October 13, 2022 • 39 mins
In 1973, Roseann Quinn was murdered in her own apartment by a man she met at a bar. The story sparked a media frenzy, and was eventually adapted into a book and movie. Rasha & Yvette discuss Roseann's case and the issues in how her story was represented.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
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Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot TV
and iHeartRadio. We are your host.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I'm a veg and tee Lay and I'm her baby sister,
Rashia Piccuerrero, and as always, our favorite Texan Trevor Young
is here as well.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Hello, Hello, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I wish we were all together still, but I do
love that we're virtually together. I have a question for
you all. So I am not the biggest book reader
like I used to be, and I think with social
media and with screens and everything, I feel like I
kind of let that get away from me. But lately
(01:04):
I've been reading a ton of autobiographies and right now
I am obsessed with Simu Liu's book and Semu Liu.
For those of you who don't know, he is Marvel's
superhero Shang Chi and he has a book out called
We Were Dreamers, an immigrant superhero origin story, and it's
(01:26):
so like just beautiful to see what his parents went through,
you know, they immigrated from China to Canada. And then
of course he's here now in America. But I want
to know, what are the two of you reading? What
inspires you when you're not here with me on Facing Evil?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, you know, I really love books. I love to
hold them. I like the smell of them, and especially
during the pandemic. Like, I've read so many different autobiographies,
but the book that I am on right now is
viol Davis, which is called Finding Me. And you know,
I've always been a huge fan of hers, but to
(02:06):
read her story and where she came from and where
she is now is truly inspiring. What about you, Trevor.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
So, I've got about three books I'm in the middle of.
I'm one of those people who's like reading a bunch
of different stuff at once and like puts one down
for a couple of days and moves on to another.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Of course you are, I love it.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, So on my mantle, I've got a collection of
stories by J. R. R. Tolkien. It's The Unfinished Tales,
which is, as the name implies, a bunch of unfinished
stories that he had written that kind of fit into
the world of Middle Earth, which is Lord of the
Rings for this, Yeah, I'm also reading a biography of
(02:49):
Anthony Bourdain which is really good and then love it. Yeah,
I miss him. And then I'm also reading the fourth
installment of Frank Kurbert's doing series. Dune is one of
my favorite sci fi series, and I'm almost about the
fourth book, which is called God Emperor of Dune.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
How many books are there in Dune?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So there are six main books that Frank Herbert Rose
the primary author. His son Brian Herbert has kind of
carried on his legacy writing a bunch of spinoff series
in prequel series. A lot of the fans of the
Dune series don't super love those books, so I kind
of take a grain of salt with the spinoffs. But
if we're talking like core canon, it's just those six books.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
The six so there could potentially be six movies, got it?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Or more because they're very long.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Right right, right, right, right right?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
With that being said, Trevor, will you take us through
today's case.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Roseanne Quinn was a twenty eight year old woman who
was killed on New Year's Day of nineteen seventy three.
She was a school teacher and a single woman who
lived by herself in New York City. On the evening
of January first, she went to a bar in her neighborhood.
There she met a man named John Wayne Wilson, and
the two went back to her apartment together. When she
(04:11):
didn't show up for work a few days later, a
coworker went to go check in on her. They found
Roseanne Quinn dead, stabbed to death in her own apartment.
A manhunt began for Wilson, who was eventually found and arrested,
but while in jail, he hanged himself, and so no
charges were ever officially filed in the murder of Roseanne Quinn.
(04:33):
After Roseanne was killed, many criticized her sexual proclivities, suggesting
a so called promiscuous lifestyle was the reason for her murder,
but since then feminist scholars have pointed out that this
rhetoric was both false and harmful. The events also inspired
a popular novel and subsequent movie, Looking for Mister Goodbar
and So. Who was Roseanne Quinn? What were the actual
(04:57):
events surrounding her death and how did those of create
the perfect conditions for a national media frenzy.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
So when I think about this case, I think about
us needing to flip the script, right, Like I feel
like Roseanne was portrayed a certain way, and you know
what happened to her is one of those things that like,
it's all of our worst nightmare, right Eve, Like, yeah,
(05:27):
you know going home with someone or in this case,
you're bringing them into your own home and then you
end up getting murdered. I mean, it's horrible to even
think about. I know this happened, you know with Angela's
Simota that we just spoke about not that long ago.
But it's yeah, the worst worst thing you can imagine happening, right,
just you.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Know, coming home from a night of dancing or partying
and you know, going to your safe space at home.
It you know, it's just, yeah, it's really devastating. And
this is one of those cases in which the true
story of what happened to Rosennu in nineteen seventy three,
it has almost been overshadowed by this book that I
(06:06):
was speaking of earlier and the movie Russia. Did you
ever see the movie Looking for Mister Goodbar?
Speaker 3 (06:13):
You know, I never did, And you know, I always
try to watch documentaries or movies or anything about all
of the cases that we're covering so that it can
kind of get into my brain even more. I mean,
on top of all the research that are amazing researcher
Claudia helps us with, but I couldn't even find it.
I mean, I know that Diane Keaton starred in it,
but I couldn't even get a snippet of it on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, I mean, you know, you can get like snippets
of it, but it's so hard to find the entire movie,
you know, in its entirety, like unless you go out
and probably rent it somewhere. But I don't even know.
Are there Blockbuster? Are there Idyot? Those video plays?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I think left? Yeah, ever have you seen the movie?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I have not seen the movie, though I've read quite
a bit about it, and my understanding is that it
didn't have the most tasteful representation of what Roseanne went
through or how best to portray her. I mean, I
think that flipped the script thing that you mentioned earlier.
Rashia is a big part of the story, and we're
going to talk about it a lot today. But you know,
(07:17):
the fact that she, essentially, according to the media, wasn't
allowed to do this thing that is very natural and,
at least in today's world, considered to be an expectation
for anybody who has a social life. Right, that that
was somehow, you know, her fault for pursuing any sort
of relationship outside of a domestic family situation. So again,
(07:40):
I haven't seen the movie, but my understanding is that
it didn't portray that very well. So I guess I'm
a little bit turned off by it, but maybe I'll
change my mind on that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, Trevor, what you're saying, I can totally see that,
because this happened at a time in history that there
was this huge cultural flashpoint, right, an era of a revolution.
This was the second wave of the feminist movement, and
the purpose of that feminist movement was to champion reproductive
(08:10):
and workplace rights and to redefine the expectations of women's
personal and political lives.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, it's interesting timing wise that this was this case
happened right in the middle of this second wave feminist movement.
But generally what you are seeing is that, you know,
it's more common to have more single career women and
it's more common for you know, women to not settle
down super fast and have children and want to get
(08:38):
married and all those things. And this is all happening
in the sixties and seventies, as you know, all sorts
of other things are happening with the cultural revolutions. So
you also get expanded access to birth control. The pill
was first approved by the FDA in nineteen sixty, but
it took the Supreme Court case in nineteen seventy two
for it to become legal for unmarried women. Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I mean, that is just crazy. But the next year,
of course, you have Roe versus Wade, and that's legalizing abortion.
