The Poisoned Heiress: The 1987 Murder of Patsy Wright | Signal 51 Chronicles Case 4 Pt.1

This is the Signal 51 Chronicles. The case of the Poisoned Eris. Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm John Henry. This is my compadre here, Jake White. We come to you from an undisclosed location
in Fort Worth, Texas as part of the Sunset Lounge DFW. Welcome to episode 11 of the Signal 51 Chronicles.
It's here. We examine the worst examples of broken humanity, seeking to understand how pride,
greed, fear, vengeance, and oftentimes extraordinary stupidity. Twist ordinary lives
into the cautionary tales we bring to you on this show. Jake, how's your throttling coming along?
Throttling. Throttling? Throttling. I haven't journeyed off into that. Oh, oh, is that not public knowledge?
Well, I don't need it. So in our last episode or last case we did, we learned about
the throttling. You became obsessed with that, I noticed.
It's very intriguing. On the other side of our table over here is the extraordinary Ashley,
our producer. Hello, friends. Ashley? No, I've not taken any throttling. No, no. Just in books.
Yeah, you said you were reading something. I'm reading a book right now.
I didn't inspire her to seek more information. No, I'll say this, I actually do like those books a
lot and I have for a long time, but that case in particular I decided it was time to go back into
the throttled life and read a book about it. All right, well, you know, I don't do, mine's a little
different on the throttling, but who was who was our guy in in on the Apple show Ted Lasso?
Oh, gosh, I love Ted Lasso. It's great, isn't it? Yeah, it's great. Fantastic. I only saw season one,
but anyway, as Ted Lasso instructed, be curious, not judgmental.
Fitting, I suppose, right? I take it, whatever. Yeah, party.
Survived the cold weather couple weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, good time though. I heard you, I heard
that was party on the street down there. There was a party on the street for about three straight days.
It's good time. Good lord. Ended up with a little tendonitis in my foot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What happened with that? So I was wearing these. I think you're hiding gout, but you know, I definitely
wasn't gout. The chat GPT diagnosed me and cured me all within a matter of a couple of days.
I just put in exactly where the pain was at on the top of my foot and it was something tendonitis.
I don't even know how to pronounce the first word, nor did I much care at the time because I was
in a lot of pain. And it said from where common causes, your shoes are too tight. Well, these boots
that I was wearing were certainly too tight. I meant to throw them away last year. So I had a
similar issue. So they're your winter boots? They wore my winter boots. Yeah, yeah. And it was
excursiating pain. I didn't know exactly what to do other than I was just going to have to suck
it up. And sure enough, three, four days later, gone. I'm fine. I'm healed up.
It felt like I broke my foot though. What did you take for it?
Tylenol, ice, Tylenol, and ice, the rice method. Ice like, like, like, I, you put ice on it
and elevate it. So you need a chat GPT to, yeah. I did. I'm not a doctor. I don't know how to solve
these problems. Next time call me because I resort for podiatrist. Oh, well, you would have known.
You'd have been like, it's whatever tendonitis. It sucked though. It hurt so freaking bad.
Actually knows all. Yeah. Yes.
We say we go to the blotter. The blotter. Let's do it. I don't even know what blotter
stories were doing. So this will be news to me.
I had a good one that I couldn't find, but I heard about that it involved a potato.
It involved a potato. Has it has a potato ever looked at you just the right way?
No, nope. Where you just, nope. No, it has not. It has not mashed or like a solid
potato. It was a solid potato. Yeah. I saw somewhere if somebody had sex with a potato.
I don't think I dreamed it. I want to know who the potato was. We have heard about your
other dream recently. So at this point, I had no idea. I'm not even going to repeat it
because they come to fruition. Have you ever run across in your career as a police officer?
Or any bizarre stories like somebody making love to sue a potato?
Or anything strange like that? No. No, I never saw. No, we never had that.
I never had a case involving that. This is one of the funniest things and I wasn't there,
but I would know people who were there. He just saw his hearsay. This is hearsay,
but on good sources. And this is loosely. Your say is admissible. It's admissible at this
table. There's a guy named Brian. Brian was probably one of the funniest, if not the funniest,
dude I've ever worked with. He was cops famous, the show cop. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he's very quick-witted. Still make cops still. I don't know. I don't think they can come
to Texas or Fort Worth or whatever. Anyway, so he's cops famous. At a search warrant,
drug house search warrant. You know, in that meth world, it's all the CD underground stuff.
