0:02

On October fourth nineteen sixty,

0:04

Eastern Airlines flight three seventy five

0:07

took off from Boston's Logan Airport. And

0:10

then, two minutes later, the

0:12

plane crashed into Boston Harbor.

0:15

Sixty two passengers died. Witnesses

0:19

on the ground told investigators that they

0:21

saw a puff of gray smoke coming from one

0:23

of the engines. Others said

0:25

they saw fire. 206

0:27

surviving flight attendants said they felt

0:29

the plane shake suddenly after takeoff.

0:34

Investigators recovered the plane wreckage from

0:36

the harbor and began a nine month

0:38

investigation into what happened.

0:42

They couldn't figure it out. And

0:45

then one day, A box was delivered

0:47

to the desk of a scientist in Washington

0:49

DC. And, of course,

0:51

in the beginning, it was what

0:53

I called going Fishing.

0:57

Her name was Roxy Laborm. She

1:00

opened the box and got to work.

1:03

I'm Phoebe Judd. This is criminal.

1:15

Brocksey Lebourn was born in nineteen

1:17

ten in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Growing

1:20

up she said her whole family was obsessed

1:22

with cars and airplanes.

1:25

Here she is speaking with archivists from

1:27

the Smithsonian in two thousand one.

1:29

I used to make A lot more

1:32

planes. I bet.

1:34

And design on

1:36

aircraft. When she was

1:38

in college, Roxy Snuckoff campus.

1:40

To see Amelia

1:41

Earhart land at the Raleigh Airport,

1:44

and we saw coming out of the aircraft

1:46

and everything. And then I

1:48

looked over that And I said,

1:50

oh. Roxie saw her school's

1:53

gym teacher and knew she was in trouble.

1:55

God, I said,

1:56

I know she's going to report

1:59

me. enough, since

2:01

I got back to the

2:02

campus. My name was on the board

2:04

from board to see the team. She

2:07

learned to work on plane engines, and

2:09

she tried to go to aviation school to learn

2:11

to fly. But she was

2:13

refused entry because she was a woman.

2:17

When she couldn't become a pilot, she

2:20

turned her second favorite thing. Birds.

2:24

As a child, she used to go out in the

2:26

woods and climb trees to see owls

2:28

close-up. She got a

2:30

job at the North Carolina State Museum

2:32

of Natural History, where she started

2:35

learning

2:35

taxidermy. I could mount

2:37

Burge, I could

2:40

do fish and dip it,

2:43

and I even can dip him

2:45

sometimes for

2:46

myself. I learned all

2:49

the rudiments of museum work.

2:52

In nineteen forty four, Roxy

2:54

got a job at the Smithsonian. Preparing

2:57

dead birds for the museum's collections. The

3:00

process involves keeping the bird's

3:02

feathers intact,

3:03

while carefully removing all the muscle.

3:06

And most of the skeleton. It wasn't

3:08

a huge staff by any means. I think it

3:10

was, you know, just a handful of people kind

3:12

of working on the taxidermy side of things at

3:14

the Smithsonian back

3:15

then. Chris Sweeney is a journalist.

3:17

He wrote a profile of Roxy for Audubon

3:20

magazine in twenty twenty.

3:22

Rock Oxyago was

3:24

in a pretty small club, and it was mostly

3:27

a boys club

3:27

206. So she was, you know, one of the probably the first

3:29

woman to do the taxidermy work

3:31

at the Smithsonian? When you came

3:33

to work at the museum back in those

3:36

days, you came

3:38

old to a stop because she didn't

3:40

appear on the street of Washington

3:43

without hat gloves and silk

3:46

clothes and all of it. And

3:48

doing the work I was doing, I

3:50

couldn't do it and not change clothes.

3:53

So I changed to hospital

3:56

pants. We didn't call them slacks back

3:58

in the forties. Anyway,

4:01

so this day, I

4:04

went down to the restroom,

4:06

and the courtroom said 206 men

4:09

can't come in here. I

4:11

never quite forgot that one. By

4:15

nineteen sixty, Roxie was working

4:17

full time for the Smithsonian's division

4:19

of birds. When

4:21

the box arrived on her desk, she

4:24

didn't know what to expect or why

4:26

she was being asked to help investigate a

4:28

plane crash. When

4:30

she opened it, there were bits of feathers

4:33

inside. She described

4:35

it as chewed up feather material.

4:37

Of course, I had made up bird skins.

