, but it's just like glossed over. So he's either involved or talking to the people who are involved. Or option C, someone was following Alberta that night, whether they were involved or not. And that is not a far-fetched idea because people had been following Alberta in the time leading up to her death. So remember, I told you that she had been scared recently because of her work. Well, there's a lot that went into that. Alberta had just become the first black female prosecutor in Louisville history.

28:18Brit Prawat:Remember, this is 1965, so I'm sure some people weren't too happy about that. And even before that job, Alberta was heavily involved in the city's civil rights movement. She was breaking barrier after barrier, and she was one of the first Black students who attended the University of Louisville. And she was considered the first Black woman to pass the Kentucky bar exam. And importantly, she was passionate about registering Black citizens to vote. So she co-founded the Independent Voters Association and helped register roughly 6 ,000 Black voters in Louisville. And she was a major part of the group that helped oust Louisville's mayor in 1961 and established new laws against racial discrimination.

29:01Brit Prawat:She had such a great reputation that Muhammad Ali relied on her to negotiate his first professional contract. Wow. But all of that made her a target. Alberta's family noticed that Alberta was becoming paranoid in the months leading up to her death. And I honestly hate that word because like paranoid makes it almost sound like this was like all in her head or whatever. But like these were very real things that were happening to her before her death. Alberta told her family about being followed and about people hitting her car, leaving scrapes. It felt really intentional to her. And Flora said she knew for a fact herself that Alberta wasn't just imagining things.

29:40Brit Prawat:because one night in May of 1965, this is like three months before Alberta died, Flora was actually driving Alberta's car, remember, distinctive car. And she saw this car following her, like making every turn, every stop. And Flora finally pulled over and confronted this other driver. And she said in the car were two white men and they showed her a police badge. Like Louisville PD? That's what she thought. And she said the men just laughed before speeding off. But later it occurred to Flora, they weren't following her. They were following the pink Thunderbird. They thought she was Alberta. Yes.

30:18Brit Prawat:And Flora also remembered one day when Alberta was talking on the phone to one of her friends. And then when they hung up, the phone rang again. And when Alberta picked it up, it was a man's voice on the other end, joking about the conversation she had just been having. Like he heard the entire thing. And so Alberta was convinced that someone had tapped her phone.

30:38Ashley Flowers:OK, that feels like way bigger than the LPD.

30:41Brit Prawat:I mean, declassified records show that the CIA, along with other U.S. agencies, spied on Martin Luther King Jr. There was a vested government interest in stopping equality movements that Alberta was a part of. And listen, the very night that Alberta went to see Gladys, Alberta was apparently reading about the Kennedy assassination. And Alberta said that very night she hoped that she wouldn't end up like him. After Alberta died, Flora said that the family learned Alberta had just gotten a burglar alarm put on her car. And she had apparently bought a gun.

31:19Ashley Flowers:Put on the car that was in the shop that one night.

31:21Brit Prawat:Yeah. And it's not lost on me that so much of this mystery surrounded the bridge connecting Kentucky to Indiana. Because Indiana had a resurgence of the KKK in the 1960s. Remember, there's 51 miles on that car. The purse is found on the Indiana side. There seems to be some tie to Indiana. I just don't know what it is.

31:45Ashley Flowers:Were there any Indiana people that showed up in the case file at all?

31:49Brit Prawat:No, not in like a meaningful way. But like, I don't know how much I actually trust the file. Because this idea that Alberta could have been targeted, the glaring reality that this, more than anything else, makes the most sense for a motive, it seems to have been like totally ignored. I mean, despite the deceptively large case file, I don't think this case was truly worked. I think a lot of work was done, but it all feels like a distraction. They spent so much time on a robbery, maybe even tried shady tactics early on to get a confession. I mean, there was a point when they accused Alberta of being Gladys's lover, but it was like all nonsense.

32:30Brit Prawat:This running around in circles, addressing anything but the elephant in the room. It did. It led to a lot of work being done on this case. But for who? Because it didn't seem like it was for Alberta. Otherwise, why two days after she was found dead did some of the prints lifted from her car get thrown away? What? Oh, you heard me. And the story of how this even got found out is wild. So it's August 9th, 1965. We're talking days after the murder. And this detective, Detective Lancaster, is working really early hours. He's there at like 4.30 a.m. And he gets this idea about how they can utilize like the most important physical evidence that they have in this case.

