[00:00:11] Speaker A: Decked out in her tennis gear, Alice MacArthur, the wife of criminal defense attorney Bill McArthur, climbed into the driver's seat of her Oldsmobile Cutlass in the driveway of her home at 24 Inverness Circle the morning of May 21, 1982. She placed her racket on the front passenger seat and turned the ignition. The cool, clear morning was a perfect day for a tennis match with her friend. An avid tennis player, Alice was a woman who never liked to sit still. There was no way she would decline. Taking advantage of a beautiful spring morning, Alice put the car in gear and rolled forward about 10ft when she heard and felt the blast under her feet. A homemade explosive underneath a front driver's seat floorboard detonated. The bomb was designed to cause a bigger blast. Had it exploded with a force that the maker had intended, Alice would have died, shrapnel would have impaled her, and her body would have been burned in an inferno that would have enveloped the car. Such elaborate assassination attempts were depicted in mob movies and a couple years later in the famous pilot episode of Miami Vice. The they did not happen in Little Rock, Arkansas. They especially did not happen in Pleasant Valley, one of the city's more affluent neighborhoods. Agents from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were summoned to Little Rock to investigate. It was suspected at the time that organized crime was involved. Alice walked away with ringing ears and cuts to her calf and knee. She sported a large bandage and walked out of the hospital. She she was shaken, but she survived the attempt on her life. Investigators knew they needed to find out who planted the bomb. People who set bombs with the intent to kill are not satisfied with trying and failing. They were sure to try again.
The bomb itself was created using a shampoo bottle which contained the explosive material, a water gel type of substance, something that bomb makers rely on in lieu of standard dynamite, which is far more dangerous to handle. The bottle was located inside a cigar box. A 6 volt battery was attached to the device with silver electric tape. The bomb, according to authorities at the time, was activated with a mercury switch. Investigators confirmed to the media that day that not all of the combustible material inside the device ignited. Otherwise it surely would have killed Alice. A pair of nearby construction workers heard the explosion and ran over one of them, helped Alice into her home, where she called her husband. Police also were called to the scene and arrived minutes later. Bill MacArthur spoke to the media afterward, surmising that whoever set the bomb had to have been targeting him. His wife, he said, had no enemies Unbeknownst to him and Alice, she really was the target. Jack lasseter was Bill McArthur's law partner at the time. Here he is describing to my co host, Daniel McFadden during a recent interview his stunned reaction to the news of the car bombing.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: You don't have to think, you know, it just comes out of the blue somebody's tried to kill Alice and that was in her car. So the bond wasn't designated for Bill. That was her car. And your imagination kind of runs loud because you do criminal defense work that you're going to have a lot of people don't like you. It just goes with that end of the profession. And the whole time I did it, I can only think of a handful of people that I thought were capable of doing harm to me. And I couldn't think of anybody that I knew that would do that. Among the clients that we had, our clients generally I thought liked us. We didn't always get the result they wanted. You go into a jury trial in criminal defense world, you're going to lose some cases. But so I was just baffled.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: In another twist, Bill MacArthur was on the phone with one of his clients moments after the bomb went off. The client was Mary Lee Orsini. His office phone started ringing incessantly while he was talking to Orsini. So he put her on hold and took the call. His frantic wife was on the other end. He needed to come home immediately. Mary Lee Orsini was very much on investigators radar when they looked into the bombing. But there were other people in Bill's life to consider as people of interest. A month before the attempt on Alice's Life, one of MacArthur's business partners, one who helped him open a honky tonk bar in little rock called BJ's Star Studded Honky Tonk, was attacked by someone wielding a baseball bat. The man was badly beaten, suffering facial fractures. Four men were arrested in that coordinated attack, including Robert Trout, who owned rival club, Country Club Cowboy Disco. The victim in that aggravated battery was Bob Robbins. He had been the DJ at Trout's club before he agreed to partner up with MacArthur and another man to open the new club. And Trout did not take it well. Robert Trout was mentioned in news articles written about the attempt on Alice MacArthur's life because of his involvement in the Robbins attack and for other criminal activities. The authors of those stories