"That's Your Dad!"

Episode 3: This Time it's For Real

The Roadtrip Begins

Content note: This article discusses family dynamics that contain abuse of a minor.

Family reunions are supposed to feel like homecomings. In this episode of Shirley, You Can’t Be Serious, the story turns that expectation upside down, revealing how the return of a long-absent father became the beginning of a far more complicated and painful chapter. What was believed to be closure quickly unraveled into a journey marked by instability, fear, and unanswered questions that followed one family from Colorado to Alaska and beyond.

At the heart of this story is the unsettling reality of how children can be swept up in adult decisions they don’t understand and can’t escape. The episode traces a childhood shaped by constant movement, isolation, and a parent whose presence felt more dangerous than his absence. Through firsthand memories, listeners hear how survival sometimes looks like adaptation - finding safety in small moments, animals, or fleeting freedoms, even when the larger environment feels hostile.

Alaska looms large in this chapter, not just as a setting but as a symbol. It’s a place of extremes: harsh landscapes, hidden lives, and second identities. The story touches on how easily someone could disappear in that era, reinvent themselves, and outrun consequences, at least for a while. Jobs tied to massive projects like the Trans-Alaska Pipeline offered money and cover, but not redemption, and certainly not healing for the family left navigating the fallout.

One of the most powerful threads in the episode is the tension between cruelty and complexity. The father, Ed, at the center of the story is not portrayed as a simple villain, but as a deeply damaged person shaped by his own brutal upbringing. That context doesn’t excuse the harm, but it complicates it and raises uncomfortable questions about cycles of abuse, accountability, and how trauma gets passed down when it’s never addressed.

The episode also explores what happens after someone like this is gone. Death doesn’t necessarily bring answers. Official records leave room for doubt. Stories don’t line up. Even grief itself looks different when a parent was a source of fear. Instead of mourning, there’s relief, confusion, and a lingering need to understand what really happened and why.

What makes this story resonate is its honesty. It doesn’t wrap pain up neatly or offer easy conclusions. Instead, it shows how truth often arrives in fragments: a memory here, a document there, a conversation decades later that suddenly reframes everything. Healing, if it comes at all, is slow and uneven and sometimes it comes not from forgiveness, but from understanding where the damage began.

This episode is a reminder that some family histories are less about lineage and more about survival. And that telling these stories out loud, carefully, truthfully, is one way of reclaiming power from the past.

Full Episode Transcript:

 Dead Serious.

The following episode has graphic descriptions of violence, including abuse of a minor and maybe disturbing for some listeners.

 Then I get the word that, our real dad's been found and we're gonna go, , live with them. He's got a place in Colorado and we're just gonna stay at until we're ready to make the trip up to Alaska

So he comes down to meet me in Colorado. So I drive over to Colorado. Okay. And I meet him there and we rented a place for a couple months.

So I remember when we got on an airplane, flew out to Colorado and we landed, and this guy comes out and unlike the guys that she dated, didn't have the vibe of a nice guy at all.

You know, like literally from our first walking up to him, there was no parental bond or anything like that, or there was no, , run up and hug your kid or your kid run up and hug you or anything like that. It was just like, this is your dad, you know?

And he was um, you know, very stern faced individual. Like, okay, let's get in the truck. You know? And um,

 And now the story of a family reunion with a pet wolf and my stepmother Shirley driving the car.

I'm Amanda Fallon, and this is the Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcast.

 When we got to the place where we were gonna be staying, the first thing that happens is this big wolf dog runs out from underneath the truck that's there in the driveway as we're getting out of the car, ready to eat us at the end of a chain, you know?

And and he is smugly like, that's your dog.

And then I'm like. Okay. We had a little chihuahua thing , as a pet, you know, here's this big wolf dog comes out now. Of course, that wolf dog would be become my best friend in the years, to come. And, um, and Colorado. Hateful place.

A crappy little, adobe house on an Indian reservation. And it was a Indian school, , and we were the only two white kids.

And probably the only reason we didn't get destroyed was the wolf dog, you know, literally. And, um, because one, it was kind of like a taboo thing amongst the local natives, this wolf dog, how many bad omen, right? Yeah. And they looked at us as a bad omen, but they kind left us alone because of this wolf dog.

