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Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 99: Shin Kick

June 03, 2026 /

This episode covers the murder of Irene Garza, the investigation into her death, and the eventual conviction of former priest John Fite. Key discussions include the cultural context of the case, the impact of the Catholic Church, and the long journey to justice for Garza's family.

Irene Garza, a 25-year-old teacher, disappeared on April 16, 1960, after going to confession at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas. Her body was found days later in an irrigation canal, leading to a massive investigation that initially focused on various suspects, including John Fite, a priest who had met with Garza before her disappearance.

The investigation revealed troubling patterns of behavior from Fite, who had been previously accused of assaulting another woman. Despite evidence and witness testimonies, Fite was not charged for many years, and the case went cold.

In 2002, a former monk came forward with information about Fite's confession regarding Garza's murder, reigniting the investigation. After years of legal battles and changes in district attorneys, Fite was finally arrested in 2014 and convicted of Garza's murder in 2017.

The episode highlights the failures of the justice system and the impact of the Catholic Church on the investigation, ultimately leading to a long-awaited resolution for Garza's family.

TLDR

Irene Garza was murdered in 1960; John Fite, a priest, was finally convicted in 2017 after decades of investigation and cover-ups.

Episode

1:52:09
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00:01:57
Hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia. This is the show where we unlock the diary of our old episodes with the key of our current feelings plus case update.
00:02:16
That was amazing. Right? That's exactly what we're doing. Well, that's the work of Alison Agosti.
00:02:21
Oh, it's written right there. It's written on this piece of paper. I thought you just fucking just blew that out of your brain.
00:02:27
Well, that's good writing, but it's already there and it sounds real natural. That's good acting.
00:02:31
Okay, today... It's good reading. Today we're rewinding to episode 99, which we named Shin Kick.
00:02:38
Shin Kick. I wonder why. Let's find out. This episode originally came out on December 7th, 2017.
00:02:45
So let's get into the intro of episode 99. Oh, yes. Do you hear the sounds of the podcast train?
00:02:58
Of the ghost podcast train? Oh, there hasn't been a ghost podcast train in 25 years.
00:03:04
That voice has gone totally into a southern bell area where it doesn't belong. I love it there.
00:03:11
I want it to stay there. It was supposed to be an old minor 49er. Yeah. But no, I've changed the scene.
00:03:18
I don't care. I love it there. Great. Thank you for your support. Welcome to My Favorite Murder.
00:03:22
Yes. Yes, we that's Georgia Hardstart. That's Karen Kilgariff. And we heard her talk to you about a couple of things called crimes and true truthness.
00:03:32
We love truthness. We also enjoy talking about crimes. We'll never lie to you. Well, we'll not get things right.
00:03:41
Yes, not intentionally. Right. You're right. But we won't lie. But there'll be times where we deeply mislead you and get you to say the wrong thing to
00:03:49
your friends and co-workers in a braggy voice. But they'll believe you because of your tone.
00:03:54
Right. And your delivery. What we're telling you is it's all about tone and incantation.
00:04:00
It's all about incantations and it's all about spells. And it's about having short term jobs.
00:04:06
You don't have to go back and see the same people after like two weeks because you've
00:04:09
lied to them so much. God, you meet one person in the eight jobs you've had as a temp.
00:04:15
That's like you're the best person you've met. Then they you will go on to marry that person.
00:04:19
Right. This is our guarantee to you. Mm hmm. And we don't lie to you. Look around the office right now.
00:04:24
Is your eighth person, your future spouse. Right. Sitting near you. Pick them. You have 15 seconds.
00:04:32
Kick them. Pick them. Kick them. I'd rather you kick them. Kicking them is a great way to start the flirting.
00:04:39
If you take it from me, seven year old Karen Kilgariff, a good shin kick. There's no better way to say I love you.
00:04:46
Karen has stuck with her flirting technique and she'll never let it go. And we like your tenacity.
00:04:52
Thank you. I feel like it, like having a big butt is going to come into fashion.
00:04:59
I just have to wait it out. There was a time where I thought, no, kicking people in shins would never come into fashion
00:05:04
in terms of flirting. But so many things have. Kicking in the shins is going to be the only way we let anyone know.
00:05:11
To break through, to say, hey, you matter to me. So prep yourself. Before you. Wreck your shins.
00:05:18
I do have a really quick shout out to the two ladies please do the two fucking so we we just
00:05:25
finished our last weekend tour of 2017 yep um in st louis and kansas city it was a fucking amazing
00:05:32
fun weekend yeah thanks you guys thank you we meet a bunch of awesome people after the show at the
00:05:37
meet and greet and everyone like every fourth person comes up in a shirt a homemade my favorite
00:05:44
murder shirt that's just funny and weird and shit that we don't remember saying or is like
00:05:48
something they drew. It's always funny. Oh, there was two girls that had a stay sexy,
00:05:53
don get murdered in wingdings Yes That I and I was like do people oh no it was yeah ssdgm wingdings right um and i was like does anyone is anyone able to read wingdings off the dome and then know what that says and they were
00:06:09
like not yet that's the best that was great and then there were two other ladies and they had
00:06:16
shorts that just said promo code murder and i was just like you fucking subtle as fuck badass
00:06:22
bitches we laughed so hard like it never even crossed our minds that that was like a funny thing
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the wingdings also included a bomb yeah because i think don't get i think a murder must be bomb
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right well there was a bomb at the end like the little like cartoon bomb but i thought those
00:06:40
things only represented the letter yeah oh so it wouldn't be murder but but i just thought it was
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coincidental that a bomb would be in there because it was ss i think it was the d was a bomb
00:06:51
something in there. It doesn't matter. It was still great. It was the bomb. It was great.
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A great looking. It was the bomb. Also someone in Kansas city, by the time it got back to us,
00:07:00
we got so many nice presents and thanks you guys. We got tons of stuff backstage. There's a lot of
00:07:05
people that were worried saying we gave you something and then they took it away from us.
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You guys bring the theater is like, you cannot bring that in here. You can't bring the severed
00:07:15
head of Ted Bundy into our theater. Please don't. But it's actually a cake. Sorry. You can't. Yeah.
00:07:20
So we got a whole table full. It was like Christmas backstage for us. Somebody made a plastic baggie filled with the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had.
00:07:30
I think there was either Rice Krispies or Corn Flakes in them. So they were really small and crispy.
00:07:36
Whoever did that, God bless you. I ate maybe six of them just standing there talking.
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We got a full cheesecake. Oh, my God. People went crazy for that cheesecake. We got a haunted scary clown.
00:07:46
The doll? It's over there. Yeah. So these these lovely women, these two women brought, I don't know where the fuck they must have found it.
00:07:54
Like, I think they said a secondhand shop. Yeah. And they were like, somehow they saw and were like, Karen and George, I need this.
00:08:00
Like, what does that say about us? It was like a Raggedy Ann homemade clown doll from the 70s.
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Knitted. Knitted that like clearly whatever child got it was terrified of it because it didn't look like it had been touched.
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no because one side of the clown's face one side of the clown was a happy clown and then you turned
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it over and we're going to post it and it was the most terrifying clown sad face you've ever seen
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yes with silver tears knitted onto the face even you're going to have to post it okay it is so
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upsetting and also the best part was the way the girl this was in st louis yeah the way the girl
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walked up holding it or woman sorry i always do that she held it like she was also a ghost like
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she walked up really weird and stiff and kind of like really slow. Like she had been looking forward to giving this to us for two months.
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And she was like, finally, it's here. Yes, it was so good. Everything about the presentation.
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She said to me, she goes, turn it over. Yeah. And then it was horror show. Yeah.
00:09:02
So anyway, you guys will see it. Steven? I was going to say, Wingdings, the bomb is M.
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So M in murder. Yep. All right. Okay. Perfect. So M just happens to be a bomb. Look at that.
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It's so perfect for us. Dude. Wingdings was made for us. Oh, my God. Wingdings? Wingdings is like my personal.
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I didn't know. I loved, like, because I've loved a lot of fonts. Mostly Times New Roman.
00:09:26
But Wingdings is now. Well, you know I only use Georgia font. I know. But from here on out, I'm doing my fucking bullet journal only in Wingdings from now on.
00:09:35
Goodbye. Oh, it's so perfect. Okay, bye. Bye. Oh. What do you have? I was going to say a couple of things about my sweet Adrena.
00:09:46
I, cause I was talking about it over the weekend with people at the live shows. I really care so much.