were careful not to state that Trout was any sort of suspect in the bombing, but his name was nonetheless printed in those stories. During the 1960s, Trout was a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat and later became a press aide for Governor Orville Faubus. He was colorful, he temperamental, and as I mentioned, he already had criminal charges filed against him, and not only for the Robbins attack. He would later be sentenced to prison. Pulaski county prosecuting attorney Dub Bentley did mention the Trout case when he addressed the media. So it was logical that newspaper readers and TV news viewers would think of Bob Trout when they thought of possible links to the bombing. Dub Bentley also mentioned the 1981 Ron Orsini murder case when he spoke to reporters about the possibility of an organized CR ring in Little Rock. He said he worried about the safety of Mary Lee Orsini. Ron's widow, Mary Lee Orsini, constantly told people that she was being watched, whether by criminals or crooked cops. As mentioned in episode two, Orsini was the focal point of her husband's death. But a grand jury, after hearing testimony for more than 50 witnesses, declined to indict her. Bill MacArthur, her attorney, put forward a strong defense, as he was known to do for his clients. Here is a recording of Bill MacArthur talking about Mary Lee Orsini and his own conviction that she was not behind her husband's murder.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Let me. Let me say something. I felt this woman was totally innocent of the charge. That's unusual because I'm usually not deluded about my clients.
I usually know whether they're guilty.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Pulaski County Sheriff Tommy Robinson, who would become a major figure in this saga, said that one of his investigators received an anonymous call from someone who said to him, this is only the beginning. The caller was referring to the car bombing. Rumors persisted, in part because of Robinson's insistence on sharing every lead his office was chasing. Robinson floated the idea that a motorcycle gang may have been involved in the bombing. Whatever the Sheriff's office uncovered in the car bombing investigation, or more accurately, whatever conclusions that Robinson was drawing, were not being shared with the Little Rock Police Department. Police there were finding out what Robinson's suspicions were by watching the news. The sheriff was already dividing people. Not only that, but Mary Lee Orsini was pleading with Robinson, Bill MacArthur, the media, and anyone else who would listen that she, too, was a target of organized crime. While she was on the phone with her attorney the morning Alice was nearly killed, Bill McArthur told Mary Lee that he had to go home right away and told her the reason. Someone had planted a bomb underneath his wife's car. Mary Lee screamed into the phone, something along the lines of, how many people are going to have to die before the police get to the bottom of this. The strange and violent tale was far from over, and unbeknownst to police, Mary Lee Orsini had someone new under her spell, and the pair had been plotting a murder. They weren't going to change their strategy, but they were going to change tactics. No more bombs.
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[email protected] ADGNow the car bombing was May 21. Weeks earlier, Orsini befriended and subsequently began a physical relationship with a convicted felon by the name of Eugene James hall, who went by the name Yankee. He originally was from Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania and spoke like it. So his Arkansas friends started calling him Yankee and it stuck. An autobody specialist by trade, Yankee hall did not always choose honest lines of work. He was on probation following a conviction on charges of cocaine possession. Yankee was not a major player in the local drug scene. He preferred to be a middleman in the cocaine trade, a position that made him less of a target for both big time drug criminals and law enforcement. And he was known to use cocaine himself. Whatever money he made, he'd spend a large portion of it to get his hands on his own supply. Yankee's life changed forever one day in the spring of 1982. He was at a place a lot of people go to often to satisfy a guilty pleasure, Taco Bell. Yankee was with his four year old son sitting at a table inside the Taco Bell location on Camp Robinson Road in North Little Rock. That's when Mary Lee Orsini walked in. Yankee looked up and made eye contact with her. Judging by the way she affectionately looked at him, Yankee struck up a conversation with her. He fancied himself as a ladies man. He sported a thin mustache and kept his salt and pepper hair slicked back. Yankee would later say that he suspected Orsini knew who he was, assumed she could easily woo him, and intentionally showed up at the Taco Bell that day to meet him. He had a reputation around town. He was sure someone had told her about him. This is Yankee hall saying under oath months later that he later concluded Mary Lee Orsini did not meet him that day. Purely by coincidence.