33:19Brit Prawat:The fingerprints taken from Alberta's rental car. He's like, you know what? We should be comparing these to everyone, not just people in her life, but like every felon who gets brought in. And honestly, even people brought in on lesser charges like this doesn't have to be a part of their record, but we should compare them to these like known suspect prints. Not bad ideas. Right. Also, he says we should get prints from her Thunderbird that was in the shop. See if any of the prints match. Like maybe she knew the guy before. Maybe we can like rule out people from the rental place. Precisely. So crack of dawn, Lancaster pops into the fingerprint lab to talk to the officer who is in charge over there, Officer Elliott.

33:57Brit Prawat:And as far as I know, no one else is in the room when this happened. So I'm just left to imagine the way that the air was sucked out of this room. The look on Officer Elliott's face as he has to tell Detective Lancaster that they don't have all the prints anymore. And then he gives the reason why. He says that on the morning of Saturday, August 7th, he was just finishing up his overnight shift when two people came into the lab. a Sergeant Miller with the department and a technician with the last name Patterson. Now, Technician Patterson had pulled the print cards from Alberta's case out and was going to go through them.

34:38Brit Prawat:But Sergeant Miller told him, you know what, just leave the prints alone. I'm going to go grab coffee and then I want to look at them. Now, Officer Elliott is leaving as Sergeant Miller was going to get coffee. Well, fast forward to that night. Officer Elliott reports back for duty. It's still August 7th, 10 p.m. now. And he goes to pull the prints from Alberta's case. They're actively working this case. Like now that he is there, Patterson is literally about to go get Alberta's prints so they can rule out whatever prints are hers. Like that's how fresh this is. Like that hasn't even happened yet.

35:12Brit Prawat:So Elliot goes to the envelope where the print cards are kept and they're empty. Like all of them are gone. So Elliot looks at Patterson and he's like, dude, like where is our evidence? Patterson says he doesn't know. He stopped looking at the prints when Sergeant Miller told him to. He said that Miller was the only one who had gone through them that night. So Elliot starts frantically looking around the lab. I'm sure he's like rifling through drawers, opening cabinets, like preserving prints is their main job. He cannot lose these. And that is when he sees them in a trash bin between desks. Like, someone threw these prints away.

35:56Brit Prawat:And because of this, some of them were completely ruined. And even more concerning, some of them were still missing. The prints that were taken from the left door window were never recovered. And the magnitude of this cannot be understated because Detective Lancaster said that he was present when these prints were lifted. He knows they existed. And he states in his memorandum to Major Robert A. Gregory that those prints were good prints and possibly the most important prints of the bunch. Of course, there were no photos taken of the prints, no negatives. And so all they had left was one slightly smeared print from the left door window instead of the actual really good ones that they know they collected.

36:44Brit Prawat:And Detective Lancaster ends his letter to the major saying they need to contact Sergeant Miller and find out what he did with the prints or contact the FBI and see if maybe they have them. And what is nuts here is that there is nothing in the file about anyone ever questioning Miller about the prints, about where the prints are or why he may have thrown them in the trash. Instead, he continued working the case and handling evidence even after those prints got thrown away. That wouldn't be the only time in this case that evidence was destroyed. No one knows exactly when this next thing happened because no one caught it like Lancaster did the prints.

37:30Brit Prawat:Or if they did, a memorandum about what happened didn't survive in the file. But in 1988, investigators decided to take another look at Alberta's case. They still weren't looking at the possibility that Alberta was targeted because of her civil rights work. They weren't trying to figure out if she was being followed or who was tapping her phone. And they weren't taking a good hard look at their own department to see if the case was mismanaged. Instead, they were interested to know if Alberta's case could be connected to another woman's death. Her name was Decora White, and she'd also been found dead in the river a year before Alberta, except no autopsy was even done on her.

38:09Brit Prawat:And they just assumed that she fell in the river and drowned. So the theory went that maybe like Alberta was doing some legal estate work for Decora, but Alberta's family basically like shut that down. She's like, not only was Alberta not working with Decora, they didn't even know each other personally. And long story short, police ended up saying that they couldn't connect the cases because none of the people in Decorah's case matched the prints in Alberta's.