And Brian's in there looking and opens a drawer, a dresser drawer, a nightstand drawer,
and finds a real big thing. Big, real big. And Brian also notices that the ceiling fan is on
high blast. And he also notices that there's other cops in the room searching.
And he- I don't remember the term that he used, but he yelled something and threw that big
thing in the fan and just see where it hit. Dude, he's were hitting the floor. My god, dodging
this. So those would be- those were common to come across. I have a lot of questions that I'll ask
after. Yeah, so yeah, it was- Well, and of course, now I know you have great stories about
when you're advice going out to the notorious Gateway Park.
Orset the time was Trinity. Trinity Park. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess, yeah, that's a whole
mother. You saw some bizarre stuff there and- I was a victim about 100 times. And I legitimately
say I was a victim. You were me too in Trinity Park. Hundreds of times. Hundreds of times.
Tough job. Man. Man. I- I- I will say this. I think I was a decent undercover and it was because
of that. If you can go out there and see that, then really the world is your oyster in the undercover
world at that point. You can do anything. Man, humanity, it's- it's very, very complicated.
Ooh, yeah. And it usually involves some sort of sexual perversion. It's always some perversion.
It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. That is so true. I actually never thought about that,
but yes, you're right. That's the one where people are like, god, this world is so jacked up.
Well, and even these murders, we see, it's revolved somewhere around sex is involved in something.
They- Yeah. Yeah.
Let's go to Florida. Florida always has a Florida man, has a man who's doing something, something.
But this was a bizarre game of hide and seek for this Florida man wanted on multiple-
for multiple felonies. And he was ultimately found folded inside a dryer by a scambia county deputies.
The man described as looking, quote, guilty embarrassed and warm was pulled out one limb at a time.
Along with dryer sheets, mismatched socks, and a wrinkled Star Wars shirt.
This felon who previously served seven years for various crimes was taken to jail on $120,000 bond.
And while the sheriff's office had fun with the quirky arrest,
they reminded everyone the charges remain mere allegations.
Free of static cling. Of course. I knew you were going somewhere along those lines.
I knew it. I knew it. You know when they caught Charlie Manson, your boy Charlie?
I don't know that anyone's ever called Charlie Manson. My boy, but yeah, I know who he is, but go ahead.
They found him in this hiding in the undercarriage of a sink.
Really? Yeah. He was five foot two Charlie. He's a tiny guy. He's gone to the other side.
Hopefully it's not my side. I think he's alive. No, he died about five years ago.
Had cancer. Oh yeah, you're right. Almost 10 years ago at this. Is that what it is? Yeah, November 19, 2017.
Wow. Yeah, I mean, the hiding spots, those are always those are, I mean, I guess thinking about
another heading, but he, you know, like hiding in the closet or something like that under
pile of clothes or you did. Yeah, nothing. Yeah, in a dryer or something. They'd have a guy in a
port of potty. One opportunity, missed opportunity that I had. He runs. He runs into this industrial
well, what was, what was the, what was the quality, remember? Uh, he was in a, I think he was in a stolen
car or he had a warrant. It was something based on his license plate. And so he takes off running.
And as I get down there, I see him running up. He's running, he's over by 287 and Miller.
You got to be really in good shape to be a, be a criminal. I've noticed. Yeah, I think you do. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway. Um, so he runs up the hill and runs across the highway. I'm in just a regular car.
And I see him and he runs and he jumps into like this little industrial complex, if you will,
down there. He doesn't have a lot of places to go. He's got a lot of places to hide.
And we're looking, looking, looking, don't see anything. And I see this port of potty.
And I thought, wow, that he's in there. And I go pull the door open. And the door's locked.
He's in there. What time of night is this? This is, uh, the, this is about two o'clock in the
afternoon in August. Oh boy. Oh boy. Yeah. And so the thought of, there's nothing he can do if I
get on the backside of it and just dump it over onto the door. And I did not, I, I, I suppose,
the professional side of the professional came over enforcement officer. So I opted not to.
We called him out and that was it. So finished at the top of your class in the academy. I don't know.