[00:11:05] Speaker C: I think the day she met me it was on purpose, but I can't understand why she definitely she came in that restaurant to meet me that day.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: I know that on the day they met, Yankee and Mary Lee Orsini talked for a while inside the restaurant and continued their flirtations outside the restaurant. Yankee would later say her car was parked next to mine out of the whole parking lot. It was just too convenient.
While the two talked in the parking lot, Orsini offered Yankee and his son a ride to a local park where he had planned to take his son after they finished eating. Yankee's young son liked Orsini right away and so did his father. Got a hell of a personality, Yankee would later say about Orsini. He described her as real bubbly. They wound up spending the entire day together. After leaving the park, they went to her place, waited for Yankee's son to fall asleep and had sex. Yankee was attracted to her, but made a point to mention to whoever would listen that she was an average lover. Whether she was or not, Yankee could not resist her. She seemed to be high society and he was not. That was part of the allure for him. It was during the first day they met that Orsini told Yankee her story, rather her version of the story that her husband was murdered. She was wrongly accused, and the chief of the North Little Rock Police Department was trying to pin the slaying on her. Yankee accepted every word as fact before it dawned on him how manipulative she was. Yankee did have one hang up about their relationship. Orsini was strangely secretive about it. He was never allowed to come over while her daughter Tiffany was home. And when she did invite him over, she would tell him to park away from the house. She did not want his truck on or in front of her property. Part of the reason may have been because it was an old beat up truck, but also because she did not want anyone to see that she had company. Yankee found it all so bizarre. Parking his truck so far away and strolling through the neighborhood in the dark to get to her house was very suspicious looking and he was afraid that a neighbor might spring out of the house with a gun. Eventually, Orsini admitted to him there was another guy, someone she did not care for anymore, and she promised Yankee that she would finally break it off with him. It was the first time that Yankee was hearing about another guy and yet he did not cut the cord on the budding relationship. Yankee kept acquiescing later that year, during a sworn seat statement that Yankee hall gave to Chris Piazza, a Pulaski county deputy prosecutor, as well as Pulaski County Sheriff Tommy Robinson, Yankee said Mary Lee Orsini had started talking to him about a fast way to make money. She mentioned her interest in dealing cocaine. Yankee told her basically that in order to make money in the cocaine business, you first need to spend money. Orsini told Yankee she did not have any such seed money, and neither did he. Eventually, Orsini raised the stakes. She started talking to her new boyfriend about making a bomb, clinging to the claim that the North Little Rock Police Department was attempting to railroad her in connection to the shooting death of her husband. Orsini talked to Yankee about making a homemade bomb and attaching it to North Little Rock Chief of Police Bill Yountz's car. She knew where you lived and drove him to his house. Pointing out the unmarked car in the driveway to Yankee that the police chief regularly drove. Finally, showing some backbone or a conscience, Yankee backed away from that idea. During the same interview with Piazza and Robinson, Yankee got more specific about the pair's conversations. He claimed that Orsini told him that she was trying to convince her attorney, Bill MacArthur, to loan her $10,000 in order for her to get started in the cocaine business. But in exchange for the loan, she said Bill McArthur wanted her to do something for him, and that was to make a pair of bombs, one to go off inside his nightclub and another to go off under one of his cars. The reasoning, according to Yankee hall, was to make his business nemesis Bob Trout, look bad. The assumption was that Trout would take the rap for an explosive going off inside BJ's. While Yankee kept talking to Robinson and Piazza, painting Mary lee and Bill MacArthur in an unflattering light. Sheriff Tommy Robinson kept listening. And Yankees words were shaping, or better yet, crystallizing the sheriff's negative opinion of Bill MacArthur. Here is a piece of Yankee's rambling statements to Piazza and Robinson about Mary Lee planting a car bomb. Yankees said, quote, this went on for a couple weeks and she just kept saying she wanted somebody. I thought it was probably intended for a competitor or something. I did not know who it was. And she kept talking about it. And finally I said, well, you haven't even told me who this is, first of all. And she said, well, it's a woman, you know, his wife. Yankee went on to say that Orsini told him all he had to do was build the bomb and she would plant it. Yankee added, she told me the reason he wanted to do this was evidently Mrs. McArthur was planning on leaving Bill McArthur, or this is what she told me, and take his kids. And she was talking about his wife just wiping out his law practice, end quote. There was nothing in the news, in the investigation or court testimony that corroborated the allegation that Alice MacArthur was threatening to divorce her husband, let alone threatened to fight for sole custody of their kids or harm him financially. But according to Yankee hall, that is the story Mary Lee Orsini told him. And as usual, he believed her. Months later, Yankee went before a grand jury to talk about his willingness to plant a bomb designed to kill Alice MacArthur, but his unwillingness to do the same for Chief Yance.