4:40

I knew a whole bird,

4:42

and I also knew

4:45

how to wash and for

4:47

try Herbert, but

4:49

getting single fellows and going

4:52

through aircraft. Now that was a

4:54

new a whole new ballgame. She

4:56

tried to find some way to organize the

4:58

evidence. As we began

5:01

to I realized if I were

5:03

gonna be able to identify

5:06

these fragments of fevers, I

5:09

had to find some character that

5:12

would tell me what a family of

5:14

birds were. I wouldn't

5:16

give up. I guess what

5:18

really. Basis,

5:21

the whole thing was. It

5:23

was probably like a

5:25

bulldog kept working there.

5:29

At the time, Roxie didn't have a microscope

5:31

that would let her look at the samples from the plane

5:34

and the feathers from the Smithsonian's collection

5:36

at the same

5:37

time. So she couldn't

5:39

easily compare them, but

5:41

she figured out a workaround. What I

5:43

did do was make

5:46

sketches all the unknown material.

5:50

And I did them on a little free by five

5:53

cards because we had plenty of

5:55

loads and then burned them on distribution

5:58

to each side. And

6:00

so I would make the little

6:02

sketches on those parts

6:05

and then try to figure out

6:07

what was in the collection to

6:09

make a

6:10

slide. She would

6:12

take out taxidermied birds and

6:14

compare the feathers under the microscope to

6:16

her drawings. She

6:18

started focusing on micro structures

6:21

at the base of the feathers figure

6:23

out what type of bird it was. And

6:27

Roxy Laborne eventually identified

6:29

what caused the crash of Flight three

6:32

seventy five? In fact,

6:34

washed. The plane shut in

6:37

fuck of stars.

6:39

The actual engine shut down

6:42

and the plane crashed. It

6:44

was the deadliest bird strike in aviation

6:46

history. Today, many

6:48

aviation experts call starlings feathered

6:51

bullets. Because of how easily

6:53

they take down a plane due to their tendency

6:56

to flock in large groups, and

6:58

because of their size. Starlings

7:01

wages three ounces and measure

7:03

about eight inches long. But

7:05

their bodies are much denser than other

7:07

birds. Rox's

7:10

work on bird strikes helped engineers

7:12

design plane engines to withstand these

7:14

kinds of strikes. Now

7:16

planes can survive collisions with

7:18

birds up to eight pounds about

7:21

the size of a Canada goose. At

7:24

the end of the Faye's investigation. They

7:27

sent Roxie a new microscope and

7:29

ordered plane mechanics across the country

7:31

to collect a feather or more

7:33

of whatever bird remains they found

7:36

and send them to roxy. Ninety

7:39

five percent of the birth strikes

7:41

occur when the plane is taking off or when it's landing.

7:44

This is Carla Dove, an ornithologist

7:46

at the Smithsonian, and one of Roxy's

7:48

former students.

7:50

So if we know the species that

7:52

are being hit on

7:54

these various air fields, the

7:56

airport managers and the biologists can

7:58

go there and modify

8:01

the habitat, or do something to

8:03

keep those birds from being attracted to that

8:05

environment, thereby reducing

8:08

the risk of a bird strike on that

8:10

airfield. So it's

8:12

all fundamental to the species

8:14

of birds involved and that where

8:17

roxy realized that it's important

8:20

to identify

8:21

these birth strikes all the way down to

8:23

the species level.

8:25

Roxy continued to work with the FAA.

8:28

She got better with every case. She

8:31

usually only knew a little about the accidents.

8:34

Pilots often didn't notice what kind of bird

8:36

they'd hit or even when they'd hit

8:38

it. Sometimes, she'd only

8:40

know where the plane took off from and where

8:42

it landed. It's a puzzle, and

8:45

you have to put pieces together. And

8:48

you don't know what pieces you have,

8:51

and Ement may be the same

8:53

species, but it's a different

8:55

arrangement -- Mhmm. -- or the

8:57

parts. And so

9:00

everyone is like a new

9:02

thing. It's all every

9:04

job is a custom job.

9:08

You have a general method,

9:11

but whatever material you have

9:14

has to be worked. Around

9:17

this method.

9:21

Roxy started to get a reputation for

9:23

her ability to identify a bird

9:25

from the smallest feather. Nobody

9:27

could do what she could do. And

9:30

then she started getting calls from the FBI.

9:33

The FBI has worked with scientists from

9:35

the Smithsonian since the nineteen thirties.

9:38

But until Roxy, no one had specialized

9:41

in feathers.

9:43

Her first criminal case was a homicide investigation.