38:33Ashley Flowers:You mean the prints that were smudged and missing?

38:35Brit Prawat:Yeah, so like I wouldn't be using that as an excuse to write a theory off, which is probably why they went looking to see if they could link other evidence to Decorah's case. But here in 1988 is when they find out, oh, guess what? Almost all of it's gone. Photos. We know the fingerprints are gone. The blood samples gone. Police had sent some of it off for testing. Some, I guess, went to the FBI. But detectives were calling around and they just could not track this stuff down. Obviously, that 1988 investigation didn't get anywhere. And knowing that evidence was now mostly gone, destroyed, missing, whatever, it's not like there was much to go back and test over the years like we see with so many other cold cases.

39:19Brit Prawat:All they had were a couple of OK fingerprint cards. But Officer Elliott saving those cards from the trash would turn out to be one of the most important moves in this whole case. Because more than 40 years after he pulled them out of the bin, thanks to new technology, one of the prints got a match.

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40:55Ashley Flowers:I'm excited to tell you about this brand new Netflix series from Harlan Coben called I Will Find You. It opens with this line. My name is David Burroughs. I'm currently serving the fifth year of a life sentence for killing my little boy. Spoiler alert, I didn't do it. Not that I'm innocent. And that pretty much tells you what ride you're in for. David's been locked up for murdering his son, which he swears he didn't commit. But when a shocking clue surfaces that his son might actually be alive, David does the unthinkable. He breaks out of prison to find the truth and his child. From there, it's prison breaks, chases, FBI tales, even billionaires standing in his way.

41:29Ashley Flowers:The only person who believes him? His sister-in-law, Rachel. It's them against the system. This show is the perfect binge. It's got the emotional, family-driven mystery, plus big action, and those classic Harlan Coben, wait, what, moments. I Will Find You is streaming only on Netflix. So once it's out on June 18th, hit play because you are not going to see these twists coming. Don't miss I Will Find You, debuting on Netflix June 18th.

41:55Brit Prawat:By 2008, the FBI had an automated system to quickly match even low-quality prints against a national database electronically. And when cold case investigators in Louisville asked the FBI to run prints in Alberta's case again, after more than four decades, they finally got some good news. One of the prints hit on a match, and it belonged to a man in California named Arthur Porter III. But Arthur wasn't a California native. Back in 1965, when he would have been just 17 years old, he was living in Louisville, Kentucky. His father owned a prominent black-owned funeral home, the same one that Alberta's body went to.

42:38Brit Prawat:The Louisville detective now working Alberta's case wasted no time getting on a flight out to L.A. I mean, this was the biggest, best lead his department ever had. And whatever was done by his department before, he was charged with solving it now. And he wanted to talk to Arthur, who is now 61. And it's kind of a strange interview. you. Because when he sits down with them, Arthur insists that he had nothing to do with what happened to Alberta Jones, while at the same time, like, seeming to kind of have a little more knowledge about the situation than I would expect if he was, like, really in the dark or hadn't thought about this woman in 40 years.

43:15Brit Prawat:Now, to be fair, when Detective Terry Jones starts this recording, he introduced himself as a homicide detective with the Louisville Police Department. So when Arthur is insisting that he doesn't even know why he's being talked to, but then in the same breath says he didn't kill anybody, he could very well be like putting the pieces together, making an assumption. Why else would a homicide detective fly across the country to meet with you unless it was about a homicide?

43:39Ashley Flowers:Right.

43:39Brit Prawat:When Detective Jones finally tells him what homicide he's investigating, Arthur says that he remembers Alberta even after 40 years. Now, he never met her personally, didn't hang in the same circle. Like, why would he? I mean, he reminds the detective more than once that he was barely out of high school then and had no business hanging around a career woman like Alberta.

43:59Ashley Flowers:Before he knows how his name was even brought up in this case,

44:04Brit Prawat:he comments to the detective, I've never been with her. And then the detective asks a cleverly worded question. Did you work anywhere that summer that she was killed that might have put you in contact with her? And Arthur says, no, he worked at his dad's funeral home. So the detective pushes again. OK, so like no car lots, like you didn't detail cars, like pumping gas, anything like that. And he says no to all of this. And in doing the questioning this way, basically, Detective Jones is backing him in to like a firm stance that there is no reasonable explanation for his prince to be on or in Alberta's rental car.

