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Speaker 1: Happy day, and welcome to Unexplained, where each week we explore another true tale of high strangeness, with me, your host, Richard McLean Smith. If you're new here and you're a fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained, then you've come to the right place, and please subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so. Now, just to let you know before we begin, this episode will conclude Season 9 of Unexplained, We'll be having a short break from new episodes until Season 10 begins on November Friday 13th. But look out for lots of other content coming your way in the meantime, as I'll be doing some collaborations and sharing a bunch of other things, and maybe a Halloween special, to get you through the break. But for now, on with the show. And I should say first, please note that this episode contains disturbing descriptions of violence and events involving a young person that some listeners may find upsetting. This is part two of Unexplained, season nine, episode 37. Anger is an energy. On Saturday 31st of March 1984, William Rowell took Tina Resch to the house of a colleague, psychologist Jim Carpenter. to play games of chance with his teenage daughter, Feral. At some point, Feral let Tina have a go on her three-wheeled motorbike. Seconds after she pulled back on the throttle, Tina shot off into a tree and was flung from the vehicle, screaming in pain, having broken her leg in two places. For the next 12 days, Tina was forced to rest up in bed with her leg in an open cast. During which time, all supposed psychokinetic activity appeared to cease entirely. A few days later, she was collected by her foster parents, and Tina returned home to Columbus, Ohio. In August, at the annual convention of the Parapsychological Association, taking place at the Southern Methodist University of Dallas, William Roll hosted a panel to discuss Tina's apparent powers. However, despite having written statements from journalist Mike Harden and psychologist Rebecca Zinn attesting to the strange events they had apparently witnessed, only photographer Fred Shannon agreed to appear in person. Magician James Randi also appeared at the conference to contest the claims. Having got hold of Fred's pictures that he took back on March 5th of that year, he proceeded to debunk every one of them suggesting that any of the objects said to have been thrown with supernatural force could have simply been thrown or knocked over by Tina directly when nobody was looking. They had all simply been fooled by a 14-year-old. Roel and Fred could only sit in uneasy silence as most of the room nodded along in mocking agreement. When Randy had finished laying out his case, there was no time for Roel to defend himself. No time to point out Randy's inaccuracies about how he and Tina had not been alone when certain events had happened and how others had witnessed them too. Or how the fact that she'd been caught deliberately pulling a lamp down could easily be explained away as a tired teenager who was just desperate to be rid of the 30 or so full-grown men who hadn't left her alone for eight straight hours. Either way, by then, There'd been no reporting of peculiar incidents of any kind occurring in the Resch household since Tina had returned there in April with a broken leg. Even if some of it had been real, Roll had to face the fact that any power she might have had appeared to have vanished for good. But he wasn't quite ready to give up yet. Tina stared hard at the objects laid out on the table before her as the sound of a swimming pool's water filter gurgled softly in the background. It was October 19th, 1984, and Tina was back at William Roll's house in North Carolina for another round of extensive tests. Beside her, looking on with great interest, was Jeannie Legle, who'd taken over the role as psychotherapist from Rebecca Zinn who'd been so unsettled by her time with Tina, she declined the offer to help out again. By comparison, Jeannie, who also specialised in hypnotism, had leapt at the opportunity to work with the intriguing girl. Something's going to happen. I can feel it, said Tina, as she continued to stare at the objects with deep concentration. But still, nothing moved. Jeannie told her once again to relax. and suggested she try naming the objects in front of her to see if that might settle her mind. Toothbrush, hairbrush, lipstick, deodorant, fork, spoon, she said, staring at each one in turn as she said the words aloud. It had been months since any apparent supernatural activity had occurred in the Resch household, but Roel, wanted to see if he could try and awaken whatever psychokinetic powers Tina might have had. Jeannie asked her to visualize a past psychokinetic event and try to hold it in her mind. Tina did as she was asked, then said she felt a pain in her stomach and that a chair was about to flip over. Then Jeannie urged her to focus on her stomach and to try and imagine the pain turning to warmth. but still nothing moved. Jeannie suggested they take a break. As the pair got up to head back into the kitchen, something clattered to the ground. It was one of the spoons. But Jeannie couldn't be sure if Tina hadn't simply picked it up and secretly thrown it. So she replaced it on the table and told Tina to walk ahead of her so she could keep an eye on her. A moment later, with Tina in front of her and a wall between them and the table. Another clink was apparently heard. The spoon was back on the ground. Down in a lab at the Spring Creek Institute, a few miles from William Roll's home, strange things were going on. Steve Bauman and his assistant were busy extracting pacemaker cells from a collection of large sea slugs known as a Plesia californica. The cells were neurons that Steve liked to work with due to their size and their ability to remain active long after they'd been extracted. With the neurons removed, Steve invited Tina to take a seat in his experiment room where a microscope was set up for her. The experiment was Steve's idea. designed to see if it was possible for individuals with apparent psychokinetic powers to manipulate organic material at the molecular level. It was the kind of experiment that William Roll thrived on too. Then Steve placed a bell jar alongside the microscope. Suspended from the top of it was a small piezoelectric crystal, types of which are found in the teeth and bones, among other things, while another crystal, unknown to Tina, was concealed at the bottom of the jar. Both were wired up to monitors. Tina was told to focus on the only crystal she knew to be there. If any pressure was registered on that crystal alone, and not the other one at the same time, as would normally happen if there was any type of physical disturbance in the room, it would suggest that Tina was potentially exerting that pressure with her mind. Then Steve placed a slide with sea slug neurons under the microscope and asked Tina to begin. Jeannie took a seat next to her to try and help her focus her mind. For 30 minutes, Tina stared hard at the various devices with seemingly little to show for it. After stopping for a break, Tina and Jeannie wandered next door to look at the lab's computer room. As they moved inside, Jeannie