5 – Just a Little Red Paint

November 16, 2021·28 min·2 clips

Investigators believe Kenneth McDavid was given a laced drink at dinner before being positioned unconscious in the alley — and phone records show Helen called Olga from the murder scene at 1 or 2 a.m.

The red paint seemed almost beside the point. The host treats it like a surface mark, easy to shrug off in the moment, even though it would matter later. If the car had anything to say about Kenneth McDavid's death, it was probably underneath. The clearance was only about six inches, which makes the Mercury Sable feel less like a normal car and more like a tight, ugly piece of evidence. Once the car was on a lift, forensic mechanics could stand below it with bright light and look for clothing, hair, blood, or anything else left behind. The first damage they noticed was structural: a front passenger floor panel had been pushed up a few inches. Farther back, white marks cut through the usual road grime. McDavid's clothing could have made those marks as the car rolled over him. Swabs from several spots tested positive for blood, though investigators still had to find out whether it was human, animal, or something else. Then the fuel line got their attention. Near the gas tank, one mechanic detective found a fuel filter repair Ford would not have built and was not supposed to make. It looked crude. If it pulled off, he said, the car would stop. That detail sits next to Helen's AAA call from a Chevron station about 900 feet from the alley on the night McDavid died. Dennis Kilcoyne kept counting angles. After more than two years, he and his team thought they had checked every edge of the case. Helen and Olga were still the hard part. The narration describes them as already corrupt before the insurance money entered the picture. The host's judgment lands cold: they would point the blame anywhere if it kept the consequences off them.

As heard by us

A forensic true-crime puzzle where the car leads the way before anyone else does.

Helen Goley and Olga Ruderschmidt anchor a corrosive, detail-led death investigation that keeps widening instead of resolving, with insurance checks, a Mercury Sable, and a chain of forensic clues that only grows stranger.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you like a death investigation that goes straight into the undercarriage and never lets up.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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