And this was a huge time and we can get
into a whole discussion about this, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Ye a whole nother cantor we won't.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But meanwhile, you know, there are a lot more women
working outside of the home, you know, so they were
moving into a space where they could control their own bodies,
do their own thing, both professionally and sexually. And the
idea of casual sex was you know, i'd say, gaining
more acceptance, especially during you know, the sixties and the seventies,
(09:44):
and during this time, but you know, not everywhere, but
in places like New York absolutely, Like I think it
was definitely more acceptable. Think so, yeah, And I think
that brings us back to Roseanne Quinn and that's where
she was living in New York.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Absolutely, she was She was born and raised in the
Bronx and this was in nineteen forty four. She was
a big part of a Catholic family of five, and
you know, she grew up in this very nice middle
class upbringing, and then the family eventually moved to New
Jersey and she graduated high school in nineteen sixty two
(10:25):
and she got a degree in elementary education. So of
course she becomes a teacher, which is obviously a very
traditional job, you know, for a female at the time,
right at the time, but she began teaching at Saint
Joseph's School for the Death in the Bronx and she
taught eight year old kids, and from what we understand,
(10:49):
she was apparently just be loved by her students and
her fellow teachers, So it seems like she had really
found her calling. She really enjoyed, you know, teaching the
deaf kids.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, and earlier that year, in May, she moved into
her very own two bedroom apartment on the Upper west
Side in a building that's actually still there.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah. I was going to say, you know, now on
the Upper west Side, you know, to have a teacher's salary,
you could not touch that. It would be untouched odly now, right,
But back then, you know, she's living on her own
on the Upper west Side, Like, what a life.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, I'm sure it's a very nice apartment, but yeah,
I doubt she could afford that today, right, Yeah, Well,
according to the New York Times story about this crime,
she chose that apartment for quote, the comparative security of
the building and the street. So I guess there's a
bit of sad irony there that that ended up not
really helping her. But yeah, in general, yeah, it does
(11:52):
seem that Roseanne Quinn had a pretty nice life going
for herself. She was twenty eight years old at the time,
She had a job that she really liked where she
was respected, and she was living in Manhattan. She also
had a very active social life, lots of friends. She
was often spotted reading books at bars on the West Side.
So yeah, it sounds like a pretty pleasant life up
(12:14):
until disaster strikes.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Something that you said really makes me think about the
movie that was made, you know, based on this crime,
and that's the movie Looking for Mister Goodbar with Diane
Keaton's character. You know, they portray her as a fairly happy,
go lucky person. Obviously you two haven't seen the movie yet,
but you know they give her the same job and
(12:39):
she is a teacher for death children. But in the contrast,
you know, the real Roseanne Quinn like always right, you
never see her on the phone, like talking to her friends,
or meeting up with the teachers, or you know, for
drinks like what you just said, Like what you just described.
You don't see that in the movie. There are always
(13:02):
these shots of her where she's like sitting alone in
this big, dark, empty apartment, and she's always alone at bars.
But I did find myself saying out loud to the screen,
like where where are all your friends? Like you know,
why are you always by yourself?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, So it sounds like the movie was trying to
set up a picture of a woman or a girl
who was a loner, and as if to say, maybe
that's why she goes home with all of these men.
Is that what I'm hearing you say?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yes, But there's even this dramatic scene where she, you know,
she leaves her family behind, she moves to New York
and there's this feminist movement that's happening, and it leads
you to believe that, Okay, well, women are you know,
being taken away from their their safety nets, their families,
and they're going off to live in this dangerous solitude,
(13:58):
you know, in New York City, I mean a.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Big, scary New York City.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
I guess that's what they're trying to portray there.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, it seems to me to be a rather surface
level attempted trying to understand feminism, you know, and also
trying to imply that Rosanne herself was like an avowed feminist,
when in reality, I don't think we have any way
to know that. I don't really think she considered herself
a feminist. I think she was just a normal person
(14:27):
trying to like live her life right right, didn't really
fit in with the normal expected lifestyle that was being
impressed upon her. And really I really think it's that simple.
But the movie, I guess, has to try and tell
a story or create a narrative that you know, makes
a point.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yes, you are so right, Trevor, you know, but she
definitely lived with that kind of freedom that came from
the feminist movement. Like I don't think she could have
done that ten years before, like living on her own,
having her own job and being unmarried and doing what
she did. But anyway, she did have friends and she
(15:06):
was seemingly happy. But you know, shocker, she takes men
home to sleep with despite all of that, And it's
almost as if she's a normal, well adjusted young woman
who likes to have sex, like sex is aoka in mind.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
She's just living her life.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, Trevor said that, just living her life, yep.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
And so this is what she's trying to do. On
New Year's Day of nineteen seventy three, on that day,
Roseanne Quinn goes to a bar just across the street
from her apartment, and that's a place called Wm Tweeds.
And we know that there were two men there that
night who were friends with each other and their names
were John Wayne Wilson and Gary Guests. So at about
(15:49):
eleven that night, Guests leaves the bar, and a bit later,
Roseanne Quinn takes John Wayne Wilson home to her apartment.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
And that's the last time that anyone will see Roseanne
Quinn alive.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
And we'll hear more about that after we take a
quick break.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
On New Year's Day, nineteen seventy three, Roseanne Quinn leaves
the neighborhood bar with a stranger. That man is named
John Wayne Wilson, and Roseanne Quinn invites him back to
her home, an apartment on the seventh floor across the street.
Once they're there, the two reportedly smoked some pocololo or
marijuana and attempted to have sex. Wilson later told authorities
(16:35):
that when he failed to perform, Roseanne mocked him for
it and told him to leave. This is when an
argument ensued and he took a knife, and he ended
up stabbing her fourteen times. Afterwards, he covered up her
body with a bathroom, cleaned himself up in her shower,
(16:55):
and wiped down her entire apartment before leaving. This is
all what he says happened.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, that's just disgusting, you know. But of course, you know,
we have to pause here for a moment because we
really don't know exactly how it went down. You know,
he he makes this classic excuse, right that she mocked
him for you know, not being able to perform his
(17:24):
manly sexual duties, you know, and that somehow justifies this
anger and then murder. Right, And also I have to
go back to the movie, and again we don't know,
we don't know what happened, but in the movie, you know,
they portray him to be possibly gay in the movie closeted,
(17:48):
closeted gay. So but again I don't know if that
is true or not. But the thing about this is
the police actually buy this excuse, you know, not being
able to get it up exactly, of not being able
to perform. Are you joking or.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
That the rage is justified as a result, right, I
mean different times, But that's wild. I mean this kind
of goes back to the Dominique dun case. Yeah, we
looked at a few episodes ago. Obviously that was twelve
years later, but we had a judge sympathizing with a
guy who strangled his girlfriend, saying he was caught up
in the heat of passion because she'd angered him in
(18:27):
some way, right, And he was only found guilty of
voluntary manslaughter as a result. So I really don't think
you're wrong. I think again, in both cases, law enforcement
or the legal system is citing with the men in
these situations and saying that their justifications are totally valid.
