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Hey weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And
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this right here is Morbid.
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[Music]
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This is Morbid. And it's morbid in the
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morning. It truly is morbid in the
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morning. It is, [ __ ] I [ __ ] It's
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like 8:00 a.m. right now, which is like
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pretty morningish. But I woke up at 5
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cuz I had to feed them cats that I own.
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Yeah. You got to feed those animals, you
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know. Yeah. And then I had to feed
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myself. And I decided I saw this Tik
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Tok. I live my life by Tik Tok. And this
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woman said if you you know, like it's
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really good for your circadium rhythm to
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get some sunlight on your face in the
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morning. Um, especially if you have
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PCOS, which I just got diagnosed with.
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Super fun. Um, boom. But that's so good
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for you. So, I went outside to eat my
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breakfast this morning and I feel I
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think it was really good for me. I think
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Well, like there's something about fresh
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air in the morning.
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No, it's true. Like, I know we say that,
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but you know, if you're getting your own
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fresh air in the morning, it's okay. You
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just don't want to do it at night. Uh,
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like when you're sleeping. But I used to
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in fact my the butcher and the ren was
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mostly written outside in the morning
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very early in the like before anyone
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woke up outside on my porch with a glass
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of iced coffee. Yes. Or a hot coffee and
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just getting that fresh air. And I feel
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like it did something to me because I
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could plow through stuff out there in
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that in the morning and it was outside
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that like really did it. like I'm going
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to start I want to start doing that
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again because I think it really does
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trigger something in the morning. I was
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but I think it really like that fresh
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air is like it can wake you up and make
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you start the day better I think. Yeah.
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And I think like just being exposed to
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the daylight that early like I I'm not
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looking to like get tan or anything. I'm
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so [ __ ] pale. Um but just like
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getting the light on your face in the
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morning is so good for you. I think and
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I was just read I'm reading um Southern
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Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by
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Grady Hendris. Elena recommended it.
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It's really good. I just want to tear
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through it. Yeah, it's I at your
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recommendation and that was like for
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book club, wasn't it? Our audio book
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club. Uh my best friend's exorcism. I
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listened and read at the same time to um
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My Best Friend's Exorcism and it was so
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good. And this uh this one, Southern
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Book Club, the same is in the same
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universe, like on the same street. So,
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it's interesting. It is. I love that
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about his stuff. And uh that's a great
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book. And then I I just posted this on
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my on my Instagram, but uh I just read
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um Widow's Point by Richard Chismar. It
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It's It's coming out in September. I
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think it's September 30th, I want to
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say. Um it'll I think it's on pre-order
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right now, though. You can pre-order
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like the audio book and all that stuff.
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I can't recommend this book enough.
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Yeah, I want to read it. Um, I mentioned
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on my on my Instagram that I want to
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start like recommending books on there.
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Yeah. And like maybe on my Tik Tok or
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something. I'm only going to recommend
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books that I like. Like I'm not going to
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like review books I don't like. Um I
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just I just don't want to people do
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that. Yeah. It's like it's like to each
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their own. That's you know the whatever
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you want to do. I I just don't want to
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do that. Like I'd rather just share
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books that I really like so that you can
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add them to your to read list or not.
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Like it's totally just because one
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person doesn't like a book doesn't mean
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it's a bad book. Yeah. Like it's it's
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like a tough line to walk. Like that's
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the thing like cuz like I I stay out of
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reviewer spaces because that's their
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space like reader spaces or their
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spaces. You're in the author space and
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then author at least when it comes to
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like my books, I'm like you you do what
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you got to do. Yeah. Say what you need
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to say. Yeah. like whatever you want to
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do and but I'm going to stay out of
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those spaces and which I I fully believe
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that like as an as authors we should
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stay out of those let them have their
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own you know like you can review books
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how you want to and but but I was just
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thinking on my pages I just wanted to
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like kind of like share what I love to
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read because I think I'm I I'm trying
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like protecting peace is like a v I
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think a lot of people are really feeling
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that lately like we're just protecting
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our piece and like keeping things
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positive. Yeah. And that's what I would
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like to do is just share positive stuff.
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Like if I don't like a book, I won't
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share it. If I like a book, I will share
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it. Um but people were like I I was
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really happy to hear that like people
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listening that you guys were like,
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"Yeah, like share books that you like."
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So I'll try to do that like once a week.
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I'll share a book that I like or
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something like just And again, if you
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like it, you like it. If you don't, you
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don't. That's fine. Whatever. But I'll
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just share what I'm reading because I'm
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trying to keep myself reading for like
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leisure. I am too because it makes me so
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happy. Like it fills my cup in such a
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such a real way. I'm at a point where
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this book where every time I have to
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close it and go back to like my life,
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I'm like I want to go back into that
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world. That's when you know you're in a
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good reading slide. And that's I'm in a
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good reading slide right now where it
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also is really good. And I don't know if
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this will work for everybody, but I
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found it works for me. Um in curbing
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doom scrolling or just like mindless
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phone [ __ ] every if you if you feel
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like this will work, this is what I do
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is every time I feel like I'm reaching
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for my phone to open it just to like
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check Instagram, like do something
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stupid, look at my email, like it's just
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like just that mindless like addictive
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I'm grabbing my phone to grab it.
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Instead of grabbing your phone, just
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have your book that you're reading with
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you at all times and read. Yeah. For
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even if it's just a page, just read for
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the amount of time you would have sat
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there and scrolled. I was just doing
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that this morning cuz you were saying
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that like a couple weeks ago even I was
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doing it this morning like you went to
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the bathroom. I opened my book and read
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like two pages instead of sitting there
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doom scrolling for a second. We're
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sitting with the girls for a minute and
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they were just like having a mama
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moment. So I was like I'm going to read.
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Yeah. And that's it. It'll get you like
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reading more and it'll get you looking
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at your screen less. it won't like I
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don't know if it'll cure it but like I
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don't think it'll eliminate it but it
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absolutely has curbed when I get into
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that I find myself being like oh yeah
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you don't need to look at your phone
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like look at the book I get into and
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I've like gone to therapy about it I get
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into like really bad doom scrolling and
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then I just like look deeply into like
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the darkest corners of what could end
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the world and then I spiral so I'm
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really trying not to do that I'm only
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going to one person for my news sources
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right now Aaron Parnes on Tik Tok It's
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the same. He gives me my updates. I say,
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"Thank you so much. Thank you, Aaron."
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But I also I'll get to an obsessive
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place about it and then I realize that
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and I'm like, "Okay, go read your book."
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Yeah. Cuz you got to I think right now
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especially like you need to be aware of
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what's going on 100%. Absolutely. But
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you also need to escape every now and
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again. You can't live in that doom. Find
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what your happy place is. Yes. Because
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you you still deserve to have a happy
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place and you need to retreat to that
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every once in a while. Like we need to
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be aware. We need to be taking action
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when need to take action. But have a
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happy place. It's okay to have a happy
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place. Don't let people feel like you
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can't have a happy place. Have your
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happy place. And if that's reading
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whatever the [ __ ] you want to read,
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whether that be the spiciest of spice,
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the goriest of gore, or the beachest of
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beach, the beachiest of beach, read it,
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enjoy it, like let it take you away for
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a little while. Take me away. But it
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really will. I find it really has curbed
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my like grab your phone and just look at
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it for no [ __ ] reason when you're
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when you have like a moment cuz I don't
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love that like we've reached a point in
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where also we can't be alone with our
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own thoughts. Oh, I I don't want to be
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alone with this but like we used to be
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able to like like it has made you feel
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like you can't be alone with your own
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thoughts. Like people feel that way. you
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can. You just are programmed not to now.
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And it's like that's we used to be able
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to just sit there and look at the clouds
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and like think about stuff like cuz
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there wasn't anything else to do like or
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you read a book like that's like that's
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your choices is like stare around the
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things around you or read your book. And
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it's like I don't I want to get a little
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bit back to that with my own things cuz
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I need to be more aware of my own like
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inside of my head. Yeah, you do. I'm
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always in my own thoughts and like alone
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with them when I'm cooking or when I'm
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baking. And I think that's why I find
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baking and cooking so therapeutic. Like
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so see it's good to be alone like but
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you but people have been programmed to
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think oh I can't be alone with my own
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thoughts. No you can. You totally can.
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You're just like you you think you can
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you know and it's like as long as you're
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doing something that like comforts you
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like you're saying. Yeah. Baking,
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cooking, reading, knitting. Oh
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crocheting like crocheting. Oh, what was
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I saw this on Tik Tok and I wanted to
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say it because again I live my life by
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Tik Tok.
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It's great for some things. No, for some
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things it really is. I saw a Tik Tok of
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this girl and she was like I need a new
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hobby. Like my hobby is just finding new
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hobbies. Like tell me some. And there is
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a whole um like subgroup of hobbies that
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are called like I think they're called
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like extinct hobbies or something like
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that or like like they're they're like I
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think it's extinct hobbies. And there
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was this whole one where it was like
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this kind of um I forget what it's
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called. I'm going to have to look it up
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and like fill you guys in later, but
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it's a kind of lace that you make. Oh,
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it's cool. So, these are things like
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like in the pioneer days when they would
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like chase that hoop around with like
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the [ __ ] that like people don't do
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anymore. No, literally things that are
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like going to go extinct if people don't
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learn them cuz they're going to like die
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with our field, you know? Yeah. Like
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that kind of [ __ ] Yeah. I was like, I
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might try that. It looks fun. And the
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there's all different kinds of lace that
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you can make and it's I love that kind
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of [ __ ] Beautiful. I love like like
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weird weird hobby hobbies. Yeah. Well,
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if it makes you happy and it's not
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hurting you or anyone else, then go look
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at a [ __ ] list of extensive.
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Don't Don't make anyone feel like it's
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weird or you're like enter a craft fair.
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Yeah. Do whatever the [ __ ] you want. I'm
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going to I might Hell yeah. I just like
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randomly took up making blankets last
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year. Hell yeah. Like crocheting
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blankets as you should. And then I just
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stopped. I think that's great. Maybe
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I'll try again. Yeah. Yeah. Got my
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tension a little better. We We need to
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get back to hobbies. Hobbies, you know.
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Yeah. Find a hobby. That's the thing.