9:46

A woman had shot her husband while he

9:48

was asleep. This woman had

9:51

used pillow

9:53

for her arms. So

9:55

when the bullet went

9:57

into his head, some of

9:59

the downey barbeew from

10:01

that fella material in

10:03

the fella.

10:05

Went in along with the bullet,

10:08

and they brought that info in

10:10

to me to turn it on.

10:14

She also worked a cold case in Alaska

10:16

for the FBI. They sent

10:18

roxy feathers found inside a van that

10:20

they thought had been used in the kidnap and murder

10:23

of a woman ten years earlier. Thoman's

10:25

body had never been found, but

10:28

her dam jacket had washed up on

10:30

the shore. Roxy

10:32

determined the feathers in the van were

10:34

matched to the jacket. Roxy

10:38

also worked with US fish and wildlife on

10:41

poaching and smuggling cases.

10:43

And once they asked her to go undercover,

10:46

I didn't get so well on the cuff.

10:50

She was supposed to go to a national boy scout

10:52

Gymboree. To see whether the scouts

10:54

were using head dresses with real eagle

10:56

and hawk feathers. All

10:58

rocks he had to do was inspect the

11:00

head dresses and keep a low profile.

11:03

She wasn't supposed to let on. She was working with

11:05

law enforcement.

11:06

So I was supposed to go

11:09

out there and

11:11

you talk to the scout and look

11:14

around and see what I see. Well,

11:17

of course, my voice, it wasn't important

11:19

or one trip on the car, but

11:22

now it doesn't have to count

11:23

me. That wasn't my

11:25

car, but it all. But

11:28

she did determine that the skirts were using

11:30

hawk feathers that were protected. Roxy

11:33

kept getting calls. Sometimes,

11:36

she received feathers to examine.

11:38

Sometimes, whole birds. One

11:40

year, I had over a thousand

11:43

carpets. And tell me from different

11:45

agents. And I worked

11:47

out a streamlined

11:50

method for identifying the

11:52

species using

11:54

the sternum and the car

11:56

colleagues. Mhmm. And I usually always

11:58

kept a winged bone and

12:01

a leg bone femur. But

12:03

that material was much easier to

12:06

learn and identify

12:08

than any fellow stuff. Roxy

12:10

found she didn't like to work on violent crimes,

12:14

but she did like testifying in court.

12:17

On a poaching case, A man had

12:19

been caught illegally buying and selling eagle

12:21

feathers. American Indian

12:23

tribes can get permits to use feathers for

12:25

ceremonial purposes, but

12:27

not to sell. He dosed

12:29

the feathers in a head dress he tried to sell

12:31

to tourists. At

12:33

the trial, Roxy revealed that

12:36

she had marked the feathers with black light powder

12:38

before the man bought them.

12:40

I get up. I had a testifying. Holding

12:44

to bind it. In front of the jewelry

12:47

and turned the black light on. It

12:50

lights up like a Christmas tree.

12:52

And my little code

12:54

marks, just shining up on

12:56

the earth. For

12:58

homicide and assault trial in Utah, Roxy

13:01

testified that feathers found on the victim's

13:04

clothing were made up of duck and

13:06

goose

13:06

down. Similar, to the

13:08

duck and goose down feathers in the defendant's

13:10

coat. Once you swear

13:12

in, you'll play in a different

13:15

role. You there as

13:18

as this expert actor,

13:20

give it this testimony for

13:22

the audience, which is a jewelry. And

13:25

so you are

13:28

very sure with your words, but

13:31

I won't say you don't have

13:33

butterflies before you step up there and

13:35

raise that hand. And

13:37

so you never knew what question was

13:39

coming in.

13:41

She said that once she would testify in court,

13:44

defense lawyers like to zero in on her

13:46

place in the chain of custody how

13:48

she got and returned the evidence to police.

13:51

With her FBI work, agents brought

13:53

the evidence to her and stayed with her

13:56

while she worked. But with

13:58

fish and wildlife, she usually walked

14:00

over to pick up evidence and bring

14:02

back herself. She

14:04

went so often to their offices that

14:06

she learned to time her walks, so she

14:08

didn't hit any red lights. When

14:10

she described this walk in court, one

14:13

lawyer commented on how dangerous Washington

14:15

DC could be, but I'm afraid to

14:17

walk the streets of Washington says,

14:21

the Fed's attorney Now,

14:23

what are you gonna say? Are you gonna answer

14:26

that? Because he's already rammed

14:28

about chain custody. And

14:30

you are trying to figure out a way to stop

14:33

it before it gets out of your hand

14:35

because that's all he wants. But you would

14:37

make one mistake then

14:40

all you have to do, at least we're

14:42

about in the minds of that jury, and

14:44

you're banished, and

14:47

that's not what you're there for. So

14:50

how are you gonna answer? Well,

14:54

all I could think of was well,

14:56

I walked fast. And I

14:59

stopped. That's all I said. That

15:01

was like a bombshell to him, and

15:04

he didn't know what to come up with. I've

15:07

been to that one. Some of the jurors

15:09

were asleep. You gotta wake them

15:11

up. They've got to hear your testimony.