00:09:51
And I, I know that there are people who like sped through reading it and there are people
00:09:56
who responded of like, I thought we were going to do a book club. Well, we told them we were doing a thing and then we were like, nope, goodbye.
00:10:01
Which is like, if you're not, if this is episode 99, if you don't know that by now.
00:10:05
Yeah. Flakeroo. Except for, I really do. It's just taking me forever to read it because I, this book, I'm, I'm attacking it on two
00:10:14
fronts, which is I have the hard bound copy next to my bed, like an old widow. And then I eat out a box of chocolates as I read it.
00:10:22
And then I also have the audio book. So I was listening to it on the plane and I just would like to read a couple.
00:10:28
This makes me so happy. Oh, and also so many people have said you have to listen to Teen Creeps because they
00:10:33
have this great episode on this, but I don't want to listen to that until I'm done reading
00:10:37
this book so it doesn't influence what I'm saying in any way. Sure. If that makes sense. Okay. So I will
00:10:43
definitely do that because so many people have recommended it, even our own Steven. They did an episode
00:10:47
of, what episode was it? Well, they've done My Cedar Gina, but I was just going to say, I've been
00:10:53
on the podcast twice and it's been really fun. Lindsay and Kelly are really sweet.
00:10:57
And they, I mean, the fact that they read a book every week to do this podcast is incredible.
00:11:03
What? Oh, but it's mostly YA. Yeah, it's all like R.L. stein and christopher pike and everything this shit's yeah still that's 200 pages yeah how do
00:11:13
they do it read me a thing okay we have to write a book report they have to read a book they have
00:11:17
to read a book and talk about it report and report it um okay so the i'm now in the part where she
00:11:25
meets um now i don't have his name written here boring old adrina she we're boring old second best
00:11:32
nobody likes you uh shut up adrina you're not the dead one therefore you're not as good adrina calm
00:11:38
down adrina we call her second best second place is first loser first is the worst second is the
00:11:45
worst or second is worser she goes into the forest which she's constantly forbidden to go into stupid
00:11:53
we told you by her family how many times she nine a quick reminder for people she nine years old Then she goes into the forest There a home in the forest where and of course I picturing it like full on gingerbread
00:12:06
house. And in the house is a boy. I think his name is Auden. And then his mother lives there too.
00:12:13
And she hides behind a tree and watches him rake the yard. And in the book, it's talking about like
00:12:19
how he has a hot ass and shit. He's 12 years old. I swear to God. Is he saying Andrew's okay?
00:12:24
I mean, I think she's just laying out a lot of like, let's, let's just break all these taboos.
00:12:29
Then, uh, she gets caught being in the woods, peeping, being a peeping stalker. Yes.
00:12:36
A nine year old stalker. Um, and so her father comes storming in, grabs her every interaction with her and her father.
00:12:45
I get so nervous. It's going to boil over into incest every time they talk or have breakfast or whatever.
00:12:52
but there's so much inappropriate in like intensity. Yeah. But at one point he starts,
00:12:58
he says to her common people will, will drain your specialness. And I had to write it down because she's saying,
00:13:05
he's saying like, you're too good to talk to those people in the woods. Oh, you,
00:13:09
Adrena, who work making you the creepiest creeping creepo. Yeah. Don't talk to common people.
00:13:15
They're fucking. Yeah. She's like, take my specialness, please. I'm so sick of this specialness,
00:13:20
but she's, she, quick reminder, she's a nine-year-old and her hair is all colors and her eyes
00:13:26
are all colors. Right. What the fuck was that? It changed. Oh. It's like she's a calico child.
00:13:33
And that's part of her specialness. Oh, also, the description of when Vera gets spanked by daddy. Oh, yeah.
00:13:41
And it's down to like her ass burning through her thin underwear. Like, it gets into a detail
00:13:47
where I'm like, nope, this is... I think we need to talk to V.C. Andrews. is she available i don't know we need to have a little fucking quickie convo with her i mean
00:13:59
look it really it just right it goes right up to the edge and then and then scatters back and then
00:14:05
kicks it in the shin oh and then i said this at the show the other night but my favorite i'm
00:14:09
assuming it's a misprint it's um she describes somebody and i'm pretty sure it's cousin vera
00:14:15
coming down the hall clumsily clumbering which i'm like i'm almost positive clumbering isn't a
00:14:21
The clumbering makes so much sense, though. It makes more sense, but you can't, if you're going to say clumbering and not lumbering.
00:14:27
We don't need clumsy as well. Get clumsy out of there and get a different adjective without the CL at the beginning,
00:14:32
because now you're clumsily clumbering. You're borderline like Rod Dahl. Why don't you just start singing a song Ooppa Loopa style?
00:14:40
And it's like, okay, stop tripping over your own fucking feet. Yeah. Who, Vera? Everyone.
00:14:46
She's a big fucking clumberer. It's the girl. Oh, okay. Speaking of books about children, I have one to talk about.
00:14:53
Okay. But this is a bad one. I mean, not this is a badder. This is a real one. Okay.
00:14:58
So last week we got in our P.O. box a couple books from a woman who lives in Ohio and gave us two like Ohio true crime books.
00:15:09
You took one. Yeah. And I kept the other and started reading it. And I am halfway through and I'm fucking obsessed with it.
00:15:15
Okay. And it's so good. This is a woman named Karen sent these to us. And it's this one's called Amy, my search for her killer.
00:15:23
Here, I'll show it to you because she's this is a true crime one. Her name's Amy Mihaljevic.
00:15:28
She's from a Cleveland suburb and she disappeared on in October of 1989. And this dude, James Renner, who's the author, who's like he he like pitched it to his like newspaper in town that he was working on.
00:15:43
And now this whole book is written by him trying to find out and going through fucking
00:15:47
each suspect and talking to the, you know, the main investigator, the FBI agents, the
00:15:52
fucking family. And it's written so well. And he inserts himself in the book in a way that doesn't suck.
00:15:59
Yeah. Because he was the same age as she was when she disappeared at town over. And like, so it's part of him in the way that we understand.
00:16:06
Yeah. Right. Yeah. The way that we remember growing up and seeing this person's face and how much it meant to
00:16:12
us. And it's, it is such a fucking good book. Amazing. And I can't wait to finish it.
00:16:19
So it's, it's by, it's called Amy, a search for my search for her killer by James Renner.
00:16:25
And I'm totally obsessed with it. And in case you can't find it, cause it looks pretty, um, it's called, it's a published by
00:16:33
Gray and company publishers, www.grayco.com. G R E Y G R. Sorry. G R A Y. So if you can't find it in normal ways, it's on grayco.com.
00:16:44
It's written so well. James Renner, you can tell how much it means to him when he's writing it.
00:16:52
And it makes the book so heartfelt and interesting and wonderful. And I really love it.
00:16:57
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. He's got a good face. He does. Yeah. You really did read a lot of that.
00:17:03
Yeah. Dang, girl. All weekend I've been reading that. Good girl. I know. Instead of drinking.
00:17:08
I'm like I can't drink too much because I want to read this book thanks James you fucking cured my alcoholism yeah that's right James James you should send
00:17:19
him a Starbucks card oh I that I swear to god that wasn't an intentional segue but I would
00:17:26
like to thank um Live Nation yes no no no um I went to Starbucks the other night in Glendale
00:17:35
because just running errands and it was the night before I get so weird before we
00:17:40
leave when we travel and I have to buy things that I want to make sure are there
00:17:44
when I get back I get real OCD weird. Plus you're like black dress I need a black dress and all that. No nothing I actually need I do things like I need
00:17:52
coffee so I have coffee here when I get back I wonder what that means It just like it part of my not wanting to leave the house in the first place um so i start telling myself like if i go i won be ready yeah there
00:18:05
a i have a real stalking problem but i went as adrena so is the second and worst shitty adrena
00:18:13
creepiest and pee-piest adrena the creepiest pee-piest stockiest ever nine-year-old behind
00:18:18
a rain tree with a fucking 12 year old butt adrena there's like a whole picnic scene where i'm like
00:18:23
Nine-year-olds and 12-year-olds don't go on picnics. Stop it. Nine-year-olds and 12-year-olds are 100 years apart.
00:18:29
Yes. Nobody wants, no 12-year-old wants to talk to a nine-year-old. Unless she has hair that's purple, gold, yellow, orange, and red.
00:18:36
Okay, so I went to the, I went to the, the Starbucks closest to the designer shoe warehouse.
00:18:44
And, and I went in and the only coffee they had out was Christmas blend. So I asked the girl behind the counter if they had Italian.