[00:17:10] Speaker C: I wasn't about to kill a police chief from a photo rock.
What's the difference?
I think there's a difference. I think. Well, first place, I think the chief probably was whatever he was doing his job, even if he wasn't wrong. And she indicated to me that Mrs. MacArthur was really, you know, quite starry person, fixing to bury Bill. And Bill was the same. I mean, she just put a whole, whole story. I mean, she said that Bill's doing his job, but she says he's persecuting her. I didn't say this was the most clever move I ever made. You know, I can't. I said, I didn't say this was the most clever goal I ever made. You know, don't ask me to rationalize it for you. I mean, I can't do that. You know, I just say it was a clever move. But anyway, in any event, you chose not to do the. That's true. I just chose not to do it.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Prior to May 21, 1982, Yankee and Orsini did some reconnoiter before planning the bomb under Alice MacArthur's car. Orsini was not sure of the car Alice drove. So she and Yankee posed as joggers and went for a run on the road that ran in front of MacArthur's home. She sneaked down the driveway during their jog and identified Alice's car. She remembered Bill telling her during a conversation that his wife drove a car with a vanity plate on it. Alice was a proud Louisiana native and her license plate read Cajun. Orsini spotted the license plate on a beige Cutlass in the driveway and assumed that was Alice's car. Yankee later told Piazza and Robinson, we spent a lot of time out there before we finally did place the bomb on the car.
He also said during the interview that he was the one who planted the bomb under the car the night of May 20. But Orsini was with him. She remained across the street, serving as a lookout. The morning of May 21, the day the bomb went off, about 30 minutes after it detonated, Yankee called Orsini. He was shocked to find out that Orsini already knew details of what had happened. Yankee had seen nothing on the news yet. According to Yankee's sworn statement to authorities, Orsini described to him how she found out. She was on the phone with Bill McArthur and he told her that his wife had just called him and told him that a bomb had gone off under her car and that she had suffered scratches but no serious injuries. Yankee described Orsini's tone of voice as sarcastic. She also sounded a little disgusted. The two decided to lie low for a while afterward. Yankee hall would eventually realize how badly he was being exploited by Marilee Orsini. Months later, when it came time for him to describe Orsini to a grand jury, he didn't pull any punches. Whenever she told him she was being victimized, it was a lie. Whenever she said her life was in danger, it was a lie. Here is a short sample of Yankee's recorded testimony describing how he was steered toward one bad decision after another because he was so caught up in her lies.
[00:20:10] Speaker C: She had hit men following her around and shooting her car and she turned into a foreigner. That one falling her. There was nobody out there. It's just amazing. She just always. Can I skim?