I could safely walk home from school, you know, and, and, and whatnot. But, um, but the native kids didn't want nothing to do with, you know, couple white kids, you know. But fortunately we were just there to finish out our school and at the end of the school year, you know, so finish out my second grade.

So anyway, so now he's up in Alaska, under his different name, because the police are looking for Ed Carroll. So now he's going under the name of Jim Edwards. And he said it was real easy to get a social security card.

Really? He just said, yeah. The, hospital that he was born in burned down and they don't have any records. And yeah, they gave him a social security card. Wow. Without any background information. And this is what the late 1960s? Uh, yeah, the late sixties, maybe early seventies by this time. Okay. You know, the kids are going into second grade and third grade. So they finished first and second grade. So anyway, like an idiot I got. And now I gotta tell my parents, now his mom has died by this time she died, not even. So how many years has passed and since you told the family that he was dead and now you decide to go back?

About three years. Okay. At least three or four years. And has it been three years since you've seen him? Yes. Because he's been gone. Yeah. So anyway, so then I have to tell him, oh, I heard from Ed. He actually didn't die. And he's, oh my God, my mom was so upset, my mom was so upset. I can't imagine being on the other end of that phone call.

Oh. Or, okay. Honestly, I can't imagine making the phone call. Yeah. But to be on the other line, how could, yes. So did your mom at all tell you to come back home? Oh, I'm sure she did. I mean, you know Yeah. To stop, not go to a Alaska step, come back home. Actually, dad, what my dad wanted to do, they had an extra lot beside their house and they wanted to buy me a manufactured home, a trailer and put it there and I could live there. So family's starting to sense the craziness of this whole, you know, I mean, my mom was just a basket case. When she hears this, well, the kids hadn't seen their dad in three years. They thought their dad was dead.

Oh my. Yeah. Third grade, second grades. What is that? Eight and seven years old. Yeah. Yeah. And they probably have hardly any memories of their dad too at this point. Yeah, true, true. At that point. Yeah.

And then we had packed up the, uh, truck. And, um, it was a, that was an adventure.

It was like a 68 Ford truck with a homemade wooden camper shell. We had two vehicles in an old Ford Fairlane sedan sixties. And those two cars were gonna make it from Colorado up the Alcan Highway to Alaska. That was an adventure, unfortunately for me.

It was not a great adventure. Got to see just how old school my dad was. And, um, now we had already figured this out because, uh, the first few days of living with him, it was like, um, I don't think he likes kids. Right. You know, my sister and I, and, um, and unfortunately my, sister experience would be way worse than mine.

But yeah, he was , a scary character. We packed up that old beat up truck, you know, hit the road and, you know, you're staying at campgrounds on your way up and off to the side of the road and things like that.

And then, um, we drive up to Alaska.

A truck was full of stuff. And, um, I had never driven a standard before. I. Learned the day before we left to drive a standard. Ed tried to teach me and he had no patience with me at always screaming and yell at at me. Finally, the 15-year-old teenager that lived in the neighborhood taught me how to drive a standard and I drove it all the way to Alaska following him.

So I have the two kids in the car and I have the one dog. He has the truck towing a truck that doesn't work but has a bunch of our stuff in it. And uh, 'cause I have my. You know, furniture and everything from, um, from, you know, the stuff I had bought after he had left and everything. Mm-hmm. So I had all, you know, after we, that we accumulated after we, you know, moved to California , from South Africa.

So anyway, I had quite a bit of furniture and stuff.

I'm following him in the car and he was driving the truck and he has the two dogs that he had gotten in Alaska. And, um, so anyway, I am following him and it's a long drive up the Alcan, which is what was about 1200 miles of unpaved road.

At the time, we really didn't have much money, so we literally camped out. All the way, we either slept in the car or we slept on the ground. We didn't have a tent, we just put sleeping bags on the ground and slept on the ground. So d what of year is this? Was there snow? This? No, there was no snow at this time.