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Every The doom scrolling has taken over
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and like arguing online and [ __ ] has
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taken over like fun hobbies that really
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like fill your cup. Stop arguing online.
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You don't know those people. Yeah. I
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think it's just like I think it it feels
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like it's boiling over that whole Yeah.
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subsect of life. I think people are
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getting a little little sick of uh the
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chronically online pendulum swings the
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other way. Yeah, it just feels like it's
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like everybody's like, you know what,
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there's worse [ __ ] happening we need to
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focus on. It's true. Well, speaking of
00:11:03
worse [ __ ] I was going to say and I
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think we're going to talk about it right
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now. Actually, we are going to talk
00:11:07
about some pretty terrible stuff. This
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uh case, so this is the last call
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killer, which um shout out to Dave for
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finding this because this happened like
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sort of in our backyard almost like a
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little bit further away, but like some
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of it takes place in mass. Wow. Um, and
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I had never really heard about this
00:11:23
case. I have not I don't think I know
00:11:25
this one. No, it's it's deeply
00:11:29
upsetting. Like what happened here is
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deeply upsetting. But I will say um this
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is going to be a two-parter. Part one,
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we're going to focus a lot on the
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victims. You know, who they were and
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what happened to them unfortunately. But
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then in part two, I will tell you like
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up at the top, this person does get
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apprehended. And the way they go about
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it and the way this is like a a real
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case of like good detective work and
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really fascinating detective work that
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makes me happy cuz this is like the it
00:11:55
starts in like uh late ' 80s mid and
00:11:57
then goes into like mid '90s all the way
00:11:58
into the early as where like that like
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turn of the century kind of like
00:12:03
forensics was turning from you know it
00:12:05
was really going through a evolution.
00:12:08
Yeah. and it's really cool and we're
00:12:09
going to talk about some things that I
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don't think we have before as far as
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like fingerprint evidence and that kind
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of stuff. Yeah. Um so yeah, it's going
00:12:16
to be two parts. So let's get into part
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one right now. Yeah. So on the afternoon
00:12:20
of May 5th, 1991, a turnpike maintenance
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worker was just emptying the trash
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barrels at a rest stop. It was along the
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highway in Lancaster County,
00:12:28
Pennsylvania, and he made a horrific
00:12:31
discovery. Uh this man had been in the
00:12:34
habit of separating out the aluminum
00:12:35
cans from the rest of the trash. Mhm. So
00:12:37
he had to really get in there and dig
00:12:39
through everything. Obviously it's like
00:12:40
pretty messy work. Yeah. But it was just
00:12:42
a matter of pulling the entire bag out
00:12:44
of the barrel and just sorting through
00:12:45
that garbage. But this time he was
00:12:47
struggling to lift the bag. It seemed
00:12:49
like somebody had put something really
00:12:51
heavy in the barrel. So he start he
00:12:53
grabbed a large stick and he started
00:12:54
poking the garbage bag just kind of like
00:12:56
trying to figure out what could be
00:12:58
inside. Mhm. And every time he managed
00:13:00
to get the bag open though, he would
00:13:02
find another layer of garbage bag
00:13:04
underneath like multiple multiple times.
00:13:06
Yeah. So finally, after making his way
00:13:08
through eight or nine layers of plastic,
00:13:10
this man discovered what was weighing
00:13:13
the barrel down. Years later, he said,
00:13:14
"It looked like a loaf of bread, but
00:13:16
then I saw freckles." Oh, yeah. Shocked
00:13:21
and absolutely horrified, he dropped the
00:13:23
stick and grabbed his radio to call his
00:13:25
supervisors, who notified Pennsylvania
00:13:27
State Police about what had been found.
00:13:29
In Rao Township, there was actually no
00:13:32
police department. So, all cases were
00:13:34
handled by the state police, no matter
00:13:36
what size or significance they were. And
00:13:38
in the case of the remains found at this
00:13:40
rest stop, the criminal investigation uh
00:13:42
unit was called in, and they arrived a
00:13:44
short time later. After removing all the
00:13:46
bags from the barrel, it was clear that
00:13:48
what the maintenance worker had
00:13:50
discovered was the decomposing body of a
00:13:53
nude, middle-aged white man with visible
00:13:55
knife wounds in his chest and back. Holy
00:13:58
[ __ ] Yeah, it only gets worse. So, the
00:14:02
criminal investigations unit in
00:14:03
Lancaster County obviously had seen
00:14:05
their fair share of homicides over the
00:14:07
years and you know, some were more
00:14:08
gruesome than others, but this was
00:14:11
unlike anything any of those officers
00:14:13
had ever seen before. This man appeared
00:14:16
to be emaciated. They said he weighed
00:14:18
maybe around 100 lb and unfortunately
00:14:21
demp had already set in. Um, this is
00:14:25
heinous, so just get ready for this. Oh
00:14:27
boy. In addition to multiple stab
00:14:29
wounds, the victim's penis had also been
00:14:31
severed and shoved into his mouth.
00:14:35
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
00:14:39
Yeah.
00:14:42
That's so [ __ ] grotesque. It's
00:14:45
grotesque. And it's like, holy [ __ ] the
00:14:48
like the whoever killed this man went to
00:14:50
the trouble of wrapping him in so many
00:14:52
garbage bags but also did that to
00:14:55
probably horrify whoever found him 100%.
00:14:58
You know, it's such a weird dichomous
00:15:01
way of doing that. Yes, it is. Cuz it's
00:15:04
like in one sense you're hiding what
00:15:06
you've done and in another sense you did
00:15:08
that so people would find it and like to
00:15:11
shock people, you know, like you you
00:15:12
want like the theater of it. Yeah. But
00:15:15
you also are trying to hide it. It's
00:15:16
very strange. and we'll run into that a
00:15:18
lot more. And like those kind of things,
00:15:20
it's just like what kind of person when
00:15:24
you find out how are you a human? When
00:15:26
you find out who this guy is, it's just
00:15:28
like what? Like what the it's wild. And
00:15:32
when you find out the fact that he was
00:15:33
able to get away with what he did for so
00:15:35
long and oh god, he never should have
00:15:37
been able to. But back to this day to
00:15:40
officer J. Muser, one of the first who
00:15:42
was at the scene, the murder seemed
00:15:44
deeply personal and very deliberate.
00:15:46
Definitely not the kind of thing that
00:15:48
just happens in the heat of the moment.
00:15:49
Obviously, now notably absent from the
00:15:52
scene were the man's clothing, any
00:15:54
personal belongings, and identification.
00:15:57
It was clear he had been brutalized and
00:15:59
mut and mutilated, but upon an initial
00:16:02
evaluation of the body, it was unclear
00:16:04
precisely how he had died. There were
00:16:06
obviously those stab marks, but there
00:16:08
were also multiple points of levidity
00:16:11
indicating that the body had been moved
00:16:12
more than once. Okay. But rigger mortise
00:16:15
had not set in yet, which suggested that
00:16:17
he'd only been dead about a day. Yeah, I
00:16:19
was going to say like very newly dead.
00:16:22
Interesting. So, the autopsy conducted
00:16:24
later that day revealed a lot more than
00:16:26
investigators and officers ever would
00:16:28
have been able to get from the scene.
00:16:30
That man had been stabbed in the back
00:16:32
between the right shoulder and the
00:16:33
spine. But the stab wounds to the ab
00:16:36
abdomen were far more serious. In his
00:16:38
stomach, there was a large oval-shaped
00:16:40
wound created by something very sharp.
00:16:43
And just above that was a stab wound
00:16:45
about half an inch in length, and the
00:16:47
coroner described it as in an 11 to 5:00
00:16:49
line as one looks at a watch. Damn.
00:16:52
Yeah. The wounds to the stomach were
00:16:55
deep and had uh perforated the abdominal
00:16:57
cavity. And so the medical examiner
00:17:00
listed that as the cause of that for
00:17:01
sure. And he also noted that the
00:17:03
severing of the penis had occurred
00:17:05
postmortem.
00:17:06
Yeah. I mean, thank goodness for that.
00:17:09
But yeah, holy [ __ ] So the medical
00:17:11
examiner had been able obviously to tell
00:17:13
investigators how and when this man had
00:17:15
died approximately. But what they still
00:17:17
had to find out was who he was and how
00:17:20
his body had come to be found in the
00:17:22
trash. Yeah. because of his small
00:17:24
stature and weight. Initially,
00:17:25
detectives theorized that maybe he could
00:17:27
have been a jockey who raced at nearby
00:17:30
um Penn National track, but they checked
00:17:32
in with Penn National Management and all
00:17:34
of their riders were accounted for. Huh.
00:17:36
So, while the medical examiner's office
00:17:39
worked to identify this man, detectives
00:17:41
continued working the few tips and very
00:17:43
little evidence that they had. A few
00:17:46
drivers had reported seeing a man
00:17:47
outside of his car by the rest stop that
00:17:49
night, but all the descriptions varied
00:17:52
so much that they were pretty much
00:17:53
useless. And several other callers
00:17:56
suggested maybe the man was a victim of
00:17:58
a mob hit because the mob was quote
00:18:00
known to do something similar to
00:18:02
enemies. Oh yeah. I was like I think Are
00:18:05
you Usually it goes a little different
00:18:07
than that. Yeah. But I mean I don't
00:18:08
know. I guess so. Yeah. I don't know the
00:18:10
Pennsylvania mob. But in the end, the
00:18:13
tips really went nowhere and the case
00:18:15
unfortunately was quickly growing cold.