00:18:52
That's my kind. She says, hold on, I'll get my coworker to go look for it. Are you fascist?
00:18:58
A little bit. Okay. Yeah. I only, I like Italy just from like 1935 to right around 43.
00:19:05
Fair enough. The girl comes out of the back holding like the one bag of Italian.
00:19:09
And when she, the doors fly open, she's like, oh my God. And then I was like, hey, I was like, that's for me.
00:19:16
And she's like, okay, I love your podcast. And then this is, that's my favorite reaction when people seem genuinely bummed.
00:19:23
Like they don't want to say it, but they've already acted weird. Yeah. And it was super cute.
00:19:28
Anyway, long story short, she didn't act weird. That sounds judgmental. She was very sweet and was seemed happy and surprised.
00:19:35
And then she gave me a free pound of coffee. And I was like, wait, hold on. I don't want you to pay for my coffee.
00:19:39
And then she's like, no, we get a free pound every week. It was like a pound she would have had at home with her roommates.
00:19:46
That's right. I'd like to take that away from her. Right. So thank you to. Thank you to Mariah at the Glendale Starbucks.
00:19:52
front me your friends and family coffee that's what she said anyway friends and fascist coffee
00:20:00
thank you mariah my mussolini sips i love it i love italians i love the way they make coffee
00:20:07
did you come home from your trip happy that you had coffee yes pre-ground already in the thing
00:20:12
come on because the mistake i always make is then oh forget i'll just get the whole bean at
00:20:16
the grocery store no no no never terrible listen creates look it creates garbage on your counter
00:20:23
don't want that can't have it um steven's got one steven's pointing at a thing oh good okay steven almost deleted this entire episode the magic the magic that just happened
00:20:36
you wouldn't i mean you heard it how could any of that get recaptured i love thinking of people
00:20:42
who start this podcast this late on. And the way we start this thing is like a word puzzle.
00:20:48
Like who the fuck would know what was going on? Why are they talking about my sweet Audrina
00:20:52
and kicking people in the shins? Oh, it's the first night of Hanukkah. Oh, yeah.
00:20:57
A Hanukkah miracle happened today. What was it? So my thing that I'm happy about this week
00:21:04
at the end of the episode was going to be that my mom and I are going to therapy on Thursday.
00:21:09
She's coming with me to therapy. Wow. We're going to sit in therapy together and work out why she's such a fucking stupid bitch.
00:21:14
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to work some shit out. We're going to work it out.
00:21:19
Because we're fighting right now and not speaking. But here's what happened. I accidentally told her it was Tuesday, our therapy appointment.
00:21:27
So she called me and was like, where the fuck are you? She was like, where are you?
00:21:30
And so I made her come meet Vince and I for lunch. And we worked some shit out. Oh, that's good.
00:21:35
It went really well. Yeah. Oh, that's good. So everything's good now. Are you still going to go?
00:21:40
She can't. She has to work. On Thursday? Yeah. So it's not, it wouldn't have happened.
00:21:44
Like, it wouldn't have happened because I fucked it up. Yeah. But we talked and argued and Vince being there made it really great because he's such a good
00:21:52
mediator and everything. So everything's fine now. Not fine. Everything's, you know, human now.
00:21:58
Are you, but are you going to get her to go? Or do you think that that window is closed?
00:22:03
No, no, she'll come. She's been offering it for years and I've always been like, that's fucking condescending.
00:22:07
Fuck you. you think that like coming to therapy and so you can tell me what's wrong with you know i've been
00:22:12
but does she go to therapy oh yeah we all go to therapy oh okay everyone in my family
00:22:16
goes to fucking therapy got it yeah so that was a hanukkah miracle amazing yeah that you got to do
00:22:24
it out of the office right yeah that it's still we still were able to talk about what happened
00:22:29
oh that's good her mean text to me um so thank you yahweh yes and the angel gabriel uh-huh
00:22:37
And those guys? And the first and best Audrina. Thank you. That's all her. She had white hair, I believe.
00:22:45
White. Yeah, it wasn't fucking changey color-y. No. Like a fucking monster. She wasn't a fucking cuttlefish.
00:22:52
Please. Oh. Oh, Elvis. Elvis loves cuttlefish. Elvis is a... What's the little...
00:22:59
Oh, my God. Jesus. What's the one, Tiny Tim? It's a happy Christmas, everyone. Is that it?
00:23:07
Is that it? No. It's like you just revealed that you've been like a spy, a Russian spy, deep, deep state Russian spy.
00:23:24
And all I've seen is Scrooge. It's the happy Christmas, everyone. I said it was a Hanukkah miracle.
00:23:31
Elvis fucking this insane Siamese cat screamed. And then I said, it's a happy Christmas, everyone.
00:23:36
Oh, sorry, that just reminded me. My favorite shirt of the weekend was the woman who was wearing a shirt that said,
00:23:43
Make Paul Unions Proud. I almost lost my mind. I don't. What is wrong with you people?
00:23:51
It's the best. You're the best people ever. Funniest, best. Who wants to go first?
00:23:56
I went first at the inside. insane kansas city show that'll never be posted that is one of my favorite shows so sometimes you
00:24:06
guys will have um well like if we sell out a show really really quickly our amazing wonderful tour
00:24:14
agent joe schwartz will be like you guys at a late show and we'll be like okay and then we're like
00:24:20
why did we do that it's it's really hard to do it's pretty hard second show and so we get on
00:24:25
there and we're fucking hopped up on diet coke and fucking coffee and cocaine and cocaine and
00:24:30
like mini twix bars and we go up and it's fucking bananas and this one was especially bananas i
00:24:38
you say that yours was great you saved it it was it here's the thing it just is like such a roll
00:24:46
of the dice we're we're doing a thing that you probably should not do for a live show which is
00:24:50
we don't know what the other person's going to talk about which makes it really fun and is the
00:24:55
best part but then like on that one with mine I felt like I was in a car sliding on ice it like
00:25:02
skidding into a brick wall I went first last time so I'll go first okay and we're back that's right we're back we are back back in good old 2026 26
00:25:18
thank you here's the thing it's like back then we were on the road a lot and we were at the
00:25:24
hardest version of us being on the road, which was three cities a weekend. Multiple cities a
00:25:29
weekend. Vince driving us in a minivan from city to city to city. I don't think we knew we could say
00:25:34
no to anything. No, we kind of couldn't. We kind of, yeah. And I mean, it paid off. Yes, it did.
00:25:40
We're here today. And we had a real good time. We had a great time. I mean, we ate so many egg
00:25:45
bites from Starbucks that neither of us can eat them anymore. The amount of bad eating I did while
00:25:52
going, I have to stop eating like this. But there was literally, I shouldn't say literally, but
00:25:56
almost no choice. Because the nighttime menu for room service, I'm not complaining about room
00:26:03
service. I will never complain about room service. We're so privileged. And you could get chicken
00:26:07
strips. Mac and cheese. And a Caesar salad and mac and cheese. Yeah. And that's it. And so we did
00:26:12
that. So we did it over and over again. This is where we tried to start the My Sweet Audrina book
00:26:17
club and it doesn't work out. This is the first of our terrible book clubs. Well, you know,
00:26:22
what's funny is like we should have a book club, but we can't figure out how to do it in a way that
00:26:26
would be effective as a weekly podcast. Right. Because we're interesting. I certainly cannot
00:26:31
read a book, not only in a week, in, I'd say, three months. I can't get that homework done.
00:26:37
I can listen to a book in three days. Yeah. But then I've neglected everything else in my life.
00:26:43
Yeah. Except for like vacuuming or things you can do while you're listening to a book.
00:26:47
Okay, so no real big update on Amy Mihaljevic's murder, the book I read of James Renner's. It remains unsolved as of today. Investigators have continued pursuing new DNA and forensic genealogy testing in the case. And James Renner, who's our friend now, has remained active in true crime media and cold case advocacy work through books, podcasts, and forensic genealogy work.
00:27:14
Amazing. Yeah, love his work. We also almost deleted this episode famously, which is crazy.
00:27:20
How did we do that? So easy breezy with the delivery of these episodes. To this day, the thought of I'm not recording still gives me chills.
00:27:30
Like the thought of like, did I hit record? We have done it. I think in COVID I did it one time.
00:27:36
Yeah, I did it once and I think you've done it once. For like full episodes where we get to the end.
00:27:40
We're like, ha ha ha, what a good time we had. We need to make a promo code murder merch.
00:27:45
We've never done that. Oh, that's a really good idea. Thank you. I just came up with it.
00:27:49
That's not true. It's from Ben. It's from 10 years ago. But we'll circle back. Now we're going to do it.
