
The Debutante
Now, with a Stunning Bonus Episode!
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Narrated by:
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Jon Ronson
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By:
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Jon Ronson
About this listen
This is the story of a Tulsa debutante who, as a result of a series of unlikely and often very bad life choices she made in the '90s, found herself in the midst of one of the most terrible crimes ever to take place in America.
Thirty years ago, award-winning journalist Jon Ronson stumbled on the mystery of Carol Howe-a charismatic, wealthy former debutante turned white supremacist spokeswoman turned undercover informant. In 1995, Carol was spying on Oklahoma's neo-Nazis for the government just when Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
Ever since then, Carol has haunted the imaginations of survivors and investigators because of a rumor that had begun to swirl: If her information had only been listened to, she could have prevented the worst domestic terrorist attack in US history.
The question mystified Ronson. In The Debutante, he embarks on an investigative journey to seek the truth about the woman who grew up in a world of privilege and opportunity and whose teenage rebellion spiraled out of control, leading her to extreme radicalization.
The Debutante takes a closer look at Carol's world, where truth is shrouded and seldom guaranteed. Rare court tapes, diary entries, undercover ATF surveillance audio, and interviews with those who crossed paths with Carol depict a complex woman whose motivations have been hypothesized about for decades. With curiosity and insight at the forefront of his work, Ronson delivers a new perspective on the extraordinary story of Carol Howe.
Now The Stunning Conclusion To The Debutante
In 1996 Carol wrote to her parents, “In my new life, I will have to be very average to avoid suspicion.” Then she vanished from the world. Until January 2025, when Jon Ronson received an extraordinary message from a woman who said she was Carol’s neighbor. As a result of the devastating information in the message, Jon travelled to the small town in Tennessee where Carol had been living under an assumed name to meet those closest to her. In this brand new epilogue, they share for the first time incredible stories that paint a much fuller picture of Carol, from her childhood to her final days.
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The Debutante
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The mysterious woman who warned of Oklahoma City
Untangle the mysterious life of a Tulsa debutante.

About the Creator and Performer
Featured Article: The Best Unsolved Mystery Podcasts to Uncover Your Inner Investigator
There are so many unsolved mysteries in the world, from murders that have stumped investigators for decades to the enigma of extraterrestrials, supernatural phenomena, and the afterlife. Such seemingly eclectic subjects all stimulate our capacity to wonder and have fascinated humans for as long as we've been telling stories. No wonder that some of our favorite podcasts seek to shed light on such mysteries, both big and small.
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Story
In a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016, the shooter, Omar Mateen, murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others. The attack was the deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ+ community in US history and the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11. But there’s a story you haven’t heard. The FBI had a secret history with the shooter and his father. To obscure that history, the FBI pushed a false story that the media dutifully carried—that the attacker was a secretly gay Islamist extremist who had chosen to target Pulse and planned the attack for weeks.
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Heart wrenching
- By Kaylee Charles on 07-21-24
By: Trevor Aaronson
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Have at It, Sister
- By: Bill Griffeth
- Narrated by: Bill Griffeth, Ryan Kailbourne, Scott Aiello, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Original Recording
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Gloria Burtzlaff feared for her life one day back in April of 1991 when her abusive husband, Larry, drunk and violent, slapped her, hit her, and began pelting her with glasses. After he tried to drown her in a tub, she got the family shotgun and confronted him in his underwear. “Larry, I’m going to kill you,” she declared. Defense lawyers would later claim he lifted a glass as if to say, “Have at it, sister.” Have at It, Sister is a true-crime tale about Gloria, a South Dakota woman who shot her abusive husband and was put on trial in a precedent-setting case.
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Thank you
- By Shelly W. on 09-02-22
By: Bill Griffeth
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Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries
- By: Jon Ronson
- Narrated by: Jon Ronson
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Jon Ronson is fascinated by madness, extraordinary behaviour and the human mind. He has spent his life investigating crazy events, following fascinating people and unearthing unusual stories. Collected here from various sources (including the Guardian and GQ America) are the best of his adventures.