heard something hit the floor behind them. She turned to see a screwdriver was now lying on the ground. Tina, who seemed amused by it, picked it up and put it back on the table. When Jeannie then walked into Steve's office moments later, five coins fell to the floor that had been on the table there only moments before. Jeannie spun round quickly to find that Tina was still a good 18 feet away in the computer room. After studying his results, Steve Bauman told William Roll that he had reason to believe that Tina may have affected the sea slug neurons, but the test was never replicated and was ultimately inconclusive. Around the same time, Roll had his colleague Jim Carpenter give Tina a Rorschach inkblot test and thematic apperception, or TAT test, in the hope that might garner some further insight into Tina's emotional state, believing that this was the foundation of all her apparent psychokinetic power. Carpenter concluded that, quote, the test showed emotional immaturity and a particularly immature understanding of other people, and interpersonal needs. Tina's world, he said, was unpredictable, chaotic, and periodically very distressing. Nothing hangs together in a normal, organised, reliable way, and that these themes represent much deeper and older currents of neglect, danger, neediness, and insecurity. It would appear that for a long time, Tina has experienced life as frustrating, neglectful, and possibly abusive. Jim concluded also, in regard to Tina's reaction to the raw shark tests, that her perceptual style shows a tendency to overgeneralize in her thinking and to miss complexities and discrepancies. She tends to jump to conclusions about things and to oversimplify them, and the emotional coloring of events is almost always like that of a much younger child. When Roel asked Jim, If he thought she was faking it all, he offered diplomatically that Tina was clearly someone who'd been starved of love and attention, and would no doubt have enjoyed the attention that she got after her apparent gifts took hold. Which might also give her reasons to prolong the apparent phenomenon in any way that she could. Over the next few days, as Roll continued to put Tina's apparent powers to the test, Numerous items were said to have moved about whenever Tina was near. These events seemed to intensify the closer the time came for Tina to return home. To Roel, who had no doubt that much of this was the result of psychokinesis, this was both an expression of Tina's sadness at having to go back to the Resch home, but also perhaps her way of demonstrating to Roel, one of the few adults in her life who had accepted her, that she was worthy of his time. In return, Rohl surmised that the movement of the objects was simply the manifesting of three of Tina's core emotions, anger at her adopted parents for not loving her enough, self-aspersion because she wasn't good enough to be loved, and the hope that someone would one day come to rescue and love her. On Tuesday 23rd October 1984, Jeannie and Roel drove her to the airport and put her back on a plane to Columbus. It was her 15th birthday. Back in Columbus, Ohio, there were few who didn't know who Tina Resch was, the poltergeist girl, or the weirdo and freak, as the kids at school would call her. Though Tina was never one to sit and take it on the chin, for someone already so deeply wounded, it was just yet another layer of how so much of life seemed to operate beyond her control. Though a few it seemed outside of Roel and his team, who recognised the fragility under the boisterous personality. As ever, it was with great relief when she returned to North Carolina in July 1985. By then, Rolls Institute had moved into a two-storey log house in the woods near Durham, looking out over a lake. He called it Spring Creek. It was yet another vastly more picturesque and idyllic location, in contrast to Tina's regular life. Tina, for her part, seemed more distracted and less enthused than before. Over the course of three days, Roll and Jeannie tried numerous experiments to try and get Tina to move metal objects. On one occasion, they even invited a group of people to come over to watch for what they termed a spoon-bending party. But it was hard for Tina not to feel like a performing monkey. In the end, nothing happened. Another time, Jeannie tasked Tina with focusing on three specific objects, and using her mind to picture specifically where she wanted to move them. At the end of the session, Tina looked up and spotted a camera through a grill in an air vent. Tina was understandably upset and demanded they stopped filming her. When they tried it all again, to no avail the following day, Tina finally snapped and lashed out at Jeannie, only to hit Roll in the face by mistake, breaking his glasses in half. and after that, she went back home to Columbus. In the autumn of 1985, a few weeks before her 16th birthday, Tina took a blade to her wrists. She was admitted to a psychiatric ward for teenagers at the Medical College of Ohio and was kept there until Christmas Eve. Before she went home, a counsellor at the hospital requested a meeting with her adopted parents, Joan and John. During her time on the ward, Tina had made it clear that she considered the couple to be the primary negative influence in her life. Though we don't know exactly what was said, the counsellor felt compelled to share this with Joan and John. Their response, as is so often the way when people feel attacked, was to become even more entrenched in their view that it was Tina who who was in fact the problem. It was Tina who was ungrateful for all they'd done for her, Tina who'd never done what she was told, and Tina who'd brought a media circus to their home and one way or another had also smashed that home to pieces. And now here she was, staining their good name to medical professionals and putting their license to foster children in jeopardy. Whatever exactly had happened between them, it had become insurmountable. Tina, they believed, was out of control, and they had had enough. A short time later, they began the process of relinquishing their responsibility to her and having her moved into a detention centre. But the by then 16-year-old Tina had other plans. It was around this time that Tina met James Bennett. James was a few years older than Tina, but still lived at home with his mother. When he invited Tina to move in with them, she jumped at the chance. Before the Reshes could kick her out, she walked out herself and moved in with James. Whether it was out of spite or a genuine sense that they thought they knew what was best for her, the Reshes proceeded with their efforts to unadopt her and have her placed in the care of the state and put in a detention centre. Tina was ultimately ordered to appear in court to determine her fate. There, she sat through a painful morning as John and Joan listed all the ways that she'd apparently destroyed their lives. In the end, the judge agreed to remove her from the Resher's care. Then James dropped a bombshell. There was no need for the state to take care of her, he said, because he and Tina were already married. It was a lie. but it was enough to give the pair time to make the union official in the eyes of the state. All that was left was for