15:14

They love those kind of answers. And

15:18

the best way is to say

15:20

something in such a way that a life.

15:23

Once you get them to laugh, then

15:26

you got to keep them and you're

15:28

not gonna keep them if you're a ray. And

15:31

they don't want to listen to all

15:33

your accomplishments because that would

15:36

then is looking to fucking hell

15:38

to and you can't talk up to him.

15:40

I hope you'll be patronized.

15:43

You gotta stay right on the same level.

15:46

Make them feel you all

15:48

one of

15:48

them. And this is not

15:50

anything I've read in the book. It's just

15:52

me. She said defense

15:54

lawyers often tried to trip her up 206

15:57

make her seem less credible as a witness. At

16:00

one trial, A defense attorney asked Roxie.

16:03

Why do you think you're an expert in feather identification?

16:07

I told you. Well, I

16:09

don't know, but all

16:12

my colleagues that I am,

16:14

so I guess I am. We'll

16:20

be right back.

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Dating apps, whether you're single

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in a relationship or somewhere in between,

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you can't get away from

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them. But what happens when

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your romantic life is part of a company's

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game and the methods they used

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to keep us in an endless cycle of

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swiping. We've seen how one company's

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dating apps out there and why that could be a

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problem. And we've explored how we've

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entrusted our romantic features to mysterious

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algorithms.

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whether the so called feminist dating

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app has actually changed the

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game, and we're looking at the future of

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dating. Are we all headed to niche

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apps? Are we going to be using artificial

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intelligence to find

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love? Or is the next generation

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of data is going to give up on apps altogether?

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Land of the Giants dating games.

17:30

Follow wherever you listen to hear new

17:32

episodes every Wednesday.

17:36

You never know what the future holds

17:39

until it hits. The

17:42

threats posed closed by Earth orbit causing

17:45

asteroids and comets has long been a concern

17:47

of mine and of the committee. NASA

17:50

has confirmed a so called city killer

17:52

asteroid narrowly missed hitting

17:55

Earth.

17:56

The dedicated researchers who find

17:59

and track asteroids across the solar

18:01

system set their sights on the little

18:03

asteroid

18:04

moonlet, dimorphous, with

18:06

one mission in mind.

18:10

Give a little boop. You know, like, boop.

18:13

Humanity's first ever attempt to

18:15

boop an asteroid. Can

18:18

we reach into the cosmos and

18:21

defend the planet?

18:24

Boom. This week an unexplainable

18:26

How did NASA's asteroid boop

18:28

attempt actually go? And

18:30

what does it mean for the future of our planet?

18:33

Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every

18:35

Wednesday.

18:41

With casework from the FBI, Fish

18:43

and Wild Life, and the FAA, Roxie

18:46

Lebourn often worked through weekends and holidays.

18:49

Students recalled, she never took a

18:51

vacation.

18:53

So in nineteen eighty, she started training

18:55

an assistant. It felt like when

18:57

we were doing bird strikes, all I saw were

18:59

ring bell gals. You know, we were identifying

19:02

wing feathers of ring bell gals that

19:04

went through a jet

19:05

engine. And so 206 this day, I

19:07

can't see a ring bell girl without

19:09

thinking about Roxy. Beth Ann

19:11

Seboe was twenty two and a master

19:14

student. When she started working with Roxy,

19:16

who was by then in her seventies. During

19:19

the day, Beth Anne worked at the museum,

19:22

doing inventory for the bird

19:23

collections. In the

19:25

evenings, she would go to Roxie's lab

19:28

for her training. And so I had already

19:30

worked a full time job that day.

19:32

And I was usually tired by the end of

19:34

an evening, but we always took a

19:36

break halfway through. We went

19:38

down through the Smithsonian to

19:41

the the little break room.