00:18:18
But just as investigators were pretty
00:18:20
much resigning themselves to the fact
00:18:21
that this was probably just going to go
00:18:24
unsolved, a truck driver at a rest stop
00:18:26
in nearby Chester County discovered two
00:18:29
50gallon trash barrels with pretty
00:18:31
unusual contents. So the driver called
00:18:34
authorities and alerted them to what he
00:18:36
discovered. And when they arrived to
00:18:38
view the contents, they immediately
00:18:39
connected them with the dead man found
00:18:41
in Lancaster County. Among the trash in
00:18:43
the barrel, crime scene technicians
00:18:45
found several pairs of socks, a corduroy
00:18:47
hat, two pairs of underwear, a pair of
00:18:50
Brooks Brothers pants, a belt, two
00:18:52
t-shirts, and travelers checks and $50
00:18:55
denominations. Okay. There was also a
00:18:57
parking ticket received from the city of
00:18:59
Philadelphia, several pieces of Melon
00:19:01
Bankank stationery with just various
00:19:03
notes scribbled on them. And finally, a
00:19:06
driver's license for the victim who was
00:19:09
found to be 54year-old Peter Stikney
00:19:12
Anderson of Philadelphia. 54. Like
00:19:16
that's so young. Yeah. And for that to
00:19:17
be how it ends. Yeah. So, there wasn't a
00:19:21
lot of information about Peter Anderson
00:19:23
for police to find right away, but they
00:19:25
did learn that he had previously been an
00:19:27
investment banker, but at the time he
00:19:29
was killed, he was unemployed. He was
00:19:31
also divorced once and in the midst of a
00:19:33
separation, so he was living alone in an
00:19:36
apartment in downtown Philadelphia.
00:19:38
To try to get some more information,
00:19:40
detectives contacted a woman whose name
00:19:42
was actually on those notes that they
00:19:44
had found in the trash. Um, and it
00:19:46
turned out that she was an an associate
00:19:48
of Peters who said she last saw him at
00:19:50
the Blue Parrot, uh, which was a
00:19:52
Philadelphia piano bar just a few days
00:19:54
before he died. Okay. It turned out that
00:19:56
the Blue Parrot was one of several gay
00:19:58
bars that Peter was known to have
00:19:59
frequented in the handful of years
00:20:01
leading up to his death. According to
00:20:04
the staff and patrons there, Peter was
00:20:06
one of the regulars who drank pretty
00:20:07
heavily and tended to stay pretty late
00:20:09
into the night. like Peter, the
00:20:11
clientele of the bar were typically
00:20:13
middle-aged, middle-class white men,
00:20:15
which indicated to the detectives that
00:20:17
if Peter had been picked up by his
00:20:18
killer at the Blue Parrot, then the
00:20:20
killer most likely wasn't a sex worker.
00:20:23
Okay, they were thinking like at first
00:20:25
they were thinking possibly that could
00:20:26
have been possibly that's the but they
00:20:27
were like maybe not. His pension for
00:20:29
piano bars was only the first, but
00:20:31
definitely not the most surprising piece
00:20:32
of information that detectives would
00:20:34
learn in the days following the
00:20:36
identification. It turned out that for a
00:20:38
lot of his life, Peter's interest in men
00:20:40
and gay bars had been kept hidden from
00:20:42
his friends and acquaintances.
00:20:44
He belonged to the Church of the Holy
00:20:46
Trinity, so he was hiding it from people
00:20:47
there. And he was hiding it from his
00:20:50
ex-wife and his current wife who he was
00:20:52
separated from. Okay. Which is really
00:20:54
sad. That that like breaks my heart. It
00:20:57
does. It really does. There's going to
00:20:58
be a lot of heartbreaking things in
00:21:00
this, especially since like he was
00:21:03
hiding it and like obviously like
00:21:05
feeling some kind of like, you know,
00:21:07
shame that was put on him for it. And
00:21:09
then it ends like this. Yeah. And it's
00:21:12
like without him. I I don't know if he
00:21:14
did he was able to, but if he was ever
00:21:16
able to like come to terms with it or
00:21:18
like be No, not really. You know, it not
00:21:22
really at all. Like what an awful way
00:21:23
for that story to end. Yeah. And I the
00:21:26
time where his life ended, it was a
00:21:28
really hard time for him. And who knows,
00:21:31
maybe he would have gotten like past it
00:21:33
because, you know, as like time went on
00:21:34
or stuff like that. But that's sad. He
00:21:37
never got that opportunity. But digging
00:21:39
into his past, investigators learned
00:21:41
that Peter's true sexual identity, like
00:21:43
we were just saying, was something he
00:21:44
very much kept private. And it seemed
00:21:46
that he really just wanted to blend in
00:21:48
with his peers. His former classmate
00:21:50
from Trinity College said he just wanted
00:21:52
to be part of the boys. He was more like
00:21:53
a mascot. Most people who knew him in
00:21:56
those days recalled that he was a hard
00:21:57
worker, very studious, very responsible,
00:22:01
nothing at all like the other members of
00:22:02
his fraternity, which was Sai Upsalon.
00:22:05
Hopefully I said that right. While the
00:22:07
other young men were out drinking,
00:22:08
partying, casually dating, being frat
00:22:10
boys, Peter could just be found in his
00:22:12
bedroom studying or writing. Oh yeah, he
00:22:14
sounded adorable. It never actually
00:22:16
really occurred to anybody that he
00:22:18
anybody that he was gay, but there was
00:22:20
no reason why it should have at that
00:22:22
time. A lot of gay people were very
00:22:24
closeted and went well out of their way
00:22:26
to hide that and suppress any, you know,
00:22:29
indication of being different, quote
00:22:30
unquote. Peter felt, like, you were just
00:22:33
saying that he wouldn't be uh he
00:22:35
wouldn't be accepted if he lived openly.
00:22:37
So, he chose not to pursue his interest
00:22:39
in politics and the priesthood and
00:22:41
instead pursued a career in banking. He
00:22:43
very much, I think, wanted to fly under.
00:22:45
That's what I was going to say. Just fly
00:22:46
under the radar. Yeah. And when he
00:22:48
finally did muster the courage to tell
00:22:50
his mother that he was gay, the
00:22:51
confession led to years of a broken
00:22:53
relationship between them, that
00:22:56
essentially just confirmed what he
00:22:58
assumed. To live as an openly gay man
00:23:00
would basically lead to a life of
00:23:02
heartbreak and rejection. That's so
00:23:05
devastating. It is. It's awful. Yeah.
00:23:09
And it's like if your own mom doesn't
00:23:10
accept you and and you're feeling that,
00:23:12
how do you come out to anybody else?
00:23:14
Yeah. I don't know how anybody gets
00:23:15
through that either kind of [ __ ] you
00:23:19
know. So, in the years that followed, he
00:23:20
lived what passed for an ordinary
00:23:22
straight life. He found a job that was
00:23:25
really not satisfying, but it paid well
00:23:27
enough to support him. A few years
00:23:29
later, he got engaged to a woman that he
00:23:30
was casually dating, but he was also
00:23:33
carrying on a secret affair with a man
00:23:34
named Anthony Hoy, who he had met in New
00:23:37
York. Okay. Hoy later said, "If it had
00:23:39
been today, in today's society, we could
00:23:41
have been partners. But in those days,
00:23:43
you weren't gay. Gay was not good.
00:23:47
Yeah, it's Why does anyone give a [ __ ]
00:23:50
That's the thing. I will never I will
00:23:51
never get to a point where I can even
00:23:53
slightly understand that way of viewing
00:23:55
it. It doesn't affect you who someone
00:23:59
else loves. If it's a consenting adult,
00:24:02
I don't give a [ __ ] It doesn't affect
00:24:04
you in any way. I don't give a [ __ ] And
00:24:07
I'm happy for you. Exactly. I'm happy.
00:24:09
I'm happy. And I don't get it.
00:24:13
I don't get caring. And it should just
00:24:15
be that simple. If you're happy, I if if
00:24:17
you're happy, it's a consenting adult
00:24:19
and they're happy. I'm [ __ ] happy.
00:24:22
Yeah. Why do we make it so much more
00:24:24
complicated? And like what what do
00:24:27
people hate about it? I don't get that's
00:24:29
what I don't get. Like what why do why
00:24:31
do people hate who somebody else loves?
00:24:34
I just let people let consenting adults
00:24:37
be. Yeah. You know, like I don't get it.
00:24:40
Live and let life live. I don't get it.
00:24:42
Yeah, it's wild. Well, unfortunately,
00:24:44
Peter's engagement eventually fell apart
00:24:46
and in 1969, so did his relationship
00:24:49
with Anthony Hoy. Um, that ended, too,
00:24:52
because Anthony ended up marrying a
00:24:53
woman also to pass. Goodness, you know,
00:24:55
most likely. That same year, Peter went
00:24:58
to a party where he met a woman named
00:24:59
Edith Sandy Blake. She was from a
00:25:01
wealthy family. Her big dream was really
00:25:03
just to make it in New York's high
00:25:05
society. And after meeting her,
00:25:07
literally just a few days later, Peter
00:25:09
proposed. And a few months later, he and
00:25:11
Sandy were married. They moved to Denim,
00:25:14
Massachusetts. Oh [ __ ] Just about a
00:25:15
half hour outside of Boston. But it was
00:25:18
soon pretty clear to Sandy that Peter
00:25:20
was not in love with her. She said he
00:25:22
thought of me as his possession, and
00:25:23
that's where it all went wrong. He
00:25:25
collected antiques, and I was just one
00:25:27
of his antiques. Oh, damn. Which is sad.
00:25:29
Yeah. Yeah. Despite the obvious
00:25:31
conflicts in their marriage, Peter and
00:25:33
Sandy did stay together for almost a
00:25:34
decade until she met somebody else and
00:25:37
decided to end things with Peter.
00:25:39
Luckily, things actually seemed to end
00:25:41
amicably enough and they did stay close
00:25:43
friends. And it wasn't long before Peter
00:25:45
got married again, this time in 1979 to
00:25:48
a woman named Cynthia Reed, um the woman
00:25:51
who he was separated from at the time of
00:25:53
his death. By that time, pretty much
00:25:56
everyone who knew Peter well assumed
00:25:58
that he was gay, but nobody brought it
00:26:00
up ever. A friend said, "You don't talk
00:26:02
about who's cheating on their wives."
00:26:04
Whoa. Yeah. I was like, I I do talk
00:26:07
about that. I was going to say, I feel
00:26:08
like we all talk about that. I think I
00:26:10
actually think everybody talks about
00:26:12
that, but Okay. You know, you're a
00:26:14
better gal than I. This entire show is
00:26:16
dedicated to that. I don't know. Yeah.
00:26:18
Well, the new marriage was followed by a
00:26:20
new job, this time with Melon Bank and
00:26:22
uh moved to Philadelphia in the mid
00:26:24
1980s. But by then, the pain and secrecy
00:26:27
around so much of his what was his true
00:26:29
identity had started to take a serious
00:26:31
toll on Peter. And to cope with that, he
00:26:34
started drinking more and more. And soon
00:26:36
enough, his drinking became excessive.