Early on in the journey, which it sets up a little butane stove. On the step bumper, the truck and, um, was boiling water for hot dogs. And I wasn't paying attention. I went to sit down and I sat down on the bumper and I didn't see the handle on the pan and sat down on it and flipped it onto my lap.

And just horrifically, you know, scalding, boiling hot water. Pour it all over my leg. And of course I let out a blood curling scream, , and my dad comes around, sees the hot dogs on the ground, the spilled water, and, um, immediately grabs a branch, drags me off and beats the hell outta me, for spilling the dinner.

And, um, it's a hard image to get outta your head. 'cause I'm looking around and I see all these people, other people camped in the park ground and they're all just kind of looking, but this is back in the day where if you beat the hell outta your kid, nobody said anything, you know? And I remember making eye contact with all these different adults that just kind of were, looking like.

Wow. You know, 'cause they could see that I was hurt and he was just pissed that I knocked over the water. And, um, and as it turned out, it was I burned all the skin off of my leg. , And every day when I'd wake up in the morning, my pant leg would be blood and puss and crusted to my big, the wound was like that big across the top of my leg.

Should have gone to hospital. It was third degree burns deep into, the flesh. And I couldn't hardly walk, on my leg. And every morning we'd pull up by a drainage ditch or a river, and he'd make me wade down into the river and let the water soak and loosen it from my legs so we could pull down my pants and clean it off.

And never even got a bandaid for it, you know, it was just wash it off and pull back your pants, you know? And we were continuing on down the road and, and I remember, uh, one, one part of the journey that I actually appreciated him for a moment because I had fallen asleep in the pickup truck. And, um, and my face was in the, into the vinyl seats and I was dreaming and I dreamt, I was like a.

Balloon, man, I'm all like floating around and everybody's kind of laughing at me. And then, but I couldn't breathe, you know? And that's how it was manifesting itself in the dream, you know? And I'm like trying to tell every I can't breathe, you know? Quit, laughing at the bouncy boy, and, um, and all of a sudden a hard, Hey, you know, wake up. You all right? You know, because I guess I was gagging, you know? And, and, and, and I woke up and I was like, oh, thank God, thank God you woke me up because I was all, I was gonna die. And, um, that, that was probably like the first time I, in, first moment that I had an appreciation for him that, okay.

And at one point. We got separated and of course there's no cell phones. He had made a U-turn and went back. For whatever reason, he didn't stop. He didn't wait to make sure I was following him.

I had trouble making the U-turn because I had to go down a ravine like, and then up and the stick shift. I couldn't get up. I kept sliding backwards and by the time I got up I couldn't find him and I'd drive around and I don't see him any place. So I thought, okay, we were just a matter of miles from the Canadian border.

So I thought, okay, I'll just go to the border and I'll just sit there and wait for him to come. I don't know what he's doing, but what happened, he was low on gas and so he turned around to get some gas. Well, I had the money, so he gets to the gas station. He has no money and he has no gas, and I'm sitting at the border.

So I'm sitting there for hours and he's sitting in the gas station. So then luckily, uh, he flagged down a car that was heading toward the border. And told him, you know, what I was driving is that if you see a woman or tell her to come back, I need gas money. You know?

And so the guy saw me sitting there at the border and then he comes back. Or what was going through your head though? Just sitting at the border for hours? I, you know what I thought, you know what, at that point I should have either gone to Alaska by myself with the kid, I have the kids and the dog, you know, or turned around and gone back home.

Mm-hmm. You know, is what I should have done. So anyway, we got the gas and then we got to Alaska and then by then we were so short on money, we literally lived in the car and in the truck for a whole month.

We parked in a parking lot, , by a restaurant. And we never ate at the restaurant 'cause we didn't have any money to eat there. But we would go in every day and wash off and, you know mm-hmm. Take sponge baths and stuff. And they never said anything to us, you know, they would never said anything. But, uh, literally it was a month.

And then finally we had money for a first month's rent, but that's all we had. And, uh, they wanted a first month rent. They wanted a, a deposit and they wanted a last month's rent. Everybody. So fortunately we found this, um, little Oriental couple and you know, they felt sorry for us and they let us move in and rent the house and know with just paying that month's rent and then we could catch up later on down the line.

