137: A Poisoner & A True Douche Canoe

Let's Go To Court!

Audrey Marie Frazier defies true crime labels. Was she a black widow? Was she a master of disguise? An escape artist? We like to think she was all three! See, ladies? We really can have it all. Audrey was a chronic spender. She never had enough money to support her expensive tastes. So she got creative. She bought life insurance policies, and umm…. All of a sudden, the people around her got sick. Super sick.

Then Kristin tells us about John Darwin. This man is a douche canoe if we’ve ever heard of one. On March 21, 2002, John hopped in his handmade canoe and set out into the North Sea. The waters were calm and he was an experienced canoeist, but John didn’t show up for work that evening. His wife, Anne, panicked. She called the authorities. Rescue crews worked tirelessly to find John, but all they found was his paddle and the wreckage of his canoe. Don’t worry about John, though. He was just fine.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.
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In this episode, Kristin pulled from:

An episode of the podcast Redhanded, “How Not To Fake Your Death: John Darwin - Canoe Man”

“‘Canoe man’ John Darwin who faked his own death has extraordinary new life,” by Emily Retter for The Mirror

“Canoe pair lose jail term appeals,” BBC News

“Canoe man’s ‘lover’: Darwin the Druid is psychotic - and I was terrified of him,” the London Evening Standard

“Canoeist sons ‘put through hell,” BBC News

“Sea search for missing canoeist,” BBC News

“Missing canoeist admits deception,” BBC News

“Anne Darwin’s week in court: ‘A woman able to lie and deceive at length,” by David Randall for the Independent

“John Darwin disappearance case” entry on Wikipedia

“Canoe man and wife jailed for six years,” by Tom Wilkinson for The Independent

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:

“Marie Hilley: Inscrutable Black Widow” by Marlee MacLeod, The Crime Library

“The Great Escape Artist” by Mark Gribben, The Malefactors Register

“Alabama Woman Who Poisoned Her Husband And Daughter Dies After Escaping Prison” by Benjamin H. Smith, oxygen.com