Definitely not. Definitely not. Our former chief actually was our honor graduate, a one-neil nooks.
He was at the top of the class. Yeah. He was. Yeah. He was. All right. The retired Neil.
The retired Neil nooks. He was not only tired once, but it was tired. He retired.
Yeah. I don't know where you're going with that, but yeah. All right. Let's go to Arlington, Texas.
Arlington for the case of Miss
Patsy Bolton, right. Dallas, Eris, who inherited the Palace of Wax Museum. Yeah.
Ever been? I've never been driven by it. A hundred times, but yeah. I've never been to it.
I've never been to it either. I figured that seemed like some place you would go at some point.
You'd think. I could just drive and buy. I wonder what kind of history lessons they have in there.
It seems like something you would do. It's right up my alley. It's still there. Oh yeah.
So, Jay's going to tell us about this. The death that would later be ruled a homicide by
strict nine poisoning. Yeah. Kind of a rarer thing. Don't see that very often. No. Other than maybe
Russia. Yeah. Poisoning is all we'll get into the violent part of it. Apparently it is
quite violent. And I do think that you said that. I think a few years ago there was a,
I don't know, a Russian Eastern European something was on trial. Yeah. He was some for charge for
some kind of war crime. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The sentence comes down and he
emigrated immediately. Justice something. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it was strict nine. I don't know.
Okay. Yeah. So. So we're going to Arlington, Texas. We're in Arlington, Texas.
I think it's just about 15 minutes to our west. Excuse me. Excuse me. Yep.
Home of the Rangers, Cowboys, Metal of Honor, Metal of Honor. It's awesome. It's kind of a,
I don't think anybody, many people outside of the state of Texas. I don't even think they know
where Arlington is. Have no clue. But they would. And decent size city, no. I think it's north of
400,000 people. It's getting there. Yeah. So we'll get started. Patsy right. So she's born Patricia
Bolton on February 24th, 1944 in Dallas, Texas. Her parents were Tom and Virginia Bolton. Tom,
he was a Texas oil man. Yeah. He was one of the founders of the present day. Ripley's believe it
or not. Palace of wax in this located in Grand Prix right off of I 30. Originally, though, the
Palace of wax was located in the Fair Park area of Dallas. But a fire in the early 1970s prompted
its move to its present day location on I 30 on the grandest of prairies on the grandest of prairies.
So Patsy, like we mentioned, dad's dad's an oil man. She grew up in the affluent suburbs
of Dallas, Highland Park. She was just on the outskirts of Highland Park, ISD Park City's area.
She has a little tie to Texas notoriety. She was the great grand niece of the famed
house speaker of the house. Sam Rayburn. Yeah, Mr. Sam. Mr. Sam, the tollway. Yeah. That's all I
knew I didn't have a clue who he was. Sam Rayburn has, he's from Bonham. And I just want to
preface this by saying this is not something that he's researched. This is legitimately something
he knows off the top of his head. I went up to, I'm a writer and editor and I went up to do a story
on art briles to football coach it, notorious football coach Stephenville and Baylor who took the
job at Mount Pleasant High School and they were playing in Bonham. So I drove up there to cover
this game his first game back and Sam Rayburn has a museum on par with a presidential museum. It's
not quite that big, but it's big. Actually, I'm not sure what it houses because I think most of his
papers are in a UT, but yeah, Sam Rayburn was quite a powerful man. Yeah. Speaker of the house
to on two occasions. Well, that's her great uncle. Yeah. So Patsy graduated from Hillcrest High School
and went on to your alma mater of one Texas Tech University. Yes, who beat Arizona yesterday,
by the way, in basketball, but anyway, well, this is, she graduated. I might drink about that
or anything. You didn't know. Okay. Well, she graduated there in 1965. Years later, she joins the
family business. We'll get into some of those details, but so when she started out, she was doing
public relations for the Palace of Wax. Started there in 1973. Three years later, Tom, her dad,
the founder passes away and it's taken over by Patsy and her sister Sally.
So as life progresses, Patsy first marries a guy named Bill Wright in 1965. They met at Tech
and the 1970s Patsy and Bill moved to Arlington with their two kids, Lesley and Wayne.
They lived in a large house near Shady Valley, Country Club over there, in Central Arlington.
