When Killers Get Caught: A True Crime Podcast · Ransom Storytelling Studios LLC

Stephanie Kane & The Murder She Couldn't Forget

·1 hr 16 min·5 clips

Police find Betty face down in the garage, with blood on the ceiling and clocks unplugged at 11:22, 11:23, and 11:27.

1. When Killers Get Caught: A True Crime Podcast focuses this episode on Stephanie Cain’s account of Betty Fry’s 1973 murder and the case that her novel Quiet Time reopened. 2. Brittany Ransom hosts the show and introduces Stephanie Cain as an award-winning author of seven crime novels whose family was directly tied to the Fry case. 3. The episode asks how Betty Fry’s death, the family’s hidden mental illness, and a later fictionalized novel ended up pulling a cold case back into the legal system. 4. Stephanie describes Betty and Dwayne Fry as coming from neighboring Kansas families with long-standing contempt between the Ortons and the Fries. 5. She says Betty’s mother, Kundi, raised 10 children on a Depression-era farm, including eight daughters organized into cooking and cleaning brigades. 6. She also explains that the Ortons were German Catholic wheat farmers while the Fries were Protestant shop owners in the county seat. 7. Stephanie says both families hid mental illness, including Dwayne’s father’s clinical depression and Betty’s bipolar disease. 8. She notes that Betty’s children did not learn about her bipolar disorder until after she was killed. 9. The family phrase “Quiet Time” referred to Betty lying in a dark bedroom with a cloth over her head while the children were told not to make noise. 10. Stephanie links that phrase to the title of her novel Quiet Time, which later became connected to the reopened cold case. 11. She recalls that Betty was quiet and composed when she first met her, even though Doug had described her as vivacious and manic. 12. She says Betty disapproved of Stephanie and Doug living together in an apartment on the hill in Boulder before their wedding. 13. On June 9, 1973, Betty called Stephanie’s apartment, asked for a message to one of Dwayne’s daughters, and became one of the last people Stephanie spoke to before the killing. 14. Stephanie describes Dwayne arriving unexpectedly at the karate studio in a long-sleeve dark shirt on a broiling hot day with a bruise on his forehead. 15. She says Dwayne claimed he had come to watch class, show Greg the apartment, and look for a rehearsal-dinner place, even though the visit was not planned. 16. Stephanie recounts how Betty was found face down in the garage, bludgeoned to death, with blood on the ceiling and trash barrels containing cheap household items. 17. She says three electric clocks had been unplugged at 11:22, 11:23, and 11:27, giving police a timeline for the intruder’s movements. 18. She details the witness statement from Greg’s 13-year-old friend and the TV Guide check that matched The Monkees and Sherlock Holmes to 11:35. 19. The episode is interview-driven, reflective, and detailed, with Stephanie narrating events from memory and Brittany pressing for chronology and context. 20. Listeners who like family-centered true crime, legal history, and long-case reconstructions will get the most from it; listeners wanting a short standalone murder summary may skip it.

As heard by us

A cold case told through the woman who carried it for decades.

Stephanie Kane's story stays centered on the murder of her mother-in-law, Betty Fry, and on how an unresolved case can keep shaping a family long after the headlines move on.

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Why you'd press play

You want a case that starts days before a wedding and comes back to life decades later.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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