So we made it up Alaska and, uh, rented this little house in AKA Valley and, um, enrolled me for third grade. And, um, and he comes home with, uh, he bought parkas for us, my sister and I. And, um, and I reached for what I thought was mine. And, um, it's like, no. Then it hands that to my sister.

It's red and with dark green checker pattern and, um, on a fuzzy parka, you know, it was fuzzy parkas. And, um, and then he hands me mine, which I thought was my sister's because it was white with purple squares all over it. It obvious total girls code. That was my dad's idea. Um, and because he said it pretty plainly, he looked at me from day one and was like, he's a blank pussy, and, you know, looked at my mom and the kind thing because he was a bully growing up, and he's like, he plays with clay. He likes to draw, I'm one of those kind of kids. And he was just like, that's terrible. So, well, my mom was at work, and this is how, like I said, our perception of our mom is she was never there to protect us and actually put us in danger.

And he one put me in that purple coat to send me to school, knowing gonna get hassled by it. And, um, and then to. To help things along the way. In the summertime while my mom was at work and he was doing nothing and hanging out at the house for entertainment, he would pay the older kids in the neighborhood for fighting bouts in, in our front yard.

He'd get a bucket piece for beating me up in my front yard. And, um, and then to make matters worse, it's like if I lost, I had to fight the next fight in my underwear. So I have to strip down and fight in my underwear. And if I lost that fight my sister had this big poofy white Cinderella dress, and so he put me in the Cinderella dress and I'd have to work my way back to my underwear.

And that was, that was my third grade summer.

I remember one time him and his buddies are sitting in the backyard. And um, my dad was very much a, you kill it, you eat it. You don't kill things just to kill things, and, um, they had their BB guns out and whatnot and, um, his friends, and they're in our backyard.

We had a big backyard and full of trees and everything, and our wolf dogs tied up there. And, um, they're shooting at the, the birds. And my dad was, and um, and he kind of let me know. We'd talk a little bit here and there, but what wa what was going on is he was shooting the branches out from underneath the birds to make fly away on, on his turn, you know, so that the ice, because like, and he kind of like grumbled about it after they left, you know, and expressing that saying, because I say he was big on him.

They ain't gonna eat 'em, so why the hell they shooting at him, you know, kind of a thing, you know? And, um,

 And then I could see the kind things that he did. Not that there were many, but they were there and the humanity that was buried down in him, even if it was something as simple as like, there was one time I go running down the stairs into our basement and it's one of those that has a trap door. Mm-hmm. You know, and you can't run jumping like that down because when you get down towards the end there, that header caught me in the head this way. My feet went out from underneath this way, landed and smashed.

I still to this day have this almost feels like a horn lump on my skull, where it, it cracked the, broke my skull, on, on the concrete floor. , It hit it so hard, and, um, and to this day I've got this giant lump of bone on the back of my skull there. And, um. And it was one of those moments, uh, blinding pain, as a kid.

And I remember my dad at the, he had fortunately been there, you know, I smash and before I can totally freak out and scream and rail and, I grab my head and I'm stunned. And, and he looks down there and he yells at me, you didn't crack my floor, did you? And I immediately, no, it's good.

He's like, all right then, you know, but it's exactly what I needed to hear in that moment so that I didn't totally lose it in panic. Panic, you know? And um, and there are other little things like that. And, um. Where there was a, a caring person in there. He just didn't know how to show it, , and let alone how to live it, 'cause it was so foreign to him and his upbringing, 

So like I said, I saw different sides of him that were soft and, you know, saving. You know, an animal was the most, more like our wolf dog that, oh, that's where I was going way back when.

Uh, that wolf dog that we had has a story, the reason he was the runt of the litter. So he is the not a huge wolf dog, compared to normal. 'Cause it was the rent of the litter and my dad had to bottle feed it. And, um, but it was first generation wolf when he was up there in to Alaska, um, at the cabin.