John and Joan to sign off on it. Though they tried to dissuade Tina from marrying James, in the end they felt they had to agree to it. It was a few years later, on the 28th of June 1990, that William Roll found a message in his mailbox at the college. Tina had phoned from Columbus. In the years since they'd last met, William Roll had tried to keep up with Tina's life, but in time had inevitably drifted away. By then, his life had changed considerably. He and his wife Muriel had separated, and had moved south to Carrollton in Georgia to teach parapsychology at West Georgia College, where he lived with his second wife, Lydia. A lot had happened to Tina in the last few years too. things had not gone well with James. Tina later said that he'd beaten and raped her, and that she'd spent time in women's shelters trying to escape him. When John Resch died in 1987, he left Tina the not insignificant sum of $ 5, 000, over $ 40, 000 in today's money. But James is said to have stolen it from her. Only then did he finally let her leave. But Tina... It was a small price to pay. On the 29th of September 1988, Tina had become a mum to a daughter named Amber Gail Bennett. By then, Tina was no longer living with the father, who seemed not to be involved with the baby at all. Seeking security and stability, she got married again to a man named Larry Boyer. But when Tina said that he began beating her too, she had him arrested and removed from the home. Cheers. was not in a good way when she got back in touch with Roel, and Roel couldn't help but be sympathetic and a little more than intrigued by her message. It was happening again, she said. According to Tina, things had been moving on their own again around her, and inexplicable fires had even broken out. She wondered if it was her, or whether Amber had somehow inherited her psychokinetic powers. Sensing her desperation, Roll gladly invited her to Carrollton to stay with him and Lydia for a while. Jeannie Legle had moved there too to continue her studies with Roll, and also offered to put Tina up. Both Jeannie and William were pleased to see Tina again, and overjoyed to meet baby Amber too, who despite everything, appeared to be a happy, radiant ball of energy. Though they attempted some experiments, most of the time was just spent being there for Tina and Amber. But it concerned Roll how Tina parented her daughter. Whenever Amber was said to misbehave, Tina would scold her viciously, and if that didn't work, she smacked her It wasn't uncommon back then by any stretch, but what concerned Roel the most was how Amber never cried when it happened. Not only because presumably she'd already grown accustomed to it, but as Roel wondered, maybe also because perversely Amber had learned to behave in such a way that forced her mum to punish her, simply as a way to get her attention. Roel could see instantly the same pattern of Tina's own upbringing. being played out before him. And in truth, Tina didn't know any better, and having had Amber at only 18 years old, had been left entirely on her own to raise her, with no help and advice from anyone. When Roel suggested she sign up to parenting classes, she threw herself into it with relish. She even went back to school to study nursing and computing. Eventually Roel and Lydia helped her find a flat too, and Jeannie took her on as an assistant and paying her to type up her notes to help financially. But none of it was quite enough, and finding a more substantial job was virtually impossible, since there was no one to look after Amber in her absence. Despite occasional support from Roll, Tina found it harder and harder to eat and keep her and Amber's home heated, let alone pay the rent. David Herron was divorced with his own three-year-old daughter when Tina met him in early 1992. He was friendly and handsome, not to mention also had a steady job driving a truck. Tina's friends told her that she was lucky. One evening, according to Tina, she came back from work at Jeannie's house to find the then three-year-old Amber covered in bruises and her lips split. David who'd been looking after her at the time, insisted that she just tripped and fell off the pavement. A few days later, Tina returned home aghast to find more bruises on her daughter and swelling on her forehead. It was just another trip, insisted David, this time off the steps of his trailer. Each time, Tina is said to have asked Amber what happened, and each time, the little girl was said to have confirmed what David said when Tina worried that the bump to Amber's head might need medical attention. According to Tina, David persuaded her not to take Amber to hospital. After all, what would social services say if they turned up with a kid covered in bruises, knowing her history? On Tuesday, 15th April, William Roll was away on a work trip in New York when he got a phone call from his wife, who was sobbing on the other end of the line. Amber was dead. Naturally, there were two conflicting stories. As Tina had it, she'd been at work at Jeannie's house when she got a call from David demanding that she come home immediately. When a deeply concerned Tina arrived at David's trailer a short time later, he was standing nervously outside. He told her that Amber was on the couch and he couldn't wake her up. In a panic, Tina ran inside and found her daughter lying unconscious, covered in more bruises than she'd apparently had before. By the time they reached the nearby Tanner Medical Centre, Amber was no longer breathing, and despite the medical staff's best efforts, Amber was declared dead later that evening. Before a distraught Tina even had time to comprehend what had just happened, she was arrested and and taken to the nearest police station for questioning. With David being quizzed in a separate room, Tina was interrogated for 11 hours straight, right through the night, while her baby, lying dead at the hospital, was barely even cold. Whenever she asked for a lawyer, she was apparently told that she didn't need one. None of it was recorded. When asked about Amber's injuries, Tina seemingly believed David, and said that she had simply fallen. While Tina's interview was taking place, in another room, David acknowledged that Amber had been in his care when she was hurt. According to the police account, he denied seriously harming her and alleged that it was Tina who frequently hit her. On the Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Amber died, Both Tina and David were charged with murder and cruelty to children. The post-mortem found bleeding and swelling in Amber's brain and bleeding in her pancreas. Her head and face were so badly bruised that the police captain told reporters it was some of the worst he'd ever seen. Tina was being held in prison when it came time for Amber's funeral. That morning, Tina was granted a moment alone with her daughter, Outside the room where Amber's body was being kept, Tina completely broke down and could barely stand as she was led inside. Then she was ushered in floods of tears toward a chair next to a small coffin at the far end of the room and told to take a seat. Then the lid was lifted up. Inside was Amber, wearing the dress that Tina had been allowed to choose for her. Tina sobbed uncontrollably. and reached into