[00:20:35] Speaker A: There appeared to be no love lost between Bill MacArthur and Bob Trout, the owner of Country Club Cowboy Disco, the rival club to MacArthur's BJ's star studded honky tonk. Conventional wisdom would lead one to think Trout would have been the first person MacArthur thought of when he mulled over who had planted the bomb or ordered the bombing. After all, he was the one who ordered the brutal attack on MacArthur's business associate. But MacArthur had serious doubts that Trout was involved. For starters, there was no strategic benefit to him for Alice MacArthur being killed. While Trout had a reputation for being a shady character who was not above resorting to violence to get his way. It is not common for those in the criminal world to whack a rival's wife. Wives and children were not to be touched. There was a code. That's what MacArthur told federal agents who were investigating the bombing. MacArthur also did not think Mary Lee Orsini had anything to do with it. Months later, when police asked him whether he ever suspected Orsini was involved in the bombing. He said this I did not.
[00:21:45] Speaker C: I thought the authorities would. As a matter of fact, after the bombing I was asked what cases I was involved in. Jerry something like this. And her case was one of them that I, I named. But as far as suspecting her personally, I did not.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: One afternoon in late May of 1982, MacArthur went for a ride with Jess Doc Hale, the assistant chief of the Little Rock Police Department. The two knew each other well. Hale was respected in local law enforcement circles and MacArthur's reputation was comparably favorable. He was a savvy lawyer, but one who always operated above board. Police officers like Hale, those who are seasoned and ethical, understand that criminal defense attorneys have a job to do. Police officers don't take their hardline questions or independent investigations personally. A lawyer's role is to put up the best defense he or she can for clients. Hale knew that MacArthur always did his job to the best of his ability. During their ride together, Hale listened intently to what MacArthur had to say. And he agreed with MacArthur that Trout was probably not the person behind the bombing. Not only that, but MacArthur told him during the drive that strange incidents kept happening in his life ever since he began representing Mary Lee Orsini in her husband's murder case. There was the car bomb, the unannounced drop ins at his office by Orsini, during which she seemed to have nothing interesting or important to say. She also would call him randomly and tell him about attempts on her life and the suspicions she had of being followed. Years later, MacArthur's assistant, Phoebe Pinkston, sat down with Gene Lyons, the author of Widow's Web, which was about the Orsini case. She described to him the string of bizarre episodes, beginning with the Bob Trout orchestrated attack on Bob Robbins. And that's when the weird stuff started to happen.
[00:23:39] Speaker C: Do you remember any of that stuff?
[00:23:41] Speaker D: Oh yeah. It's when Sibalams got beat up and she got shot at and she's supposed to be followed by somebody. The phone calls were starting, I guess, Yankee Hall.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: So it was almost day after day.
[00:23:55] Speaker D: That all of a sudden once Bob Robbins got beat up, it was just a steady flow of who done it to who.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Pingston recalled the time on April 8, the day after Robbins was assaulted, when Mary Lee Orsini showed up at the law office in a panicked state. Pinkston even poured Orsini a drink in an effort to calm her down. Orsini alleged that someone had shot at her while she was driving in a remote area on the Batesville pike near the North Little Rock Airport. A window in her car had been shot out, and police extracted a.38 caliber bullet from the driver's seat headrest. Afterward, both Pinkston and her boss wondered whether Orsini was cooking up crazy tales.
[00:24:38] Speaker C: You all thought all this was real and going on?
[00:24:42] Speaker D: Yeah, well, Bill and I talked about it after she come in there when she supposedly got shot at. I mean, we talked about it for months, whether she was faking it or not. I mean, we talked at length about it.
[00:24:55] Speaker C: Did you ever think which.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Who took which part? Or did you all.
[00:24:59] Speaker D: I would always approach him. I said, well, now, Bill, do you think that she could fake that by any reason? And he'd just say, well, I don't know. I said, God. I said, but gosh, you look so scared, you know. I said, how can you create fear if it's not there?
You know, I mean, it's not like we didn't discuss the possibilities of it being fake, but we always came up with the same answer.
It had to happen. You know, it had to happen because you just seen her, the condition she was in.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: Well, how. What was that condition?
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Oh, she's scared to death. To hear Pinkston tell it, Bill MacArthur would not allow himself to not believe Orsini. Pinkston was the same way she felt she had to believe her. But Orsini was very tactical when it came to convincing someone of a story, no matter how far fetched it seemed.