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Like a Collection of TAL Episodes
- By Pamela Harvey on 10-20-12
By: Jon Ronson
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'Til Murder Do Us Part
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Bryan Burrough
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Original Recording
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The case began in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1922 and lasted for over a decade. The killer has never been found, and the case continues to fascinate true-crime aficianados. A bon vivant Episcopal minister, a not-so-virginal soprano in his choir. The wealthy wife. Her oddball brother. Their furtive maid. The snooping congregants. The bumbling detectives. And in the denouement, a trial, one of the more notable of America’s Jazz Age, covered by the likes of Damon Runyon, Dorothy Dix and James Thurber. All of it hanging on the dramatic testimony of a single, strange witness.
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New Brunswick, NJ, here's your audio....
- By Christina -- Audible on 10-17-19
By: Bryan Burrough
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Dear Cousin: The Stalking of Susan Fensten
- By: Ventureland
- Narrated by: Susan Fensten
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Original Recording
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Dear Cousin: The Stalking of Susan Fensten is the gripping true story of one woman's quest for long lost family. After the deaths of her sister and estranged father, Susan searches for relatives on an early online genealogy forum. When she meets cousins from her grandfather's other family, they're everything she'd hoped for—until it all goes to hell.
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Harrowing Case, Excellent Production
- By C Lopez on 07-12-24
By: Ventureland
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Exposed
- The Ashley Madison Hack
- By: Sophie Elmhirst, Maria Luisa Tucker
- Narrated by: Sophie Nélisse
- Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
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Millions of people–looking to cheat on their partners–signed up for Ashley Madison in the early 2000s, seeking a private space to share their public desires. The promise of discretion was shattered in the summer of 2015, when anonymous hackers stole the company’s cache of user information and published it worldwide. The result? One of the most shocking data breaches of the internet age. Overnight, millions of unfaithful spouses had their real names, addresses and sexual preferences published online in a searchable database that anyone could browse.
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Hard to feel sorry for the cheaters
- By Kim Kormylo on 02-21-24
By: Sophie Elmhirst, and others
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Something Ain't Right
- By: Roger Stringer, Zachary Stringer
- Narrated by: Roger Stringer, Zachary Stringer
- Length: 1 hr and 53 mins
- Original Recording
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Roger Stringer grew up in rural Mississippi, hunting and eating everything from deer to rabbits. When he had two sons, Zac and Justin, he gave them guns and took them to the woods as well. Then one day when the boys were home alone, he got a call from Zac that Justin had been shot. What follows is an intimate and gripping memoir about the shooting’s aftermath. The story moves between the perspectives of Roger and Zac as they take us through their journey of betrayal, redemption, and ultimately confrontation with a company that had kept its corruption a secret for decades.
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The Journey for Truth
- By samsararose on 05-19-23
By: Roger Stringer, and others
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Hold Fast
- The Unadulterated Story of the World’s Most Scandalous Website
- By: Trevor Aaronson, Sam Eifling, Michael Mooney
- Narrated by: Trevor Aaronson, Sam Eifling, Michael Mooney
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
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Hold Fast is the uncompromising story of Backpage.com, the world’s most scandalous website, and the rise and fall of alternative weekly newspapers nationwide.
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An amazing, crazy ride. Highly recommend.
- By Tara N on 04-17-24
By: Trevor Aaronson, and others
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Them: Adventures with Extremists
- By: Jon Ronson
- Narrated by: Jon Ronson
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Them began as a book about different kinds of extremists, but after Jon had got to know some of them - Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen - he found that they had one oddly similar belief: that a tiny, shadowy elite rule the world from a secret room. In Them, Jon sets out, with the help of the extremists, to locate that room. The journey is as creepy as it is comic, and along the way Jon is chased by men in dark glasses, unmasked as a Jew in the middle of a Jihad training camp, and more.
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Dated but VERY Good... and FUNNY!
- By aaron on 09-26-12
By: Jon Ronson
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Frank
- The True Story that Inspired the Movie
- By: Jon Ronson
- Narrated by: Jon Ronson
- Length: 1 hr and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late 1980s Jon Ronson was the keyboard player in the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band. Frank wore a big fake head. Nobody outside his inner circle knew his true identity. This became the subject of feverish speculation during his zenith years. Together, they rode relatively high. Then it all went wrong. Twenty-five years later and Jon has co-written a movie, Frank, inspired by his time in this great and bizarre band. Frank is set for release in 2014, starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Lenny Abrahamson.