You know, maybe Roseanne Quinn did actually mock Jane Wayne Wilson,
(18:49):
but do we really think that gave him a right
to harm her physically and then kill her? Absolutely not, No,
of course, obviously not. It's wild that anybody would ever
take that perspective.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Absolutely, absolutely, no way.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
No.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
So after he leaves Roseanne Quinn's apartment, Wilson then goes
to his friend Gary Guests, and that's the same friend
who he'd been with at the bar the night before,
and he ends up confessing to Geary Guests what he
had done to Rozanne, but Guests did not believe him
and thought he was just trying to get money home
(19:24):
for a flight to Miami. So anyway, he bought him
the plane ticket home, and Wilson flew to Miami, where
he picked up his wife. I have no clue what
he actually told his wife, but the two of them
then flew together to Indiana, where Wilson's mother was living.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I just have to stop you there, and you think about,
like if you have a friend who comes back and
tells you that, like, what wouldn't you kill you someone,
what wouldn't you be Like what did you say? Like right,
wouldn't you want to know?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Like you wouldn't pay for them to get out of town?
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Not at all. So anyhow, meanwhile, back in New York,
Rosanne Quinn, you know, her friends and her colleagues, they're
getting extremely worried. She hadn't showed up to school where
she taught, and so on January third, a fellow teacher
went to her apartment and of course, when she didn't
(20:21):
answer the door, he had the building superintendent open it,
and that's when they found her. Sadly.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, so it's a bit of a gruesome crime scene.
So she's laid out on her fold out bed. Not
only had she been stabbed fourteen times, but she had
also been raped, and the murderer had placed on top
of her face a sculpted bust of another woman.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Oh that's a lot to intake, as all of you know,
the murder scenes are, of course, but this is really
when the press frenzy begins.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, I mean you can imagine like that kind of
story is to blow up very fast, right for a
lot of reasons. But the immediate news coverage following Roseanne's
murder doesn't really focus on this woman getting killed, but
more about how scandalous the whole thing appears to be.
(21:16):
So the daily news headline takes up three quarters of
the page and reads, in all caps, quote teacher found
nude and slain. And I'd say that's pretty typical of
a lot of like news coverage of the time, right,
Like I think outlets really made a point to like
talk about her physical appearance, like how pretty she was,
talk about how young she was, and then of course
(21:38):
all like the weird extreme violence and the bust and
all that stuff. But it was weird. It was like
her status as this attractive young woman who was killed
after a sexual encounter. You know, it was portrayed as
almost like titillating, right, like it was just for the
tabloids exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
That's what I was going to say. And I was
going to say, it's just it's so so sad, you know,
because again, as we said, she's just this independent woman
who's living her life, having a great time. She's a teacher,
she has people who love her, and then to be
you know, blasted right all over the newspapers in this
sensationalism and titillation, you know, especially by using that word nude,
(22:21):
you know, and the pictures that they showed, Like, just
how awful is that, you know, for her family and
all of the people that knew her. You know, just
think about her student and the student. That's exactly what
I was going to say, her students.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
So it's interesting. There's an essay by Susan Brown Miller.
And Susan Brown Miller wrote the famous book Against Our Will,
and that book helped change the way we talk about rape.
But in this essay she talks about the headline that
you mentioned, Trevor teacher found nude and slain. She writes, quote,
the introduction of the operative word nude was significant. No
(22:59):
longer simply a victim of male violence, Roseanne Quinn had
been transmogrified in death into an object of sexual fantasy.
A teacher was not even naked, but nude, nude the
way strippers are nude, the way prostitutes are nude, the
way statues are nude, the way lovers are nude. Any
(23:21):
man could now fully fantasize about Rosanne Quinn's nude body
on her disheveled bed end.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
You know, so that really says something right about how
rape and violence against women were thought of as kind
of titillation for a long time, and it's just sickening.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It is, and it's something that we will still continue
to push back against. And you know, I have to say,
you know, one of my all time favorite movies was
It's called The Accused, which is done in nineteen ninety
eight with Jodie Foster, and it's you know, similar but different.
But you know, Jodie Foster's character was you know, she
(24:04):
was at a bar, she was having a good time,
and you know, they tried to turn it around. You know,
she ended up getting gang raped in the movie, but
they tried to flip the switch and say, well it
was because she was dressed like this, you know, like
she was asking for it. And again, like I said,
we will we will always continue to push back against this.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, moving on with the story here. One other thing
that the New York Papers publish is a sketch of
who they believe the perpetrator is given to them by
police based on accounts from people at the bar that night.
But the sketch was not of John Wayne Wilson, the
man we know who killed her, but instead of Gary Guest,
(24:48):
the friend.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah, and this was the guy who was there at
the bar that night with Wilson, who later bought him
that ticket out of town.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Right, yeah, the guy that he confessed to.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Right, he didn't believe his story, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
So Gary Guest, as you can imagine, sees this in
the newspaper and is terrified, right right, So he's obviously
worried that he's going to get implicated in Roseanne's murder.
So the first thing he does is go straight to
the police. He tells them that Wilson actually is the
one who confessed to the crime and went home with
(25:23):
her that night.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Oh now, he tells him, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I mean, it could have been that that was the
first time he had seen that Roseanne was murdered. And
he puts two and two together, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Finally believes them. Maybe yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Either way. He gives them Wilson's location in exchange for
your immunity. So the NYPD then flies to Indiana with
the goal of arresting John Wayne Wilson for the murder
of Roseanne Quinn. And we'll talk about what happened next
after we take another quick break.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
So having been alerted by his friend Gary, Guest then
flew to Indiana, where they promptly arrested Wilson at his
mother's home. He is then incarcerated at the Manhattan Detention Complex,
which is also famously known as the Tombs. From there,
he is sent to Bellevue Hospital Center for testing, and
(26:18):
the reason he was sent there is because his lawyer
wanted to see if he had suffered brain damage as
a child in order to support an insanity defense. I'm sorry,
it just baffles me to even say those words.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You hear about the insanity defense every now and then,
and you definitely hear about it in movies, right, But
how common is it really?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I mean, it feels like we hear about it a lot, right.
It feels like anytime there's one of these murders motivated
by anger, that the defense lawyer's default to this insanity
defense plea. But according to the numbers anyway, it's actually
not that common. In fact, only about one percent of
all felony cases in the US involve the use of
(27:03):
the insanity defense, and it's very rarely successful. So the
thing to remember here is that the so called insanity
defense is just a legal concept. It's not like a
medical concept, right, So you won't find doctors or psychiatrists
like using it in their office. So it's really just
based on the idea that at the time of the crime,
(27:24):
the defendant was experiencing quote severe mental illness like temporarily
and is therefore incapable of understanding the difference between right
and wrong, and because of this there of course not
accountable for the crime. But just having a mental disorder
is not enough to make someone not accountable for a crime,
at least so you would think, and most logical people
would think that. At any rate, it's really like hard
(27:46):
to determine what legal insanity is, and it's even harder
to defend it in court. So even though you do
sometimes kind of hear about it, it's really only in
high profile cases kind of as a hail Mary, right,
Like it's almost impossible.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
To back right, like a last ditch effort.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Right. Well, so in this case, did it work.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
No, it definitely did not work. You know, there was
really no chance for it really to even be investigated
or attempted. So shortly after his visit to Bellevue, Wilson
got into an argument with a guard at the tombs,
and that guard mockingly encouraged Wilson to kill himself and
he even tossed him some bed sheets into his chamber.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And in fact, Wilson did kill himself. He hanged himself
in his cell using those very sheets.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Whoa, I mean, so that really is the end of
the case, you know, with him committing suicide. I mean,
that's that's heavy.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, that's kind of it, right.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Gosh, it makes me think about her family, like do
they feel like they got any justice or like you
wonder if they feel like they were robbed of something
because they have no reason and don't know why he
did what he did right, Yeah, yeah, maybe?