[00:25:47] Speaker D: Then you get to the point where you can't disbelieve it, because what if it really is happening and then somebody gets hurt? Well, that's what Bill and I said, you know, whether it's happening or not, you know, I felt like some point she was going to end up dead and that nobody cared. I mean, that was what was so crazy. I mean, she made you believe that at some point she's gonna end up being dead, that nobody was gonna do anything about it. So then she got you. You just even that stronger as an ally when she had you believe that stuff toward the end. She never let you get in a situation. Of course not. Bill was. Bill wouldn't around her toward the end. But I was. It's like she would never let up on it because she could never give you a free moment to sit and think about it. Because, you know, if you sat down and really thought about it for two, three or four days without any contact with her, at some point you would start doubting her. And it never failed. If I ever started doubting her, the slide. But all of a sudden she'd call.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Another person witnessed the incident in which a frantic Orsini showed up at MacArthur's office. It was MacArthur's law partner, Jack Lassiter. Orsini was not Lassiter's client, so he could look at the situation more objectively than MacArthur and Pinkston. And he never believed Orsini's acts.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: I think kind of a turning point was when she came to the office upset and claimed that somebody had shot at her and shattered a glass in her car.
[00:27:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay.
[00:27:09] Speaker D: What do you remember about that day?
[00:27:11] Speaker B: I'm not believing any of this. That was the first thing to me, this is not happen. I had picked up on some things and Bill was more open minded about her than I was. And I can just tell you just, just my sixth sense just told me this just didn't happen. I mean, but if you are her lawyer, which in that situation, Bill was, I, I was not. I'm around. Anything she says to me is privileged, obviously. But as her lawyer, you got to give her the benefit of the doubt now, which of course Bill did. He didn't say, you're crazy, I don't think this happened. And he just, you know, went with it. And, and if you're her lawyer, that's what you got to do, because you might well be wrong, your success might be crazy and somebody might actually take a shot at her out there.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Yankee hall would later testify about Orsini's supposed brush with death before a grand jury. It happened after Orsini went public about her desire to conduct her own investigation into her late husband's murder. She told those close to her as well as law enforcement and the media, that she was being hunted by those who wanted her to keep quiet and end her investigation. She spoke at length with Sheriff Tommy Robinson about the so called threats she was receiving. She also spoke to Yankee about it. And Yankee was convinced she was in actual danger for a time. And then she tried to portray him as one of the people threatening her. Here is Yankee recalling a phone conversation he had with Orsini after she said someone had shot at her.
[00:28:52] Speaker C: I called her one night after her car was. Supposedly had been shot. Okay, supposedly? What do you mean? Well, because nobody shot it. You know, I figured she shot it now, but at the time I thought someone had actually shot at her. And I called her and I was kind of, you know, I was worried about her. And I start telling her she shouldn't have offered this reward for the killer. Anyway, she recorded the call and took it, Tommy, like it was an anomalous. Phone caller threatening her and it was me. And then she took a list of. She recorded the conversation conversation and it was me. And she, she turned over to Tommy and said it was an anomalous caller, that it was threatening her and it was. It was me. Was it a threatening type phone call? No, I was just. You could listen to they. Tommy's got it over there. No. Well, I was, I was kind of hollering at her but I mean it was because I was worried about her. I said, well, you're going to mess around and you're going to get killed or you're. They might even try to get your daughter. I was referring to the. That supposedly killers that had killed her, her husband. She turned and turned me in as making a threatening call to her.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Back to that night in the spring of 1982, sometime after the alleged shooting incident involving Mary Lee Orsini. The night that Deputy Chief Hale and Bill MacArthur took a long drive together. Hale kept listening to MacArthur describe how chaotic his life had become and how it seemed that Orsini was always in a state of panic. It all sounded so outlandish to Hale. He was fully convinced that Orsini was a very suspicious person. Unfortunately for MacArthur, not every high ranking law enforcement official in and around Little Rock centered their suspicions on Mary Lee Orsini. There was one in particular, looking squarely at Bill McArthur.
