The Dry Tin in the Ditch: How Ticket Stubs Lied About Murder

The Dry Tin in the Ditch: How Ticket Stubs Lied About Murder

A sealed metal tin found dry in a flooded drainage canal held four complete rolls of sequential drive-in ticket stubs-intended as a paper alibi that had been hidden for six months. Who assembled that coded record by hand and why did someone wait until January to bury the proof of a June murder?

In this episode, you will hear the sequence of events from the night George Hunter vanished at a drive-in to the discovery that exposed a fabricated alibi, and how one investigator’s attention to arithmetic challenged the story the ticket stubs seemed to tell.

Person: George Hunter
Date: June 7, 1956
Location: Starlight Motor Picture Court, Route 9
Investigator: Donna Harris
Evidence: Four rolls of sequential drive-in ticket stubs in a sealed metal tin

- The tin was coffee-can size and found dry on January 14, 1957, after six months of summer storms had flooded the canal.
- Inside the tin were four complete rolls of ticket stubs, numbered sequentially and held with a rubber band.
- Approximately 150 cars filled the Starlight drive-in on the night of June 7, 1956, when George Hunter disappeared.
- George Hunter was 52 years old and had managed the grain elevator cooperative for 19 years at the time of his disappearance.
- Investigator Donna Harris was 38 years old when she began to break the fabricated alibi by noticing numerical discrepancies.

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