44:42Brit Prawat:But he never mentions prince. He asks if any of his jobs would have put him in contact with her, specifically her. And the answer is no. So the next question the detective asks is, so leading up to her death, what did you know about her? And this is where the answer is a little odd to me. Arthur said all he knows is that she got killed and she was a lawyer. And if they found his prince, he doesn't know what they were doing with her because he was a good kid. A bookworm straight out of school who didn't get into any trouble. And Detective Jones doesn't miss a beat. He's like, you said Prince. Like, why are you talking about Prince?

45:19Brit Prawat:And to be fair, Arthur, like, he doesn't say it like this, but he's like, listen, I'm not dumb. You're clearly asking me if there's any reason for me to have, like, touched a car, right? Like, he's putting the pieces together. But once the cat is out of the bag, the interview goes on and on, round and round. Arthur, at least in text, sounds pretty convincing to me or reads pretty convincingly to me as he tells detectives that he had no idea how his prints ended up on her car. Where on her car? Well, so this is the catch. We don't actually know all these years later. So in the interview, Detective Jones tells Arthur they were in Alberta's vehicle.

45:54Brit Prawat:But actually, in the documents we have, police aren't ever able to determine exactly what part of the car the prints are from. Like, they could be from the inside, sure. But it's been so long, and the original case notes don't say. So investigators in 2008 don't actually know for certain. Either way, Detective Jones is like, here, let me just show you the reports. And Arthur's like, listen, I don't need to see the reports. I don't care what is written in these reports. I didn't kill this woman. But you were in her car? Right. And Detective Jones isn't super confrontational as he, like, pushes back.

46:26Brit Prawat:He's like, listen, this is why I'm here talking to you. I'm trying to figure this out. I'm not even saying all of these prints are yours. In fact, I know they're not all yours, but some are. Help me help you. How could they have gotten there? And Arthur says, OK, well, maybe if the prints are on the hood or something, it got there when him and his buddies were hanging out. So they start spending some time talking about where they used to hang out that summer. And this is where it gets really interesting again, because Arthur says that they're always on the west side by where his two buddies live between Hale Avenue and River Park Drive.

47:03Brit Prawat:Mostly, they would hang out at Elliott Park, which is really interesting when you look at the map again. Just to the east of the park is the convenience store that Alberta stops at at 2 a.m. Just to the west of the park, like right on the corner, is where the couple saw a woman screaming and being pulled into a car. And then one street west of the park is where Alberta's car is ultimately found. Arthur just keeps saying, I was a good kid. I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't hang around with anybody who did. And he's even willing to take a polygraph to prove it. So they're like, perfect. Let's get this on the books for the next day.

47:40Brit Prawat:And they do. And Arthur shows up as promised for it. And he fails. In fact, the report found, quote, the highest level of deception possible. I think 2008 detectives probably thought they had their man. Or at least they found a man with the answers that they were looking for. But they could not get Arthur to talk after that.

48:06Ashley Flowers:I mean, does he need to? If they've got his prints.

48:09Brit Prawat:Yeah, but like not knowing where the prints are from leaves this door open to a million explanations. So even though they, it seems like, want to charge Arthur with something, the Kentucky Commonwealth attorney refuses. In a letter that they sent to the Louisville Metro Police Department, it says that the state would not prosecute Arthur then or ever because the case wouldn't hold up in court.

48:34Ashley Flowers:OK, so if Arthur was involved in some way, I guess I have all the questions. Like, why? How?

48:42Brit Prawat:Well, I thought it was really interesting that Arthur mentioned two friends that he was with a lot that summer because I was thinking about that gas station sighting of Alberta. There were three teens. What if that was them? Also, come down the rabbit hole with me real quick. There was another run in that Alberta had with teenagers that night and I didn't mention it yet. So back when her and Gladys went to Kingfish to grab a bite, Gladys said that two white boys were yelling perverse things at them from their car. They actually drove off because of it. Now, she said that she didn't notice them following the car or anything.