, A wild wolf mated, one of his female sled dogs. , So he got a, first gen set of pups and this is the one that he kept. And, um, and he did that a few times because the hybrids make really good sled dogs. So he'd sell, 'em. As first sled dogs, 'cause the, uh, wolf traits, mixed with, uh, the husky, one of the things a wolf can do is it can control the temperature of its feet.

So where normal dogs run out in the snow and they get all that snow packed in between their toes freezes, turns to ice and get all clumped up and you'll watch, , sled doggs with all the booties, and that's why they do that. But a wolf drops its pot pads down to. Just above freezing and it doesn't get any snow collected in its toes.

And the guard here and other things like that, but they, but they're also smart and lazy. So he always had to be the lead dog. 'cause if you put 'em in the wine, there'd always be slack in his, you'd make all the other dogs work. Wolf's only good as a lead, 'cause it didn't have any trouble leading.

But it ain't gonna pull, let let those crazy yippy huskies do that, you know? But, you know, so he had, , there were good qualities in him, but they were never developed. Fortunately when we had got to fourth grade, we moved to Eagle River. He had been working on a house it was , a gutted to be condemned house. Wouldn't even let my mom or any of us see it until after he'd done a bit of work, cleaning things up and, and so he moved into this old flat roof house.

They actually got it to be, you know, um, for a guy with one arm I admired him because of , all the things he could do. And um, and it's like before we hit the road trip, one of the things we had to do is make sure the truck was ready to go. And, and, um, he found out how u useless I was as a helper, as a mechanic.

'cause yeah, it's like he only has one hand. So he was trying to have me hold and help solder things and stuff like that, and that was unpleasant. But I remember marveling it, it's like he replaced the engine in this truck by himself Right. And did all kinds of, you know, mechanical work.

there was a point in time where Ed bought a motorcycle.

A triumph. And Ed's got one arm, right? Yeah. Eddie takes that motorcycle and he drives it all the way up through to Alaska on that Alaskan highway with one arm, and then he turns around when he gets up there, he stays there just for a very short period of time, and he drove back.

And when we got up to Alaska, one of the things we did is we went and stayed at, he had built three cabins way out in Tok and we actually had to, uh, follow a river for miles out into the woods, from the last little stretch of pavement kind of a thing, way out in the middle of nowhere.

So we, we spent a couple months out there before we came and settled in town. But, um, he built. Three cabins by himself, one armed man, and, um, so I was, you know, amazed and that was where he had disappeared to during that time that everybody thought he was dead, you know, as his hiding out there in Alaska.

And of course he, he was always in trouble, taking the shortcuts.

so it's like his, his story is a sad story, you know, because it's like, you know, he was smart and able to do things, but always did the scheming thing.

It's like half the time I remember him, he was always wearing one of those foam collars because he would. Found out early on that if you let somebody hit you, you, you can sue him. You know? So he was constantly doing the schemes and whatnot and it's like, man, if you'd have just concentrated on steady plotting at a normal job, you'd have gotten somewhere in life and just put all that scheming away.

And that's one of the positive things I got is that illustration. 'Cause my mom kind of freaked out is 'cause she had never told me anything about his young life and I was kind of falling into all the same things, as I grew up through a teenager, you know, I got busted for stealing a car and that's what put my dad in prison as a teenager where he lost his arm on a attempted suicide.

Not really, who knows?

He managed to get a job. He faked that he had two arms 'cause he had his, you know, prosthetic, with the fake hand or the hook.

And, um, he put his fake hand on and bandaged it all up and did the interview. And you told him that, ah, no, I just burned my hand, so it'd be fine here, no time. You know, and, and, uh, got hired on at the, on the pipeline mostly driving trucks and whatnot up, up there.

 Construction of the Trans Alaska pipeline is almost complete by the end of 1976, all 800 miles of mainline pipe were installed. Work was nearing the final stages at the several pump stations along the route  

 So he gets a job on the pipeline under his different name, you know, because the police are looking for Ed Carroll. So now he's going under the name of Jim Edwards

We loved it when he got the pipeline job, because he would be gone for three weeks. He'd come back to town for like two weeks, but that two weeks he was running off with his friends and whatnot. And my mom was always working and, um, the, I said, uh, our life was better when we lived , in the, uh, the red house there, uh, in Eagle River. And that was kind of where my joy was. 'cause I said he got a good job.