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Frankly, Not Enough
- By Dubi on 07-31-17
By: Jon Ronson
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Twisted
- The Story of Larry Nassar and the Women Who Took Him Down
- By: Mary Pilon, Carla Correa
- Narrated by: Mary Pilon, Carla Correa
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Original Recording
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In early 2018, Larry Nassar, the former doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, was sentenced to serve out the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to a variety of sex crimes. New York Times best-selling author Mary Pilon and Carla Correa chronicle the scandal from its inception, tracking the institutions that Nassar hid behind, the athletic culture that he benefited from, and the women who eventually brought him to justice.
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The Truth as told by the Survivors
- By DKMarkham on 07-27-19
By: Mary Pilon, and others
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The Last Days of Cabrini-Green
- By: Ben Austen, Harrison David Rivers
- Narrated by: Ben Austen, Patina Miller, Harry Lennix, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
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In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.
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An important moment in Chicago History
- By Ms. B. on 12-02-24
By: Ben Austen, and others
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The Lost
- By: Matteo Fagotto, Matilde Gattoni
- Narrated by: Matteo Fagotto, Matilde Gattoni
- Length: 4 hrs
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They’re known as the bebés robados, or “stolen babies”–children stolen at birth from their mothers and sold to wealthy families around Spain. For decades, European reporters and activists have tried to penetrate the secretive networks responsible for the crimes, typically with little success. Until now. In The Lost, veteran journalists Matteo Fagotto and Matilde Gattoni investigate the story of a woman named Ana Belén Pintado, a middle-aged woman from a small village in Central Spain.
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Investigative Podcast
- By Michael & Cora on 10-28-22
By: Matteo Fagotto, and others
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Chase Darkness with Me
- How One True Crime Writer Started Solving Murders
- By: Billy Jensen, Karen Kilgariff - foreword
- Narrated by: Karen Kilgariff, Billy Jensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
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In Chase Darkness with Me, you’ll ride shotgun as journalist Billy Jensen identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You’ll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle’s pursuit of the Golden State Killer which is chronicled in I’ll Be Gone In The Dark which Billy helped finish after Michelle’s passing, and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown 4 family.
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COULD NOT STOP
- By KK on 04-14-19
By: Billy Jensen, and others
What listeners say about The Debutante
Highly rated for:
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- Mr Dangerous
- 04-15-23
Interesting story...
Ronson is always entertaining. Was she a criminal? Did the FBI screw up? Regardless, this is quite entertaining. A worthy listen.
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4 people found this helpful
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- DM
- 04-16-23
Smoke, not fire
I feel for the journalist’s decades-long quest for a more compelling story, that wasn’t to be. Which made this a pretty disappointing listening experience.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jane Alpers
- 04-22-23
Interesting, informative and really well done
I had no previous exposure to the potential conspiracy around the Oklahoma City bombing. I’m glad to now be better informed in what seemed like a well researched and balanced way. The Carol Howe element of the story was riveting.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Nick Merrill
- 04-21-23
Wonderful
Couldn’t recommend this more. Great as always from Jon Ronson. Hope for more like this in the future.
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- Julie C Wileman
- 04-30-23
Very Interesting
Well presented with opposing opinions. Great chronology made for easy understanding. Presenter and interviews are clear and concise.
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- Michael Wood
- 04-20-23
Ronson yet again delivers….
Since I watched “Them” on TV in the 90’s I’ve really enjoyed Jon’s work. This is no exception. A really interesting dive into the OKC bombing…. Listen, you won’t be disappointed.
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- Adam W
- 04-22-23
Jon is a fabulous story teller
what a ride, I know of Jon through the 5th column podcast, I didn't have much interest in the Oklahoma City bombing but his amazing tale drew me in from start to finish. really wild stuff, bravo!
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- Katherine
- 05-17-23
Just when you think you’ve heard it all
There’s more that you’ve never heard!! I have to listen to this again to catch all the details. It does jump around a lot, there is speculation, but this story is so interesting and I can’t imagine there’s any other way to tell it since Carol Howe won’t talk, at least not yet.
Most interesting to me while listening was thinking about, and knowing about, all of this happening on a day to day basis now, everyday in this country and others! Perhaps even more so these days! This story is very relevant for these times!
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- Anonymous User
- 05-13-23
Do they really hear you?
I was drawn into the story of the bravery of a young woman who put her life on the line to send a warning. Did anyone listen?
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- yukichan
- 06-19-23
Engaging investigation
Excellent storytelling assembles fleeting facts and questions surrounding the OK City bombing. I really like how voices of those interviewed are framed to give listeners a chance to evaluate what they say.
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