the coffin to touch her daughter's face and smooth down her hair, but the officers told her to stop. Then she reached in again to smooth down her dress, and again they told her to leave the body alone. But she's cold, Tina said through tears. She needs a blanket. The officers ordered her up from the chair, then Tina leant into the coffin and kissed her daughter goodbye. On the way to the funeral, Tina was warned not to make a scene or else she'd be removed. When she inevitably began to cry and the tears wouldn't stop, her uniformed escorts picked her up and removed her from the church. That was the day that Tina saw her adopted mother Joan for the last time. It was only later Tina learned that Amber had been buried in a coffin surrounded by stuffed animals. just like Tina used to do it, back in that basement all alone, to keep the darkness at bay. Whatever the truth of it, it didn't take long for Tina to be labelled a baby killer, with many papers gleefully picking up the story of the former poltergeist girl, now accused of beating her own daughter to death. To be a woman in jail... accused of murdering your own child is not a safe place to be. At some point in 1994, Tina's court-appointed lawyer, Jimmy Berry, sat her down for a frank conversation. The punishment for infanticide if Tina was convicted was death. But after talking to the district attorney, Berry said they'd promised to drop the death penalty if Tina pleaded guilty. The law was such that she could even take the plea while officially maintaining her innocence. They call it an Alford plea. And who knows, if Tina kept her head down and the judge looked favourably on her circumstances, she might even get parole within the next decade. In October, a few days before the trial took place, with William Roll's help, Tina sat for a lie detector test in the hope that it would help her case. The examiner concluded that Tina was telling the truth when she denied murdering her daughter. But it was too late, she said. She'd already made up her mind. She wanted to take the plea. And so, on Monday the 24th of October, down at the Carroll County Courthouse, she did just that. As the by then 25-year-old Tina sat heavily medicated, as she was often kept in jail, her lawyer Jimmy Berry made the case that David Herron was was the real guilty party, and that Tina had been guilty of little more than poor judgement. And with that, she entered her Alford plea to felony murder, accepting the conviction while maintaining her innocence. In response, the judge sentenced Christina Boyer, as she was then known, to life in prison plus 20 years. Or as one headline had it the following morning, Telekinetic Mum Averts Trial. One major drawback for public faith in Tina's side of the story was that since she'd already pled guilty there was no need for David Herron to do the same. When his trial finally took place the following year Tina was routinely demeaned for her supposed paranormal past. A homemade adult video in which Tina had participated when she was especially desperate for money was played to the jury. It showed Amber suddenly entering the room and being quickly ushered out by Tina, followed by the sound of a smack. Tina was portrayed as an erratic and violent parent who often beat her daughter, which Tina rejected. Though the coroner couldn't rule out the possibility that Amber's fatal injury, a heavy blow to her head, had happened on Tuesday morning before Tina left for work, Tina had not seen her daughter for approximately six hours before returning home. During this time, she was in the sole so-called care of David, who according to Tina at least, didn't once seem concerned about her welfare throughout that entire time, until the moment he called Tina. David was eventually convicted of the much less severe crime of cruelty, and for failing to take Amber to hospital in the days before she died. and was sentenced to 20 years. After serving only 16, he was released on parole in November 2011. Today, after 32 years, Tina, having been repeatedly turned down for parole, remains incarcerated in McRae Correctional Facility in McRae, Georgia. Tina says she still dreams about all that went on in that house on Blue Ash Road. They are never good dreams. I feel in some ways that I should apologise for bringing the season to an end on such a sombre note, but the story of Tina Resch is one that I've wanted to tell for a long time, and one that I feel is often unnecessarily sensationalised and misunderstood, and I felt compelled to give my version of it. And at the risk of sounding overly sentimental... I think it's always worth reminding ourselves, especially during this particularly fractious moment in time that we seem to have found ourselves living in. To paraphrase the late and irreplaceable Dolly Parton, when you look beneath the hate, more often than not, you'll find a broken heart. If anything in this episode has affected you or brought up difficult feelings or memories, please know that support is available. In the UK... you can contact the Samaritans for free confidential emotional support at any time 24 hours a day from trained volunteers on 116 123. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, you can contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247. And if you're concerned about the safety of a child, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children's Helpline is available on 0808 800 5000. In the US, you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available on 800 799 SAFE and ChildHelp's National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453. And if you are in immediate danger, please contact the emergency services. On a somewhat lighter note, if you've listened to this episode and you think you may have experienced psychokinesis yourself, there are researchers who are still interested in hearing from people who believe they have unusual abilities. In fact, Duke's Institute of Parapsychology, now known as the Ryan Research Center in North Carolina, is still going strong today. So if you think you might have something worth investigating, you can find out more about their current research and how to get in touch with them at rhineonline.org. That's R-H-I-N-E online.org. As I said at the top of the episode, this is the last episode of Season 9. Although there won't be any new episodes for a few weeks, look out for all sorts of other unexplained adjacent content that might be appearing on the feed in the meantime, including possibly a Halloween special. Otherwise, I'll be back very soon with Season 10, which begins in November on Friday 13th. Because how could it not? Lastly, I want to say a big thank you to all the writers that have contributed to this series. In no particular order, Diane Hope, Neil McRobert, Emma Dibden and James Connor Patterson. They've all done a phenomenal job. And extra lastly, I just want to say a huge thank you to all you wonderful listeners out there for taking the time to listen to and support the show. Until next time, much love to you all and stay strange and dissonant. Please remember to like and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by me, Richard McLean-Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast and on X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod.