00:26:38
And with the heavy drinking came other
00:26:40
vices. One day after she had been away
00:26:42
for a few days on a trip to New York,
00:26:44
Cynthia came home to find evidence that
00:26:46
Peter had a guest for quote sexual
00:26:48
purposes and that it was not a woman.
00:26:51
After that, Cynthia started finding
00:26:53
evidence about Peter sexuality hidden in
00:26:56
various places around the house. So, by
00:26:59
the end of the 1980s, almost everything
00:27:01
in Peter's life seemed to have broken
00:27:03
down completely. Oh, man. In 1987, he
00:27:06
was charged with drunk driving and ended
00:27:08
up losing his license. Then a short time
00:27:10
later, he lost his job at the bank. And
00:27:13
finally, by 1990, his marriage to
00:27:15
Cynthia had completely unraveled. And
00:27:17
that's when they were separated. Damn.
00:27:19
And through all of that, Peter's health
00:27:21
was continuing to decline. He was losing
00:27:24
a significant amount of weight. And to
00:27:26
everybody who knew him, he looked gaunt.
00:27:28
Like he was going through it. By May of
00:27:31
1991, Peter's life was in shambles. He
00:27:35
had squandered all but $75,000 of the
00:27:38
$400,000 he'd inherited from an aunt who
00:27:41
passed away. Wow. Just a few years
00:27:43
earlier, and the rest of his money was
00:27:45
running out fast. Most of it basically
00:27:48
on drinks at various gay bars around
00:27:50
Philadelphia.
00:27:52
However, investigators did learn uh that
00:27:55
Peter actually spent his final days in
00:27:57
New York City. They thought possibly
00:27:59
Philadelphia, but they found out that
00:28:00
no, he was in New York City. Oh, okay.
00:28:02
He had attended a fundraiser in the city
00:28:04
on May 3rd, and he was last seen leaving
00:28:06
the Townhouse Bar, which is a Manhattan
00:28:09
piano bar that catered almost
00:28:10
exclusively to a gay clientele. In the
00:28:13
first week of the investigation, they
00:28:15
really did end up learning a great deal
00:28:17
about Peter and had even arrived at a
00:28:19
theory as to how he met his end, but
00:28:21
none of that information led them closer
00:28:23
to their killer. It was clear that the
00:28:25
rest stop was not where Peter had been
00:28:27
murdered, and because of that, there
00:28:28
wasn't a lot of evidence to collect
00:28:30
there. Yeah. So, crime scene technicians
00:28:32
ended up finding 28 fingerprints and
00:28:35
three palm prints on the bags uh that
00:28:37
Peter had been wrapped in, but they
00:28:39
weren't a match to anybody in a local
00:28:41
database, and a nationwide search would
00:28:43
eventually turn up nothing either. So,
00:28:46
in miday, Lieutenant Charles Stevens
00:28:48
told reporters, "We don't have any
00:28:50
suspects and no motive." And
00:28:52
unfortunately, that's how things would
00:28:54
stay for several years to come. Oh,
00:28:56
[ __ ] A year passed and Peter Anderson's
00:28:59
case was shelved as a cold case when on
00:29:01
July 10th in Burlington, New Jersey, the
00:29:03
scene appeared to be repeating itself.
00:29:06
That morning, New Jersey Department of
00:29:08
Transportation workers Wayne Lucer and
00:29:10
Theodore Doyle were just going about
00:29:12
their daily cleaning of the rest areas
00:29:14
along Route 70 and Route 72. When at the
00:29:17
Butler Place rest area, Lucer noticed
00:29:20
that some of the bags in the barrel were
00:29:22
not New Jersey DOT issued. Okay. So he
00:29:25
pulled one of the bags out of the trash
00:29:26
to inspect it and noticed that it was
00:29:29
unusually heavy and quote felt like it
00:29:31
had a pumpkin in it. Oh. Underneath
00:29:34
there were several more bags and some of
00:29:36
them appeared to be leaking what looked
00:29:37
like blood. At the time the men didn't
00:29:41
find this unusual, which like at first I
00:29:43
was like, "What?" But it was because it
00:29:45
was common for fishermen to dispose of
00:29:47
fish parts on their way home from like a
00:29:49
fishing trip. So they gathered up the
00:29:51
remaining bags and just threw them in
00:29:52
the truck. Okay. Once they were back at
00:29:54
the sorting plant, Lucer and Doyle
00:29:56
started, you know, removing the garbage
00:29:58
from the truck, throwing it into larger
00:29:59
receptacles for processing. But
00:30:02
curiosity was at, you know, poking at
00:30:04
Lucer. Yeah. So, he opened the bag that
00:30:06
felt like it had a pumpkin in it and
00:30:08
discovered that it was obviously not a
00:30:10
pumpkin, but the decapitated head of a
00:30:13
middle-aged white man. Holy [ __ ] I
00:30:16
can't imagine just going about my job
00:30:18
and finding that.
00:30:20
Finding a decapitated head. Yeah. Well,
00:30:25
there's nothing that could ever prepare
00:30:28
you for something like that. No. And
00:30:30
imagine if his curiosity hadn't been
00:30:32
poking at him. Yeah. He would have just
00:30:34
thrown like that. That man could have
00:30:36
never been found and it would have been
00:30:37
exactly what the killer was hoping for.
00:30:40
Yeah. That somebody would have just
00:30:41
tossed it away. Or maybe not at the same
00:30:43
time. He's a strange guy. Yeah. So, as
00:30:46
they were emptying the contents of their
00:30:48
truck at the plant, another sanitation
00:30:50
worker cleaning the Stafford Forest Rest
00:30:52
area about 15 miles away also made a
00:30:54
similarly horrifying discovery. When
00:30:57
Leon Valentino was unable to lift the
00:30:59
entire trash bag out of the full barrel,
00:31:01
he started pulling smaller bags out one
00:31:03
at a time. And at one point, one of
00:31:06
those bags ripped open and revealed the
00:31:08
contents to be a human leg. Damn. Now,
00:31:11
this is again, this is 15 miles away.
00:31:14
So, New Jersey State Police detectives
00:31:17
Yeah, they he did. New Jersey State
00:31:18
Police detectives split up between the
00:31:20
two sites and started processing the
00:31:22
scenes. At the first site, investigators
00:31:25
inventoried the contents of the trash
00:31:26
bags and discovered three triple bagged
00:31:29
trash bags with handles containing the
00:31:30
man's head. Two double bagged white
00:31:33
trash bags containing the left and right
00:31:35
arms, each individually bagged. Two
00:31:38
double bagged and double knotted brown
00:31:40
plastic trash bags containing a man's
00:31:42
upper torso. and a New York Daily News
00:31:45
paper dated July 3rd, 1992.
00:31:48
They also found two double bagged and
00:31:50
double knotted brown tra plastic trash
00:31:52
bags containing the man's lower torso
00:31:54
and another newspaper uh dated July 3rd,
00:31:57
1992, a white plastic bag containing the
00:32:01
man's intestines and stomach contents.
00:32:05
And then they also found two
00:32:06
right-handed seven uh size seven
00:32:09
surgical gloves, a shower curtain, one
00:32:11
fitted sheet, a torn latex glove, a pair
00:32:14
of man's tennis shoes, um sorry, men's
00:32:17
to tennis shoes, one master compass saw
00:32:20
with a blade, one master compass saw
00:32:22
package with an extra blade and a
00:32:24
pergam's price sticker, two more latex
00:32:27
gloves, and an Abraham and Strauss paper
00:32:29
bag with handles. Oh my god. It's the
00:32:32
stomach contents and intestines in a
00:32:35
white plastic bag in one bag. Yeah. Just
00:32:38
alone. Like for some reason that's like
00:32:42
so visceral. Uh it sure is. Like holy
00:32:45
[ __ ] Intestines and stomach contents.
00:32:46
That's a lot. Holy [ __ ] And that was
00:32:50
just at one site. Remember there's two
00:32:52
sites. God. Meanwhile, at the Stafford
00:32:55
Forest Rest Area, the other site,
00:32:57
technicians sorting through the contents
00:32:59
of the barrels discovered several um of
00:33:02
the same brand of garbage bags used at
00:33:04
the other site. And they also found uh
00:33:07
the man's left and right legs in those
00:33:09
bags.
00:33:10
Also discovered in the trash bags were
00:33:12
more latex gloves, a pair of cloth
00:33:14
gloves, a disposable razor, another copy
00:33:17
of the New York Post dated July 7th,
00:33:19
1992.
00:33:21
And the bags also contained a man's
00:33:23
briefcase, which is how they found the
00:33:24
identification for their victim,
00:33:26
57year-old Thomas Mkei. A again, so
00:33:30
young. According to the driver's
00:33:32
license, Thomas Mkei lived in Sudbury,
00:33:35
Massachusetts, which is wild. This It's
00:33:38
so weird to hear all these places. It
00:33:40
always weird. It's always weird to hear
00:33:42
these places, but it's so weird when
00:33:43
you've never heard of the case and it
00:33:45
was like right there. Which like makes
00:33:46
me angry that we've never heard of this
00:33:48
case cuz I'm like what the [ __ ] do you
00:33:50
mean I didn't know about this? That's
00:33:51
exactly how I felt. Like I'm actually
00:33:52
like annoyed. No, same. Yeah. Um and
00:33:56
just for anybody who doesn't know,
00:33:57
Smaria is like another suburb about 30
00:33:59
miles from Boston and Thomas Milke as a
00:34:02
technology consultant. Upon further
00:34:05
investigation, detectives learned that
00:34:07
he was a married father of four
00:34:09
children. Yeah. Are you kidding me?