1980 though, Bill and Patsy divorced. Short time later, 1981, year later, Patsy meets
husband number two. Bob Cox is this guy's name. So Bob, he's a successful Dallas businessman,
kind of described as like a high rolling gambler type, card player, and all the country club card
rooms. You're going to notorious those certainly are. Oh yeah. Well, in this guy, he was a player.
I mean, he definitely will get into some of that too. So by 1983, Bob and Patsy had married.
Bob, he was almost 15 years older than Patsy. They had something common. So he too was in the
wax museum business. Oh, really? Oh yeah. In fact, he didn't realize you could find more than one
person in the wax museum. Yeah, I guess he's worth a thing back then. I don't know. All right.
I have only known of this one, but Bob was going to open one. He bought a collection and he was
going to open one or he owned a collection, I should say. He owns one or was going to open one
in Galveston, Texas around 1983. I will never exactly got off the ground though. Why? Because it caught
fire. Definitely suspicious there. Well, their marriage was short lived, divorced. We're going
into some of those details. Next up was a guy named Leo Fikes. Fikes too, country club kind of guy.
He had known Patsy for several years. And their relationship took off pretty, pretty quickly.
And he got Patsy into this whole cutting horse world. Something that she was very involved in.
Something was a big part of her life. They were going to Mary, but Patsy said, you know, I tried
this marriage thing a couple times, didn't exactly work out. Yeah. So she declined. Some people just
aren't good at it. Yep. So that's kind of a brief history on some of the relationships she's
had. So a little bit more about Patsy kind of going into detail. Like I said, as we mentioned,
she was born into this whole wax museum world. Growing up in the affluent part of Dallas,
she did well in life. You know, her income was high. 1987, it was reported that her salary was
$150,000. Did a little research on that by today's standards, about 450K a year. Was that out of
the wax museum? Yeah, the other thing was making some money back then. 1988, her salary was supposed
to jump to 250. She obviously didn't get there, but she also lived in two different worlds though.
So she had kind of that highfalutin Dallas socialite scene that she was a part of, but she was also
involved in the cutting horse world. In fact, when a cutting horse competition at the Mesquite
rodeo just weeks before her death, she was in the process of buying a 30 acre ranch in what would
have been the unheard of town back then of Alito. She was, that ranch was, like I said, 30 acres
buying that for $125,000. As we know now, Alito's more or less just an extension of Fort Worth,
if you will. That plays good football. That plays good football. We'll see how that pans out in
other day. Going up to 6A. Going up to 6A should be interesting. So,
her patty spent money on this cutting horse world too. She bought one in 1986 for $26,000.
Horse. Yep. And shortly before her death, she put down a $1,500 down payment on another.
Overall, it seemed like with the purchase of the ranch, some of the comments she made,
she was kind of ready to get rid of or move on to the more quaint life, if you will, move out to
the country. One of her friends joked about her living in the country. So, she went and bought
as what they described as a fancy glock pistol. So, she was going to be ready to go
when she lived out there. Now, with all that being said though, we got her personal life.
That palace of wax was booming, man. It was busy. It was growing. They had a lot of different
plans. They had recently, the family had recently opened another wax museum in San Antonio.
And we're preparing to extend the wax museum to more oddities and add a
Ripley's believe it or not, collection to their wax museum empire.
So, this thing was growing. Life was good. If you failed marriages here and there,
some relationships kind of faltered, some weird things, but all seemed to be well.
Yeah. So, we all get involved in bad relationships.
Yep. Yep.
So, what happened? So, October 22nd, 1987, just before 3am, a lethargic patsy right
called her sister's home. Her brother-in-law, Steve, answered the phone and passed the phone
to Sally. The sister? Yep. Yep.
Patsy reportedly said, I've taken some Nyquil and something's really, really wrong.
Sally calls 911, but she didn't know Patsy's address because at the time she was living in a
rental house in Arlington. She was renovating the house. She was in the process of buying the
Alito Ranch. So, she knew where it was. She just didn't know what the address was.