49:20Brit Prawat:But is it possible that those two white boys met up with Arthur later? Remember, we don't know the race or have any descriptions for the three boys from the gas station. I was going to ask. But I do suspect that Arthur's two friends were white because while their names are redacted from the transcript, what's not redacted is the part where Arthur tells police that his two friends, their dads, worked for Louisville PD. One was a sergeant and one was a major. I know at the time that Louisville PD was predominantly white. So that's what I'm basing my assumption off of.

50:01Ashley Flowers:Well, and is that the real reason the fingerprint cards disappeared? Makes you wonder, right?

50:08Brit Prawat:And listen, I went down a rabbit hole of yearbooks and obituaries trying to figure out who these guys could be. I could not pin it down. I will say that the Sergeant Miller, the one who was last with the print cards before some magically went missing. I think I found the right Miller. Based on his obituary, he only had girls. So I don't think that was like him protecting his kid. OK, but someone else's? I don't know, because this 2008 investigation feels a little like the 1965 one. Even though there are a lot of documents and work, the work I want to see is either missing or wasn't done. because I can't find any records of them going and speaking to the friends that Arthur names to figure out if they know anything or had any connection to Alberta's case.

50:54Brit Prawat:The mention of them just kind of like goes away, just like the prince did. And listen, maybe Arthur's prints are a red herring. We couldn't ask Arthur about it ourselves because he passed away in 2024, maintaining his innocence.

51:11Ashley Flowers:If it was just like a group of teens, though, Arthur or not, Do you think it really was just like some robbery gone wrong?

51:19Brit Prawat:So no matter who it was, I really don't think that that was the motive because I don't think Alberta just randomly encountered her killer. Like, I actually think that she was set up from the beginning. I mean, think about it. She didn't want to go out. She had been extra cautious lately. It would have been hard to get her in a vulnerable position unless she was lured out of the house, maybe by someone she trusted.

51:50Ashley Flowers:Are you saying Gladys was in on it?

51:52Brit Prawat:I don't know for sure, but I can tell you that Alberta's family always suspected that. Her sister Flora still suspects that because there are some things that just don't add up. Like, for one, over the years, Gladys' story of what happened the night Alberta came over kind of changed. I mean, at first she said that she watched Alberta get into her car before she went inside, right? But in a later interview, she said that she watched Alberta actually drive away. This isn't like a huge deal. I think it could be easy to misremember some things over years. But what is a huge deal is that in her original story, it was that Alberta came over, she fits the wig, they go to Kingfish, And then they come back and Alberta said that she wanted the wig like trimmed up a little bit more.

52:37Brit Prawat:She didn't like the way that like the bangs fell or something. So they went back into Gladys's house before Alberta left. But in one of the later interviews, Gladys said that Alberta didn't come back inside her house at all after they went to Kingfish that night.

52:51Ashley Flowers:I mean, that's not like that huge. It's not saying she didn't come over at all, right?

52:56Brit Prawat:No, but this highlights the thing that I am obsessed over. Was or wasn't there a wig?

53:04Ashley Flowers:What do you mean?

53:05Brit Prawat:The whole reason Alberta supposedly goes to Gladys's that night is for this wig, right? Like Gladys, sure, she wanted to talk legal stuff too, whatever, whatever, but she wanted Alberta to get this wig. Alberta gets the wig put on. Alberta is supposedly wearing the wig when she leaves. Where's the wig, Brit? Because guess what? Alberta didn't have a wig on when she was pulled from the river. There wasn't a wig in her car or in her purse when that's found years later. And listen, admittedly, I don't know a lot about wearing wigs in general, much less the techniques of applying wigs back in 1965.

53:38Brit Prawat:But I did wear one wig for our Halloween photo shoot, and that baby was glued to my head. So I kept thinking, I doubt her wig wasn't, like, secured, right? Like, it's not just, like, sitting.

53:49Ashley Flowers:Just having her hairdresser, like, fitted on her.