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I mean yeah, I mean I sometimes wonder that in
cases where the perpetrator gets killed before they're able to
stand trial. It's not unheard of, and it's definitely complex,
but you know, at least they are pretty sure, pretty
confident that he did it right, Like they have Roseanne's body,
they know who did it. I mean, that's a lot
of things that a lot of people don't get a
(29:20):
lot of families don't even get that much.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So definitely very true, Trevor.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, it's definitely a piece of closure. For sure. So
you know, Roseanne Quinn is eventually buried in Saint Mary's Cemetery,
just a mile away from her family's home in New Jersey.
So three years later, the novel that we've been talking
about and the movie we've been talking about, Looking for
(29:44):
Mister Goodbar ends up getting published as a novel casting
its main character as a self destructive young woman who
seeks men that would harm her. And then five years
later is when the movie is made Diane Keaton, and
when Roger Ebert reviewed the movie, he called it a
(30:07):
quote cautionary lesson that promiscuous young women who frequent pickup
bars and go home with strangers are likely to get
into trouble end quote.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Yeah, and I read that sometimes wondering if he was
being kind of sarcastic or being literal right in either case.
The media took that message very literally, and they really
drive that home, especially after the movie comes out, so
they focus on the fact that she would come home
with men late at night who would stay over. There
(30:38):
was even one neighbor who told a reporter that there
was a night that Roseanne and a man she brought
home got into a fight and that they had to
go intervene in the fight, and when they did, they
found Roseanne sobbing with two black eyes as though she
had been beaten. Right, So it seems like everybody's painting
Roseanne as somebody who's getting into trouble unnecessarily.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Right, painting her as like a charlatan.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
It is good though that that neighbor was there during
that particular incident to help Roseanne out, But we could
definitely do without all the slutshaming that was going on, right,
I mean, hello, yeah, there, of course there is a
risk to bringing someone that you don't know very well
to your home, absolutely no doubt about it. But it
(31:25):
does not mean that you, in any way, shape or form,
deserve violence or harm full stop.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, I agree. I mean you can dress, you can
have as much sex as you want. You can, you know,
have whoever you want come into your home. I mean
that is your right, that is your choice, you know,
but it does not give anybody the right to be
killed or raped because of nope, their lifestyle that they're living. Again,
(31:56):
she was, you know, an independent woman who has an
amazing job. We can go on and on, right, like
people loved her.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, I mean all that said, I think it's not
surprising to me that, you know, tabloid papers in the
nineteen seventies and you know, moving book adaptations in the
nineteen seventies would take this kind of approach to this story.
You know, it's just a different time. I mean, obviously
you're all correct this was not okay and that you know,
there are realities to this that should have been better represented.
(32:28):
But you know, I think since then, there's been a
lot of work done and you know, and sometimes we
need bad representations, you know, we need misrepresentations to know
that that was wrong and we're going to do it
better next time. Yeah, yeah, sure, so we can work
on this as a society and like, you know, do better.
And you know, I hate to say that, like this
(32:49):
was an example to be made of some sort, but
it was just like something that I think a lot
of feminist scholars would look back on and be like,
you know, this was a crucial point and hiss for
you because we learned what not to do.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, right, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
To piggyback on that, Trevor, I actually found a Slate
article that talks, you know, about that time and like
you said, like I think we've come a long way
in our society today, but that was a different time
back then. And this particular Slate article it points out
that quote much of the public discussion centered on Quinn's
private life. Wilson wasn't the first man she'd brought home.
(33:27):
Neighbors had heard fighting in her apartment before. Was this
rough sex gone wrong? Was she suicidal? Had she wanted
all the sex in the world with no consequences? Was
she what Gloria steinem was going to the barricades for?
End quote, And it goes on to say in that
same article, quote, the reason Rosanne Quinn's death terrified people
(33:50):
wasn't that she was a freak or a hippie. It
was that she was steadily employed, modestly dressed, well liked.
She was normal, but she was a new normal one
that decades later, we're still trying to deny or scare away.
End quote.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, you know, we could say that she was ahead
of her time, right, that people they just weren't ready
for her. And again, I mean it's absolutely not over.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
You know, any case that we choose to do on
facing evil, Eva and I and now Trevor, we're always
looking for that Emua, right, like that what that theme
is throughout the entire episode, like why are we telling
this story? And I really believe that we're telling Roseanne
Quinn's story because we need to flip the script right.
(34:41):
She was vilified as a victim just because of the
way she dressed, who she slept with, being by herself,
you know, being an independent young woman. And we are
here to tell you that it doesn't matter how you dress,
what under you identify as, where you are in your life,
(35:04):
if you like having sex, if you don't, if you're asexual,
doesn't matter. You do not deserve to be harmed. You
don't deserve violence. You do not deserve to be murdered.
And I want to highlight some great things about who
Roseanne Quinn was as a human being before she was
(35:24):
a victim. So just a few facts, little few nuggets
to know about Roseanne. She suffered from polio as a child,
and she walked with a slight limp, but she never
let that bother her. She enjoyed going on ski trips.
She was very dedicated to her work and to the
children that she got to teach American Sign language too.
(35:49):
She often brought breakfast in for her students because they
didn't have time to eat at home because they were
catching the school bus. And of course Rosanne probably wasn't
a saint, but but I'm sorry, no one is, and
I'm sure she was a very complex person, but she
above all deserved to live and she is way more
(36:13):
than her victimhood.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Or the way that she died. Amen to that, Rasha, Amen,
absolutely absolutely, you know, and again I can just add
in there she was truly ahead of her time. You know.
She was, like we've said in so many cases, she
was living out loud, and she was doing all the
things that she loved to do, and the way that
(36:38):
her life was taken is just tragic.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
And we have to remember that gender based violence is
a real thing, and it's the system that perpetuates this
harm that we need to challenge every single day, and
not the people who find themselves victims of these crimes,
but the people who are actually doing the crimes. And
(37:09):
that brings us to this week's EMUA.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
We'd like to dedicate this week's final message of hope
and healing to Roseanne Quinn and to all of the
other women who have been targets of violence.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
And so with that we will keep working to point
out the ways that our unconscious bias feeds a harmful system.
And for you out there who are soldiering through your
days in a world that would box you in, that
would label you and harm you, we see you, we
support you, and we are right there with you. Onward
(37:47):
and upward. Emua emua. Well, that is our show for today,
and we'd love to hear what you thought about today
discussion and if there is a case that you would
like us to.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Facingevil pod at tenderfoot dot tv. And one request, if
you haven't already, please find us on iTunes and give
us a review in good rating. If you like what
we do, your support is always cherished.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Until next time.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Aloha.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia pacquerero In Avet Gentile,
Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams, our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald
Albright and Payne Lindsay, our executive producers on behalf of
(38:58):
Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico.
Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(39:22):
favorite shows.
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the individuals participating in the show
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV.
This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable
for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot TV
and iHeartRadio. We are your host.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I'm a veg and tee Lay and I'm her baby sister,
Rashia Piccuerrero, and as always, our favorite Texan Trevor Young
is here as well.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Hello, Hello, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I wish we were all together still, but I do
love that we're virtually together. I have a question for
you all. So I am not the biggest book reader
like I used to be, and I think with social
media and with screens and everything, I feel like I
kind of let that get away from me. But lately
(01:04):
I've been reading a ton of autobiographies and right now
I am obsessed with Simu Liu's book and Semu Liu.
For those of you who don't know, he is Marvel's
superhero Shang Chi and he has a book out called
We Were Dreamers, an immigrant superhero origin story, and it's
(01:26):
so like just beautiful to see what his parents went through,
you know, they immigrated from China to Canada. And then
of course he's here now in America. But I want
to know, what are the two of you reading? What
inspires you when you're not here with me on Facing Evil?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, you know, I really love books. I love to
hold them. I like the smell of them, and especially
during the pandemic. Like, I've read so many different autobiographies,
but the book that I am on right now is
viol Davis, which is called Finding Me. And you know,
I've always been a huge fan of hers, but to
(02:06):
read her story and where she came from and where
she is now is truly inspiring. What about you, Trevor.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
So, I've got about three books I'm in the middle of.
I'm one of those people who's like reading a bunch
of different stuff at once and like puts one down
for a couple of days and moves on to another.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Of course you are, I love it.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, So on my mantle, I've got a collection of
stories by J. R. R. Tolkien. It's The Unfinished Tales,
which is, as the name implies, a bunch of unfinished
stories that he had written that kind of fit into
the world of Middle Earth, which is Lord of the
Rings for this, Yeah, I'm also reading a biography of
(02:49):
Anthony Bourdain which is really good and then love it. Yeah,
I miss him. And then I'm also reading the fourth
installment of Frank Kurbert's doing series. Dune is one of
my favorite sci fi series, and I'm almost about the
fourth book, which is called God Emperor of Dune.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
How many books are there in Dune?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So there are six main books that Frank Herbert Rose
the primary author. His son Brian Herbert has kind of
carried on his legacy writing a bunch of spinoff series
in prequel series. A lot of the fans of the
Dune series don't super love those books, so I kind
of take a grain of salt with the spinoffs. But
if we're talking like core canon, it's just those six books.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
The six so there could potentially be six movies, got it?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Or more because they're very long.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Right right, right, right, right right?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
With that being said, Trevor, will you take us through
today's case.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Roseanne Quinn was a twenty eight year old woman who
was killed on New Year's Day of nineteen seventy three.
She was a school teacher and a single woman who
lived by herself in New York City. On the evening
of January first, she went to a bar in her neighborhood.
There she met a man named John Wayne Wilson, and
the two went back to her apartment together. When she
(04:11):
didn't show up for work a few days later, a
coworker went to go check in on her. They found
Roseanne Quinn dead, stabbed to death in her own apartment.
A manhunt began for Wilson, who was eventually found and arrested,
but while in jail, he hanged himself, and so no
charges were ever officially filed in the murder of Roseanne Quinn.
(04:33):
After Roseanne was killed, many criticized her sexual proclivities, suggesting
a so called promiscuous lifestyle was the reason for her murder,
but since then feminist scholars have pointed out that this
rhetoric was both false and harmful. The events also inspired
a popular novel and subsequent movie, Looking for Mister Goodbar
and So. Who was Roseanne Quinn? What were the actual
(04:57):
events surrounding her death and how did those of create
the perfect conditions for a national media frenzy.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
So when I think about this case, I think about
us needing to flip the script, right, Like I feel
like Roseanne was portrayed a certain way, and you know
what happened to her is one of those things that like,
it's all of our worst nightmare, right Eve, Like, yeah,
(05:27):
you know going home with someone or in this case,
you're bringing them into your own home and then you
end up getting murdered. I mean, it's horrible to even
think about. I know this happened, you know with Angela's
Simota that we just spoke about not that long ago.
But it's yeah, the worst worst thing you can imagine happening, right,
just you.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Know, coming home from a night of dancing or partying
and you know, going to your safe space at home.
It you know, it's just, yeah, it's really devastating. And
this is one of those cases in which the true
story of what happened to Rosennu in nineteen seventy three,
it has almost been overshadowed by this book that I
(06:06):
was speaking of earlier and the movie Russia. Did you
ever see the movie Looking for Mister Goodbar?
Speaker 3 (06:13):
You know, I never did, And you know, I always
try to watch documentaries or movies or anything about all
of the cases that we're covering so that it can
kind of get into my brain even more. I mean,
on top of all the research that are amazing researcher
Claudia helps us with, but I couldn't even find it.
I mean, I know that Diane Keaton starred in it,
but I couldn't even get a snippet of it on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, I mean, you know, you can get like snippets
of it, but it's so hard to find the entire movie,
you know, in its entirety, like unless you go out
and probably rent it somewhere. But I don't even know.
Are there Blockbuster? Are there Idyot? Those video plays?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I think left? Yeah, ever have you seen the movie?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I have not seen the movie, though I've read quite
a bit about it, and my understanding is that it
didn't have the most tasteful representation of what Roseanne went
through or how best to portray her. I mean, I
think that flipped the script thing that you mentioned earlier.
Rashia is a big part of the story, and we're
going to talk about it a lot today. But you know,
(07:17):
the fact that she, essentially, according to the media, wasn't
allowed to do this thing that is very natural and,
at least in today's world, considered to be an expectation
for anybody who has a social life. Right, that that
was somehow, you know, her fault for pursuing any sort
of relationship outside of a domestic family situation. So again,
(07:40):
I haven't seen the movie, but my understanding is that
it didn't portray that very well. So I guess I'm
a little bit turned off by it, but maybe I'll
change my mind on that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, Trevor, what you're saying, I can totally see that,
because this happened at a time in history that there
was this huge cultural flashpoint, right, an era of a revolution.
This was the second wave of the feminist movement, and
the purpose of that feminist movement was to champion reproductive
(08:10):
and workplace rights and to redefine the expectations of women's
personal and political lives.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, it's interesting timing wise that this was this case
happened right in the middle of this second wave feminist movement.
But generally what you are seeing is that, you know,
it's more common to have more single career women and
it's more common for you know, women to not settle
down super fast and have children and want to get
(08:38):
married and all those things. And this is all happening
in the sixties and seventies, as you know, all sorts
of other things are happening with the cultural revolutions. So
you also get expanded access to birth control. The pill
was first approved by the FDA in nineteen sixty, but
it took the Supreme Court case in nineteen seventy two
for it to become legal for unmarried women. Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I mean, that is just crazy. But the next year,
of course, you have Roe versus Wade, and that's legalizing abortion.