19:43

She got a coke and peanuts. I'd

19:46

get a diet coke and peanuts and then back

19:48

up we'd go and we'd sit and have

19:50

our coke and peanuts. And

19:52

that was our break. And then we get back right back

19:54

to work. And I remember

19:57

the the Division of Birds had five hundred

19:59

sixty thousand birds in it at that time,

20:01

study skins, and then about two hundred

20:03

to two hundred fifty thousand skeletons.

20:06

And you climbed up these big

20:08

ladders and into these three

20:10

tiers of cabinets. There were

20:12

metal cabinets with wooden trays in them.

20:15

And pull those out and inside would be

20:17

a whole tray of study

20:19

skins of birds.

20:21

Roxie had done the taxidermy on many of

20:23

these birds herself. There's

20:26

a picture of her taken by a Smithsonian photographer.

20:29

She's surrounded on all sides by

20:32

dozens of open trays, filled

20:34

with dead birds. Each

20:36

drawer has birds arranged in neat

20:38

colorful rows, bright

20:40

red parrots in one drawer, giant

20:42

geese in another, and dozens

20:44

of tiny yellow warplers in another.

20:48

The bird's eyes are sewn closed, they

20:50

almost look like they're sleeping. Their

20:53

legs are crossed and tied with an ID

20:55

tag with information about

20:57

when and where the bird was

20:58

collected. Bethan

21:01

had to memorize where all the birds were.

21:04

She'd say Bethan, I think, would need a Mallard

21:06

Duck. And I'd so I'd scurry

21:08

over to the Mallard Duck section because I

21:10

was twenty And I would scurry

21:12

up that ladder, and then I would look in

21:14

the Mallard Duck drawer, you know,

21:16

looking for a male and no doubt

21:18

I would bring it down and she'd go, Beth

21:20

Ann, that's the wrong

21:21

bird. And off I'd go again.

21:24

Beth Ann says they get a box.

21:27

And open it to find what looked

21:29

like pocketland.

21:30

And she'd say, okay, we've got this from

21:33

Kansas. Alright?

21:35

So then she would start

21:37

talking her way through it. And,

21:40

you know, you start with

21:43

kind of what birds are there

21:45

and then what size a bird is it

21:47

and which part of the bird is this feather

21:49

from or this piece of gown or

21:51

whatever and and

21:54

work from there. And so there would be all these

21:56

little trays. And then other days, I would go

21:58

in go to work

22:00

with her, and we would go

22:02

down to the marine mammal lab.

22:04

And the marine mammal lab is in the courtyard

22:07

at Natural History Museum.

22:09

It's Smithsonian. And it has

22:11

a very sweet smell. It's

22:13

sickeningly sweet, but

22:16

those days, we were going to identify

22:20

lots and lots of bird

22:23

carcasses, and they were typically from

22:26

duck hunting overkill. So

22:28

it's legal to hunt ducks, but it's not

22:30

legal to kill too many.

22:33

So we would have to identify what

22:35

we would do is strip off the meat, strip

22:37

off all the tissue, and

22:40

then put them into the domestic beetle colony,

22:42

the the remaining skeletons. And

22:47

the domestic beetles would do their work

22:49

clean them up. And then we'd go back

22:51

a few weeks later, get them,

22:53

clean them up, and take them up to the

22:55

collection and compare them against the

22:57

study

22:58

skins. So the work was very varied.

23:01

So that this isn't just like a nice

23:03

little tray of cleaned feathers that

23:06

you and roxy were going

23:07

through. I mean, you were you were really in

23:09

these birds? We were. And

23:11

often they were at whole birds, like those those

23:13

duck carcasses had no heads. They were just

23:16

what you would sell somebody or put

23:18

on you

23:18

know, put in the oven. In

23:20

nineteen eighty eight, Beth Anne went with

23:23

Roxy on a raid with fish and

23:24

wildlife. In Charlottesville, Virginia.

23:27

At the Crookedawn, six

23:29

o'clock in the morning, we're all driving

23:31

in a convoy

23:33

of black police cars

23:35

and SUVs out

23:37

to this farm. That van was riding

23:40

in the back seat of one of the cars with Roxy.

23:43

Roxy had on her usual uniform, a

23:45

white lab coat, and white kids sneakers.

23:49

They were driving to the state of billionaire and

23:51

media mogul John

23:53

Kluge. In the eighties,

23:55

he was one of the richest men in America. I

23:58

had no idea what it would be like when we got there,

24:00

but we went back on this beautiful,

24:02

beautiful farm. And

24:04

there we parked by this hole

24:07

in the ground and they called it the pit.