00:27:54
Now, Nicole and Vanessa, we will pull them in and get this done. It's not all me making our merch anymore.
00:28:00
No, that's right. On fucking cut and paste. No. Promo code murder would be really cute.
00:28:04
Kat would be very hurt to hear you say that. Oh, Kat? Oh, no, no. She did decorate it.
00:28:10
But then I had to like pick out the blanks and upload it. Oh, no, no, no. You did it all.
00:28:14
I didn't design anything. You started our merch economy. It's incredible. Thank God you did it.
00:28:19
You pulled my house out of foreclosure. You had to do all those things and then show me the piece of paper that said, here's how
00:28:25
much we made this week. Handwritten, scribbled. Yeah. Okay. Anything else? Oh, oh, oh, oh.
00:28:31
This is the episode where we are given the haunted doll. Can we show pictures in case you don't remember?
00:28:40
Oh, my God. It's the doll with two faces. Can we see the other side? Happy? Oh, no.
00:28:47
It's the scariest, like, homemade Raggedy Ann knitted. This was given to us in 2017 at our St. Louis stop.
00:28:55
Okay. A legendary show that we talk about often. Yeah. But somebody came backstage and was like, I got this, and now you're going to have it.
00:29:03
And we kept it for as long as we could, and then you took it back out onto the road and gave it away.
00:29:09
Am I right? No, you know what I think I did? Also, first of all, this is the first gift or curse.
00:29:16
A.K.A. And it's very clear what the answer is. I said no gifts. I think we packed it into mail.
00:29:23
I think we were sending a listener something and we put it in the box and sent it with it.
00:29:29
That's mean. And made them take it. Made them have it. Who is that person? Write us.
00:29:34
We're sorry. Are you still alive? Or did this doll kill you? Yes. Jesus Christ. Who has this doll?
00:29:41
We would love for you to reach out so we can bring you back into the fold and talk about how your life has either improved or fallen apart since we sent you this doll.
00:29:51
Probably deproved. What if it deproved terribly and it all our fault Well the point was that she had to then give it to someone unwittingly Like it just has to go on and on Like we got it unwittingly She got it unwittingly This is a chain letter of a doll of a haunted doll
00:30:05
That's right. It's like a hot potato, but with a terrifying doll. You know why? It's the knitter, someone's great aunt, who put this thing together,
00:30:13
decided that when they were going to do the sad face, they were just going to do white yarn,
00:30:17
whereas the happy face has a nice flush to it. And somehow their eyes look like they're bleeding.
00:30:22
Yeah. Okay. That's like a doll that person died in an ice storm. That's the feeling I get.
00:30:30
The soul of the person who died in an ice storm is in that doll. It's so scary. All right, let's stop talking.
00:30:36
Let's get into Karen's story about Jennifer Pan. Your husband is not who you think he is.
00:30:47
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
00:30:51
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
00:31:00
Just then, we felt the plane turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.
00:31:09
Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.
00:31:20
my daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me
00:31:25
alive because I wasn't eating anything. And me pretending like everything was fine.
00:31:30
He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped
00:31:34
in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family
00:31:39
Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:31:43
In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
00:31:52
You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test once.
00:31:57
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
00:32:04
Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped.
00:32:11
Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
00:32:17
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:32:24
10-10 shots fired in City Hall building. How could this have happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that.
00:32:31
A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
00:32:38
I screamed, get down, get down. Those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten and a mystery that may or may not have been political.
00:32:48
It may have been about sex. Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:33:00
Now, this story, Guy Branham told me to do this a while ago when we were doing shows in Toronto.
00:33:08
But I said, no, it's it. When he told me about it, I read it up a little bit. And then I was like, oh, it's too singular.
00:33:14
It's too like doesn't have enough. I don't know. Bells and whistles or whatever.
00:33:20
Body. And then body. Body. Yeah. But then I read it and that's not the case. And I knew it was a good story because for me, it this story causes me more and more and
00:33:35
more anxiety as I read it. Uh, so I'll tell you about, this is, um, this is the story of Jennifer Pan.
00:33:45
Oh, you know this one? Yes. Okay. Then I love it. So I realized in reading these articles, what I found was that the real like, um, mother,
00:33:58
like the source of this story that, yeah, exactly. The original yeast dough of this story was from an article written by a woman named Karen K. Ho, a name I'll remember for the rest of my life, for, I guess, a magazine called Toronto Life.
00:34:17
Because this girl knew Jennifer Pan and grew up with her. So it was kind of giving a different view of the whole thing.
00:34:28
I feel like it's always different when the person who's writing the story knows what the town was like, where they're from.
00:34:34
You know what I mean? Like, cause it's, can be like any fucking small town or suburb or whatever, but you know what it's like.
00:34:40
Yeah. And what the person, what the high school is like and what the curriculum and what the person's expectations are.
00:34:46
Yeah. The context because. Context. And this one, yes. And like, it's the family context, especially in this story, because this is one of those stories about what they call the dragon parents.
00:34:57
Right. There's tiger, tiger moms are one thing, but then there's another term that they're,
00:35:03
they were using in all these articles and it was dragging, dragon parents or dragon father.
00:35:07
So I think it's the ones that are way more intense. It's not just like, it's, it's, it's the kind that are insanely restrictive and insanely
00:35:14
strict and, and tough, um, with really high expectations where there's kind of, you have
00:35:20
no choice. There's a failure is not an option. Right. Okay, so on November 8th, 2010, at around 9.30 p.m., Jennifer Pan locked the front door of her family's home in Markham, Ontario, which is a suburb outside of Toronto, and went to bed.
00:35:38
Shortly afterwards, three men entered her home with guns. They ransacked the home.
00:35:46
It was a home invasion. Looking for money, they grabbed Jennifer's parents. Han is her father and Bic is her mother They took them down into the basement basically the TV room down in their basement brought them down into the basement They were demanding money They looked all through the master bedroom They tore up the whole master bedroom to find money They kept demanding money
00:36:12
were being invaded. Han, Jennifer's father, told them that he had money in his wallet.
00:36:24
He was trying to think of other places that he could give them money from. And they end up shooting Han in the shoulder
00:36:32
and then in the right eye. And then as Bic, Jennifer's mother, is screaming, they shoot her three times and kill her.
00:36:39
Han survives getting shot in the eye. Dad? Yes. How does that happen? I don't know.
00:36:47
It broke his orbital bone, the bullet, and it grazed the vein that goes down your throat.
00:36:56
I guess, is it your jugular? Or one of those? No, the eye vein. His big tear duct.
00:37:05
It basically went through his eye. No, I don't like that. But then like, I think out the side and he survived.
00:37:12
Jesus. Upstairs, they tied Jennifer to the staircase. Bannisters. Thank you. To the banister.
00:37:23
The thing you stick your head through. Yeah. And get stuck. How old is she again?
00:37:27
16? No. At the time she is 26. Okay. Oh, wow. But she looks 16. Okay. She lives at home.
00:37:34
Yes. She lives at home with her very strict parents. Okay. So they tie her with shoelaces to the banister and, um, they shoot the parents and then they
00:37:44
all leave with whatever that cash that they've taken. I think it's, it ended up being like through around $3,000 or something.
00:37:52
Um, Jennifer gets out of, she loosens out of the shoelaces. She calls 911. She's freaking out.
00:37:59
The cops arrive. Um, Han comes out of the basement. He's able to get up and walk outside.
00:38:06
A neighbor's the first one to find him. And he gets loaded into an ambulance. Jennifer gets loaded into an ambulance.
00:38:14
She has a younger brother who is half an hour away at college. And they all get taken.
00:38:23
She gets met by crisis workers at the hospital. They tell her her father's in surgery and that her mother is dead.
00:38:31
She's at the hospital for a really long time. Eventually they realize that, that there's not even wounds.
00:38:37
Like there, there's aren't even red marks on her wrist from those shoelaces. So she is uninjured and she ends up, um, they take her once she's out of the hospital,
00:38:47
they take her back to the police station and the, um, the detectives question her and basically
00:38:52
just kind of start asking her questions. What happened? Just, can you describe these people?
00:38:56
They make her go through it once. Then they do another technique where they make her, um, and I got also got a lot of this
00:39:03
from Case File, one of our favorite. Case File. That's the episode I listened to of this show.
00:39:09
I mean, that guy just does such amazing research. It's just so dramatic. Yes. He was also pronouncing the mom's name
00:39:16
Bicca, but I only ever saw it written that it was pronounced Bic. And he's Australian. He's Australian. I don't know
00:39:25
what he's doing. He's doing something with his voice. So anyway, basically she goes
00:39:33
And the cops are like, tell me the story your way. Now tell it from above, like just, and then see what you can remember.