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[email protected] adgnow August 29, 1982.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: The day of Yankee Hall's interview with prosecutor Chris Piazza and Sheriff Tommy Robinson, Yankee was spilling everything about all the crimes he had committed with Mary Lee Orsini. He gave admission statement after admission statement about what the pair had done. At one point, out of the blue, Robinson perhaps signaling his belief that Bill MacArthur was behind everything told Yankee that his office had information that he had handled cocaine from MacArthur. The sheriff asked Yankee point blank whether that was true. Yankee told him it was not true. He had never met Bill McArthur, let alone engaged in any illegal activities with him. However, he kept describing everything that Orsini was telling him. And she had many stories to tell about Bill McArthur. Portraying the locally famous lawyer as the one manipulating her. Yankee said that he and Orsini did lie low for a few days after the bombing, as they promised each other they would do. Eventually, Orsini got back in touch with Yankee, telling him that Bill McArthur still wanted something done about his wife and that he was willing to pay her more money to get it done. That's when she asked Yankee whether he knew of any hitmen. Yankee, a years long criminal, had a guy in mind.
Larry McClendon, a convicted felon who was out on parole, was the guy Yankee turned to. Yankee met McClendon while they were serving time together in the same prison. Yankee said during his interview with Piazza and Robinson that McClendon, who by then was out of prison and living with his mother, required no coaxing, no arm twisting. He was in. Yankee and Mary Lee Orsini decided there would be no more homemade bombs. This time the job required a gun. Yankee said all I had to do was find somebody to pull the trigger. He went on to say about McClendon, well, I just run the proposition out to him real quick, didn't give him any details. He didn't know who was having it done. All he knew was me. And I just informed him that I needed this done and I didn't even tell him who. At First, Yankee told McClendon the amount of money that was going to be paid for the job, said it would be split three ways and that supplies for the job would have to be taken out of the payment. So in the end, McClendon was going to collect about $6,000 or so he was told. McClendon agreed to do it. Mary Lee Orsini was very detailed with her preparation. And according to Phoebe Pinkston, Bill McArthur's assistant, she was also in a state of desperation. Pinkston concluded that Orsini could feel the heat of law enforcement and it was only a matter of time before her attorney, the one who saved her, would no longer be there for her. In fact, all of Mary Lee Orsini's civil matters were being handed over to another attorney. Her damsel in distress act was running out of steam and Bill McArthur's reasons for representing her were drying up. And if she kept on badgering Bill McArthur and telling him and his employees about all of the outlandish things happening to her, they would eventually gain a clearer perspective. Well, they were about a half a jump behind her.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: If it had gone on two more days, Data would have had her.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: They would have atf.
[00:34:54] Speaker D: She was running out of time. She had to do it.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: How's that?
[00:34:58] Speaker D: She was. I mean, it was just. There was too many. She was running out stories with everybody that she was running out of reasons to be in office, you know, come by to see Bill.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: During the same interview, author Gene Lyons asked Phoebe Pinkston a direct question. Considering that Mary Lee Orsini would have had better odds of getting away with murder and attempted murder by staying out of the spotlight and leaving people alone, why couldn't she simply slide out of everyone's view and maintain a low profile?
[00:35:30] Speaker C: Why couldn't she just quietly tiptoe away from all this?
[00:35:33] Speaker D: She cries.
[00:35:34] Speaker C: Couldn't you?