24:10

The pit was the crime scene. It

24:13

was full of dead birds. So

24:16

Roger Gaphart was the youngest, newest agent.

24:18

They made him jump down in the pit, and it stunk

24:21

because this was just like any

24:23

other

24:23

dump, but it was all decaying animals.

24:26

How big was it?

24:29

Probably, like, two Suburban's in the ground?

24:32

It must have smelled horrible. Oh,

24:34

it was awful.

24:36

Agent Getpart told the reporter that it was,

24:38

quote, the most vile crime

24:40

scene he'd ever worked. Roxy,

24:43

who was seventy six at the time, said

24:45

that the smell didn't really bother her. She

24:48

said, as a rule, mammals

24:51

smell worse than birds. Fishing

24:54

wildlife parked a pickup truck next to

24:56

the pit. Beth Anne and Roxy

24:58

set up on the tailgate. Agent

25:00

Gephart ended up one body at a time,

25:04

Some were badly

25:04

decomposed. Others were

25:07

only skeletons. And

25:09

he would hand me what he thought

25:11

was a car guess, I would put it

25:13

up there on some kind of a

25:15

tray, and Roxy and I would

25:17

look it over she would identify

25:19

it and write notes. So she

25:21

kept her hands clean. I had on gloves,

25:23

of course, but I was handling the

25:25

birds, the in between week of the

25:27

birds, and pork roger at Park was in

25:29

the pit. John

25:32

Kluge ran an English style shooting preserve

25:35

on his estate. His wife was

25:37

British, and she wanted something that

25:39

reminded her of home. The

25:41

Kluge invited celebrities like Frank's

25:44

and Audra and Arnold Palmer to

25:46

hunt pheasants and ducks. Guess?

25:49

Were served champagne in silver goblets

25:51

and taken to the shooting grounds in

25:53

horse drawn carriages. FISH

25:57

and wildlife agents received an anonymous

25:59

letter that claimed the estate

26:02

kept their game bird safe by

26:04

killing anything that could hurt them. Often

26:07

birds of prey. Agents

26:10

found former employee who told them

26:12

where they could find these dead birds. FISH

26:15

and wildlife brought roxy to identify

26:17

them and see if they were protected under

26:19

federal law. She

26:22

worked fast She would

26:24

look at the body in Beth Ann's hand and

26:26

then write her IDs on the report. Turkey

26:29

falcher, partial skull. Or

26:32

red tailed hawk

26:33

immature, tail feathers. Beth

26:37

and I had enough to do when

26:39

they brought it up and we had to put it lay

26:41

it out on the tailgate

26:43

and identify. That was and

26:45

we had to go west as fast as she had

26:47

possibly could. At the end of

26:49

the day, Roxy and Bethanne catalogued

26:52

more than a hundred dead birds, mostly

26:54

hawks and owls, that were protected

26:57

under the migratory bird treaty act.

27:00

It can be a felony to kill them.

27:03

They also found several neighborhood dogs

27:05

who had been reported missing.

27:07

As a matter of fact, I think

27:10

they found the sheriff's beagle in that

27:12

pit. The sheriff's beagle Yeah.

27:15

A dead dog. They found because they thought

27:17

he was killing pheasants. And so

27:19

I'm pretty sure that was the bottom line on that

27:21

bagel. He had collar on, of course, they

27:23

didn't think to taking the collar off. So

27:25

the game's keepers had had shot

27:28

anything that they thought was you

27:30

know, gonna pray on these poor

27:32

pheasants. So we found red

27:35

tailed hawks and red

27:37

shouldered hawks which would probably would

27:39

not eat a pheasant. Neither of those

27:41

species would eat a pheasant. It would have

27:43

been raccoons and foxes, praying

27:46

on those pheasants.

27:48

Three estate employees were arrested and

27:51

convicted of conspiring to kill the birds

27:53

of prey. They were fined.

27:56

No charges were brought against the cookies

27:58

at all. They were allowed to continue

28:00

running a hunting preserve. Beth

28:04

Anne remembers feeling amazed

28:06

watching Roxywork.

28:08

She just kept on. I mean, she was very dogged

28:10

in her determination about solving

28:13

puzzles. And so now

28:15

I train competition search dogs.

28:18

One of the things we say is the search

28:20

is the reward. It's that

28:22

activity of solving that puzzle

28:24

for the dog. And for me,

28:27

that's the reward. And so I

28:29

think that's one of the big things we had

28:31

in common. Just loving to figure

28:33

out what the heck happened here. We'll

28:40

be right back.