00:39:40
So like, it's so weird. Can you imagine having to do that? Yeah. Especially if a traumatic event.
00:39:45
Yeah. Telling the story over and over again. It's like, as you see the people acting it out as, oh, it's so weird.
00:39:50
It's so crazy. But then that second way does help her to remember. And she's able to describe the guys better and more detail.
00:39:59
She remembers them, the names that they called each other. different things that they talked about with the money, whatever.
00:40:06
So it's a little bit effective. Then right before she leaves, the guy says, oh, we need to check your phone.
00:40:14
Because if these guys, we think, you know, her mom had just come home from line dancing
00:40:18
class. So they're like, well, maybe somebody followed her or like it's, she was targeted somehow.
00:40:24
So if it wasn't her, then we want to see if it was you, if you were being targeted.
00:40:28
So we need to know who you've been talking to. and then in this interview because on the case file thing that that he has all the interview
00:40:34
tapes so they that it starts with the 9-1-1 tape where i was on the freeway did you listen on the
00:40:39
way over and i grabbed that phone so fast it was just because she is freaking out into the phone
00:40:44
um and of course you know screaming um but then in the police interview tapes she's really she's
00:40:52
crying she's really upset and then at one point he says you need to sign this thing so we can look
00:40:57
into your phone. And then she's like, um, so, and all of a sudden she has a bunch of questions
00:41:01
about how they're looking into her phone and what that might mean. And he's basically going,
00:41:07
it's fine because if you're not lying to us, it's just us looking at your phone.
00:41:11
And then if you are lying to us, we're going to find out like who you've been talking to. And if
00:41:15
it's information we need to know. And that's when like the temperature changes a little bit. Cause
00:41:19
up until that point, she was the victim. She was, you know, like the one of two survivors of a
00:41:25
terrible home invasion murder robbery. Um, so that, you know, it changes a tiny bit there.
00:41:32
Um, and then they start looking into her past and the people that she's been talking to. And,
00:41:37
uh, it turns out that Jennifer Pan might not be the person that she has been presenting herself to
00:41:42
be. Okay. So, um, basically her father Han had been a tiger dad. Uh, well, we'll start at the
00:41:52
beginning They um her parents um were both born and raised in Vietnam and they moved to Canada as political refugees in 1979 And they got married in Toronto and then they lived in Scarborough neighborhood for a while
00:42:06
And that's where they had Jennifer in 1987, and then her brother Felix in 1989. Scarborough neighborhood apparently was kind of rough at the time that they lived there.
00:42:18
They both, Han and Bic, worked at Magna International Car Parts Manufacturer, and they worked really hard.
00:42:28
So by 2004, they'd saved enough money to buy a large house, the two-car garage in Markham.
00:42:35
So Markham was a quiet suburb north of Toronto, predominantly Asian families, and it's just kind of like where people went.
00:42:45
It was really just quiet, low-key. And now Bic is driving a Lexus, Han's driving a Mercedes.
00:42:52
Like, they're doing very well. And, um, they have, it's reported they had 200 grand in the bank.
00:42:59
So they were totally dedicated to their kids and getting their kids into college, getting
00:43:04
their, making their kids as successful, um, you know, Canadians as they can. Um, so they didn't allow Jennifer.
00:43:12
They had, Jennifer was playing piano from the age of four. She won all these awards.
00:43:16
She had like a room full of awards for how good she was at playing the piano. then she got into ice skating
00:43:23
when she a little older and she did it every single day and she wanted to go she was like in training
00:43:32
and she had set her sights on being in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver then she tears a ligament in her knee
00:43:38
and basically that dream ends for her when she was graduating 8th grade she thought she was going to be the valedictorian
00:43:46
and she basically found out she was getting no academic awards and she was not the valedictorian. And that's like,
00:43:54
all of a sudden she was just like, I'm not who I'm supposed to be. And she kind of, she had been
00:44:00
working her ass off up to that point. So she, it wasn't, she didn't make a mark and she was shocked
00:44:05
and couldn't believe it. And that's totally unacceptable in her family. Like her family
00:44:10
was like, always, all you do is like these extracurricular activities we've chosen for
00:44:16
you very specifically and then you're going to be like you're going to get a 4.8 gpa essentially
00:44:22
um so even a thing no she just has to do the impossible essentially okay got it so um
00:44:30
so some nights in elementary school she'd come home from ice skating at 10 then do homework till
00:44:37
midnight and then go to bed in elementary school honey and um and in elementary school she started
00:44:45
cutting herself because the pressure was so intense to be successful in all these different
00:44:49
things she was doing. Um, so she was doing little horizontal cuts on her forearms. Yeah. So, um,
00:44:57
so then when she went to Mary Ward Catholic secondary school, um, ice skating was over for
00:45:03
her. She started playing flute in the school band. Um, but every day after school, her parents were
00:45:09
there to pick her up when, when band practice was over so she could go home and study, but her grades
00:45:14
for the way their family considered it were failing because she was only getting B's.
00:45:19
God, I would have fucking paid for a B back then with my cello. My shitty cello playing. I mean,
00:45:27
I don't understand why I got any of the grades I got because I never tried and I
00:45:31
would get just a full variety from A to D. It was just like, why try? I learned that early. It's very random.
00:45:39
Why try? Why try? Just have a good time. So So when she got her first bad, you know, all B's report card freshman year, she took some
00:45:48
old report cards, some scissors, some glue, a photocopier, and she made herself a brand
00:45:53
new fake report card worth straight A's. All A's. Yep. That's how you get all A's.
00:45:58
And in her mind, she said, universities don't consider marks from grade nine, Canadian grade
00:46:03
nine and Canadian grade 10. So she's in her mind, it wasn't a big deal. It didn't matter.
00:46:09
Fair enough. And I'm sure she was thinking, I'm buying myself a little time. Here's these A's and I'll work back up to A's and I'll work out.
00:46:15
Sure. She was not allowed to have a boyfriend. She was not allowed to go to dances.
00:46:22
She was not allowed to go to parties. She was not allowed to spend the night at friends' houses.
00:46:27
It was all about school and getting her schoolwork. In the spring, all her hard work and dedication paid off.
00:46:37
She graduated from high school and won early acceptance to Ryerson University in Toronto.
00:46:42
her parents were happy they wanted her to go to the University of Toronto but Ryerson University
00:46:47
was still great for them here's the problem Jennifer Pan had early acceptance to Ryerson
00:46:55
University but then that got canceled when she flunked out of calculus when she was a senior
00:47:01
so she that that early acceptance was rescinded now she's not in any college Oh no.
00:47:08
So she starts doing what many people do. You pretend you're going to college every morning.
00:47:14
Yeah. So this is like, yeah, now we're into me when I live in Sacramento and I'm flunking out of college,
00:47:21
but my parents don't know. So I'm doing the thing where I go home for the summer and every day get up and
00:47:27
run to the mailbox. Like I'm a child excited for the mail, trying to get the mail,
00:47:32
the report card before my parents do. Cause they're going to see it and know you're not going.
00:47:37
Yeah, my report card was like a point eight three or something like I was only going to theater classes
00:47:44
I mean you're literally going It was insane. Oh, no, so she's doing the same thing, but
00:47:53
She's kind of doing it in reverse. So she's saying she's going to school getting up every morning taking the train and
00:48:00
And then just chilling out at cafes. She got a part-time job waitressing at a pizza place.
00:48:06
And she was hanging out with her secret high school boyfriend, Daniel Wong. Daniel Wong.
00:48:11
So she had been dating Daniel Wong since they went on a European, in high school bands,
00:48:17
they went on a trip to Europe. And she'd only been friends with them up until that point.
00:48:22
And she, I think the story was that she had an asthma attack in a smoke-filled bar and
00:48:27
like thought that she was going to die because she couldn't breathe. And Daniel came to her rescue.
00:48:31
And Daniel came to her rescue. Daniel Wong. And like talked her down. And then they became secret lovers.
00:48:39
Yeah. I was trying to hold my breath so you could finish that because it was so amazing, but
00:48:44
I couldn't. Karen singing. Oh my God, Daniel. They were secret lovers. So that had been going on also.