So, Arlington Police, the 911 operators, has started doing some research and they find out
where Patsy's address is because they couldn't summon them in ambulance because they didn't know
where to go. Yeah. So, once they get the address, Sally and Steve, brother-in-law and sister,
quickly drive over there. They're not far about 10 minutes away and they drive over to this house
on Home Oak Street in North Arlington. So, the house is on Home Oak Street in Arlington. They race
over there. When they get there, the front door is unlocked. Again, it's 3 o'clock in the morning.
Nothing, nothing crazy there. Steve walks around the house and he finds an open or an unlocked,
I should say, bedroom window. He crawls in. So, he goes inside, starts looking around. He finds
Patsy in her bed. Unresponsive. He immediately starts CPR, the old school way of mouth-to-mouth
and at some point during this CPR, he says that he ingests a green liquid that Patsy regurgitated.
But he was able to spit it out. There was some consistency with the paramedics when they got
there. Same thing. When they began CPR efforts, Patsy regurgitated what they described as a large
amount of clear liquid. Patsy, again, she's dead in her bed. She's dressed in her pajamas. She's on
the king size water bed. The first responders notice a few abnormalities, but there's nothing
really out of play. In fact, she's a healthy, early 40s. There's no signs of violence, right?
There's no stab wounds, there's no gunshots, there's no blood everywhere. She's just laying in her bed dead.
So, first responders, first one that went inside the house, one of the first abnormalities was
the alarm system was not activated. Patsy had some issues with some dudes. Bottom line. And she was
pretty suspect and was cautious. She actually had this alarm system installed because of a
stalking incident. We'll go into detail on that, but that wasn't activated. Three o'clock in the
morning, you would think somebody who's concerned about their safety, etc. would have that on.
You know, with with that not being on, she had valuables inside the house. Nothing taken,
nothing removed. Again, she's just dead in her bed. One of the responding patrol officers
inside, he sees a bottle of Nyquil in her room. For some reason, but it turned out to be good.
He thought maybe, hey, that's worth taking. So, he collects that bottle of Nyquil.
And of course, she had told her sister that she had taken some Nyquil.
Yep. They take her to Arlington Memorial Hospital. She's pronounced dead at about 430
in the morning. So, again, there's no signs of forced entry. There's no signs of any kind of
violence. She's just dead. And so, they do the autopsy and part of the autopsy, they do the
toxicology screen. Right? So, we talked about that bottle of Nyquil.
People that knew Patsy knew that I think it's safe to describe that she had an addiction to Nyquil.
She frequently, very frequently took it. Almost like a sleep aid, I think.
Okay. Yeah. Probably took it too much. Not something that, unless you knew that person well,
because I could be wrong. But I highly doubt she's driving down the road, slamming a bottle
in Nyquil in her car, right? I mean, it's something that most people, you've got to know her to know
that that's what she was into. So, no obvious signs. Deputy medical examiner, Mark Kraus, calls
the lead detective, Arlington Police Sergeant Jay Gustavison about eight days later. When he calls,
Kraus asked Gustavison, are you setting down?
Consistent with any suspicious death, like I said, the medical examiner analyzed the blood samples
from Patsy. What came back in the toxicology screening was not something that Kraus had seen
in 20 years, strict nine. I had to look up strict. I don't even know what a strict nine use force.
Use is a rodent killer. Yeah. It's heavily restricted. You can buy it, I guess, in a super
watered down format. It's banned in many cases. I suppose banned in states because of the
toxicity and the problems that it can create with household animals and things like that.
The strict nine Patsy ingested was not watered down. It was almost a pure form of strict nine.
So, obtaining that is hard. You're not going to the hardware store, buying something with strict nine,
certainly not a almost pure form of it. You've got to go to specialize chemical companies,
certain chemical companies to get this. Once Gustavison hears strict nine, again, probably not
something he's heard or dealt with before. Yeah. He thinks, wait, at patrol officer, the bottle
and Nyquill. We better check that. They test the bottle and Nyquill. There it is. Sure enough.
Been poisoned with strict nine. So, this leads to, do you remember in the early 80s the
tampering Tylenol? Yeah, this is what immediately came to mind. They've got to go down that rabbit hole.
Sure, right? Because they don't know. I mean, what if, what if it's not a murder? What if it's
something similar? So, Arlington police, FBI. What that was was if people don't know, Tylenol.
Several people died in the early 80s from poisoned, laced Tylenol. Yeah.
And they still don't know. There's a pretty interesting documentary on this. Yeah.