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Crazy but determined. As it turned out, the gun that Orsini promised to provide Yankee hall and Larry McClendon was a snub nose.38 special. She told them she would get it from a local veterinarian whom she had dated, Dr. Charles Wols, the very same man she had been hiding Yankee from. The same man who popped open the champagne bottle during Orsini's victory celebration at her home after a grand jury declined to indict her in her husband's murder. In late May of 1982, Bob Trout, the embattled Honky Tonk Club owner and Bill McArthur's business rival, needed to have a sit down with law enforcement. He had some information he thought police needed to know. He did not want to come to Little Rock to talk to investigators, so he invited them to Hot Springs. An ATF agent and a couple of Little Rock police detectives drove to his attorney's office to take a statement from him. The reason Trout did not want to come to Little Rock was because he was tipped off by a reporter that Mary Lee Orsini had fingered him in the car bombing. It was the very thing that Sheriff Tommy Robinson wanted to hear. Robinson had been telling the media that Little Rock was being plagued by one or more crime syndicates, and the car bomb at McArthur's residence may have been the work of organized criminals. Bob Trout felt as though he was being singled out by Robinson, and he accused the sheriff of threatening him. Under oath, Trout strenuously denied any involvement in the bombing of Alice MacArthur's car, he offered to take a polygraph. He said he and Bill MacArthur were business rivals, nothing more. He also said the only time he ever heard of any stories about organized crime infiltrating Little Rock was by hearing Robinson ranting on television about it. He had no knowledge of it and surely was not involved in any such criminal activity himself. Trout did have some choice words about MacArthur and his marriage, but that was it. Law enforcement took him up on his offer to take a polygraph. He passed on all questions related to the car bombing. He flunked the questions about MacArthur's alleged rocky marriage. The ATF agent crossed Trout off the suspect list. A day or two later, he crossed off MacArthur. He also concluded that any suggestion that Bill and Alice MacArthur had anything other than a loving marriage was based on false rumors, not reality. Trout wasn't done talking. On July 1, he had yet another interesting conversation with law enforcement. This time the North Little Rock Police Department, the agency that investigated and was still investigating the shooting death death of Ron Orsini. During an hour long face to face conversation, Trout told Detective T.J. farley, the lead investigator in the Ron Orsini murder case, that there was a hit team made up of a white man and a black man and the white man was armed with a 9 millimeter handgun and drove around in a Corvette. Then he told the detective something else, that there were contracts out on three people. Trout's ex wife, Mary Lee Orsini and Alice MacArthur. Farley knew what he had an eyebrow raising, potentially life or death tip from a source who seemed to have insight on a lot of criminal activity in and around Little Rock. He passed that tip to the Little Rock Police Department. It was later discovered that the tip got all the way to the chief of police. By the early morning hours of July 2, the investigation into the car bombing was still going. But there were no arrests and no signal that any were coming. May turned to June and June turned to July. Meanwhile, Bill and Alice MacArthur's children were away at camp and they were getting gearing up for a July 4th weekend trip together at a Hot Springs lake house with friends. They were really looking forward to that trip. They were due for a getaway. Alice briefly considered leaving for Hot Springs early, but ultimately decided to wait for her husband to come home from work so that they could drive together. The lake house would remain empty that weekend.
[00:40:08] Speaker D: Next week on the Orsini tapes.
[00:40:10] Speaker C: And Larry was in there just a few seconds after he fired that last shot. He was running out that door. I mean, there wasn't any time for him to do anything except get out.
[00:40:18] Speaker D: Somebody came back out, and I can't identify that man. And he took Bill and he sat him down. And Bill said, is she in there? And then the guy just looked at him and he said, for God's sake, man, tell me if she's in there.
[00:40:32] Speaker C: Mr. Palmer?
[00:40:33] Speaker D: Yes, sir. I called a few minutes ago. I'm Lee Orsini, and two black men pulled up to the front of my house while ago. They keep driving by around my house.
[00:40:41] Speaker C: What kind of car are they in? I guess hoping against hope more than anything else because I was scared shitless about this time.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: The Orsini Tapes is a production of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. The show is written and hosted by Daniel McFadden and Tony Holt and is produced by Kyle McDaniel.
[00:41:00] Speaker D: The archive audio for this podcast came from three sources. The North Lanark Police Department, the Pulaski County Prosecutor's Office, and the Gene Lyons Collection at the University of Arkansas Library. A special thanks to Juliet Robinson for the hours she spent digitizing Jean Lyons Tapes.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: We are deeply thankful.