00:48:53
She had a bunch of plates spinning at once, Jennifer Pan. so sometimes she would go over to his house she finally convinced her parents that she needed to
00:49:03
move in with her friend topaz who lived close to college and had an amazing name and had the best
00:49:09
names was she a stripper we'll never know it doesn't matter that's what i'm picturing in my
00:49:14
head yeah topaz in the apartment had the pole to practice on i mean that's hard have you seen
00:49:20
this is like some crazy ab work dude that's like incredible dedication uh strength
00:49:27
stamina stamina i just fall asleep as i'm talking um so uh okay so basically that becomes part of it
00:49:38
she's also telling her father that her grades are so good she's getting like three thousand dollar
00:49:42
tuition scholarships so she it's just lies upon lies upon lies so um because it's better than
00:49:49
having to tell your parents that you're just like a normal human being right which made me so sad
00:49:53
it's just just to be like i'm just average yes i want it just enjoy my life yeah as a normal human
00:50:00
is not acceptable right and there is apparently there's a couple times in this article that um
00:50:07
bick her mom would be like let her be herself or she's okay as she is and tried to like take the
00:50:14
heat off a little bit but she was also jennifer's the oldest yeah and there's just so you know
00:50:19
there was so much pressure. It's that it's, it's the same kind of pressure in, um, like I will,
00:50:24
I can equate it in the way of like in our family, Irish immigrants, like they call them lace,
00:50:31
lace curtain Irish, where they make sure everything looks really good because they think
00:50:35
everybody thinks they're a scumbag. So they're like, here's our beautiful lace. Look how well
00:50:40
we're doing. Everything's ironed and everyone, we have nine kids, but everyone's clothes are
00:50:44
perfectly ironed because it's a thing of like immigrant parents where it's like, I didn't
00:50:48
fucking I didn't go through what I went through for you to work in an office like a boring office
00:50:53
or in a pizza place or as a you know even as an exotic dancer like which is all acceptable fucking
00:51:00
jobs it's what everybody does that's not I will not accept it I didn't come here from Vietnam
00:51:06
to fucking raise a child to not be a superstar you have to have like your own law firm you have to
00:51:13
yeah you have to do everything perfectly and never trip once which is not only impossible yeah but
00:51:20
also that's not how you get good at things thank god my parents had no expectations for me whatsoever
00:51:25
aside from i mean aside from nothing my parents my dad used to love to tell the story that they
00:51:31
used to bring home their report cards to my grandpa who they said d's and um d's and d's and f's meant
00:51:38
doing fine. And he didn't, he dropped out of school when he was a kid. So he was like doing
00:51:45
good, everybody. And they all became civil servants and plumbers and things that, you
00:51:50
know, you could make money by doing that. It's not like that anymore. Anyway, I'm sorry.
00:51:56
Go on. No, no, no. Um, no, but there, it's just funny how there, there, there are these
00:52:01
pressures and some way it's like in some cultures it's academic pressure in some cultures. It's
00:52:06
like you have to get married and have a family immediately pressure. It's, it just depends,
00:52:11
but you have to be religious. Yeah. Yeah. Stay in the click. Totally. Stay in the fam. Totally.
00:52:17
Okay. So Jennifer is, she's under the gun and now she's 22 years old and she has been lying to her
00:52:24
parents consistently since like eighth grade essentially and being, having like a double life,
00:52:29
which is kind of amazing but she's never gone to a party she's never gone to a club
00:52:36
she's never gotten drunk and her one relationship is her secret relationship with Daniel Wong
00:52:43
so basically she then tells them that it was her father's dream for her to go to pharmacology school
00:52:52
and become a pharmacist so she's like guess what everybody got accepted she just makes a thing up
00:52:58
Yeah, she lies. She tells them that she got in. They're thrilled. She hadn't. But she starts buying used books and bringing home pharmacology books.
00:53:11
And when she would leave for school every day, it's stressing you out, huh, Stephen?
00:53:16
No, it just reminds me of the woman who did that for Stanford and pretended to be in Stanford for like two years.
00:53:23
Same thing. Because her family thought she was in Stanford? Yeah, the family pressure, yeah.
00:53:26
So she lived in Palo Alto And she would sleep in If a dorm A roommate dropped out
00:53:35
She'd be like, oh, I'm the new roommate And she would sleep in people's dorms and stuff
00:53:39
Pretending that she was a student Faking her grades, all the same stuff Oh my god
00:53:44
They kind of should get an honorary doctorate For getting away with it For faking it for so long
00:53:51
Don't pretend to be successful Because then you have so much further to fall Yes And also it Take that Take that initial hit Of like I fucked up Let the chips fall They can only yell for so long Yeah And take the and take the initiative to lie and use that towards something better
00:54:10
You know what I mean? Like you're a really good liar. I like go get a job somewhere cool.
00:54:15
Right. And build yourself up to management. Take that. Lie your way to manage. Don't lie.
00:54:20
But just like you clearly are not stupid if you're able to fucking trick all these people
00:54:25
for two years. Get into sales. Get into fucking sell houses. Sell houses. Sell mobile phones on Hollywood Boulevard right out on the sidewalk.
00:54:34
Right. Pharmaceuticals. Start right around the corner in the alley. There you go.
00:54:38
My dad sold fucking Ginsu knives at fucking Walmart. Hell yes. Do it. Those things can cut a Coke can.
00:54:44
And he showed you how at a Walmart. Marty. Marty. Go ahead. um so she instead goes for it in a major way she majors in lying and tells her dad she's going to
00:54:56
pharmacology school which i just can't it's almost like she's not even lying and going like i you know
00:55:02
what i got a job in california i'll see you later or anything she's not busting out she's just like
00:55:06
continuing to try to make it work like i i still have to live here yeah and i have to make these
00:55:12
people happy and i don't know how so i'm just gonna do it the way they demand so she's buying
00:55:16
fake textbooks and not fake textbook use textbooks like oh the old pharmacology right and then she's
00:55:22
going to the library and watching videos and reading books on it and taking notes so that
00:55:27
when she goes home she has reams of notes so it looks like she's really doing work she could have
00:55:31
actually been going to school this whole time doing that probably if she if she wasn't a b student she
00:55:37
could have um that was rude so so then she asked she asked if she can stay at topaz's house during
00:55:46
the week because it's a way better commute. Her mom's like super empathetic and like, let's let
00:55:50
her, it'll be so much better. Well, she's of course not staying at Topaz's house. She's staying at
00:55:55
Daniel Wong's house. Danny, um, his parents, she was lying to his parents and saying it was okay
00:56:02
with her parents that she was staying at their house. And then, uh, so basically there was no
00:56:09
one she wasn't lying to except Daniel Wong. Um, so basically when it was theoretically time for
00:56:17
her to graduate from the university of Toronto pharmacology program, they Daniel and helped her
00:56:23
find someone online to create a fake transcript with all A's in it. And then she told her parents
00:56:30
when it was the graduation ceremony that, um, they, that it was an extra large class and all
00:56:38
the, there weren't enough seats. All the students only got one ticket and she'd already given it to
00:56:42
a friend because she didn't think one parent would want to go without the other parent.
00:56:46
Yeah. I think that's when it might've started to stink a little bit to the parents. But then when,
00:56:52
um, Jennifer told them that she was volunteering at Toronto's prestigious hospital for sick children, they noticed that she didn't have any ID, no uniform. There was
00:57:02
nothing to prove that she officially worked there. So one day Han, they drop her off or
00:57:10
they insist upon driving her to work. And so then she gets out of the car and runs into
00:57:15
the hospital. And then Han tells Bic, go in after her and follow her in. So she ends up
00:57:20
going and running and like hiding for hours in the emergency room or in the, in the waiting
00:57:26
room um and basically bit comes back out and like doesn't find her um uh and basically she waits
00:57:36
them out until they leave and then early the next morning they call topaz to say hey we need to talk
00:57:43
to jennifer and topaz who just wakes up is like she's not here yeah isn't in on it isn't it doesn't
00:57:49
know what's going on and basically they find out that jennifer was at daniel's house and and the
00:57:53
whole lie comes down so basically she has to confess she never volunteered at the hospital
00:57:59
for sick children she didn't she wasn't in the pharmacology program um and that she had been
00:58:05
staying at daniel's house um she actually didn't mention that she'd never graduated from high school
00:58:10
um and that her time at ryerson university was fake so i didn't even know that she didn't admit
00:58:17
to any of that she only she got out what she could yeah of course han lost his fucking shit
00:58:23
But the dad went crazy. Bic had to convince him to let her remain in the house. And they basically said, it's him, it's Daniel Wong, or it's us.
00:58:34
And if you go with him, you can never come back to this house again. So then she basically had to break up with Daniel Wong because she didn't know where to go or what to do.
