🕰️ For four years, a stalker who called himself The Poet terrorized Wichita, Kansas — rhyming threats, a stabbing in a mall parking lot, a wreath set on fire on the front door — all during the height of the BTK murders. The city spent $370,000 and ran down more than 300 suspects. Then one weekend, the Chief of Police read the whole file and saw what no one else could.

This is the story of Ruth Finley 💛 — a soft-spoken phone-company secretary, a devoted husband, and a secret buried so deep that even Ruth didn't know she was keeping it. It's one of the strangest, saddest, and most human true-crime cases ever to come out of Kansas — and it happened just up the road from my front door in Derby.

🔎 What you'll hear:

• The 1946 Fort Scott attack at the root of it all
• How BTK-era fear made an entire city believe
• The Poet's siege — the red bandana, the threats, the cruelty and the patience
• Chief Richard LaMunyon and the clue that cracked it
• The confession — and the doubt that never fully went away
• The buried childhood trauma that explains everything
• 📍 A personal Derby aside: the "Glen Hills" case I still remember

📍 A Wichita / Sedgwick County true crime story, told Kansas-honest: documented facts and personal opinion kept clearly separate, no padding, no guessing.

✉️ The Time Killer Files: Send me the false-stalker case from your own town — the phantom attacker everyone feared who turned out never to exist. You might hear it on a future episode.

⚠️ Content note: This episode discusses childhood sexual abuse and suicidal thoughts. U.S. support: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline); RAINN 1-800-656-4673.

📚 Sources: Corey Mead, The Pursued (2025); Gene Stone, Little Girl Fly Away (1991); Wichita Eagle archives; Wichita PD case history.

🎧 New here? Follow the show and join the Time Killers — new episodes every week.

#TrueCrime #PoetOfWichita #RuthFinley #WichitaKansas #BTK #KansasTrueCrime #DerbyKansas #justkillingtimepodcast #elizabethstanton #derbykansas

She hid a spy pen to catch her husband cheating. It recorded her own secret affair instead.

On Mother's Day weekend 2020, Suzanne Morphew went for a bike ride in the Colorado mountains and never came home. Three years later, her remains were found by accident in a remote field locals call "the boneyard" — with a wildlife tranquilizer in her bones and her body moved at least twice. Her husband Barry has pleaded not guilty to her murder. His trial begins October 13, 2026.

This is the whole story: a crying husband and a $200,000 reward, a "chipmunk alibi," a deleted "I'm done" text, a deer tranquilizer called BAM, a district attorney who got disbarred, unidentified DNA tied to unsolved sex crimes in two states, and a cremation order police stopped one day before it happened.

As one law professor put it: nothing is what it seems.

I tell you what's documented, what's prosecution theory, and what the defense disputes — and I keep them separate, so you decide for yourself.

ACTIVE CASE: Barry Morphew has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty at trial. This episode is sourced entirely from court filings, the grand jury indictment, preliminary-hearing testimony, the autopsy, and established news reporting.

In this episode:
- Who Barry and Suzanne were, and a marriage quietly falling apart
- The spy pen, the affair, and the last 24 hours
- BAM, the needle cap in the dryer, and "the only private citizen"
- The unidentified male DNA in Suzanne's car
- The disbarred DA and the collapse of the first prosecution
- The boneyard, the autopsy, and the second arrest under an alias
- The cremation order — and where the case stands now

TIME KILLER FILES: Have a case from your own hometown? A cold case, a small-town mystery, a story nobody talks about? Send it to me — I read every one.
Email: JustKillingTimePodcast@gmail.com (Subject: TIME KILLER FILES)

New episodes of Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube. True crime, conspiracy, and the stories the official version leaves out.

Sources include court filings and the grand jury indictment in People v. Barry Morphew, the El Paso County Coroner's autopsy, preliminary-hearing testimony, CBS News and CBS 48 Hours, the Colorado Sun, 9News, the Mountain Mail, Fox News, and others. Full source list on the YouTube version of this episode.

🌊 It's one of the most beautiful lakes in America. It's also one of the deadliest. More than 700 people have died at Lake Lanier — and the reason why is hiding at the bottom.

💀 In this deep dive, I tell the documented, fully-sourced story of Lake Lanier, Georgia: the town that was flooded to create it, the graves the government admits it never moved, the woman in the blue dress who was seen for 30 years before anyone learned her name, and the 1912 racial cleansing of Forsyth County that was never punished.

If you've only heard the viral version of this story, this is the part it gets wrong — and the part that's far more disturbing than the myth.

🎙️ WHAT YOU'LL HEAR
🛶 Why one lake accounts for roughly HALF of all drowning deaths in Georgia
👻 The Lady of the Lake — the true story of Delia Young, Susie Roberts, and a 32-year mystery
🔥 Forsyth County, 1912: 1,098 Black residents driven out at gunpoint, and not one arrest
🪦 The unmarked graves the Army Corps of Engineers admits remain on the lakebed
🏁 The racetrack that rises out of the water during droughts
🏞️ Cherokee removal, eminent domain, and the land that was stolen twice
✊🏾 The 1987 Brotherhood March: 20,000 people, the Klan on the courthouse steps
🦠 The antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the mud — one more way the lake can hurt you

❓ QUESTIONS THIS EPISODE ANSWERS
• Why is Lake Lanier so dangerous? — A flooded valley full of submerged roads, buildings, standing trees, and sudden drop-offs, plus 11+ million visitors a year, makes it Georgia's deadliest lake.
• Is there a town under Lake Lanier? — Yes: Oscarville and parts of Forsyth and Hall counties were flooded in 1956, and not every structure or grave was moved.
• Who is the Lady of the Lake? — Delia Mae Parker Young, drowned in 1958, found in a blue dress with both hands missing, unidentified for 30+ years until her friend's car surfaced in 1990.
• How many people have died at Lake Lanier? — More than 700 since 1956, with roughly two dozen bodies still unrecovered.
• What happened in Forsyth County in 1912? — A racial cleansing that expelled all 1,098 Black residents in three months, with no one ever charged.

🎧 ABOUT THE SHOW
Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton is a true crime and conspiracy podcast that pairs documented, deeply-researched history with one Kansas host's take on the stories the official version leaves out. Every fact is sourced. Every theory is labeled. You decide what it means. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio.

📩 THE TIME KILLER FILES
Got a Lake Lanier story or a Forsyth County family history? A true crime or conspiracy from your own community?
Email 👉 JustKillingTimePodcast@gmail.com — Subject line: TIME KILLER FILES. I read every single one.

🔔 Follow the show so you never miss an episode.
Thanks for killing time with me. 🖤💛