And this was a huge time and we can get
into a whole discussion about this, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Ye a whole nother cantor we won't.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But meanwhile, you know, there are a lot more women
working outside of the home, you know, so they were
moving into a space where they could control their own bodies,
do their own thing, both professionally and sexually. And the
idea of casual sex was you know, i'd say, gaining
more acceptance, especially during you know, the sixties and the seventies,
(09:44):
and during this time, but you know, not everywhere, but
in places like New York absolutely, Like I think it
was definitely more acceptable. Think so, yeah, And I think
that brings us back to Roseanne Quinn and that's where
she was living in New York.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Absolutely, she was She was born and raised in the
Bronx and this was in nineteen forty four. She was
a big part of a Catholic family of five, and
you know, she grew up in this very nice middle
class upbringing, and then the family eventually moved to New
Jersey and she graduated high school in nineteen sixty two
(10:25):
and she got a degree in elementary education. So of
course she becomes a teacher, which is obviously a very
traditional job, you know, for a female at the time,
right at the time, but she began teaching at Saint
Joseph's School for the Death in the Bronx and she
taught eight year old kids, and from what we understand,
(10:49):
she was apparently just be loved by her students and
her fellow teachers, So it seems like she had really
found her calling. She really enjoyed, you know, teaching the
deaf kids.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, and earlier that year, in May, she moved into
her very own two bedroom apartment on the Upper west
Side in a building that's actually still there.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah. I was going to say, you know, now on
the Upper west Side, you know, to have a teacher's salary,
you could not touch that. It would be untouched odly now, right,
But back then, you know, she's living on her own
on the Upper west Side, Like, what a life.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, I'm sure it's a very nice apartment, but yeah,
I doubt she could afford that today, right, Yeah, Well,
according to the New York Times story about this crime,
she chose that apartment for quote, the comparative security of
the building and the street. So I guess there's a
bit of sad irony there that that ended up not
really helping her. But yeah, in general, yeah, it does
(11:52):
seem that Roseanne Quinn had a pretty nice life going
for herself. She was twenty eight years old at the time,
She had a job that she really liked where she
was respected, and she was living in Manhattan. She also
had a very active social life, lots of friends. She
was often spotted reading books at bars on the West Side.
So yeah, it sounds like a pretty pleasant life up
(12:14):
until disaster strikes.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Something that you said really makes me think about the
movie that was made, you know, based on this crime,
and that's the movie Looking for Mister Goodbar with Diane
Keaton's character. You know, they portray her as a fairly happy,
go lucky person. Obviously you two haven't seen the movie yet,
but you know they give her the same job and
(12:39):
she is a teacher for death children. But in the contrast,
you know, the real Roseanne Quinn like always right, you
never see her on the phone, like talking to her friends,
or meeting up with the teachers, or you know, for
drinks like what you just said, Like what you just described.
You don't see that in the movie. There are always
(13:02):
these shots of her where she's like sitting alone in
this big, dark, empty apartment, and she's always alone at bars.
But I did find myself saying out loud to the screen,
like where where are all your friends? Like you know,
why are you always by yourself?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, So it sounds like the movie was trying to
set up a picture of a woman or a girl
who was a loner, and as if to say, maybe
that's why she goes home with all of these men.
Is that what I'm hearing you say?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yes, But there's even this dramatic scene where she, you know,
she leaves her family behind, she moves to New York
and there's this feminist movement that's happening, and it leads
you to believe that, Okay, well, women are you know,
being taken away from their their safety nets, their families,
and they're going off to live in this dangerous solitude,
(13:58):
you know, in New York City, I mean a.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Big, scary New York City.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
I guess that's what they're trying to portray there.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, it seems to me to be a rather surface
level attempted trying to understand feminism, you know, and also
trying to imply that Rosanne herself was like an avowed feminist,
when in reality, I don't think we have any way
to know that. I don't really think she considered herself
a feminist. I think she was just a normal person
(14:27):
trying to like live her life right right, didn't really
fit in with the normal expected lifestyle that was being
impressed upon her. And really I really think it's that simple.
But the movie, I guess, has to try and tell
a story or create a narrative that you know, makes
a point.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yes, you are so right, Trevor, you know, but she
definitely lived with that kind of freedom that came from
the feminist movement. Like I don't think she could have
done that ten years before, like living on her own,
having her own job and being unmarried and doing what
she did. But anyway, she did have friends and she
(15:06):
was seemingly happy. But you know, shocker, she takes men
home to sleep with despite all of that, And it's
almost as if she's a normal, well adjusted young woman
who likes to have sex, like sex is aoka in mind.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
She's just living her life.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, Trevor said that, just living her life, yep.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
And so this is what she's trying to do. On
New Year's Day of nineteen seventy three, on that day,
Roseanne Quinn goes to a bar just across the street
from her apartment, and that's a place called Wm Tweeds.
And we know that there were two men there that
night who were friends with each other and their names
were John Wayne Wilson and Gary Guests. So at about
(15:49):
eleven that night, Guests leaves the bar, and a bit later,
Roseanne Quinn takes John Wayne Wilson home to her apartment.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
And that's the last time that anyone will see Roseanne
Quinn alive.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
And we'll hear more about that after we take a
quick break.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
On New Year's Day, nineteen seventy three, Roseanne Quinn leaves
the neighborhood bar with a stranger. That man is named
John Wayne Wilson, and Roseanne Quinn invites him back to
her home, an apartment on the seventh floor across the street.
Once they're there, the two reportedly smoked some pocololo or
marijuana and attempted to have sex. Wilson later told authorities
(16:35):
that when he failed to perform, Roseanne mocked him for
it and told him to leave. This is when an
argument ensued and he took a knife, and he ended
up stabbing her fourteen times. Afterwards, he covered up her
body with a bathroom, cleaned himself up in her shower,
(16:55):
and wiped down her entire apartment before leaving. This is
all what he says happened.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, that's just disgusting, you know. But of course, you know,
we have to pause here for a moment because we
really don't know exactly how it went down. You know,
he he makes this classic excuse, right that she mocked
him for you know, not being able to perform his
(17:24):
manly sexual duties, you know, and that somehow justifies this
anger and then murder. Right, And also I have to
go back to the movie, and again we don't know,
we don't know what happened, but in the movie, you know,
they portray him to be possibly gay in the movie closeted,
(17:48):
closeted gay. So but again I don't know if that
is true or not. But the thing about this is
the police actually buy this excuse, you know, not being
able to get it up exactly, of not being able
to perform. Are you joking or.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
That the rage is justified as a result, right, I
mean different times, But that's wild. I mean this kind
of goes back to the Dominique dun case. Yeah, we
looked at a few episodes ago. Obviously that was twelve
years later, but we had a judge sympathizing with a
guy who strangled his girlfriend, saying he was caught up
in the heat of passion because she'd angered him in
(18:27):
some way, right, And he was only found guilty of
voluntary manslaughter as a result. So I really don't think
you're wrong. I think again, in both cases, law enforcement
or the legal system is citing with the men in
these situations and saying that their justifications are totally valid.
