Case 308: Ruth Finley
In the late 1970s, Wichita secretary Ruth Finley began to receive cryptic letters and chilling threats from a mysterious figure known only as ‘The Poet.’ For years, The Poet tormented Ruth and her husband Ed, leaving them in a constant state of confusion and fear. Despite relentless efforts from the police, The Poet continued to evade detection. But as the investigation unfolded, the truth that emerged left everyone questioning what was real.
Team:
Anonymous Host - narration
Milly Raso - research, writing, creative direction
Mike Migas - production, music
Andrew D.B. Joslyn - music
Comments (35)
Great episode!! Not once did I suspect she was the one doing it
You know it’s my own fault for opening the comments before I finished the episode 😂
Wow, some people really got to live in a much kinder, gentler, more humane and understanding world. That story is wild just from the standpoint of modern comparison... And of course the loose ends. The broken window incident, etc.
I never thought we would have a somewhat happy ending in a casefile episode. Great episode guys
Truly a fascinating case, very surprised I'd never heard of it before. Great episode!
This is honestly one of the most uplifting Casefile episodes I've ever heard! Nobody got killed, nobody went to prison. Ruth finally got the mental health care she sorely needed and went on to enjoy the rest of her life happily with her husband. Crazy how all it needed was one unbiased person to review her case without having met her to figure out what was going on. I don't blame the other officers for not noticing it themselves, they were probably too invested and too emotionally connected to Ruth to look at it objectively. Not often I finish a Casefile episode feeling more cheerful than before!
Pro: the police took a case of stalking seriously and took actions to protect the individual Con: there was no stalker...
Crazy case, really well crafted episode! Are we assuming now that the initial branding episode was similarly self-inflicted? I just heard an episode on another podcast where police called BS on someone’s story after they claimed to have been rendered unconscious overnight with chloroform. I was confused when I heard the same claim being made here, but had no other reason to doubt the branding story until much later in the episode. It’s just mind boggling to consider that Ruth caused herself so much physical pain, between the branding and the stabbing.
Therapy just makes manipulative assholes like Ruth better at lying.
Seek help
Really enjoyed this one, great work guys. So good to have you back!
Thought the 'twist' was pretty obvious but a very well told story nonetheless.
That was a beautiful story.
Did Ruth place the call ‘from the hospital’ saying a man came in looking for her? Police went to the hospital after a nurse said she thought the man may have been ‘Ruth’s assailant’, but he was gone when they arrived.
Also - the real victim here is Ed. He was terrorised by the poet for years… he slept with a gun, had to drive his wife to the hospital because she had been stabbed, had the phone lines cut in Xmas Eve like… poor Ed
Holy. Sh*t. OMG. What an episode!!!!!!! You all are amazing.
Can I just ask fellow listeners to please title their comments with SPOILER warnings to avoid giving away the contents of the episode? Thanks 🩷
Don’t read the comments until after you listen to it if that’s an issue
Incredible episode!
I am a person who suffered a great deal of abuse as both a child and a dependent adult, and I know more than a few people whose trauma has manifested into "headmates," i.e. different voices or personalities that come forward or fade back at times. My username is Suicidesauce, for chrissake, I know what all of this is like, I know what trauma is like, I know what feeling like there are different people inside of you is like. But if I had multiple personalities and one of them was someone who wrote frankly awful poetry I would definitely not go on the news about it. I was listening with my head in my hands like "oh god, PLEASE learn to paint"
Hi team, ever think about switching off the comments ???
I think it only crosses their mind when I start thirstposting about Anonymous Host. How you goin sweetheart
Cakefiles pending, this was a standout telling of the story. At one point im like, why we reading this sickos poems so much? Then the twist. It felt like all the stylistic choices in narration fell into place at that point. Great work to the writer, and our eternal Narrator.
What a brave woman! Thanks for relating this story.
I think the main thing from the psychoanalysis here is the master signifier of ‘cry baby’ and her embodiment of an unwanted child. She wanted recognition for her cries! Likely the rest of the childhood abuse is factitious.
Man I was really not expecting this to take the turn that it did. I was certain for a while that this woman was the victim of an ongoing harassment by actual people. When the twist came though… I was shocked.
I picked it in the first 20 mins. Was driving home with my wife and we were listening and I said, “it’s always when she’s alone, I bet I know where it’s going”.
You guys ever think about changing the name to Cakefile and discuss all things cakes instead.
The fact that the chief detective basically solved the years-long investigation after spending a weekend studying the file though. Oof this must have been a tough day at work for the detectives.
But maybe also a lesson to him that he needed to be more involved in the cases.
Whichever is or isn't I'm truly grateful that casefile still continues there mouthwatering stories.. Keep it up guys
Casefile - do you have an error at the 57 minute mark? You said "a few weeks earlier in mid-September 1980", but you had just been talking about 1981.
Ahh you guys know I am among your biggest fans, but it's WILD and honestly unlike Casefile to treat the junk psychology in this episode with such reverence? It's not even a debate at this point that repressed memories aren't real, and the fad of psychologists "uncovering" them in the 80s did far more harm than good. The possibility that Ruth just swapped one self-indulgent, grandiose form of attention-seeking for another via the drama of making up trauma for a shrink eager to profit from her notoriety really should be part of the framing of this case, imo. By the same token, "split personalities" in the sense they seem to be portrayed here are well established as not being real either; dissociative identity certainly is real, but it doesn't lead to the kind of memory blackouts and lack of awareness that Ruth and her doctors claimed. I'm not sure how the new documentary handled all this, but I'm really surprised you guys just presented all this debunked outdated 80s pseudoscience without any contextualization or critique. And of course none of that precludes her trauma being real and her healing through therapy being real! I'm just saying it's really irresponsible to present this therapeutic method as legitimate when it's profoundly illegitimate. Maybe you are trusting us to fill in these gaps and be skeptical of Ruth and her claims of abuse, but i didn't get that sense from the last third of this at all. All that said, this was scary and dark and mildly depressing, and if all the incidents are true, then there's no way Ed didn't know about this because they were *both* downstairs when their window got smashed that one time. So either he just nodded along while she made up the details of this one false incident, or he must have been creating the incidents with her. I kept waiting for you guys to come back to this moment! A mystery. Hmmm. Hmmmmm.
Thank you so much for saying all this. It epically infuriates me when podcasts share not just incorrect psychological information, but diagnoses that have been debunked for years already, ruled as junk science. It's such a disservice to...listeners, patrons, victims...everyone! In particular, I cringe when thinking about how many lay people hear this bs, and they have no reason to question it, I mean, why would they? They have full trust in, and believe these podcasters have done their due diligence and researched it all...so why would they think twice about it? I mean, a quick Google search by the writers and/or "researchers" would have given them all the answers they need to make an informed decision to NOT present that crap as fact. And yes, while DID is real, it is very rare, and scarcely diagnosed without many hours of evidentiary behaviour. I’m practically speechless that the writers/researchers for Casefile couldn't be bothered to do even a minimal amount of research about repressed memories and DID. I've always trusted the integrity of Casefile's team, and I'm as disturbed as you seem to be as well. For me, this kind of fractures my confidence in Casefile – should I be concerned, going forward, about their integrity? Their loyalty to their principles? Am I being hyperbolic? I don't think I am....but I'm open to discussion on it.
WOW, what a ride, thanks for this one. 💚