00:58:44
And they take away her cell phone and her laptop for two weeks. And then after that, they tell her, we're going to check your messages anytime we want to make sure you're not interacting with him.
00:58:55
And she's an adult. Now she's like 25. Oh, my God. So she's. Yeah, it's it's not.
00:59:02
It's crazy. Yeah. So she finishes up just that she takes a calculus class, finished, gets her high school like GED or whatever.
00:59:12
Um, she, uh, so basically her parents encourage her to apply for college for real.
00:59:20
She makes money as a, being a piano teacher part-time and, um, basically she can't go
00:59:26
anywhere except for university or piano lessons. Um, uh, this, so she's 24. I said that.
00:59:34
So, um, when she breaks up with Daniel this time, it says, I can't see you anymore cause
00:59:39
I'll get kicked out forever. He's like, fine, I can't take it anymore anyway. He starts dating somebody else and they fell in love.
00:59:47
And of course, Jennifer doesn't handle it well. She falls into a deep depression. She attempts suicide.
00:59:54
And at one point she tells Daniel that some men had home invaded their house and had gang raped her And then she tells him that his new girlfriend mailed a bullet to her as a as a warning
01:00:08
to stay away. That she basically insinuated that the new girlfriend, this was all her plan to attack
01:00:14
Jennifer. Yeah. So somehow that story works. Okay. Because they end up getting back together.
01:00:25
Well, is she a really good liar at this point? I think she must be in the, like, that 911 call is so believable.
01:00:32
I would have never doubted her. And I'm sure, in a way, she was really, I mean, her parents were just attacked.
01:00:38
So I don't think she's a completely cold, like, sociopath or psychopath. But she's been lying for fucking 15 years.
01:00:49
She has to be good at it and used to it, and it's a normal. It's not keeping her up at night.
01:00:53
Yeah, it's not. And it's like a it's like a normal way to live your life is to start by trying to lie about something.
01:01:02
Yeah. That like if you're if you're not getting what you want, get that manipulation going because you can't ever get anything kind of the direct way.
01:01:09
The default is to tell some tell a person what they want to hear. Yes. Or like or really play a huge card.
01:01:15
Right. So that people go like, holy shit. Stop everything. Why would anyone lie?
01:01:19
Yeah, exactly. So basically Daniel and Daniel himself is a bit of a, he's, he has been kicked
01:01:28
out of schools. He, um, he's a little, you know, he got caught dealing pot when he went to that
01:01:34
Catholic school that they went to together. He's a little, you know, living on the edge a little
01:01:39
bit himself. So when they get back together, basically together, they figure out that her
01:01:46
parents' life insurance policies would pay out half a million dollars and that she's the
01:01:52
beneficiary. And so Daniel starts helping her make a plan to have them killed. Yes. So he says that he
01:02:00
knows a guy named Lenford Crawford, the worst name of all time. A borderline VC Ender's name, Lenford Crawford.
01:02:08
Daniel calls him homeboy. They start setting up a thing where she has a separate SIM card
01:02:16
and iPhone so she can talk to him and make this plan. Nobody finds out. And basically the plan is when you're done like watching TV for the night,
01:02:27
unlock the front door. So she actually left the front door unlocked. Then she went upstairs to her room.
01:02:32
She flicked the lights in the study to give them the signal that it was time. Her mom had come home from line dancing, was watching TV.
01:02:39
Her dad was watching the news in a different room. and basically these men came in and the the men that that um home invaded and and basically
01:02:55
attempted to kill her father and killed her mother it was all her doing and completely her setup oh
01:03:01
my god yeah so which you know it felt like we were getting to that it's not the biggest reveal
01:03:06
but it's so sad it's so fucking crazy and over the top and then basically the third time they
01:03:13
bring her. So the cops, the first time they think they're just getting the story from her,
01:03:17
the first interview, the second interview, they're kind of like, let's talk about this
01:03:21
again and go over some details. Yeah. And it's always, you know, it's like the family is what's
01:03:26
looked at first. Plus the dad was supposed to die. Yeah. Right. Yes. So the dad was supposed
01:03:31
to die. Was the mom supposed to die? Yes, they both were. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So essentially the
01:03:38
third time they inner they interrogate her and they use something uh i think it was called i
01:03:46
didn't i didn't write it here but basically a guy named jeremy grimaldi is a journalist
01:03:50
in 2016 he but he published a true crime book um about jennifer called a daughter's deadly
01:03:56
deception the jennifer pan story and in that he talks about they use this interrogation technique
01:04:02
that might not have been above board where they basically trick you into trusting them and then
01:04:08
waterboard and then like it's almost like one guy is good cop and bad cop oh waterboard you
01:04:13
and then they just waterboard you wait so the guy is like you trust me you trust me you trust me
01:04:19
now i'm angry and you need to make me not angry anymore because i'm your friend yes like they
01:04:24
lull they lull her into a sense of kind of like she's being talked to like yes you're a victim too
01:04:28
and i bet it was really hard your dad was really mean and strict and whatever and then just boom
01:04:32
and they like it's like that kind of shock and awe thing i didn't read the whole thing of but
01:04:38
But you can read this book where it talks all about that, how that interview might not
01:04:42
have been totally fair. Oops. But at the end of the day, she is the person who hired those people.
01:04:48
Yeah. And, um, essentially, uh, um, uh, at the trial, her own father took the stand and told the
01:04:58
story of what happened. Um, that was March 19th, 2014. he basically had to get up on the stand and tell everybody how these men came in and he
01:05:08
survived when he woke up um after getting shot into the eye he woke up to his dead wife laying
01:05:14
there next to him and then like got out of the house thinking that everyone had been killed yeah
01:05:18
like where's my daughter is she okay yeah worried about her too probably of course and then slowly
01:05:24
finds out that it's she's the one behind it horrible so after 10 months of this trial jennifer
01:05:31
Pan, Daniel Wong, Homeboy. Homeboy, Lenford Crawford, and this guy's name was David
01:05:41
Milvaganaman. There's a bunch of Milvaganaman. Milvaganaman. They all got they were all convicted for murder and attempted murder and each received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years And then the third guy Eric Carty who is the one that tied her to the banister he
01:06:06
tried separately. So there's, yeah. So basically read Karen Cahoe's article in Toronto Life Magazine, Jennifer Pan's Revenge,
01:06:15
the inside story of a golden child, the killers she hired and the parents she wanted dead.
01:06:21
that's the article you're going to want to really get into because there are pieces
01:06:25
of this article in every other article I read that's what everyone's basing it on
01:06:29
Karen Cahos you'll never understand unless you have been raised in a family like that
01:06:35
that's crazy it's like so strict but then there's people that have had terrible parents and they don't have their parents
01:06:43
killed it's just that weird turn of like it just stresses me out so bad it's like I've done that exact thing where you're like
01:06:51
okay that fucked up now i'm gonna make up a new thing that's gonna get fucked up and i'm gonna do
01:06:55
that dumb thing and like the more complicated you make it the more the worse you're making it for
01:07:01
yourself yeah for sure that's a good one dude it's crazy good job thanks that's that is bananas
01:07:08
um yeah vince had a friend she was a comedian from michigan and they went to new york and
01:07:16
her name was Juwan and she came from that kind of family where she had been lying to her family.
01:07:23
They all thought she was going to school to be a dentist and she was actually a comedian and
01:07:28
didn't tell any of them. And then out of nowhere, she fucking jumped off the Brooklyn bridge and
01:07:34
killed herself. I remember hearing about that. It's just so sad. Like she just couldn't tell
01:07:39
them that she was doing what she actually wanted to do in life. Yeah. It's horrible. It's just like
01:07:43
such a sad thing to me. I can't imagine. And I bet so sad for the family. Yeah. I think they're applying pressure
01:07:51
in just the right way to or or whatever. They're doing what they know. Right. And I'm sure never in a million years
01:07:58
is that the result they're looking for. They'd rather have their daughter as a comedian that, you know,
01:08:03
and not what they wanted her to be than what they wanted her to be. And so I'm alive.
01:08:09
Right. Of course. It's always made me so sad, even though I didn't know her. It's so tragic.
01:08:13
Yeah. I remember a lot of, I mean, a lot of people I know knew her and it was, they're really upset about it.
01:08:19
Yeah. Okay, we're back. Karen, you have updates, yes? I do. In 2024, Netflix released a documentary called What Jennifer Did about this case.
01:08:32
It includes interviews with police officers and people who were in Jennifer's life and footage from her police interviews.