00:34:12
Yeah. So, the first call placed after
00:34:15
the body was discovered was obviously to
00:34:17
Mahhee's wife, Margaret. According to
00:34:19
Margaret, Thomas had been in New York
00:34:21
City for a business conference and he
00:34:22
was supposed to return home the previous
00:34:24
day, July 9th. They had talked 2 days
00:34:27
earlier and he said he was still
00:34:28
planning on coming home. And when he
00:34:30
hadn't returned as was planned, she
00:34:32
called the hotel and asked the staff the
00:34:34
staff to check his room where they found
00:34:35
his clothing and that was it. The next
00:34:38
day, she called the NYPD, but she was
00:34:40
told that she would need to file a
00:34:42
missing person's report with the local
00:34:44
police in Sudbury, which really doesn't
00:34:46
make a lot of sense. She did as she was
00:34:48
instructed, but the Sudbury police told
00:34:50
her it would be wise to wait a few days
00:34:52
before filing the report just in case
00:34:55
her husband just returned. Yeah. But
00:34:57
it's like, no, I'm going to file the
00:34:58
report. I think like air on the side of
00:35:00
caution. Yeah. I don't Yeah, that would
00:35:02
absolutely be me. But also, she's like,
00:35:04
"Okay, I guess I'll just do what the
00:35:06
police tell me because they seems like
00:35:07
they don't want to file this report."
00:35:09
But later in court, she said, "I
00:35:10
couldn't understand why I had to wait."
00:35:12
Yeah. I wouldn't understand that either.
00:35:14
I'd be pissed. She absolutely was, and I
00:35:16
would be, too. Back in Newark, the
00:35:18
medical examiner started the autopsy of
00:35:20
Thomas Mke laying out the disarticulated
00:35:23
parts on the table to form a whole
00:35:25
human. The first thing the examiner
00:35:27
noticed was a patch of missing skin on
00:35:29
the neck, which had been crudely
00:35:30
removed. Oh, the patch ended up being
00:35:33
found in one of the other bags and there
00:35:35
was an obvious bite mark in this patch
00:35:37
of skin. Holy [ __ ] Brutal. And that
00:35:39
they removed the patch of skin cuz they
00:35:42
knew they had Yeah. but then left it in
00:35:44
the bag. It
00:35:48
weird. Awful. And like you said, it's so
00:35:50
dichomous. Like Yeah. That's I can't cuz
00:35:53
it's like did you throw it away because
00:35:54
it had a bite mark in it or did you
00:35:56
throw it like I just like why did you
00:35:58
cut that off and throw it away? It's a
00:35:59
very disorganized way of thinking. It is
00:36:02
like you can't figure out this person
00:36:03
can't think what they want out of this,
00:36:07
you know, like what the point of it all
00:36:08
is to them. I don't know if maybe they
00:36:10
thought one set of what they had thrown
00:36:12
away was not going to be discovered for
00:36:14
some reason because of where they threw
00:36:15
it away and then the other one would be
00:36:18
found because of where they put it or if
00:36:20
they just wanted both to be found. Yeah,
00:36:21
cuz I feel like they wanted both to be
00:36:23
found. Does it feel that way? I And
00:36:26
maybe they just thought it would I mean
00:36:27
I guess they were right because they
00:36:28
were It sounds like it took a while to
00:36:30
find them. Maybe they just thought they
00:36:31
would have this exciting goose chase
00:36:35
where they would find something over
00:36:36
here and they wouldn't be able to
00:36:37
connect it here. And yeah, because it's
00:36:39
like if not, you would have just
00:36:41
destroyed that piece. This is very
00:36:43
grotesque, but you would have destroyed
00:36:45
that piece of flesh. You wouldn't have
00:36:47
left it whole to be able to see a bite
00:36:49
mark. That's the thing. That would have
00:36:50
been pretty easy to destroy. Exactly.
00:36:52
Instead of just leaving it. It's just
00:36:54
Yeah, this person's mind is wild. Yeah.
00:36:57
Well, they ended up determining that the
00:36:59
cause of death was a penetrating stab
00:37:00
wound about 4 in deep which penetrated
00:37:03
the heart which had obviously killed
00:37:05
Thomas instantly. There were three
00:37:08
additional stab wounds in the abdomen
00:37:09
and the chest. And they also found
00:37:11
ligature marks around the wrists which
00:37:14
had caused hemorrhaging on one arm
00:37:15
indicating that Thomas had been alive
00:37:17
when he was bound. Oh wow. Yeah. Most
00:37:20
interesting to the medical examiner was
00:37:22
not the death itself, but the
00:37:24
disarticulation.
00:37:25
We've obvious we've said this a lot
00:37:27
during other cases. A lot of times when
00:37:29
a body is dismembered, it's not done
00:37:30
well. It's usually just because the
00:37:32
killer needs to dispose of the remains
00:37:34
more easily. Yeah. But this case showed
00:37:37
considerable evidence of skill. The body
00:37:39
had been carefully and methodically
00:37:41
taken apart at the joints, which takes a
00:37:44
long time. Yeah, I was going to say.
00:37:46
Yeah. So, this suggested that not only
00:37:48
did the killer have the time and the
00:37:49
space to perform such a laborintensive
00:37:51
task, but they also had considerable
00:37:53
knowledge of human anatomy that allowed
00:37:55
them to remove a limb like a surgeon
00:37:57
would. Yeah. And it also indicated that
00:38:00
the killer was probably a man since
00:38:02
proper disarticulation of that type took
00:38:05
a decent amount of upper body strength.
00:38:07
Yeah, I could see that. You know, so
00:38:09
finally, there was something ritualistic
00:38:10
about the disarticulation itself. The
00:38:13
body parts had all been carefully
00:38:15
removed, washed, and placed in
00:38:18
individual bags, then double bagged and
00:38:20
tied tightly, which definitely shows you
00:38:23
a very particular pathology. I would
00:38:26
think this Yeah, this wasn't just like a
00:38:28
means to an end, just somebody trying to
00:38:30
simply get rid of a body. It was a large
00:38:34
part of a long process engaged in by the
00:38:36
killer. And whoever had done this to
00:38:39
Thomas Milke had really left nothing
00:38:41
behind. Taken together, all of this told
00:38:43
the investigators that this killer was
00:38:45
confident and most alarmingly, he had
00:38:48
probably done this before and was
00:38:50
definitely going to strike again. Yeah.
00:38:52
The kind of person who does this isn't
00:38:53
just going to stop. No. You know, this
00:38:55
isn't like, "Wow, okay, I satisfied
00:38:57
that." Right. Right. The obviously the
00:39:00
news hit the Mahi family and friends
00:39:02
very hard. Reverend Brian Manning said
00:39:04
he died a very tragic, very violent
00:39:06
death. It was very unsettling and the
00:39:09
level of violence indicated a personal
00:39:11
relationship between Mulah and his
00:39:13
killer, but neither Margaret or anybody
00:39:15
else could imagine someone who would
00:39:17
want Thomas dead and who would go to
00:39:19
these lengths. A former coworker said he
00:39:21
had a view of life that everything was
00:39:23
great. The classic forward-thinking
00:39:25
American. He would always say nice
00:39:26
things about people. Oh, yeah. That just
00:39:29
makes me sad. I know. They So,
00:39:31
detectives poured over Thomas's business
00:39:33
cards and credit card just trying to
00:39:35
retrace his moments in the days leading
00:39:37
up to his death. And that's when they
00:39:39
came across something unexpected.
00:39:41
Among the charges that you would you
00:39:43
would find during a business trip was a
00:39:45
charge from the townhouse bar. I don't
00:39:48
know if that sounds familiar to you. It
00:39:50
does. So, the news didn't really come to
00:39:53
Margaret as much of a shock. They had
00:39:55
been married for more than three decades
00:39:57
at that point, but in recent years,
00:39:59
Thomas had actually been open uh with
00:40:01
her about his bisexuality. He was
00:40:02
bisexual. Good for him. Yeah, I know.
00:40:05
I'm happy that he felt like he could be
00:40:06
open. It And good for her, I hope, for
00:40:10
allowing him to feel that way. Yeah. I
00:40:12
think it obviously was tough because of
00:40:15
course you're married when it changes.
00:40:17
Yeah. Or like when it comes out like it
00:40:21
could probably be like, "Oh, okay."
00:40:22
Yeah. They they struggled. But but
00:40:24
obviously she made him feel safe enough
00:40:27
to bring it up which is beautiful. So in
00:40:30
fact it was actually and it did become a
00:40:33
regular practice that when Thomas went
00:40:34
out of town for business trips usually
00:40:36
he would add on a day or two to his trip
00:40:38
to explore the local gay scenes and
00:40:40
visit the bars. Okay. His daughter Tracy
00:40:42
said he got to live the part of his life
00:40:44
that he wasn't able to live publicly.
00:40:46
Wow. So like when he went to New York he
00:40:48
kind of got to be in touch with that
00:40:50
part of himself and really be who he
00:40:52
was. Yeah. Like I and it seems like he
00:40:55
was just like a multiaceted human being.
00:40:57
Yeah. Exactly. And I'm glad he had
00:40:59
people around him who were supportive of
00:41:01
that. Him looking at all those parts.
00:41:04
Yeah. So, initially obviously the
00:41:06
revelation that her husband also had a
00:41:08
sexual and romantic interest in men did
00:41:10
come as a shock to Margaret. Yeah, of
00:41:11
course. But after months of going to
00:41:13
therapy together and having very open,
00:41:15
honest communication, Margaret did
00:41:17
accept Thomas for who he was and they
00:41:19
did reach a compromise. Wow. That's like
00:41:22
that's big cuz remember especially what
00:41:23
time period is this is this is the it's
00:41:26
1991 I want to say I mean it was
00:41:29
probably like the mid to late 80s when
00:41:30
this happened. Yeah. So that I mean
00:41:32
that's that's like a really like healthy
00:41:35
way to approach that kind of like cuz
00:41:38
cuz obviously you went into this
00:41:39
marriage thinking one thing and when
00:41:40
things change no matter what it is it's
00:41:43
okay for somebody to be like a little
00:41:45
shocked and have to like kind of work
00:41:47
through it. Absolutely. And the fact
00:41:48
that they worked through it together and
00:41:50
had like open honest conversations is
00:41:52
like and especially at that time period.
00:41:55
Yeah. Is like really like impressive. It
00:41:58
is of them as humans all of them. It is.