So there was some money. So, you know, it's not like we were super poor.

So he was making good money and for the first time,

I was able to stay home with the kids.

And I babysat. I had a couple kids. We lived right across the street from the school, so I had 2, 3, 5 kids that I was babysitting one full time and then a couple after school, you know? And so I was doing that. He was working on the pipeline for the first time. Things were really good financially.

 And I'd come home after school and he'd be making out with the babysitter on the couch who was like 17, 18, lived next door, and didn't matter that I opened the door and come in to the mo he does, is sit back, but still has his arm around her and she's all cuddled up, yeah, babysitter, teenage girl from next door.

Yeah, I'd come across that often. But it was good because that kept him distracted, you know? And I was already at that place where I'm just gonna come in, grab the key to, um, mini bike and gone, so that's what I did. As soon as I got home every day from school grabbed the key, grabbed my mini bike, saved my lunch money for gas money, and, um, and I was gone.

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And, um, and I remember, you know, I ha had a lot of hatred and animosity towards him.

Did you ever see your dad abusing your mom?

Other than the, harsh language right. Never saw him, be physically and she said, I'd have left. If he'd ever laid a hand on me, I'd left. Well, how about your kids? You know? But did she see with you guys? Hmm? Did she see the

Oh yeah. Because that's the man's job is to discipline the kids. Right. You know, so it doesn't matter what he beats you with. And he had all kinds of different instruments, and she just acted like, well, that's normal. You do something wrong. Well, if your dad decides you deserve a whooping, whooping, you're gonna get, and so she just turned a blind eye to it.

So, like I said, we never really, it wasn't like we could run to mom, uh, out of fear of dad, you know, 'cause she was gonna back him up. And, um, and that, at least that was our perception. 'Cause she never countermanded him on any corrections. Many a days my dad would lose it on us, and she had to see that from time to time because the whooping, that wasn't necessarily the worst part.

It was getting to the kitchen to get whooped. That could be, more traumatic because, you know, he'd grab me by the neck and just use my head as a battering ram down the hallway, just smash it to this wall, , smash it to this wall. As he walked me down the hallway, throw me in the kitchen.

And then it was my job to drop my drawers because, you know, no pad in your underwear, no tricks, no nothing. He wants to see That bare Butt, you know, when he, whips you with the belt. , And he had a wicked belt, wicked belt. I'm like, it, it doesn't even work as a belt. What is that, like a saddle strap or something?

It was three layers of leather riveted together with the ends, both flopped. So you had like three pieces of leather. Two were long and one was short in the middle. And I'm like, it has no buckle. I don't even know what it is. It is just a big leather strap. But, oh man, we'd smack you with it. , The extra slap, slap, slap, slap, you know, those heavy leather belt.

The belt wasn't the worst thing, if he couldn't find his belt that he liked to use, I hated that was, um, army cots. Yeah. And they have the wooden piece and it's got three holes at the end so you can adjust the tension and that wooden stick. I went to whole school with welts circles on my butt all the dang time, where I couldn't sit, couldn't barely sit down in my chair at school.

And I'd look in the mirror and my butt and it just riddled with circles and black and blue welts on my butt. And, um, and I hated that thing. And, um, but he, he was like switches, doubled up garden hose. That was another particularly not fun. A thing to get hit with. And, um, and you get hit lots and that was his problem.

He had no anger management control. And, um, , so just stupid little things could just throw him, and I wouldn't say we got beat every night before bed, but pretty much it was just the routine. And like I said, my mom would be right there,

uh, one of the games he would play at night and my mom would watch, you know, they'd be watching TV and my dad had this game and my sister actually would play this game. I'm like, I wanna play.

He'd sit there with the BB gun and just a spring, action, not a pump, you know, , but, we're in our pajamas. And he'd make a game of us running from , the hallway bedroom to the bathroom hallway, right. And having to cut across there at the living room. And he'd, give us like a nickel, for every time he could make it across without getting shot.