Speaker 1: Happy day, and welcome to Unexplained, where each week we explore another true tale of high strangeness, with me, your host, Richard McLean Smith. If you're new here and you're a fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained, then you've come to the right place, and please subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so. Now, just to let you know before we begin, this episode will conclude Season 9 of Unexplained, We'll be having a short break from new episodes until Season 10 begins on November Friday 13th. But look out for lots of other content coming your way in the meantime, as I'll be doing some collaborations and sharing a bunch of other things, and maybe a Halloween special, to get you through the break. But for now, on with the show. And I should say first, please note that this episode contains disturbing descriptions of violence and events involving a young person that some listeners may find upsetting. This is part two of Unexplained, season nine, episode 37. Anger is an energy. On Saturday 31st of March 1984, William Rowell took Tina Resch to the house of a colleague, psychologist Jim Carpenter. to play games of chance with his teenage daughter, Feral. At some point, Feral let Tina have a go on her three-wheeled motorbike. Seconds after she pulled back on the throttle, Tina shot off into a tree and was flung from the vehicle, screaming in pain, having broken her leg in two places. For the next 12 days, Tina was forced to rest up in bed with her leg in an open cast. During which time, all supposed psychokinetic activity appeared to cease entirely. A few days later, she was collected by her foster parents, and Tina returned home to Columbus, Ohio. In August, at the annual convention of the Parapsychological Association, taking place at the Southern Methodist University of Dallas, William Roll hosted a panel to discuss Tina's apparent powers. However, despite having written statements from journalist Mike Harden and psychologist Rebecca Zinn attesting to the strange events they had apparently witnessed, only photographer Fred Shannon agreed to appear in person. Magician James Randi also appeared at the conference to contest the claims. Having got hold of Fred's pictures that he took back on March 5th of that year, he proceeded to debunk every one of them suggesting that any of the objects said to have been thrown with supernatural force could have simply been thrown or knocked over by Tina directly when nobody was looking. They had all simply been fooled by a 14-year-old. Roel and Fred could only sit in uneasy silence as most of the room nodded along in mocking agreement. When Randy had finished laying out his case, there was no time for Roel to defend himself. No time to point out Randy's inaccuracies about how he and Tina had not been alone when certain events had happened and how others had witnessed them too. Or how the fact that she'd been caught deliberately pulling a lamp down could easily be explained away as a tired teenager who was just desperate to be rid of the 30 or so full-grown men who hadn't left her alone for eight straight hours. Either way, by then, There'd been no reporting of peculiar incidents of any kind occurring in the Resch household since Tina had returned there in April with a broken leg. Even if some of it had been real, Roll had to face the fact that any power she might have had appeared to have vanished for good. But he wasn't quite ready to give up yet. Tina stared hard at the objects laid out on the table before her as the sound of a swimming pool's water filter gurgled softly in the background. It was October 19th, 1984, and Tina was back at William Roll's house in North Carolina for another round of extensive tests. Beside her, looking on with great interest, was Jeannie Legle, who'd taken over the role as psychotherapist from Rebecca Zinn who'd been so unsettled by her time with Tina, she declined the offer to help out again. By comparison, Jeannie, who also specialised in hypnotism, had leapt at the opportunity to work with the intriguing girl. Something's going to happen. I can feel it, said Tina, as she continued to stare at the objects with deep concentration. But still, nothing moved. Jeannie told her once again to relax. and suggested she try naming the objects in front of her to see if that might settle her mind. Toothbrush, hairbrush, lipstick, deodorant, fork, spoon, she said, staring at each one in turn as she said the words aloud. It had been months since any apparent supernatural activity had occurred in the Resch household, but Roel, wanted to see if he could try and awaken whatever psychokinetic powers Tina might have had. Jeannie asked her to visualize a past psychokinetic event and try to hold it in her mind. Tina did as she was asked, then said she felt a pain in her stomach and that a chair was about to flip over. Then Jeannie urged her to focus on her stomach and to try and imagine the pain turning to warmth. but still nothing moved. Jeannie suggested they take a break. As the pair got up to head back into the kitchen, something clattered to the ground. It was one of the spoons. But Jeannie couldn't be sure if Tina hadn't simply picked it up and secretly thrown it. So she replaced it on the table and told Tina to walk ahead of her so she could keep an eye on her. A moment later, with Tina in front of her and a wall between them and the table. Another clink was apparently heard. The spoon was back on the ground. Down in a lab at the Spring Creek Institute, a few miles from William Roll's home, strange things were going on. Steve Bauman and his assistant were busy extracting pacemaker cells from a collection of large sea slugs known as a Plesia californica. The cells were neurons that Steve liked to work with due to their size and their ability to remain active long after they'd been extracted. With the neurons removed, Steve invited Tina to take a seat in his experiment room where a microscope was set up for her. The experiment was Steve's idea. designed to see if it was possible for individuals with apparent psychokinetic powers to manipulate organic material at the molecular level. It was the kind of experiment that William Roll thrived on too. Then Steve placed a bell jar alongside the microscope. Suspended from the top of it was a small piezoelectric crystal, types of which are found in the teeth and bones, among other things, while another crystal, unknown to Tina, was concealed at the bottom of the jar. Both were wired up to monitors. Tina was told to focus on the only crystal she knew to be there. If any pressure was registered on that crystal alone, and not the other one at the same time, as would normally happen if there was any type of physical disturbance in the room, it would suggest that Tina was potentially exerting that pressure with her mind. Then Steve placed a slide with sea slug neurons under the microscope and asked Tina to begin. Jeannie took a seat next to her to try and help her focus her mind. For 30 minutes, Tina stared hard at the various devices with seemingly little to show for it. After stopping for a break, Tina and Jeannie wandered next door to look at the lab's computer room. As they moved inside, Jeannie heard something hit