00:42:01
And you know things seemed to go okay
00:42:03
for a while. Thomas seemed relieved that
00:42:05
he had you know shared that part of
00:42:06
himself. Yeah. And he seemed happy. But
00:42:09
at a later period Margaret started to
00:42:11
wonder whether he was as happy as she
00:42:12
assumed he had been. For the last
00:42:14
several years, it seemed that his
00:42:16
drinking had been increasing to the
00:42:18
point where she actually even confronted
00:42:20
him about maybe possibly being an
00:42:22
alcoholic. And years later, their
00:42:24
children would recall attention in the
00:42:26
house toward the end of their father's
00:42:27
life. But at that time, they obviously
00:42:29
didn't know why. Tracy said it seemed
00:42:31
like she made him feel like [ __ ] but
00:42:33
you didn't know what was the what was
00:42:34
the reasoning behind it. Yeah. So, to
00:42:36
them, it seemed like one thing, but
00:42:37
obviously it was much more layered than
00:42:39
they ever made. I was going to say it's
00:42:40
a that sounds like a very complicated
00:42:42
situation. Yeah. So, aside from his
00:42:44
mostly closeted sexuality, Thomas
00:42:46
Milkey's background didn't shed much
00:42:48
light onto how he would have ended up
00:42:50
killed. Instead, investigators turned to
00:42:52
his whereabouts in the days before his
00:42:54
death. According to his wife, Thomas had
00:42:57
traveled to the offices of I think it's
00:42:59
uh Deote and Touch on the morning of
00:43:02
July 8th where he gave a presentation to
00:43:05
about 25 staff members at their offices
00:43:07
in the World Trade Center. Afterward, he
00:43:09
went out to a long lunch with some
00:43:11
associates where they each drank quote
00:43:13
unquote more than a half a dozen beers
00:43:14
each, which would have accounted for his
00:43:17
blood alcohol being nearly two and a
00:43:19
half times the legal limit when he died.
00:43:20
Wow. Yeah. He had a good time. Yeah.
00:43:23
After lunch, the men went their separate
00:43:25
ways, and Thomas ended up going on to
00:43:27
the townhouse bar where he stayed and
00:43:29
continued drinking for several more
00:43:31
hours. At the townhouse bar, detectives
00:43:33
interviewed a man named Douglas Gibson.
00:43:35
He was one of the patrons who had been
00:43:37
in the bar the night that Thomas was
00:43:38
there. Gibson said that he had been
00:43:41
introduced to Thomas that night by
00:43:42
another townhouse regular and he just
00:43:44
sat down beside him at the bar. He was
00:43:47
interested in Thomas. Yeah. But despite
00:43:49
his obvious interest, Thomas seemed
00:43:51
distracted and pretty disinterested.
00:43:53
Gibson said he kept looking across the
00:43:55
bar at a man sitting by the piano on the
00:43:57
other side of the room. At a certain
00:43:59
point, Gibson got up to go to the
00:44:01
restroom, and when he came back, Thomas
00:44:03
and the man at the other end of the bar
00:44:05
were both gone. Okay. So, Gibson
00:44:07
described the man to the detectives as
00:44:09
best he could, but he was seated on the
00:44:11
opposite side of a crowded room, so the
00:44:14
description was pretty vague. Yeah. And
00:44:15
it sounds like he was more interested in
00:44:17
who he was talking to, so he wasn't
00:44:19
probably looking very much. Exactly. So,
00:44:22
it really didn't come of any use to the
00:44:24
detectives. So, with no fingerprints,
00:44:26
very little evidence, and not a single
00:44:28
suspect, the case looked like it was
00:44:30
going nowhere. Just like Peter
00:44:31
Anderson's case, the only thing
00:44:34
investigators had to work with were the
00:44:36
various items found inside the garbage
00:44:37
bags and the bags themselves. Inside one
00:44:41
of the bags, technicians discovered the
00:44:43
saw likely used in the disarticulation
00:44:46
alongside an additional saw blade, which
00:44:48
still had that price tag from the
00:44:50
Perams, which is a regional home
00:44:51
improvement store. Okay. So using the
00:44:54
price tag to guide them, detectives
00:44:56
traced the saw back to a store located
00:44:58
on Staten Island where they confirmed
00:45:00
that the saw had been purchased. So
00:45:02
they're doing like straight up detective
00:45:04
work here. Similarly, the rubber gloves
00:45:07
and bags appeared to have been purchased
00:45:08
at a CVS store which was also located in
00:45:11
Staten Island next to that permanence
00:45:13
location. Okay. To investigators on the
00:45:15
case, the point of purchase for the saw,
00:45:17
the gloves, and the garbage bags was
00:45:19
significant. It indicated that the
00:45:20
killer was at least comfortable with
00:45:22
that area of Staten Island enough so
00:45:24
that he could move about casually. So
00:45:27
that indicated to them that Staten
00:45:28
Island was most likely his home base.
00:45:31
But the range of distance from Staten
00:45:32
Island out to New Jersey where Milhey's
00:45:35
body had been discovered was massive and
00:45:38
canvasing every neighborhood just would
00:45:39
have been impossible. I do love real
00:45:42
oldfashioned detective work when they're
00:45:44
able to like, you know, follow these
00:45:46
little like trails, right? And come up
00:45:48
with like things based on very purchases
00:45:53
like something you might think is
00:45:54
innocuous, but it's not. Mhm. And even
00:45:56
though it took years to finally get
00:45:58
there, at least they had those little
00:46:00
things along the way that somebody like
00:46:02
a new detective could then follow back
00:46:04
up on. Yeah. And like put all the pieces
00:46:05
together, right? You had they had the
00:46:07
puzzle pieces. It wasn't like they were
00:46:08
just letting this go. Yeah. But after
00:46:11
about 2 weeks on the case, the results
00:46:13
um of a previously completed VCAP, which
00:46:16
is the violent criminal apprehension
00:46:18
program. It's a small unit of the FBI.
00:46:20
They analyze like serial violent sexual
00:46:23
crimes. So the VCAP search came back and
00:46:26
it indicated that Thomas Mkey's murder
00:46:28
definitely bore certain similarities to
00:46:30
the murder of Peter Anderson the
00:46:32
previous year. When they looked into the
00:46:34
Anderson case, the similarities were
00:46:36
striking. Both men lived mostly closeted
00:46:38
lives. Both men had been married to
00:46:40
women, seemed to have drinking problems,
00:46:43
and had both also spent their at least a
00:46:46
few of their last hours at the townhouse
00:46:48
bar. Yeah. And of course, they had both
00:46:50
been mutilated and left in garbage bags
00:46:52
alongside the highway where they were
00:46:54
almost certain to be found quickly.
00:46:56
Detective Matthew Khan said, "At that
00:46:58
point, you're looking at a potential
00:47:00
serial killer." Yeah. So, by the end of
00:47:03
July 1992, the investigation into Thomas
00:47:05
Mkey's death had unfortunately gone
00:47:07
cold. And after a few more months of
00:47:10
dead ends, the case was shelved and
00:47:11
marked inactive. Then on May 10th, 1993,
00:47:15
a man driving along a dirt road in
00:47:17
Manchester Township, New Jersey,
00:47:19
inadvertently revived the Malkee
00:47:21
investigation when he spotted something
00:47:23
laying in the road and pulled over to
00:47:25
investigate. When Donald Giberson pulled
00:47:28
off to the side of the road, he couldn't
00:47:30
quite tell what he was looking at, but
00:47:32
it seemed worth investigating. As he got
00:47:35
closer to the object, he was horrified
00:47:37
to discover that what he had stumbled
00:47:39
upon was a man's arm with a piece of
00:47:42
clothes line attached to it. Oh my god.
00:47:45
Yeah. And that was sticking out of a
00:47:47
white trash bag. So he looked closer
00:47:49
into the bushes just beyond where the
00:47:51
arm was, thinking that he might find
00:47:52
whoever it belonged to. But instead, he
00:47:55
found six heavy duty dark green trash
00:47:58
bags. Holy [ __ ] So he immediately found
00:48:00
the nearest phone and called the police.
00:48:02
Good on him.
00:48:04
After searching the scene thoroughly,
00:48:05
investigators ended up finding a total
00:48:07
of seven garbage bags containing seven
00:48:10
seven different body parts. The legs,
00:48:12
upper torso, and lower torso were each
00:48:15
triple wrapped in heavy green garbage
00:48:17
bags. And the arms were each wrapped in
00:48:20
white trash bags and then placed in a
00:48:22
heavy green bag. Okay. The head on the
00:48:24
other hand was in a similar shopping bag
00:48:26
with the word uh words president's
00:48:28
choice on one side and made with pride
00:48:31
by Bob H and Jerry H on the other. Like
00:48:33
these were just commercial shopping
00:48:35
bags. Investigators theorized that the
00:48:38
bags had all been placed in the same
00:48:39
location by the killer, but the arm that
00:48:42
had been discovered in the road was
00:48:43
probably uncovered by animals. Yeah.
00:48:45
Unfortunately, unlike the previous
00:48:47
victims, there wasn't any wallet or
00:48:49
belongings found on or near the body to
00:48:52
help identify this man. Before the
00:48:54
remains were uh removed, a crime scene
00:48:56
technician took fingerprints and
00:48:58
examined the body. And from what the
00:49:00
technician could tell, the parts had all
00:49:01
been washed, and there was very little
00:49:03
blood in these bags. He also took
00:49:05
photographs, including one of a tattoo
00:49:07
between the index finger and thumb of
00:49:09
the right hand, which said Linda. A few
00:49:12
hours later, the fingerprints and the
00:49:15
tattoo were entered into the automated
00:49:16
fingerprint identification system, but
00:49:19
nothing came back on a local search. But
00:49:21
luckily, when the prints were sent to
00:49:23
Philadelphia and New York for comparison
00:49:24
to their database, they ended up with a
00:49:26
hit. Okay. Their victim was a known sex
00:49:29
worker in New York who went by the name
00:49:30
Eddie Ramos. About an hour later,
00:49:33
another hit came back, this time from
00:49:35
Philadelphia, where the victim was known
00:49:37
to police by his real name, Anthony
00:49:39
Morero.
