MURDERED: Alberta O. Jones

**Brit Prawat** (0:00)
Hi, Crime Junkies, it's Brit, and I have big news. One of my favorite seasonal shows, Counter Clock, is back with a brand new season, and it is wild. Host Delia D'Ambra is digging into the 2008 Lane Bryant murders. I mean, this isn't just a recap, it is a re-investigation. She's talking to law enforcement, people from the community, even sources who have never spoken publicly until now. And you know I love a show that asks all the questions. Listen to Counter Clock Season 8 now, wherever you get your podcasts.

**Ashley Flowers** (0:31)
Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers.

**Brit Prawat** (0:33)
And I'm Brit.

**Ashley Flowers** (0:34)
You guys, there's a story out of Louisville, Kentucky that I bet you've never heard of, about a woman that you've probably never heard of. But I don't know why, because it's one of the most mysterious cases I've ever come across. A call in the middle of the night lures a woman out of her home, and hours later, her body is found floating in a nearby river. The list of suspects is a mile long, and evidence keeps showing up all over town, sometimes in suspiciously planted ways. Yet for 60 years, this case has remained unsolved. Our investigation set out to ask the question, why? And the possibilities will surprise you. Maybe it's because evidence in the case mysteriously disappeared. It could be because some investigators on this case had ulterior motives, or it could be because the very foundation that this story was built on might be a lie.
This is the story of a woman you should know about, a passionate attorney who made strides at the height of the civil rights movement, a woman who was brutally murdered before she could break even more barriers.
This is the story of Alberta O. Jones.
Alberta Jones didn't want to go out that Wednesday night on August 4th, 1965 The truth is, things had gotten dangerous for her recently. She'd taken a new job, and she'd been doing civil rights work that put a target on her back. So she was being more cautious than she had ever been before. That's why when her friend Gladys Wyckoff first called at around 11 p.m. and asked her to come over, Alberta said no. But Gladys pushed. She was a hairstylist too, and she practically begged Alberta to come over that night because the new wig that Alberta wanted was ready for her.

**Brit Prawat** (2:56)
Okay, so get it any other time.

**Ashley Flowers** (2:58)
Well, and maybe the real reason it had to be right then was that she wanted to chat about some legal trouble that she was in, because you see Alberta is a lawyer. That new job that she had just gotten was as a prosecutor.

**Brit Prawat** (3:09)
So good friend to have.

**Ashley Flowers** (3:11)
Free legal advice, right. So this is when Gladys laid it on really thick, like gave her a bit of a guilt trip. She's telling Alberta like, oh, well, you've gotten snobby since getting that new job. And that must have done it because Alberta was at Gladys' house by 11:30 PM. Now, according to Gladys, they hang out at her salon that's in her house until about 12.15, when they decide to go grab a bite to eat at this local seafood restaurant called Kingfish. And then on the way back to Gladys', they pick up the local newspaper, the Louisville Defender, because there was this article in it that like one of Gladys' employees was featured in, she was calling out racist double standards in the hairstyling industry. So once they got back, Gladys trimmed Alberta's wig, fitted it on her before Alberta left between 1.3 and 2:00 AM. And Gladys said that she watched Alberta get into her car, and then Gladys herself went back inside to go to bed.
Now, it wasn't until the next morning that Alberta's sister Flora and her mom, Sadie, realized that she hadn't made it home the night before. Like they all lived together and Flora and Sadie knew something was wrong pretty quickly. Like they knew about Alberta's fears, knew that she went out last night anyway, and if she was going to stay out, she would have called. So they phoned Gladys' house looking for Alberta, but Gladys' daughter answered and told them that Alberta wasn't there. By the way, her car wasn't out front. And even when she looked down the street to the parking lot of Alberta's law office, she didn't see her car there either.
Now, what her family didn't know was that by the time they were making these calls and by the time they were even beginning to worry, it was already too late. That same morning, a group of boys walking along the Ohio River, south of the Sherman Mitten Bridge, had found Alberta floating face down 15 feet from the shore.