53:51Brit Prawat:It didn't just float away in the river. So I did a lot of phoning a friend, talking to women in our office who have worn wigs, including the reporter for this case, Char Adams. And everyone said that the wig would have been secured. Likely not glued, though, because it seems that was kind of rare back in 1965. So I think that's important, too, because it's not like the water, like, loosened the glue. Right. It more than likely means that the wig was secured on with pins. So why wasn't the wig on her head when she was found? The autopsy said that Alberta had a cut on her forehead right near her hairline that looked like she was maybe jabbed with a stick.

54:33Brit Prawat:Other than that, there was nothing out of the ordinary about her hair. There wasn't a report of any pins or combs to hold down the wig. So, like, I keep going back to, was there a wig? Gladys did provide a similar wig. to police. So they knew what they were looking for. Now, to be clear, Flora said that the family never suspected that Gladys actually committed the murder, but they did know that she was in debt. So they think that someone maybe paid her to get Alberta out of the house that night, and she took the job to help pay off her debts, not thinking that anyone was going to kill Alberta.

55:12Ashley Flowers:Wouldn't you think she would just say that, though? Like, if that's what happened?

55:16Brit Prawat:I think it depends on who's paying you, right? Like, who would you be pointing the finger at? Are they scary people? Are they powerful people? I mean, maybe that's not even what happened. There is actually one theory that the family heard about from a detective that could explain a lot, including the missing wig. In the year after Alberta died, there was supposedly this guy in a Chicago jail who was planning to confess to being involved in Alberta's murder along with two other people. And the man said that they were in Louisville to rob a bank around the time Alberta died. But then they got this better deal to kill an attorney.

55:53Brit Prawat:And according to Flora, the man said that they killed Alberta and then sold her wig somewhere in Kentucky. But the detective who told the family about this came back later and said that the guy had been stabbed to death in jail before the detective could even go talk to him personally. That seems convenient. Right. Weird timing. And whether or not that story was true or connected, this whole case reeks of something bigger. Bigger than just who killed Alberta. The question for her family is who was behind her killing? Who might have helped cover it up? Because it feels like someone in power had a hand in this.

56:34Brit Prawat:And if that's the case, then it likely has to do with one or two places where Alberta was getting in the way for people. Either it had to do with her civil rights work or it had to do with her work involving Muhammad Ali. So I told you earlier that Alberta negotiated his first professional contract, but she was also managing a lot of his money. Like 15 % of all the winnings at the height of his career was kept in a trust that he couldn't touch until he was 35. And if someone wanted that money, they had to go through Alberta. Now, this started to get explored a little in the 1980s investigation.

57:15Brit Prawat:A detective reported that Ali wanted some of his money to go to the Nation of Islam, but Alberta refused. And the detective said that they even argued about it. And Ali told Alberta that members of the NOI really wanted that money. But all lines of inquiry into this stopped when the detective's wife started receiving threats, said that if her husband didn't back off, that they would put her in the river.

57:41Ashley Flowers:So he just backed off?

57:42Brit Prawat:Seems like he just backed off. Yeah. But this avenue is getting renewed attention now, thanks to a professor at Bellarmine University in Louisville named Lee Remington. She has been studying this case for a book that she's writing about Alberta's life and death. And so far, she says this is the direction that seems most promising. She expects to lay out more evidence, like a potential money trail leading back to Alberta's killer when she publishes. though there is no published date quite yet. Like I mentioned, the book is about more than just Alberta's death. Alberta made a huge impact on her community in the 34 years of life that she had.

58:25Brit Prawat:And Flora and Lee have made sure that she won't be lost in history. In 2017, Louisville honored Alberta as a hometown hero and hung a banner with her picture on a massive bank building along a street named after Muhammad Ali. The city named a park after Alberta, and there is an annual Alberta O. Jones Park Day. Alberta's been gone for over 60 years, but it's never too late for justice. So if anyone out there has any information about her death, you can contact the Louisville Metro Police Department's Cold Case Squad at 502-574-7055. or you can email us directly tips at audiochuck.com.

59:24Brit Prawat:You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.

59:29Ashley Flowers:And you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast.

59:31Brit Prawat:We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

59:36Thank you.

1:00:12Brit Prawat:Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

1:00:20Ashley Flowers:Okay, Crime Junkies, you know I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not. That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon. Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre, it will leave you wondering, how did they get away with that? It is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now, and I've been listening for years. I think you'll love it too. Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.