That kind of goes, explains it all. But, you know, obviously, this is something they've got to
look into. This is a, you know, the bottle and Nyquill. It's a commercial product. So, Arlington
police, FBI, Dallas police, their Intel center back then or Intel group back then, the EPA,
VIX Corporation. They have to start research and they do so quickly. But long story short,
they determined that no other poisoning cases had come from the product. So, this theory was
pretty quickly ruled out. It's, I think, a little bit different than, you know, and frankly,
that Tylenol case probably the experience of that probably helped expedite that investigative
step as well, because they know now, you know, this is something we have to look at or something
we have to focus on. Regardless, though, that motive or that theory was ruled out, definitely not
any kind of product tampering. So, the, they know, okay, we're dealing with a murder.
So, with a poisoning death, you know, what happens, right? I mean, they're pretty rare.
By all accounts, it's a super violent death, getting poisoned with Strychnite.
Well, we have Strychnite specifically. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's muscle convulsions,
muscle spasms. They say that it's described as being a super painful death. So,
this is again, now we're dealing with the Nyquil bottle. Somebody has to know that she is
her habit of drinking Nyquil. You've got to know, I mean, I guess this is a good thing. I would
have no clue how to poison someone, right? Like, I wouldn't know what to use. So, the Strychnite
creates that violent death, but it's a relatively quick death, okay? But then they also have to have
access to it. Where the hell are you going to go by Strychnite? Yeah. Like, I mean, so there's a
whole lot of things that they now have to look at. So, but what they have to do now is figure out
the motive. And there are so many possible motives with this thing, you know, from a relationship,
ex-lover, ex-lover. Yeah. And the ex-lovers are where they turn for the most part. So,
naturally. Yep. So, we ran through the list of exes and boyfriends, you know, right,
Cox, Leo Fikes. As we mentioned, whoever knew Patsy, they knew her well, they knew that that was her
habit. Very, very common in her inner circle. Up first, though, who were looking at her first
ex-husband Bill Wright? Bill was described as a workaholic when they were married,
and after their divorce, he moved to Houston. Surprisingly, after Patsy's death, it was
discovered that Bill was the executive of her estate. But there wasn't much evidence pointing
to Bill. Like, there was not really anything that says, hey, this Bill Wright's a bad guy.
Like, said, he was a workaholic. He worked in some kind of retail industry type job.
He moves. It seems like he moves on with life. Yeah. Now, him being the executive or
executive of her estate, was that something she just didn't change from from when they were married?
Yeah. 10, 12 years ago, possibly. Or did they still have a good relationship?
Yep. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I just don't think there was much. It didn't seem like tumultuous
by any stretch. Right. So, um, police bring Bill in. Interview him. He denies any involvement.
Will you take a polygraph? He does. He passes on to the next. So, we talked about her
love for horses, this whole cutting horse thing. Well, there was a couple that were heavily involved
with her hobby, her passion. Bill and, Bill and Bonnie Alexander, or I guess what I would describe
is kind of her go-to horse people. So, they lived in Haiko and they boarded her horses.
When Patsy was moving money around for her ranch purchase, her CPA found that she had written a
check to the Alexander's in the amount of $4,000. The only thing on there, there was the word
saddle and the word saddle and fees were written on the check. Another point of interest, Patsy's
horses were in the Alexander's name. So, she had the $26,000 horse, she put the $1,500
down payment, but the horses on paper belonged to the Alexander's. Patsy told a friend, quote,
if she could find a man like Bill Alexander, she'd marry him. Finally,
Patsy made the Alexander's a lot of money, right? Boarding horses, training, the saddle,
the $4,000 checks. So, a few things done, she's buying that $30 acre ranch. So, do they need her
to board the horses anymore? They're making money off of that, right? That's going to be gone
from their income. The investigator at one point starts researching this horse world and
strict nine and finds that at some point in the past, strict nine was used to treat some kind
of horse ailment, or a product that contained strict nine was used to treat some kind of horse ailment,
right? So, detective asks, hey, Alexander's coming in and talking to me, they do, they agree,
hey, take a polygraph, they do, they agree, and they both pass. So, we get on to husband number two,
Bob Cox. Bob Cox. Bob Cox was a successful Dallas businessman. He sold the fabric company
over for over $1 million in 1970, so it would be a hell of a lot of money today.