And my sister actually liked that came you know, I'm like, I'm trying to think of how we can get out of this game. And you're like, okay. I'm like, , she has a bathrobe. So she had, but she got to a place where she'd run across and, and learned not to Yelp, and then claim that she made it across without getting hit and get her nickel or dime, or me when I got it.

Ah. And so I didn't make no money on this deal. I was a kid, so that's an evening at home, with my mom and my dad, you know?

And, um, but it was really weird.

Whenever he would come home from the pipeline, he would never let me know when he was coming. He would work like three weeks on, one week off. And so, but he'd always come home late at night. You know, I never knew what time he was coming. He never had me pick him up at the airport or anything. And I remember one time he came in and, uh, he's looking all over the house, under the bed in the, uh, like I was hiding somebody there.

You know, I thought, what the heck is wrong with you? Mm-hmm. It was like he was expecting that I had some boyfriend a hit away or something, you know? And, um, what I didn't know was he was the one who was having the affair.

And, then , ultimately he took off with like a 17-year-old girl and, uh. He drove down to Tennessee with this 17-year-old girl. And the police were hunting for him, for everything, for taking an underage girl.

But him and my mom got divorced and, you know, he left us the house and took the motor home and he had a 19-year-old Ann, and um, and she was very, very soft spoken, nice girl. And um, you know, and I was just like, what guy? You know, that's what I'm thinking. 'cause she seemed like a really nice person

and, um, but only met her like maybe two, three times. And, um,, always just very much passing through

and then he committed suicide, , and this time he was dead. Was the whole family like skeptical at first though? Were they like, okay, wait, repeat at this time? Well, it's kinda like, I want photos, you know? Yeah, yeah.

You know? I said, I don't know what the real stories are of anything. Even his death, you know, I know the story that he told me. I don't know if I buy it. You know, I think it went down a little differently. . Um, when I was in, uh, seventh grade, eighth grade, um, he died for real. That's the, the real one. Yeah. So the, yeah, the for real death

 Today is Thursday, September 15th, 1977. Reverend Joseph t Wanner will officiate at funeral services for Edward Barton Carroll 32 at 8:30 PM tomorrow at Forest Law Memorial Chapel.

 But the pastor said, he got his life right with the Lord, you know, blah, blah, blah, trying to comfort you. And I remember when I went to the funeral and, when we walked in, the first thing I was amazed at is like, who are all these people? And why are they crying?

But, you know, I, I was amazed at how many people were at this funeral and it was an open casket. And, um, and I was there to make sure he's really dead. 'cause I'd heard this before, right? I was a kid. It is yeah, well I want to see myself, you know? So I remember going up there, you know, to the open casket and, um, the hand looking at his hand, shriveled.

On his stomach, folded over and, and looking at that hand and one, seeing it weak, I'd all always only known it strong, and, um, and assertive and seeing it feeble and weak, and the, uh, sense of satisfaction never get hit by that hand again. And just cool, you know, as a little kid looking at my dead dad and seeing that hand, that that hand's never gonna hit me again, and so I walked out of the funeral happy, satisfied, and just not understanding why everybody else seemed to be grieving,

 Alaska State Medical Examiner's office , Anchorage, Alaska.

 alaska Department of Health and Welfare Bureau of Vital Statistics. Certificate of Death, Edward Barton Carroll Date of Death, September 15th, 1977. Place of Death, Fairbanks, Alaska. Married date of injury, August 27th, 1977. Nature of violent death, gunshot to the abdomen, accident? Suicide? Homicide? Undetermined?

Undetermined! ☑️

But you have a question for him. Mm-hmm.

 What do YOU think happened? I think he was fighting with his new wife. And she shot him and in his arrogance and some woman shot me, kind of thing. Oh, I was cleaning my gun and it went off and whatever story he was saying, you know, it's like no, you were fighting and she got scared and you got shot, with her little 22.

Yeah, because it's like the only reason we had 20 twos, I had a 22 'cause he gave me a 22. That's the kids' guns. All of his guns are guns, 30 odd sixes and rifles and Winchester lever action, cowboy guns, you know, it's like, yeah. If he was gonna kill himself, he had all the stuff he needed to do it Right.

