The Big Story - 1950-06-21 Death In the Family [William Noble, Lapeer Michigan Press]
In September 1941, Julia Kulinich killed her husband, their young daughter and son. She tried to cover it up by calling the police and saying her husband killed the children, set their home on fire, and planned to killed himself after killing her. There was general belief in her story, but as our hero reporter came to know her through repeated interviews, he realized that she had killed her family. She confessed five months after the incident. At the trial the question of her sanity came up, implying that her confession might not be true. She was found guilty of second degree murder of her daughter and manslaughter for the death of her husband. The court dismissed the charges for the killing of her son. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. She was paroled in 1959, and died in 2003 at 88 years old. This broadcast is an example of why The Big Story producers and NBC changed the names, and often some circumstances, in their adaptations. The only name that stayed the same from the real life event and the broadcast was that of the reporter. When this incident was announced to appear on The Big Story , Kulinich sued to stop the broadcast. The suit was brought to preserve her privacy and to protect her from "harassment, ridicule, and humiliation." The first judge to hear the case, hours before the show, issued an injunction against the program. A second judge, later that afternoon, vacated that order. The show went on, as scheduled. In modern times, the lawsuit might arouse suspicions that it was brought in an attempt to secure a payout from the producers to end the suit. There would be too much at stake, however, because then every Big Story broadcast might be subject to the same nuisance strategy. The network lawyers would staunchly defend against this lawsuit to discourage others from trying the same. There might be another reason for the suit. She might have wanted to annoy the honored reporter, William Noble, whom she believed had betrayed or misled her in his process of interviewing her for his articles and overall coverage. William Noble followed in his father’s footsteps into the newspaper business. At the time of this incident, he was news editor of the Lapeer County Press , but would leave that position in 1944. He joined the Flint MI Journal until 1951. He briefly owned a weekly newspaper in California, but returned to become a reporter at the Detroit News . He remained there until his 1976 retirement, covering crime stories and as feature writer for their Sunday magazine section. His two sons also became reporters covering the automobile industry for other newspapers. Noble passed away in September 1998 at age 83. The sheer brutality of this case possibly haunted his thoughts many times in his .
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.