28:46

A few years into Beth Ann's time with Roxy,

28:49

fish and wildlife asked them to fly out for

28:51

a big poaching case.

28:53

Roxy and I went to Mesa,

28:55

Arizona, to the Fisher

28:57

Model Air Service Office there. We went

29:00

through the garage, We had

29:02

on our little white lab coats. We

29:04

went into this double car garage room,

29:06

and there were two freezers on either side

29:08

of the room. And all

29:11

around the room were shelves of

29:14

mounted birds, you know, so, like, taxidermy

29:17

birds. Fans

29:20

with feathers, made of feathers,

29:23

single feather. I mean, it was just

29:26

a crazy amount of stuff.

29:29

Fish and wildlife needed rocks in

29:31

Beth Ann to identify every

29:33

individual feather in the room.

29:35

They knew they had illegal things there, but

29:37

you can't take those things to court until they're

29:40

positively identified as a protected

29:42

species. So Roxie

29:44

walked in and honest to God,

29:46

she said, Oh, Beth Anne.

29:49

Oh, my god. And I

29:51

just started laughing. Because

29:54

it was exactly how I was feeling. And

29:56

so I said, I'll tell you what, we're gonna

29:58

do like we did with the pit. You

30:01

just stand there, put you back to the room,

30:03

and I'm gonna bring you one item at

30:05

a time. I'll do all the evidence handling.

30:08

So the agents, you know, got

30:10

things down up on shelves and

30:13

we just worked our way through, you

30:15

know, a couple thousand. I

30:18

felt like thousands of items. By

30:20

this time, I was totally hooked on

30:22

the puzzle

30:23

solving. It was, you know

30:26

I mean, and here we were, it's the biggest test

30:28

of all because it was just so

30:30

much So I

30:33

used to tell Beth Anne, I

30:35

don't care how long you study fellas.

30:37

You never gonna learn them. And

30:39

I think that's true with and

30:42

I and

30:44

I have I I still don't know

30:46

them and I never will. Keep

30:49

learning new things all the time.

30:53

What made you stick around? And

30:56

want to learn from Roxy. I mean, could

30:58

you tell that this was

31:00

someone who who knew their stuff?

31:02

That if you wanted to know birds and you wanted

31:05

to know bird feathers that this was the right woman

31:07

for you to be around?

31:09

It was very clear she knew what she was talking about.

31:12

I think what made me want

31:14

to do it was and

31:16

and stick with it was I realized what

31:18

a special position I

31:20

was in. It was only me.

31:23

And people began

31:25

to know that Roxy had beth

31:27

a. I'm the student and that I would be there to

31:30

facilitate both our

31:32

growth. And so I just

31:34

I really liked being with her. She

31:37

was difficult because she worked so hard,

31:39

but it was

31:41

well worth the effort.

31:43

She had a reputation for working late.

31:46

Sometimes until one o'clock in the morning.

31:48

You

31:49

know, I was twenty two because and I hadn't

31:51

dated yet. And so I was starting to date,

31:53

and she would say, I say, Roxy,

31:55

can't work on Wednesday night because I'm

31:58

gonna go out a

31:59

date. I'm gonna have dinner with somebody. And she said,

32:02

At that, you don't need to have dinner. It's

32:07

like, are you kidding me? And,

32:11

you know, I didn't I didn't get it, but now

32:13

I get it.

32:16

So she used to tell us, you know, your

32:18

entertainment now is your work.

32:21

Carla Dove, who worked with Roxy

32:23

from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety

32:25

eight. We used to stay late,

32:28

working on better cases. And

32:30

we did that for years and years until I finally

32:32

felt comfortable enough to

32:35

to do it myself.

32:37

So she was a tough boss. She

32:40

was tough, but she was fun. I mean, you

32:42

know, she wasn't like, she never

32:44

would tell you what you had

32:46

to do. She would just just keep working

32:48

away. And she was a and she was

32:50

a role model in that way. It's like, she

32:52

was you do what she does, and that's how

32:54

you you learned.

32:56

And I had to work with her on evenings and weekends

32:59

and holidays, and so she would give me a ride

33:01

home every evening. She had a

33:03

two eighty z a black

33:05

two eighty c. That's a sports

33:07

car? Yes. It was a very fast two

33:09

door sports car. It

33:12

turned out that I lived right around

33:14

the corner from her, so she would drive

33:16

me home. She'd love to go fast.