He then gets into this wax museum game, as I mentioned. 1975, Bob purchased a $30,000 collection
of wax figures. By 1981, he had a smaller museum, also in Fair Park at some point, geared more towards
the presidents, but it was nowhere near the level of the wax museum. Yeah, nowhere near. So,
by 1981, Cox wants to sell the collection, he valued at at least $300,000. So, he was very proud
of his collection. He's reaching out, he's placing ads in the Dallas Morning News or Dallas News.
Yeah, Dallas newspapers, like advertising, hey, I've got a wax collection worth over $500,000
for sale for a really good deal. So, obviously, Patsy sees this, she looks at the collection,
she actually has the collection appraised and decides to make an offer. Remember, he wants 300,000,
or says it's worth 300,000. Her offer, not anywhere close, $14,000. Wow. So, way off.
One would think, at least in my eyes, she low balls the hell out of them.
That's going to piss them off, right? This is, I mean, this is a 90% whatever, 90% is lower than what
he wants. Not Bob, didn't piss him off too bad. Ultimately, don't sell. Yeah, no, and he decided,
well, hey, I'm going to ask her out. So, she low balls him for this wax museum collection,
and then he low balls her. She asks him out, but Patsy says, now, you know, you're married,
he's married to his wife's name was Kitty, such a, like, name back then, I guess, right?
And he's older too. I mean, he's about 15 years older than her. So, you know, he's,
yeah, I mean, this is definitely, I guess, par for the course. So, she says, hey, no, you're married,
I'm not going out with you, but once you get a divorce, call me again. So, he does. A few months
later, Bob calls. Patsy thinking, okay, all right, they're divorced. Let's go out, Bob, and they
do. And quickly, Patsy falls for Bob. Hit it off. Hit it off. They were going to the high
society events, the charity balls, the country clubs. You name it, they were there. You know me.
Uh, however, Patsy learns, wait, you're not really divorced yet? Uh-oh, sorry, he wasn't
divorced. He actually won divorce until February of 1983. Bad start to release. Oh, yeah, it's a
bad start. Is this whole thing just went off the rails, their marriage? So, they, um, they stay
together though. The relationship grows and they take the trip to Galveston in January of 1983
to see Bob's collection, collection, and new location for his wax museum. This building was nowhere
even close to being in condition to open it for a wax museum. Needed a ton of updating.
Needed a lot of work, but Bob tells Patsy, hey, it's going to be ready by two or a season,
so we're probably what June or so. It's going to be ready to go.
Um, well, February of 1983, a month later, the building caught on fire.
Bob files an insurance claim due to the fire. He blames it on, um, some homeless people,
I guess, trying to keep warm in a cool February Galveston evening, I suppose, happens.
Yeah, I guess it, it happens. Um, but with this insurance claim, now Patsy learns,
wait, you're not quite as well off as I thought you were, because now the veil gets pulled back
a little bit off the knob. Yeah. With that though, at this point, remember, they're still just dating.
This is February of 1983. They get married in April of 1983. Okay. Thanks, change though. Once,
once the rings are on, man, Bob flips a script, dude. He has Patsy pay for everything.
He'll throw her a couple hundred bucks here or there, but she's paying the whole, the whole
lifestyle, right? They got their Dallas Country Club membership. Um, Bob, he, I think he was more
into playing poker or gin than he was digging himself out of this financial hole. That's,
that's how he's been his time. He's a card player, card player. Yep.
He would, um, love playing cards against me. Me, me too. You, yeah, maybe you, I'm just,
I'm the worst card player of all time. I have no clue what I'm doing. I just think I'm gonna
get lucky and I never do. So these gambling issues were not necessarily something Patsy talked about
or knew a whole lot about, but it, it, it had been a thing, right? His ex-wife Kitty knew about it
in the divorce deposition. I thought this was kind of funny. So, or not the divorce deposition,
I'm sorry, the, the insurance deposition for the fire. He tells the insurance company attorney,
hey, I've got to leave. I'm like, leave early. I've got to leave because, quote, they find you
$500 if you're late, meaning the card game that he's going to, if he's late, they find him $500
bucks. So he leaves his insurance deposition early. I'm like, oh, okay, whatever. So all these,
you know, this Bob guy, like I said, not turned out who he was. I mean, obviously he, he had done
well. He had sold a business in 1970 for a million bucks. He seemed to have it all together.