You know, maybe Roseanne Quinn did actually mock Jane Wayne Wilson,
(18:49):
but do we really think that gave him a right
to harm her physically and then kill her? Absolutely not, No,
of course, obviously not. It's wild that anybody would ever
take that perspective.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Absolutely, absolutely, no way.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
No.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
So after he leaves Roseanne Quinn's apartment, Wilson then goes
to his friend Gary Guests, and that's the same friend
who he'd been with at the bar the night before,
and he ends up confessing to Geary Guests what he
had done to Rozanne, but Guests did not believe him
and thought he was just trying to get money home
(19:24):
for a flight to Miami. So anyway, he bought him
the plane ticket home, and Wilson flew to Miami, where
he picked up his wife. I have no clue what
he actually told his wife, but the two of them
then flew together to Indiana, where Wilson's mother was living.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I just have to stop you there, and you think about,
like if you have a friend who comes back and
tells you that, like, what wouldn't you kill you someone,
what wouldn't you be Like what did you say? Like right,
wouldn't you want to know?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Like you wouldn't pay for them to get out of town?
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Not at all. So anyhow, meanwhile, back in New York,
Rosanne Quinn, you know, her friends and her colleagues, they're
getting extremely worried. She hadn't showed up to school where
she taught, and so on January third, a fellow teacher
went to her apartment and of course, when she didn't
(20:21):
answer the door, he had the building superintendent open it,
and that's when they found her. Sadly.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, so it's a bit of a gruesome crime scene.
So she's laid out on her fold out bed. Not
only had she been stabbed fourteen times, but she had
also been raped, and the murderer had placed on top
of her face a sculpted bust of another woman.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Oh that's a lot to intake, as all of you know,
the murder scenes are, of course, but this is really
when the press frenzy begins.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, I mean you can imagine like that kind of
story is to blow up very fast, right for a
lot of reasons. But the immediate news coverage following Roseanne's
murder doesn't really focus on this woman getting killed, but
more about how scandalous the whole thing appears to be.
(21:16):
So the daily news headline takes up three quarters of
the page and reads, in all caps, quote teacher found
nude and slain. And I'd say that's pretty typical of
a lot of like news coverage of the time, right,
Like I think outlets really made a point to like
talk about her physical appearance, like how pretty she was,
talk about how young she was, and then of course
(21:38):
all like the weird extreme violence and the bust and
all that stuff. But it was weird. It was like
her status as this attractive young woman who was killed
after a sexual encounter. You know, it was portrayed as
almost like titillating, right, like it was just for the
tabloids exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
That's what I was going to say. And I was
going to say, it's just it's so so sad, you know,
because again, as we said, she's just this independent woman
who's living her life, having a great time. She's a teacher,
she has people who love her, and then to be
you know, blasted right all over the newspapers in this
sensationalism and titillation, you know, especially by using that word nude,
(22:21):
you know, and the pictures that they showed, Like, just
how awful is that, you know, for her family and
all of the people that knew her. You know, just
think about her student and the student. That's exactly what
I was going to say, her students.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
So it's interesting. There's an essay by Susan Brown Miller.
And Susan Brown Miller wrote the famous book Against Our Will,
and that book helped change the way we talk about rape.
But in this essay she talks about the headline that
you mentioned, Trevor teacher found nude and slain. She writes, quote,
the introduction of the operative word nude was significant. No
(22:59):
longer simply a victim of male violence, Roseanne Quinn had
been transmogrified in death into an object of sexual fantasy.
A teacher was not even naked, but nude, nude the
way strippers are nude, the way prostitutes are nude, the
way statues are nude, the way lovers are nude. Any
(23:21):
man could now fully fantasize about Rosanne Quinn's nude body
on her disheveled bed end.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
You know, so that really says something right about how
rape and violence against women were thought of as kind
of titillation for a long time, and it's just sickening.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It is, and it's something that we will still continue
to push back against. And you know, I have to say,
you know, one of my all time favorite movies was
It's called The Accused, which is done in nineteen ninety
eight with Jodie Foster, and it's you know, similar but different.
But you know, Jodie Foster's character was you know, she
(24:04):
was at a bar, she was having a good time,
and you know, they tried to turn it around. You know,
she ended up getting gang raped in the movie, but
they tried to flip the switch and say, well it
was because she was dressed like this, you know, like
she was asking for it. And again, like I said,
we will we will always continue to push back against this.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, moving on with the story here. One other thing
that the New York Papers publish is a sketch of
who they believe the perpetrator is given to them by
police based on accounts from people at the bar that night.
But the sketch was not of John Wayne Wilson, the
man we know who killed her, but instead of Gary Guest,
(24:48):
the friend.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah, and this was the guy who was there at
the bar that night with Wilson, who later bought him
that ticket out of town.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Right, yeah, the guy that he confessed to.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Right, he didn't believe his story, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
So Gary Guest, as you can imagine, sees this in
the newspaper and is terrified, right right, So he's obviously
worried that he's going to get implicated in Roseanne's murder.
So the first thing he does is go straight to
the police. He tells them that Wilson actually is the
one who confessed to the crime and went home with
(25:23):
her that night.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Oh now, he tells him, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I mean, it could have been that that was the
first time he had seen that Roseanne was murdered. And
he puts two and two together, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Finally believes them. Maybe yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Either way. He gives them Wilson's location in exchange for
your immunity. So the NYPD then flies to Indiana with
the goal of arresting John Wayne Wilson for the murder
of Roseanne Quinn. And we'll talk about what happened next
after we take another quick break.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
So having been alerted by his friend Gary, Guest then
flew to Indiana, where they promptly arrested Wilson at his
mother's home. He is then incarcerated at the Manhattan Detention Complex,
which is also famously known as the Tombs. From there,
he is sent to Bellevue Hospital Center for testing, and
(26:18):
the reason he was sent there is because his lawyer
wanted to see if he had suffered brain damage as
a child in order to support an insanity defense. I'm sorry,
it just baffles me to even say those words.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You hear about the insanity defense every now and then,
and you definitely hear about it in movies, right, But
how common is it really?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I mean, it feels like we hear about it a lot, right.
It feels like anytime there's one of these murders motivated
by anger, that the defense lawyer's default to this insanity
defense plea. But according to the numbers anyway, it's actually
not that common. In fact, only about one percent of
all felony cases in the US involve the use of
(27:03):
the insanity defense, and it's very rarely successful. So the
thing to remember here is that the so called insanity
defense is just a legal concept. It's not like a
medical concept, right, So you won't find doctors or psychiatrists
like using it in their office. So it's really just
based on the idea that at the time of the crime,
(27:24):
the defendant was experiencing quote severe mental illness like temporarily
and is therefore incapable of understanding the difference between right
and wrong, and because of this there of course not
accountable for the crime. But just having a mental disorder
is not enough to make someone not accountable for a crime,
at least so you would think, and most logical people
would think that. At any rate, it's really like hard
(27:46):
to determine what legal insanity is, and it's even harder
to defend it in court. So even though you do
sometimes kind of hear about it, it's really only in
high profile cases kind of as a hail Mary, right,
Like it's almost impossible.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
To back right, like a last ditch effort.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Right. Well, so in this case, did it work.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
No, it definitely did not work. You know, there was
really no chance for it really to even be investigated
or attempted. So shortly after his visit to Bellevue, Wilson
got into an argument with a guard at the tombs,
and that guard mockingly encouraged Wilson to kill himself and
he even tossed him some bed sheets into his chamber.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And in fact, Wilson did kill himself. He hanged himself
in his cell using those very sheets.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Whoa, I mean, so that really is the end of
the case, you know, with him committing suicide. I mean,
that's that's heavy.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, that's kind of it, right.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Gosh, it makes me think about her family, like do
they feel like they got any justice or like you
wonder if they feel like they were robbed of something
because they have no reason and don't know why he
did what he did right, Yeah, yeah, maybe?