the floor behind them. She turned to see a screwdriver was now lying on the ground. Tina, who seemed amused by it, picked it up and put it back on the table. When Jeannie then walked into Steve's office moments later, five coins fell to the floor that had been on the table there only moments before. Jeannie spun round quickly to find that Tina was still a good 18 feet away in the computer room. After studying his results, Steve Bauman told William Roll that he had reason to believe that Tina may have affected the sea slug neurons, but the test was never replicated and was ultimately inconclusive. Around the same time, Roll had his colleague Jim Carpenter give Tina a Rorschach inkblot test and thematic apperception, or TAT test, in the hope that might garner some further insight into Tina's emotional state, believing that this was the foundation of all her apparent psychokinetic power. Carpenter concluded that, quote, the test showed emotional immaturity and a particularly immature understanding of other people, and interpersonal needs. Tina's world, he said, was unpredictable, chaotic, and periodically very distressing. Nothing hangs together in a normal, organised, reliable way, and that these themes represent much deeper and older currents of neglect, danger, neediness, and insecurity. It would appear that for a long time, Tina has experienced life as frustrating, neglectful, and possibly abusive. Jim concluded also, in regard to Tina's reaction to the raw shark tests, that her perceptual style shows a tendency to overgeneralize in her thinking and to miss complexities and discrepancies. She tends to jump to conclusions about things and to oversimplify them, and the emotional coloring of events is almost always like that of a much younger child. When Roel asked Jim, If he thought she was faking it all, he offered diplomatically that Tina was clearly someone who'd been starved of love and attention, and would no doubt have enjoyed the attention that she got after her apparent gifts took hold. Which might also give her reasons to prolong the apparent phenomenon in any way that she could. Over the next few days, as Roll continued to put Tina's apparent powers to the test, Numerous items were said to have moved about whenever Tina was near. These events seemed to intensify the closer the time came for Tina to return home. To Roel, who had no doubt that much of this was the result of psychokinesis, this was both an expression of Tina's sadness at having to go back to the Resch home, but also perhaps her way of demonstrating to Roel, one of the few adults in her life who had accepted her, that she was worthy of his time. In return, Rohl surmised that the movement of the objects was simply the manifesting of three of Tina's core emotions, anger at her adopted parents for not loving her enough, self-aspersion because she wasn't good enough to be loved, and the hope that someone would one day come to rescue and love her. On Tuesday 23rd October 1984, Jeannie and Roel drove her to the airport and put her back on a plane to Columbus. It was her 15th birthday. Back in Columbus, Ohio, there were few who didn't know who Tina Resch was, the poltergeist girl, or the weirdo and freak, as the kids at school would call her. Though Tina was never one to sit and take it on the chin, for someone already so deeply wounded, it was just yet another layer of how so much of life seemed to operate beyond her control. Though a few it seemed outside of Roel and his team, who recognised the fragility under the boisterous personality. As ever, it was with great relief when she returned to North Carolina in July 1985. By then, Rolls Institute had moved into a two-storey log house in the woods near Durham, looking out over a lake. He called it Spring Creek. It was yet another vastly more picturesque and idyllic location, in contrast to Tina's regular life. Tina, for her part, seemed more distracted and less enthused than before. Over the course of three days, Roll and Jeannie tried numerous experiments to try and get Tina to move metal objects. On one occasion, they even invited a group of people to come over to watch for what they termed a spoon-bending party. But it was hard for Tina not to feel like a performing monkey. In the end, nothing happened. Another time, Jeannie tasked Tina with focusing on three specific objects, and using her mind to picture specifically where she wanted to move them. At the end of the session, Tina looked up and spotted a camera through a grill in an air vent. Tina was understandably upset and demanded they stopped filming her. When they tried it all again, to no avail the following day, Tina finally snapped and lashed out at Jeannie, only to hit Roll in the face by mistake, breaking his glasses in half. and after that, she went back home to Columbus. In the autumn of 1985, a few weeks before her 16th birthday, Tina took a blade to her wrists. She was admitted to a psychiatric ward for teenagers at the Medical College of Ohio and was kept there until Christmas Eve. Before she went home, a counsellor at the hospital requested a meeting with her adopted parents, Joan and John. During her time on the ward, Tina had made it clear that she considered the couple to be the primary negative influence in her life. Though we don't know exactly what was said, the counsellor felt compelled to share this with Joan and John. Their response, as is so often the way when people feel attacked, was to become even more entrenched in their view that it was Tina who who was in fact the problem. It was Tina who was ungrateful for all they'd done for her, Tina who'd never done what she was told, and Tina who'd brought a media circus to their home and one way or another had also smashed that home to pieces. And now here she was, staining their good name to medical professionals and putting their license to foster children in jeopardy. Whatever exactly had happened between them, it had become insurmountable. Tina, they believed, was out of control, and they had had enough. A short time later, they began the process of relinquishing their responsibility to her and having her moved into a detention centre. But the by then 16-year-old Tina had other plans. It was around this time that Tina met James Bennett. James was a few years older than Tina, but still lived at home with his mother. When he invited Tina to move in with them, she jumped at the chance. Before the Reshes could kick her out, she walked out herself and moved in with James. Whether it was out of spite or a genuine sense that they thought they knew what was best for her, the Reshes proceeded with their efforts to unadopt her and have her placed in the care of the state and put in a detention centre. Tina was ultimately ordered to appear in court to determine her fate. There, she sat through a painful morning as John and Joan listed all the ways that she'd apparently destroyed their lives. In the end, the judge agreed to remove her from the Resher's care. Then James dropped a bombshell. There was no need for the state to take care of her, he said, because he and Tina were already married. It was a lie. but it was enough to give the pair time to make the union official in the eyes of the state. All that was left was for John and Joan to sign off