#52: "Could Be Him, Could Be Anybody" — The Wrongful Trial of Brenton Butler, and the story behind "Murder on a Sunday Morning"

This week the Spooky Darlings cover a case of lazy, racist, and downright crooked police work. A woman is murdered at a Jacksonville hotel on a Sunday morning. Ninety minutes later, police have their suspect, a fifteen-year-old boy on his way to get a job application. His name is Brenton Butler, and his story, documented in the Oscar-winning film Murder on a Sunday Morning, is one of the most infuriating wrongful arrest cases in American history. Racial profiling, a coerced confession, zero physical evidence, and two public defenders who simply refused to let the system win. This week on the Spooky Darlings, we're telling it in full.Sources:PRIMARY SOURCES:De Lestrade, Jean-Xavier, director. Murder on a Sunday Morning. HBO America Undercover, 2001.Murder on a Sunday Morning." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_on_a_Sunday_Morning. Accessed 6 June 2026."Brenton Butler Case." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenton_Butler_case. Accessed 6 June 2026.CLOSE CAPTIONING FOR DRAMATIC READING IN EPISODE: https://subsaga.com/bbc/documentaries/factual/storyville/2011-2012/5-murder-on-a-sunday-morning.htmlCROSS-RACE EFFECT SOURCES:Horry, Ruth, et al. "The Cross-Race Effect in Eyewitness Identification." Visual Cognition, vol. 31, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1–18. Taylor & Francis Online, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13506285.2023.2288358.Available, John, et al. "Cross-Race Effect in Face Recognition." PubMed Central, National Institutes of Health, 2020, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7067904/."Cross-Race Effect." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect. Accessed 6 June 2026.Message us!Thanks for listening to The Spooky Darlings! If you have a creepy, strange, or cool story you would like to share email us at [email protected] us on instagram and TikTok @thespookydarlingspodcast for more!Peruse our merch store at https://thespookydarlings.printful.me/