And then they got married and then they realized, and then Patsy realized, like, oh, man,
this guy does not have it together at all. I'm paying for everything. All this guy does is play cards.
Then tells them like, hey, I'm gonna leave this deposition early. I don't want to get
fined $500. So a few extra hands, you got to win. Oh, yeah, October 84. It was over. Bob and Patsy
were done. Divorced. This divorced, put Bob into tailspin. Right. I mean, he's living, he's
living the good life. Yeah. Best of marriage is best. As my friend Chad once told me when I asked him,
what are you doing for a living now? He said, I'm on wife support. There you go. So Bob was on wife
support. But this divorce puts him in a tailspin. He began stalking her. He would change his
appearance and borrow cars, borrow cars just to follow her around. In fact, one, an employee of his
calls, Patsy one day and tells her, hey, Bob borrowed a car and he's gonna start following you or
is following you. So this concerns Patsy a great deal because at one point in the relationship,
Bob in this, I don't want to call it a CD underworld, it's cargurums, right? I mean, it's not that
crazy. But he tells Patsy, we've got some people. I know some people that will take people out if I
need them to. So now she's like, holy crap. I just divorced this guy. I was paying for everything.
He has nothing. He has nothing to lose. Yeah. So freaks are out a little bit.
I have to get a burglar alarm. Well, and that's what happened. Remember, we talked about the burglar
alarm. This behavior concerned Patsy to the point where she installed home security system
matter residents. She also filed a restraining order against him. But by 1986, Bob maybe moved on
a little bit. He wasn't stalking her. That starts to slow down. Found another sugar mama, maybe.
But this whole fire thing keeps getting brought up in Galveston. In Galveston. Well,
they want to depose Patsy too. And Bob knows that they're going to depose Patsy. And Patsy says,
I assume Bob asks, well, what are you going to tell him? And Patsy says, I'm going to tell him the
truth. The trial was set for early November, 10 days after Patsy turned up net. So she gets
she gets murdered 10 days before she was to be deposed in this insurance on this insurance thing.
The detective, hey, Bob, need to talk to you. Bob agrees comes and talks.
Can you just take a polygraph? Bob says, no, I'm not taking a polygraph. Do you want that? He declines.
So there's another one that pops up. This recent found love of Leo Fikes.
On the surface doesn't, you know, they're dating. I mean, it seems kind of, you know, relationship.
No big deal. Except the fact that the detective gets an anonymous phone call that says, hey,
did you know that Leo Fikes was also dating Linda Donahue? Well, who's Linda Donahue?
Never heard of her. On June 1st, 1987, Donahue was discovered deceased in her Arlington home.
She had been strangled and stabbed. So dates her. Another thing's weird. Fikes owned a company called
the Fikes Chemical Company. While the company focused mostly on sanitation style chemicals,
in Dallas at the time there was one location that sold strict nine. Like the more pure form.
Fikes had been there earlier that year buying chemicals. Strict nine was not on the list.
It wasn't something that they said he bought. But again, he's there. He's dating a girl that's murdered.
He's in the chemical world. It's a chemical, a regulated chemical.
The detective brings Fikes in and Fikes is like, man, I've been waiting for you to call.
He seems eager to talk. And I didn't kill her. I don't know. I mean, anything to do with it.
Okay. We'll prove us wrong and take a polygraph and he does and he passes.
All right. So this seems like a good place to take a stop with the inclusion of Mr. Leo Fikes
as a person of interest in our story anyway. Yeah, because we've still got, we've got more people
to talk about. We've got more twists and turns with this whole thing. So I think this is a perfect
place to call it a day. To call it a day. Make sure you click the subscribe button
on YouTube. Yeah. And where else can they find us, Ashley?
They can find us on the Sunset Lounge, DFW on any of their platforms as well as Signal 51
Chronicles on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. And if you all tell me you won't win,
we will have an X. There you go. All right. We built a built to satisfy. All right. We'll see
next week for episode 12 on dealing with the Poison Darius. See you guys. See you.
This is a stolen water media production.