on it. Though they tried to dissuade Tina from marrying James, in the end they felt they had to agree to it. It was a few years later, on the 28th of June 1990, that William Roll found a message in his mailbox at the college. Tina had phoned from Columbus. In the years since they'd last met, William Roll had tried to keep up with Tina's life, but in time had inevitably drifted away. By then, his life had changed considerably. He and his wife Muriel had separated, and had moved south to Carrollton in Georgia to teach parapsychology at West Georgia College, where he lived with his second wife, Lydia. A lot had happened to Tina in the last few years too. things had not gone well with James. Tina later said that he'd beaten and raped her, and that she'd spent time in women's shelters trying to escape him. When John Resch died in 1987, he left Tina the not insignificant sum of $ 5, 000, over $ 40, 000 in today's money. But James is said to have stolen it from her. Only then did he finally let her leave. But Tina... It was a small price to pay. On the 29th of September 1988, Tina had become a mum to a daughter named Amber Gail Bennett. By then, Tina was no longer living with the father, who seemed not to be involved with the baby at all. Seeking security and stability, she got married again to a man named Larry Boyer. But when Tina said that he began beating her too, she had him arrested and removed from the home. Cheers. was not in a good way when she got back in touch with Roel, and Roel couldn't help but be sympathetic and a little more than intrigued by her message. It was happening again, she said. According to Tina, things had been moving on their own again around her, and inexplicable fires had even broken out. She wondered if it was her, or whether Amber had somehow inherited her psychokinetic powers. Sensing her desperation, Roll gladly invited her to Carrollton to stay with him and Lydia for a while. Jeannie Legle had moved there too to continue her studies with Roll, and also offered to put Tina up. Both Jeannie and William were pleased to see Tina again, and overjoyed to meet baby Amber too, who despite everything, appeared to be a happy, radiant ball of energy. Though they attempted some experiments, most of the time was just spent being there for Tina and Amber. But it concerned Roll how Tina parented her daughter. Whenever Amber was said to misbehave, Tina would scold her viciously, and if that didn't work, she smacked her It wasn't uncommon back then by any stretch, but what concerned Roel the most was how Amber never cried when it happened. Not only because presumably she'd already grown accustomed to it, but as Roel wondered, maybe also because perversely Amber had learned to behave in such a way that forced her mum to punish her, simply as a way to get her attention. Roel could see instantly the same pattern of Tina's own upbringing. being played out before him. And in truth, Tina didn't know any better, and having had Amber at only 18 years old, had been left entirely on her own to raise her, with no help and advice from anyone. When Roel suggested she sign up to parenting classes, she threw herself into it with relish. She even went back to school to study nursing and computing. Eventually Roel and Lydia helped her find a flat too, and Jeannie took her on as an assistant and paying her to type up her notes to help financially. But none of it was quite enough, and finding a more substantial job was virtually impossible, since there was no one to look after Amber in her absence. Despite occasional support from Roll, Tina found it harder and harder to eat and keep her and Amber's home heated, let alone pay the rent. David Herron was divorced with his own three-year-old daughter when Tina met him in early 1992. He was friendly and handsome, not to mention also had a steady job driving a truck. Tina's friends told her that she was lucky. One evening, according to Tina, she came back from work at Jeannie's house to find the then three-year-old Amber covered in bruises and her lips split. David who'd been looking after her at the time, insisted that she just tripped and fell off the pavement. A few days later, Tina returned home aghast to find more bruises on her daughter and swelling on her forehead. It was just another trip, insisted David, this time off the steps of his trailer. Each time, Tina is said to have asked Amber what happened, and each time, the little girl was said to have confirmed what David said when Tina worried that the bump to Amber's head might need medical attention. According to Tina, David persuaded her not to take Amber to hospital. After all, what would social services say if they turned up with a kid covered in bruises, knowing her history? On Tuesday, 15th April, William Roll was away on a work trip in New York when he got a phone call from his wife, who was sobbing on the other end of the line. Amber was dead. Naturally, there were two conflicting stories. As Tina had it, she'd been at work at Jeannie's house when she got a call from David demanding that she come home immediately. When a deeply concerned Tina arrived at David's trailer a short time later, he was standing nervously outside. He told her that Amber was on the couch and he couldn't wake her up. In a panic, Tina ran inside and found her daughter lying unconscious, covered in more bruises than she'd apparently had before. By the time they reached the nearby Tanner Medical Centre, Amber was no longer breathing, and despite the medical staff's best efforts, Amber was declared dead later that evening. Before a distraught Tina even had time to comprehend what had just happened, she was arrested and and taken to the nearest police station for questioning. With David being quizzed in a separate room, Tina was interrogated for 11 hours straight, right through the night, while her baby, lying dead at the hospital, was barely even cold. Whenever she asked for a lawyer, she was apparently told that she didn't need one. None of it was recorded. When asked about Amber's injuries, Tina seemingly believed David, and said that she had simply fallen. While Tina's interview was taking place, in another room, David acknowledged that Amber had been in his care when she was hurt. According to the police account, he denied seriously harming her and alleged that it was Tina who frequently hit her. On the Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Amber died, Both Tina and David were charged with murder and cruelty to children. The post-mortem found bleeding and swelling in Amber's brain and bleeding in her pancreas. Her head and face were so badly bruised that the police captain told reporters it was some of the worst he'd ever seen. Tina was being held in prison when it came time for Amber's funeral. That morning, Tina was granted a moment alone with her daughter, Outside the room where Amber's body was being kept, Tina completely broke down and could barely stand as she was led inside. Then she was ushered in floods of tears toward a chair next to a small coffin at the far end of the room and told to take a seat. Then the lid was lifted up. Inside was Amber, wearing the dress that Tina had been allowed to choose for her. Tina sobbed uncontrollably. and reached into the coffin to touch her