33:19

This woman in her eighties love

33:22

to drive that car, and she

33:24

probably was not the best driver

33:27

that sort of been driving

33:29

a little sports car. But

33:32

we got some pretty strange looks sometimes

33:34

as we were riding on the on the Express

33:36

Lane. In

33:38

in in her little two eighty z x.

33:41

Some of my favorite memories are talking

33:43

to her in the car because

33:47

I just those times with her

33:49

when I think you're often

33:52

not lucky enough to get

33:54

a relationship like that where you could talk

33:56

with somebody and

33:58

just have them to yourself for an hour.

34:00

It was an hour drive easy to

34:02

get from DC to

34:03

Virginia. And, what

34:06

a great thing. Roxie

34:10

was eighty years old when she finally stopped

34:12

working on criminal cases. In

34:15

nineteen ninety, Bethanne became

34:17

the resident feather expert at the

34:19

newly opened national fish and wildlife

34:21

forensics lab. The lab

34:23

is dedicated entirely to wildlife

34:26

crime.

34:28

Roxie's former student Carla still

34:30

works at the Smithsonian.

34:31

And I am currently the director of

34:33

the feather identification lab.

34:36

Carla's continuing Roxie's work with

34:38

the FAA. She told

34:40

us that last year, she handled about

34:42

ten thousand bird strike cases.

34:45

Using a mix of Roxy's microscope techniques,

34:48

as well as DNA testing 206 identify

34:50

birds.

34:52

Hopefully, when I retire

34:54

someone else will continue to do this after

34:56

me, but it was all started

34:59

by Roxy. But,

35:01

you know, she had other things

35:04

that

35:05

came along with that, like lessons

35:07

in life that just things

35:10

like, know, just do your

35:12

work and and don't worry about

35:14

what your colleagues are doing or just

35:16

do the best you can do at your job with

35:18

one of her things. The other thing is

35:21

keep an open mind all your life,

35:24

you know, try to just treat

35:26

people the way you would like to be

35:28

treated.

35:29

So 206 those personal

35:32

things are also part of her legacy. I

35:35

think that's Roxie's lesson.

35:37

Is to pass a hit on pass on something

35:40

good to another person because

35:42

after you're gone, you're gone.

35:45

People may or may not remember

35:47

you, but it you'll be remembered through your

35:49

actions. To

35:51

me, I feel that when you'll

35:53

get or opportunity to learn and

35:56

why then is you have a responsibility

35:59

to share it with someone else.

36:02

So you can have them build

36:05

on your knowledge and go

36:08

far more forward, then you

36:10

good by yourself. And

36:13

it's like, we're at the bottom of

36:15

the ladder. And he's stood.

36:17

We go, look. And

36:19

we'll never get to the top, but

36:21

we'll keep flying.

36:25

Bird strikes are still common. Captain

36:29

Solly Sullenberger crash landed in

36:31

the Hudson River after hitting a flock

36:33

of geese in two thousand nine, but

36:35

fatal crashes from birds are much rarer.

36:38

That's partly thanks to Roxy. Roxy

36:43

retired as a forensic or pathologist from

36:46

the Smithsonian in nineteen eighty

36:48

eight, but she kept working

36:50

on bird strike cases for years

36:52

afterwards. She

36:54

died in two thousand three. She was

36:56

ninety two and had become

36:58

widely known as the feather lady.

37:02

He just had a job to do, and

37:04

that was it. Criminal

37:20

is created by Lauren Spohr and me.

37:23

Katie Wilson is our senior producer. Katie

37:25

Bishop is our supervising producer. Our

37:28

producers are Susannah Robertson, Jackie

37:30

Sacheco, Libby Foster, and Samantha

37:32

Brown. Our technical directors

37:34

are our buyers. Engineering by Russ

37:36

Henry. Julian Alexander

37:39

makes original illustrations for each episode

37:41

of criminal, you can see them at this

37:44

is criminal dot com. Special

37:46

thanks to Chris Sweeney, Erin Wade,

37:48

and to the Smithsonian institution archives providing

37:51

a share audio of Roxy Lebourn herself.

37:55

Roxy was interviewed by Marcy Hecker

37:58

and Pamela Henson in two thousand one,

38:00

In two thousand twenty, the Smithsonian made

38:03

those conversations public for the first

38:05

time. We're on Facebook

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and Twitter at criminal show and Instagram

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at criminal underscore podcast. We're

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the scenes content. Criminal

38:19

is recorded in the studios of North Carolina

38:21

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38:24

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network. Discover more great shows

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at podcast dot voxmedia dot com.

38:32

I'm Phoebe Judge. This criminal.