00:49:40
Anthony Morero had been born in Puerto
00:49:42
Rico on May 2nd, 1949. But detectives
00:49:46
quickly learned that even to those who
00:49:47
knew him, he hadn't shared a lot of
00:49:49
information about his past. H They knew
00:49:52
that he lived in Philadelphia from 1969
00:49:54
to 1983 and that he then moved to
00:49:57
Manhattan. When it came to any other
00:49:59
information though, like friends and
00:50:01
family and you know, particularly
00:50:03
friends who also performed sex work
00:50:05
weren't very forthcoming or eager to
00:50:07
cooperate with the police. Yeah. Um,
00:50:09
even even now, author Elon Green notes
00:50:11
it's pretty hard to find information on
00:50:13
Anthony Morero. He did have an arrest
00:50:15
record for solicitation and just other
00:50:18
like petty crimes. Uh, and that contains
00:50:20
some biographical information, but
00:50:22
otherwise his past was remaining a
00:50:24
mystery.
00:50:26
At the medical examiner's office, the
00:50:28
autopsy strongly indicated what already
00:50:31
investigators assumed, that Anthony
00:50:33
Morero was killed by the same man who
00:50:34
had killed Peter Anderson and Thomas
00:50:36
McKahhee. Yeah. Like the other victims,
00:50:38
his body was disarticulated. Rather than
00:50:41
crudely dismembered, it had also been
00:50:42
done postmortem. Time of death was
00:50:45
estimated to be somewhere between 3 and
00:50:47
5 days earlier. So decomp was already
00:50:50
well underway. But still, the cause of
00:50:52
death was very easily identifiable and
00:50:54
listed as multiple stab wounds to the
00:50:56
chest and back just like the other
00:50:58
cases. That's so brutal when you think
00:51:00
about that cause of death because you
00:51:02
bleed out. Yeah. And it's just a brutal
00:51:05
way to kill someone. Yeah. That's a lot.
00:51:07
Otherwise, there was no sign of physical
00:51:09
trauma and there was no indication that
00:51:11
Anthony had been sexually assaulted or
00:51:12
drugged at the time of death. From what
00:51:15
uh detectives were able to learn about
00:51:17
Morero, they knew that he worked uh a
00:51:19
lot at the Port Authority bus terminal
00:51:21
in Manhattan. And one of the terminal
00:51:23
agents told them that when he wasn't
00:51:25
working at the bus station, Anthony
00:51:26
would cruise what he called the basic
00:51:28
bars, meaning the area's upper u upper
00:51:31
middle class skate bars. Oh, okay. Yeah.
00:51:34
Assuming the case was connected to the
00:51:36
other murders, the detectives went
00:51:37
straight to the townhouse bar, but
00:51:39
nobody remembered having seen Anthony
00:51:41
there before. Okay. But somebody did
00:51:43
remember seeing him working a lot in an
00:51:45
area just down the street. So, while
00:51:47
they couldn't place him in the townhouse
00:51:49
where Thomas Mohei and Peter Anderson
00:51:51
had been, they still felt pretty
00:51:53
confident that his connection to the
00:51:55
area was a good indication that they
00:51:57
were looking for their same killer. For
00:51:59
sure. Within a week, detectives had
00:52:01
exhausted all the New York leads and
00:52:03
turned to their peers in Philadelphia,
00:52:05
but those leads also dried up quickly
00:52:07
and really went nowhere. According to
00:52:09
his family, Anthony would sometimes make
00:52:11
his way back to Philadelphia, but he
00:52:13
never stayed very long and they never
00:52:15
knew when he was coming back. By the
00:52:17
80s, they had learned how Anthony was
00:52:19
making his living, and they had come to
00:52:20
accept that his life was pretty
00:52:23
dangerous and likely could have ended
00:52:25
the way that it did. That's so sad. But
00:52:28
they said there was little they could do
00:52:29
to persuade him to stop. Which is really
00:52:32
sad. Yeah. Several months later though,
00:52:34
a reporter from the New York Times would
00:52:36
uncover more about Anony's life. And
00:52:38
what he learned only seemed to
00:52:39
strengthen his connection to the other
00:52:41
victims. According to his brother Lewis,
00:52:43
Anthony struggled with addiction since
00:52:45
the breakup of his marriage in 1980. Uh
00:52:48
which Lewis did attribute to his wife
00:52:49
finding out that Anthony had an interest
00:52:51
in men. Okay. Ever since then, Lou said
00:52:53
Anthony kind of just bounced around from
00:52:55
place to place, casually dating both men
00:52:57
and women and earning money however he
00:53:00
could or borrowing it from family
00:53:01
members. In the interview, he did
00:53:04
recount a story though about how his
00:53:05
brother always dreamed of becoming a
00:53:07
pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies.
00:53:10
And actually, one year he was even
00:53:11
invited to try out for them. Oh [ __ ] In
00:53:14
the end, he wasn't asked back for a
00:53:15
second try out, but that's that's like
00:53:18
big dreams. That's a lot too to actually
00:53:20
be personally invited by them. I mean,
00:53:23
when you think of like the the stats of
00:53:27
how many people could even make it to
00:53:29
that point, right? It's very low. It is.
00:53:32
Yeah. And to be asked back for a second
00:53:33
try try out is like Yeah, that's that
00:53:36
would have been major. So, the fact that
00:53:37
he was even asked for one is crazy. That
00:53:38
means he was really good. It does. And
00:53:40
Lewis said he even showed me the
00:53:41
invitation to try out. He was very proud
00:53:43
of that invitation as he should be.
00:53:45
Yeah. In the absence of new leads,
00:53:47
though, investigators turned back to the
00:53:49
small amount of evidence that had been
00:53:50
collected at the crime scene. Crime
00:53:52
scene technicians had discovered two
00:53:54
fingerprints and a palm print on the
00:53:56
plastic garbage bags, but unfortunately,
00:53:58
they didn't match anything on file in
00:54:00
New Jersey, New York, or Pennsylvania.
00:54:03
So, that only left them to work with the
00:54:05
distinctive bag where Anony's head was
00:54:07
found. From the information printed on
00:54:09
the bag, they learned that made with
00:54:11
pride bags were custom printed for
00:54:13
promotional use and distributed pretty
00:54:15
locally. But unfortunately to Acme
00:54:18
Security, the company that produced
00:54:20
them, locally meant a very long list of
00:54:22
cities and towns across a tri-state
00:54:25
area. I was hoping locally would narrow
00:54:26
that down a little. Not so much. No. So,
00:54:29
the list provided to them wasn't
00:54:31
completely useful to investigators, but
00:54:34
one location did stand out to them.
00:54:37
Staten Island, New York.
00:54:40
So, we keep coming back to Staten
00:54:41
Island. I was gonna say we keep touching
00:54:42
upon Staten Island. Yep. Unfortunately
00:54:45
though, like the other cases, the trail
00:54:47
did quickly go cold and after a few
00:54:49
days, detectives had moved on to what
00:54:51
they considered to be more pressing
00:54:52
cases. Then on July 31st, 1993, the case
00:54:57
was unexpectedly revived, unfortunately,
00:54:59
with the discovery of yet another body.
00:55:01
Yeah. Cuz I'm sitting here like more
00:55:03
pressing cases. You have a serial
00:55:05
killer. Yeah, but everybody they're
00:55:07
targeting gay women victim profiles and
00:55:09
it's a very different time. It's just so
00:55:11
frustrating. It's like this is a literal
00:55:12
serial killer. It's a serial killer in
00:55:14
the gay community is at a risk. Brutal
00:55:16
serial killer. Yeah. Not just like I
00:55:18
mean any serial killer is brutal, but
00:55:20
this is this is just like he could re
00:55:22
like this is very very dangerous. Yeah.
00:55:24
But that was back at a time where they
00:55:26
considered being gay and at risk
00:55:27
lifestyle. Less dead. Yeah. So that's
00:55:30
awesome.
00:55:31
On the afternoon of July 30th, uh Ronald
00:55:34
Kandria packed up his truck at the Route
00:55:36
9W overlook in Havstaw, New York, and he
00:55:38
placed all the trash in large barrels to
00:55:40
be picked up by the sanitation workers
00:55:42
later that day. When he came back the
00:55:44
next day, though, he was surprised to
00:55:45
find that his barrels hadn't been
00:55:47
emptied. But when he looked closer, he
00:55:49
realized it wasn't the trash he had put
00:55:50
in the barrels the day before. Somebody
00:55:52
else had come along in the middle of the
00:55:54
night, it seemed, and dumped more
00:55:55
garbage. So, he was like, "What the
00:55:56
[ __ ] What the fuck?" So, he's obviously
00:55:58
curious about what somebody would have
00:55:59
wanted to dispose of in someone else's
00:56:02
trash. He's like, "What the hell?" I'd
00:56:03
be [ __ ] pissed. Yeah. So, he untied
00:56:06
the knot on the heavy duty green bag
00:56:07
sitting on top of the pile and that was
00:56:09
when he discovered what he believed to
00:56:11
be a human head. Holy [ __ ] Later, he
00:56:14
told a reporter he had to be dumped
00:56:16
overnight. It was still fresh and there
00:56:18
were no flies. Oh my god. And also it's
00:56:21
like to know that this person came by
00:56:23
and just dumped a severed head in your
00:56:26
garbage. I in the middle of the night
00:56:28
cannot imagine. How do you ever sleep
00:56:31
again? Also, you're I mean you're you
00:56:34
have a list of thoughts running through
00:56:35
your head when you open garbage of what
00:56:37
could possibly be in there. A
00:56:38
decapitated head would never be one of
00:56:40
them. That would not be the thing that
00:56:41
would be no forefront of my mind. No.
00:56:44
Like what the [ __ ] I can't I cannot. So
00:56:48
by that point, most law enforcement a
00:56:50
agencies in the area had heard about the
00:56:52
murders of Peter Anderson, Thomas
00:56:53
Malahhei, and Anthony Morero. So this
00:56:56
crime scene had an eerie familiarity.
00:56:58
Yeah. The body had been disarticulated.
00:57:01
Uh but the barrel contained only the
00:57:03
head and arms of the adult man. Each had
00:57:05
been wrapped in heavy duty green garbage
00:57:07
bags. Same thing, just like just like
00:57:09
before. Mhm. Later that day, at a rest
00:57:12
stop a few miles down the road, the rest
00:57:14
of the body was discovered in identical
00:57:16
garbage bags. That same day, a man
00:57:19
collecting bottles and cans along the
00:57:20
Hud Hudson River found a briefcase and a
00:57:23
bag of men's clothes, which he brought
00:57:25
to the local police station. And inside
00:57:27
the briefcase were several several
00:57:29
documents that identified their victim
00:57:30
as 56-year-old Michael Sakura.
