Eileen Franklin Lipsker said she suddenly knew who killed Susan Nason after forgetting it for decades.
1. True Crime Brewery’s “Memory of Murder” follows the disappearance of eight-year-old Susan Nason from Foster City in September 1969.
2. Jill and Dick host the episode, and they matter because they frame the legal fight over repressed memory and George Franklin’s 1990 murder trial.
3. The episode asks whether Eileen Franklin Lipsker’s recovered memory can be trusted as proof that her father killed Susan Nason.
4. Eileen Franklin Lipsker says she suddenly remembered childhood details about Susan Nason’s death after decades of forgetting them.
5. The hosts explain that prosecutors treated Eileen as a star witness and linked her testimony to a ring found at the crime scene.
6. The defense pointed to San Mateo Times coverage and other news reports from 1969 that had discussed public details about the case.
7. Judge Thomas Smith refused to let the jury see the defense package of clippings and video about that publicity.
8. George Franklin is described as a 51-year-old retired firefighter with no alibi and a rough, stone-faced demeanor.
9. Eileen also testified that George Franklin had sexually abused her and her sister Janice.
10. Her account shifted on whether Janice was in the van and on whether the killing happened in the morning or late afternoon.
11. Inspector Charles Etter of the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office received the first call on November 17, 1989.
12. Barry, Eileen’s husband, said his wife had witnessed a murder 20 years earlier and feared George Franklin would kill her if she spoke.
13. Etter agreed to speak with Eileen after Barry negotiated for a way to verify what she remembered.
14. Eileen identified Foster City and Susan Nason by name before giving a brief account of the killing.
15. She described a Volkswagen van, a wooded area on the road to Half Moon Bay, and a smashed ring.
16. The episode then returns to 1969, when Susan left school with a bag of Celia Oakley’s tennis shoes.
17. Susan’s mother Margaret Nason searched the neighborhood by bicycle and later called police when her daughter did not come home.
18. Foster City police organized a major search that eventually drew more than 200 people, bloodhounds, divers, and a Coast Guard helicopter.
19. The tone mixes case narration with debate, and the hosts interrupt the chronology with pointed reactions to the evidence and the memory argument.
20. Listeners who follow wrongful-conviction debates and child-abduction cases will get the most from it, while those avoiding long forensic storytelling may skip it.