He ain't gonna pick up the stupid 22 and shoot himself in the stomach. I was like that, that's bs it just right away I was just like, yeah. Right. And, and then I hear, in my mind it was like, okay, I could see that, where they're arguing or fighting and she got scared and trying to defend herself kind of a thing.

And well, when the cops get here I shot myself. 'Cause he was, there was a level of, goodness in him, you know, where that, the noble thing to do, you know, is keep her out of trouble. 'cause it's probably his fault they were fighting in the first place or whatever.

 Carol was rushed to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital where he later succumbeded to complications of a gunshot wound. Born February 15th, 1945 in West Virginia. Carol died Tuesday after being hospitalized for 17 days, an Anchorage resident. Since 1970, he was employed as a mechanic and driver. He has survived by his wife Ann of Anchorage, a son Edward Jr.

And a daughter ra, both of Eagle River.

And it wasn't until, you know, well after he died, we, uh, came , on a trip back to Ohio where my mom took us to meet my grandpa, my dad's dad.

And his, uh, wife had passed away. So I'd never met my real grandma on his side. And, um, not that I would want to, because she was like, uh, everybody knew she was a practicing witch. At a time when, you know, that stuff wasn't like very, I mean, nowadays it's like the wiccans and all that kinda stuff. But this is, this is way back, you know, , in the late seventies. And uh, but she was known through the community, you know, 'cause they read tar cards and do palm reading and stuff like that. So she was an actual witch, black magic practicing witch.

And my grandfather was the evilest man I'd ever, to this day met in my life. And when we sat down, he had us, come over and he start sharing stories of when my dad was a kid. And, um, and I remember when, when I left that every,

every ounce of, of, uh, animosity that I had towards my dad gone, you know, because I walked away and tell myself my dad didn't stand as snowball's chance in hell at turning out like a normal human being with that monster. For a father. And this guy just spent the last three hours gloating over his torturous life that he created for my dad as a, as a boy growing up and boasting the whole way through it.

Eddie's dad used to beat that kid, , with his fist until he couldn't even walk.

Oh yeah. His dad was the most brutal person that you could ever meet.

And I was just like, wow. Wow. And suddenly after that, everything my dad ever did, negative washed away. So that was very, very good that we got to do that. My sister, unfortunately, she'll never heal, ever, , she had it worse than I did and , like I said, my mom's right there through now, she didn't know about me getting beat up,, she didn't know about that. But it's not like my sister and I could go to my mom, because she was never there to begin with.

Now that you, um, I was like, no, I'm amazed that you were able to find Anne. Yeah, and I had always wanted to see her again.

More so, wasn't about what really happened, no. I was more, you were. Such a sweet girl. I have no idea why you felt for my dad, but I was always curious, because technically she's probably what? Just a handful of years older than me.

I would say 67. 67. Yeah. So she is about seven years older than me. Really? Yeah. So when he brought home this 19-year-old girl, you know, I'm, I'm a budding teenage boy, and so I was just like, oh, she's pretty.

I would love to talk to her one. Because like I said before. Of who I saw her as all those years ago when she married my dad. This very young, , innocent person and, um, incredibly soft spoken person. And, just way too kind and gentle a person to be around somebody like my dad with his incredibly rough edges, you know?

And so , the tragedy of his death, like I said, definitely not her fault, and I would love to be able to just. See how she's doing because I always wondered, 'cause I'm sure it must have been hard, but I never heard anything. And then also I always wanted to touch base with her because from what I understand, she was the one who took his ashes out to the cabin and she's the only one who knows where it is.

 Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Anne mc is not available at this time. 

​ We found Anne online and made several attempts to connect with her. She eventually blocked us.

​  Coming up 📍 next time.

,

most of the people I dated had come there for the pipeline.

next thing I know they're getting married

The journal. I gave it to the police. They made a copy of it and gave it back, and I don't think I ever looked at it after that,

First year we were together, second year Iceland, third year we were together, fourth year prison.

They had apparently found a map inside the glove box in the airplane that had Xs on 📍 it 📍

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