00:57:33
According to the medical examiner,
00:57:35
Michael's cause of death was blunt force
00:57:37
trauma to the skull. So, that's
00:57:39
different this time. I was going to say
00:57:40
that's change that's a change up. It is
00:57:42
a change up. It caused quote multiple uh
00:57:44
communuted fractures. Holy [ __ ] Yeah.
00:57:48
As well as lacerations to the front and
00:57:50
back of his head and swelling and trauma
00:57:52
in his brain. My god. There were also
00:57:54
stab wounds to the chest and back
00:57:56
similar to what had been seen with the
00:57:58
other victims. But what interested
00:58:00
detectives in this case was that unlike
00:58:02
the arms and the head which had been
00:58:03
expertly disarticulated for the first
00:58:06
time in this series of cases, the legs
00:58:08
had been crudely dismembered from the
00:58:10
body, which indicated to them that the
00:58:12
killer had to have been in some kind of
00:58:14
rush for whatever reason toward the end.
00:58:16
Interesting. Otherwise, there wasn't a
00:58:18
lot to go on from the autopsy. If
00:58:20
investigators wanted to learn who killed
00:58:22
Michael Sakura, it seemed that they were
00:58:24
going to be more likely to find that out
00:58:26
by learning about his life rather than
00:58:28
his death. Yeah. So, they found that
00:58:30
Michael Sakura lived in New York's West
00:58:32
End in a studio apartment that he'd been
00:58:34
in since 1964.
00:58:36
From the door man, detectives learned
00:58:38
that until a few months ago, he had
00:58:39
actually been in a relationship. But the
00:58:41
door man hadn't seen the partner in a
00:58:43
while, so he figured they broke up.
00:58:45
Okay. When detectives got into contact
00:58:47
with Michael's sister Marilyn, that's
00:58:49
when they learned a great deal more
00:58:50
about their victim. Michael Sakura was
00:58:52
born and had been raised in Ohio as the
00:58:55
oldest of two children born to Michael
00:58:56
Senior and Mary Jane Sakura. Sadly,
00:59:00
according to Maryland, their parents
00:59:01
weren't really educated. They worked
00:59:03
blue collar jobs and their father, who
00:59:05
they called Big Mike, had served a few
00:59:07
years in jail after a robbery conviction
00:59:09
in his early 20s. Oh, man. And both
00:59:11
parents participated in domestic
00:59:13
violence, quote unquote. Oh boy. Uh
00:59:15
Marilyn said, which was often directed
00:59:17
at her and her brother. Oh, that's
00:59:19
awful. Yeah, they had a rough childhood.
00:59:22
Marilyn did though seem to remember
00:59:24
their mother more more fondly than their
00:59:26
father. Okay. And indicated that their
00:59:28
father was not only viciously
00:59:30
homophobic, but racist to boot. Wow. He
00:59:33
sounds like a gem. He does. Uh Marilyn
00:59:36
lovingly referred to Michael as a quote
00:59:37
unquote nerd who quote wanted to know
00:59:39
everything about everything and would
00:59:41
read whatever he could get his hands on.
00:59:43
She said he loved music and theater and
00:59:45
he had dreams of making a name for
00:59:47
himself on Broadway. In high school, she
00:59:50
said he casually dated girls, but
00:59:52
according to Marilyn, some members of
00:59:54
the family did sense that he may have
00:59:56
been gay, even if they didn't know
00:59:57
exactly what it meant at all. He was
00:59:59
obviously not going to even bring that
01:00:02
up in front of his racist homophobic
01:00:04
father. Nope. Like the other victims,
01:00:06
Michael very much understood that his
01:00:08
sexuality would be unacceptable to his
01:00:10
family and his friends and his
01:00:11
neighbors. So he kept his interests and
01:00:14
attractions to himself and as soon as he
01:00:16
graduated from high school, he joined
01:00:18
the army and got the hell out of Ohio.
01:00:20
After three years in the army, Michael
01:00:22
was discharged in May of 1958 with a
01:00:25
quote uh undesirable discharge. Oh. Now,
01:00:29
it's unclear exactly what this meant,
01:00:31
and I didn't actually realize this, but
01:00:33
in the 1950s, the federal government
01:00:35
actually considered gay men to be a risk
01:00:38
to national security.
01:00:40
I'm going to say that again for the
01:00:42
people in the back. The federal [ __ ]
01:00:44
government considered gay men to be a
01:00:47
risk to national security. Is that
01:00:50
shocking now though? It's not. But but
01:00:53
it is. That's not shocking at this time.
01:00:55
At this point in time in in the year
01:00:57
2025,
01:00:59
I'm like, "Yeah, that makes sense that
01:01:02
they would think that." I'm like, "You
01:01:03
guys are worried about gay men? Look
01:01:04
who's in the [ __ ] White House. Sorry.
01:01:06
the dumb just just doesn't even get a
01:01:10
grip. It's shocking in the most horrific
01:01:12
way, but it's not surprising. It's
01:01:13
awful. Yeah. And this was either because
01:01:16
of their associations or their risk of
01:01:18
being blackmailed, they said. So, it is
01:01:20
possible that that uh discharge was
01:01:22
related to his sexuality. Wow. Which is
01:01:25
just [ __ ] That's wild. Yeah. I've
01:01:28
never heard of an undesirable dis. I've
01:01:31
only heard of like a dishonorable. Same.
01:01:33
You know, undesirable is almost worse.
01:01:36
Yeah, it sound Yeah, it doesn't sound
01:01:38
great. And according to Elon Green, the
01:01:40
discharge was humiliating and prompted
01:01:42
Michael to come out to his family, who
01:01:44
were obviously less than supportive. So
01:01:46
rather than go back home to Ohio,
01:01:48
Michael moved to Arizona for a few years
01:01:50
and then finally got settled in New
01:01:52
York's West End in 1961. From that point
01:01:55
on, he was finally able to grow into
01:01:56
really who he wanted to be. Good for
01:01:58
Michael. He was comfortable with
01:01:59
himself. He found community among New
01:02:01
York's gay community and he just really
01:02:04
didn't go back to Ohio much. He would go
01:02:06
back on holidays or, you know, family
01:02:08
milestones, but otherwise the city was
01:02:10
his true home. Good. And he had I'm glad
01:02:12
he found it. Probably more true family
01:02:14
there. Yeah. In a lot of ways, the
01:02:16
details of his life bore similarities to
01:02:18
the lives of the other victims, other
01:02:19
than the fact that he was the first
01:02:21
victim who was comfortably and openly
01:02:23
gay. But unfortunately, while the
01:02:26
statements from friends and families
01:02:27
told a lot about who Michael was when he
01:02:29
was alive, it didn't do much to indicate
01:02:31
how he had come to be murdered. Yeah.
01:02:33
There was, however, one piece of
01:02:35
information that did prove to be
01:02:37
helpful. According to his sister,
01:02:39
Marilyn, Michael was a regular at the
01:02:41
Five Oaks Tavern, which was a popular
01:02:43
piano bar in Midtown Manhattan. Ah, that
01:02:45
sounds familiar. Yeah. Not the same as
01:02:48
um the Townhouse Bar, but a piano bar,
01:02:50
but a piano bar. Yes. So, the news of
01:02:53
Michael's death was a shock to everyone
01:02:55
at the Five Oaks, where he spent a lot
01:02:56
of his nights just drinking, chatting
01:02:58
with the staff and the patrons until
01:03:00
last call. He had started going to the
01:03:02
Five Oaks almost 20 years earlier when
01:03:05
he and the other gay staff members at
01:03:06
the New York Law Journal started
01:03:09
stopping by the bar every day after work
01:03:11
just to kind of like shoot the breeze.
01:03:13
Yeah. Since then, he was kind of a
01:03:14
fixture at the bar. According to one of
01:03:16
the bartenders at the Five Oaks, he had
01:03:18
been at the bar late the night that he
01:03:19
was killed. And the piano player
01:03:21
remembered seeing him sitting with a man
01:03:23
at the bar whom Michael introduced as a
01:03:25
nurse that worked at Saint Vincent
01:03:27
Hospital and just introduced him with
01:03:29
some generic men's name that
01:03:31
unfortunately the pianist couldn't
01:03:33
recall. He said that the two of them
01:03:35
spent hours, several hours, drinking and
01:03:38
chatting and then that and that they
01:03:39
left the bar together around 3:00 a.m.
01:03:42
and that was the last time anyone saw
01:03:43
Michael Sakura alive. And that is where
01:03:46
we are going to end for part one. Oh,
01:03:49
damn. This is brutal. It's brutal. It's
01:03:52
really sad. And it just breaks my heart
01:03:54
that a lot of these men didn't get to
01:03:57
live comfortably. Yeah. And like never.
01:04:00
And then in Michael's case, like you're
01:04:01
happy that he got to live com
01:04:03
comfortably, but you're like a lot of
01:04:05
your life was spent like in an abusive
01:04:07
place and then you were like abused in
01:04:10
the end and it's like that's so sad.
01:04:12
Yeah, this is a gut-wrenching case. And
01:04:14
again, I can't believe that we had never
01:04:15
heard of this. No, it's gross. It is
01:04:18
that we have never heard of this. It's
01:04:20
really sad. Um, in part two though,
01:04:22
we're going to get a lot more into the
01:04:24
background of who this killer is. Don't
01:04:26
worry, he was found apprehended. Um, and
01:04:30
there's some surprising details in part
01:04:32
two that you're going to be like, "How
01:04:33
is he still on the streets for this to
01:04:35
happen?" Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah. So, with
01:04:39
that being said, we hope you keep
01:04:40
listening, and we hope you keep it
01:04:43
weird,
01:04:45
but not so weird that um you're a
01:04:48
hateful [ __ ] Yeah. Yeah. Not that
01:04:50
weird. Don't be that weird. Not so weird
01:04:52
that you suck.
01:04:54
You guys rule, though. Yeah, of course.
01:04:57
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