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I mean yeah, I mean I sometimes wonder that in
cases where the perpetrator gets killed before they're able to
stand trial. It's not unheard of, and it's definitely complex,
but you know, at least they are pretty sure, pretty
confident that he did it right, Like they have Roseanne's body,
they know who did it. I mean, that's a lot
of things that a lot of people don't get a
(29:20):
lot of families don't even get that much.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So definitely very true, Trevor.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, it's definitely a piece of closure. For sure. So
you know, Roseanne Quinn is eventually buried in Saint Mary's Cemetery,
just a mile away from her family's home in New Jersey.
So three years later, the novel that we've been talking
about and the movie we've been talking about, Looking for
(29:44):
Mister Goodbar ends up getting published as a novel casting
its main character as a self destructive young woman who
seeks men that would harm her. And then five years
later is when the movie is made Diane Keaton, and
when Roger Ebert reviewed the movie, he called it a
(30:07):
quote cautionary lesson that promiscuous young women who frequent pickup
bars and go home with strangers are likely to get
into trouble end quote.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Yeah, and I read that sometimes wondering if he was
being kind of sarcastic or being literal right in either case.
The media took that message very literally, and they really
drive that home, especially after the movie comes out, so
they focus on the fact that she would come home
with men late at night who would stay over. There
(30:38):
was even one neighbor who told a reporter that there
was a night that Roseanne and a man she brought
home got into a fight and that they had to
go intervene in the fight, and when they did, they
found Roseanne sobbing with two black eyes as though she
had been beaten. Right, So it seems like everybody's painting
Roseanne as somebody who's getting into trouble unnecessarily.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Right, painting her as like a charlatan.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
It is good though that that neighbor was there during
that particular incident to help Roseanne out, But we could
definitely do without all the slutshaming that was going on, right,
I mean, hello, yeah, there, of course there is a
risk to bringing someone that you don't know very well
to your home, absolutely no doubt about it. But it
(31:25):
does not mean that you, in any way, shape or form,
deserve violence or harm full stop.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, I agree. I mean you can dress, you can
have as much sex as you want. You can, you know,
have whoever you want come into your home. I mean
that is your right, that is your choice, you know,
but it does not give anybody the right to be
killed or raped because of nope, their lifestyle that they're living. Again,
(31:56):
she was, you know, an independent woman who has an
amazing job. We can go on and on, right, like
people loved her.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, I mean all that said, I think it's not
surprising to me that, you know, tabloid papers in the
nineteen seventies and you know, moving book adaptations in the
nineteen seventies would take this kind of approach to this story.
You know, it's just a different time. I mean, obviously
you're all correct this was not okay and that you know,
there are realities to this that should have been better represented.
(32:28):
But you know, I think since then, there's been a
lot of work done and you know, and sometimes we
need bad representations, you know, we need misrepresentations to know
that that was wrong and we're going to do it
better next time. Yeah, yeah, sure, so we can work
on this as a society and like, you know, do better.
And you know, I hate to say that, like this
(32:49):
was an example to be made of some sort, but
it was just like something that I think a lot
of feminist scholars would look back on and be like,
you know, this was a crucial point and hiss for
you because we learned what not to do.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, right, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
To piggyback on that, Trevor, I actually found a Slate
article that talks, you know, about that time and like
you said, like I think we've come a long way
in our society today, but that was a different time
back then. And this particular Slate article it points out
that quote much of the public discussion centered on Quinn's
private life. Wilson wasn't the first man she'd brought home.
(33:27):
Neighbors had heard fighting in her apartment before. Was this
rough sex gone wrong? Was she suicidal? Had she wanted
all the sex in the world with no consequences? Was
she what Gloria steinem was going to the barricades for?
End quote, And it goes on to say in that
same article, quote, the reason Rosanne Quinn's death terrified people
(33:50):
wasn't that she was a freak or a hippie. It
was that she was steadily employed, modestly dressed, well liked.
She was normal, but she was a new normal one
that decades later, we're still trying to deny or scare away.
End quote.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, you know, we could say that she was ahead
of her time, right, that people they just weren't ready
for her. And again, I mean it's absolutely not over.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
You know, any case that we choose to do on
facing evil, Eva and I and now Trevor, we're always
looking for that Emua, right, like that what that theme
is throughout the entire episode, like why are we telling
this story? And I really believe that we're telling Roseanne
Quinn's story because we need to flip the script right.
(34:41):
She was vilified as a victim just because of the
way she dressed, who she slept with, being by herself,
you know, being an independent young woman. And we are
here to tell you that it doesn't matter how you dress,
what under you identify as, where you are in your life,
(35:04):
if you like having sex, if you don't, if you're asexual,
doesn't matter. You do not deserve to be harmed. You
don't deserve violence. You do not deserve to be murdered.
And I want to highlight some great things about who
Roseanne Quinn was as a human being before she was
(35:24):
a victim. So just a few facts, little few nuggets
to know about Roseanne. She suffered from polio as a child,
and she walked with a slight limp, but she never
let that bother her. She enjoyed going on ski trips.
She was very dedicated to her work and to the
children that she got to teach American Sign language too.
(35:49):
She often brought breakfast in for her students because they
didn't have time to eat at home because they were
catching the school bus. And of course Rosanne probably wasn't
a saint, but but I'm sorry, no one is, and
I'm sure she was a very complex person, but she
above all deserved to live and she is way more
(36:13):
than her victimhood.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Or the way that she died. Amen to that, Rasha, Amen,
absolutely absolutely, you know, and again I can just add
in there she was truly ahead of her time. You know.
She was, like we've said in so many cases, she
was living out loud, and she was doing all the
things that she loved to do, and the way that
(36:38):
her life was taken is just tragic.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
And we have to remember that gender based violence is
a real thing, and it's the system that perpetuates this
harm that we need to challenge every single day, and
not the people who find themselves victims of these crimes,
but the people who are actually doing the crimes. And
(37:09):
that brings us to this week's EMUA.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
We'd like to dedicate this week's final message of hope
and healing to Roseanne Quinn and to all of the
other women who have been targets of violence.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
And so with that we will keep working to point
out the ways that our unconscious bias feeds a harmful system.
And for you out there who are soldiering through your
days in a world that would box you in, that
would label you and harm you, we see you, we
support you, and we are right there with you. Onward
(37:47):
and upward. Emua emua. Well, that is our show for today,
and we'd love to hear what you thought about today
discussion and if there is a case that you would
like us to.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Facingevil pod at tenderfoot dot tv. And one request, if
you haven't already, please find us on iTunes and give
us a review in good rating. If you like what
we do, your support is always cherished.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Until next time.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Aloha.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia pacquerero In Avet Gentile,
Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams, our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald
Albright and Payne Lindsay, our executive producers on behalf of
(38:58):
Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico.
Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(39:22):
favorite shows.
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