daughter's face and smooth down her hair, but the officers told her to stop. Then she reached in again to smooth down her dress, and again they told her to leave the body alone. But she's cold, Tina said through tears. She needs a blanket. The officers ordered her up from the chair, then Tina leant into the coffin and kissed her daughter goodbye. On the way to the funeral, Tina was warned not to make a scene or else she'd be removed. When she inevitably began to cry and the tears wouldn't stop, her uniformed escorts picked her up and removed her from the church. That was the day that Tina saw her adopted mother Joan for the last time. It was only later Tina learned that Amber had been buried in a coffin surrounded by stuffed animals. just like Tina used to do it, back in that basement all alone, to keep the darkness at bay. Whatever the truth of it, it didn't take long for Tina to be labelled a baby killer, with many papers gleefully picking up the story of the former poltergeist girl, now accused of beating her own daughter to death. To be a woman in jail... accused of murdering your own child is not a safe place to be. At some point in 1994, Tina's court-appointed lawyer, Jimmy Berry, sat her down for a frank conversation. The punishment for infanticide if Tina was convicted was death. But after talking to the district attorney, Berry said they'd promised to drop the death penalty if Tina pleaded guilty. The law was such that she could even take the plea while officially maintaining her innocence. They call it an Alford plea. And who knows, if Tina kept her head down and the judge looked favourably on her circumstances, she might even get parole within the next decade. In October, a few days before the trial took place, with William Roll's help, Tina sat for a lie detector test in the hope that it would help her case. The examiner concluded that Tina was telling the truth when she denied murdering her daughter. But it was too late, she said. She'd already made up her mind. She wanted to take the plea. And so, on Monday the 24th of October, down at the Carroll County Courthouse, she did just that. As the by then 25-year-old Tina sat heavily medicated, as she was often kept in jail, her lawyer Jimmy Berry made the case that David Herron was was the real guilty party, and that Tina had been guilty of little more than poor judgement. And with that, she entered her Alford plea to felony murder, accepting the conviction while maintaining her innocence. In response, the judge sentenced Christina Boyer, as she was then known, to life in prison plus 20 years. Or as one headline had it the following morning, Telekinetic Mum Averts Trial. One major drawback for public faith in Tina's side of the story was that since she'd already pled guilty there was no need for David Herron to do the same. When his trial finally took place the following year Tina was routinely demeaned for her supposed paranormal past. A homemade adult video in which Tina had participated when she was especially desperate for money was played to the jury. It showed Amber suddenly entering the room and being quickly ushered out by Tina, followed by the sound of a smack. Tina was portrayed as an erratic and violent parent who often beat her daughter, which Tina rejected. Though the coroner couldn't rule out the possibility that Amber's fatal injury, a heavy blow to her head, had happened on Tuesday morning before Tina left for work, Tina had not seen her daughter for approximately six hours before returning home. During this time, she was in the sole so-called care of David, who according to Tina at least, didn't once seem concerned about her welfare throughout that entire time, until the moment he called Tina. David was eventually convicted of the much less severe crime of cruelty, and for failing to take Amber to hospital in the days before she died. and was sentenced to 20 years. After serving only 16, he was released on parole in November 2011. Today, after 32 years, Tina, having been repeatedly turned down for parole, remains incarcerated in McRae Correctional Facility in McRae, Georgia. Tina says she still dreams about all that went on in that house on Blue Ash Road. They are never good dreams. I feel in some ways that I should apologise for bringing the season to an end on such a sombre note, but the story of Tina Resch is one that I've wanted to tell for a long time, and one that I feel is often unnecessarily sensationalised and misunderstood, and I felt compelled to give my version of it. And at the risk of sounding overly sentimental... I think it's always worth reminding ourselves, especially during this particularly fractious moment in time that we seem to have found ourselves living in. To paraphrase the late and irreplaceable Dolly Parton, when you look beneath the hate, more often than not, you'll find a broken heart. If anything in this episode has affected you or brought up difficult feelings or memories, please know that support is available. In the UK... you can contact the Samaritans for free confidential emotional support at any time 24 hours a day from trained volunteers on 116 123. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, you can contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247. And if you're concerned about the safety of a child, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children's Helpline is available on 0808 800 5000. In the US, you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available on 800 799 SAFE and ChildHelp's National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453. And if you are in immediate danger, please contact the emergency services. On a somewhat lighter note, if you've listened to this episode and you think you may have experienced psychokinesis yourself, there are researchers who are still interested in hearing from people who believe they have unusual abilities. In fact, Duke's Institute of Parapsychology, now known as the Ryan Research Center in North Carolina, is still going strong today. So if you think you might have something worth investigating, you can find out more about their current research and how to get in touch with them at rhineonline.org. That's R-H-I-N-E online.org. As I said at the top of the episode, this is the last episode of Season 9. Although there won't be any new episodes for a few weeks, look out for all sorts of other unexplained adjacent content that might be appearing on the feed in the meantime, including possibly a Halloween special. Otherwise, I'll be back very soon with Season 10, which begins in November on Friday 13th. Because how could it not? Lastly, I want to say a big thank you to all the writers that have contributed to this series. In no particular order, Diane Hope, Neil McRobert, Emma Dibden and James Connor Patterson. They've all done a phenomenal job. And extra lastly, I just want to say a huge thank you to all you wonderful listeners out there for taking the time to listen to and support the show. Until next time, much love to you all and stay strange and dissonant. Please remember to like and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by me, Richard McLean-Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast and on X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod.
