179: A Mother-Daughter Bond & A Speech

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Steven Robards was in rough shape. He’d been perfectly fine just hours earlier, but suddenly, the 38-year-old man’s arms and legs went stiff. He couldn’t swallow. His mouth foamed. By the time paramedics arrived at Steven’s apartment, there was little they could do. Steven died, apparently from a heart attack. For his daughter, Dorothy Marie Robards, his death was yet another tragedy in her already tumultuous life.

Then Kristin tells us about a high school student named Matthew Fraser, who caused a stir when he gave a hilarious, innuendo-laced speech to his fellow Bethel High School students. During a school assembly with nearly 600 students present, Matthew nominated his friend for student body vice president by telling them that his friend was “rock hard -- he’s firm in his pants, he’s firm in his shirt, his character is firm -- but most of all, his belief in you, the students of Bethel, is firm.” The school administrators were not amused.

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.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“Bethel School District v. Fraser,” FamousTrials.org
“FIRE Starters: Bethel School District v. Fraser,” by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on YouTube
“Bethel School District v. Fraser,” entry on Wikipedia
“Matthew Fraser speaks out on 15-year-old supreme court free speech decision,” by David Hudson for the Freedom Forum Institute

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
“Poisoning Daddy” by Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly
“Marie Robards: Deadly Daughter” by DeLani R. Bartlette, Medium
“Death Play” episode Forensic Files
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