01:08:39
In 2023, the Ontario Court of Appeals overturned the first degree murder convictions in the killing and ruled the original trial judge didn't allow the jury to consider whether Hahn was the only intended target of the murders.
01:08:54
Wow. Then in April 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that there should be new first degree murder trials for all four people accused in this case, but affirmed the convictions of attempted murder.
01:09:07
Jennifer then pled guilty to manslaughter in her mother's death in March of 2026.
01:09:11
So just a couple of months ago. I mean, it's just been ongoing. And she got a life sentence, but now she's eligible for parole.
01:09:19
What? Because it's time served. Yeah. And then Lenford Crawford is the only one who's been convicted to apply for parole.
01:09:28
He was denied last year. Eric Carty, who was tried separately from everybody else, was sentenced to 18 years in prison,
01:09:34
although he did die in prison under mysterious circumstances. And then Kate Winkler Dawson actually did an episode of Wicked Words
01:09:43
from August 9th, 2021 about this called Karen K. Ho, Jennifer Pan's Revenge where Kate interviewed Karen K. Ho, the woman who grew up with Jennifer Pan
01:09:55
and wrote the article for Toronto Life about this case. Wow. So if you want to go listen to Kate Winkler Dawson
01:10:03
who's a great interviewer, talked to Karen Cahill about this. You can go listen to that.
01:10:07
Wow. Amazing. Yeah. And now it's time to get into George's story from this episode
01:10:12
about the murder of Irene Garza. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Your husband is not who you think he is.
01:10:22
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
01:10:27
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
01:10:35
And just then, we felt the plane turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats
01:10:43
just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy,
01:10:49
how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.
01:10:56
My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive
01:11:00
because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.
01:11:07
And he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.
01:11:12
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:11:20
When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable?
01:11:25
Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy, a weekly podcast from me,
01:11:30
a DJ and licensed therapist. It's mental health month. Let's figure out what actually works.
01:11:35
I didn't care about my life circumstance when I listened to that stuff. It didn't matter to me.
01:11:40
This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for you every day. Open your free iHeartRadio app,
01:11:46
search DJ Hester Prince Music is Therapy and start listening now. Hi, I'm Chris Fairbanks.
01:11:51
And I'm Karen Kilgariff. We host Do You Need a Ride? The mobile comedy podcast that answers the question,
01:11:56
what does it sound like when we drive our comedian friends around the wild street?
01:12:00
of Los Angeles. Yes, every week we pick up a hilarious guest, maybe run some errands, share some laughs,
01:12:06
and our dreams. Like when Martha Kelly shared her career pivot. I want to become a influencer of divorced moms
01:12:13
whose kids have gone off to college who have decided they're going to start living life for themselves.
01:12:19
Or the time Baron Vaughn got distracted by the majestic scenery. Then there's a freaking deer right there
01:12:24
on the side of the road. Holy shit. Eating freaking road grass. I wish you said glass.
01:12:32
New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Do You Need a Ride on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:12:42
Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, here's my turn. This is a timely story because it's a cold case that finally, hopefully, this is the end, came last week.
01:12:56
Uh-huh. But this is a story that I've been interested in. It's one of the 48 hours.
01:13:03
You know, we've all watched it. It's really interesting. Texas Monthly. I got a lot of this information from the Texas Monthly, which we love Texas Monthly.
01:13:10
The best. Article called Unholy Act by Pamela Colloff. C-O-L-L-O-F-F. This is the story of a fucking priest John Fight.
01:13:23
Oh. And the murder of Irene Garza. Oh, I don't know this. Oh, honey. Oh, shit. Fucking buckle the fuck up.
01:13:31
Buckle down, baby. Settle in. Buckle up. Hit your foot on the coffee table. Kick the coffee table as hard as you can.
01:13:39
Kick the coffee table. Like you have a crush on it. Okay, here we go. Okay. So Irene Garza is born in 1934.
01:13:49
She's this dark haired Hispanic beauty from McAllen, Texas. It's an agricultural, agricultural, nope, area.
01:14:01
Agricultural. Agricultural. Thank you. Area south of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
01:14:10
In high school, Irene had been crowned Miss All South Texas Sweetheart. Shit. And McAllen High School, where, you know, everyone's fucking white back then.
01:14:20
she had been the first hispanic twirler and head drum majorette wow so she was like
01:14:26
fucking busting down borders she's this beautiful beauty queen but she's hispanic so it's you know
01:14:32
uh sense of pride that it's it's you know she's she's down borders yeah she's not i mean texas
01:14:40
that's like blonde big teeth blue eyes that's like usually what you're gonna get out of a texas
01:14:48
beauty queen. Right. And she is, you know, she's not that. And she's the first in her family to
01:14:54
graduate from college, which is a super big deal, huge accomplishment. So at 25 years old,
01:15:00
she worked as a teacher for disadvantaged children, which she took a great pride in.
01:15:05
Some of her students were so poor and came from the neighborhood where she had come from
01:15:10
and had been able to get out of that they came to school barefoot. And Irene spent her first
01:15:16
paycheck on buying those children clothes and books. Yeah. So happens to this very day. Right.
01:15:23
Even worse. Exactly. So she's this really big hearted, kind person. She is gorgeous, which isn't
01:15:29
a reason why she shouldn't be a victim, but there's just this warmth coming from her. And,
01:15:34
and, you know, she had a huge future that, uh, that, that she earned. Yeah. What I'm saying.
01:15:40
yeah listen look look and listen stop it at the center of her life though is her uh devout
01:15:47
catholic faith that's like her fucking thing on april 16th 1960 uh the day before fucking
01:15:56
uh easter sunday oh okay is saturday easter saturday called a thing it's like chill out
01:16:03
Saturday. It doesn't sound like it. It is. Palm. I don't know. Chill the fuck out Saturday.
01:16:11
The day before Easter. Well, go ahead. Well, Good Friday. Good Friday. Good Friday's when
01:16:19
he went up on that cross. It might be the ascension. I don't know. He chilled out on Saturday.
01:16:25
He got rolled on up in that tomb. Yeah. And then he was risen on Sunday. Yeah, but Saturday he just hung out.
01:16:31
Well, Saturday was all up in that tomb. Yeah. People thinking he's dead. It's over. And he was like, you know what? I'm in a high.
01:16:37
OK, I'm not going to get sacrilegious here. We are. Yeah. Real mad at me. It's so sad because I've had this shit drummed into my head. But then, of course,
01:16:45
when it would be impressive, I can't pull it out. But here's the thing. And today's the first night
01:16:49
of Hanukkah. We rebelled against it because we hated it so much. So everything was drummed in
01:16:54
our head. We're like, fuck you. I'm not remembering this. Yeah. And now we don't.
01:16:57
Now we just don't know things. Now just the guilt remains. The guilt and the ignorance.
01:17:05
And the really good songs. I got a bunch of those. Peace is Flowing Like a River.
01:17:09
Anytime you want me to sing it to, I will. Baruch HaTah. Let's fucking do this. Name a prayer.
01:17:16
Okay. So, on April 16th, fucking Lazy Saturday, 1960, Irene borrows, she's 25, she borrows
01:17:28
her family car to drive to their church, Sacred Heart Church, where she plans to go to confession.
01:17:35
She leaves around 6.30 that evening. She's like, Mom, I'll be back. A bunch of witnesses see her get to church.
01:17:41
Everyone's in line for confession. She gets in line as well, but no one sees her leave that church that day.
01:17:47
She never came home that night, and the next morning, Easter Sunday, that's right, as you know.
01:17:53
He is truly risen. He rises and her car is still parked down the street from Sacred Heart The first clue comes two days later when one of Irene high shoes is spotted by the side of the road
01:18:06
And 300 yards from there is her purse. It looks as if someone had thrown it out the window of a passing car.
01:18:11
There's no fingerprints on it. This crazy huge search ensues, including they drag the irrigation canals.
01:18:19
They go house to house through the town. Border Patrol planes go fucking circling.
01:18:26
Sixty five National Guardsmen are called out to assist what became at the time the most extensive investigation in Valley history.
01:18:34
Wow. But it's not till four days later after she disappeared that Irene's body is found floating in a nearby irrigation canal.
01:18:44
She's fully dressed except for her shoes and underwear are missing. The right side of her face is badly bruised.
01:18:51
She had two black eyes and the autopsy reveals that she had been beaten with a hard object and suffocated.
01:18:58
The state of decomposition suggests that she'd been dead for fewer than four days.
01:19:04
So maybe she had been kept somewhere for a day or so. And she had been raped while unconscious.
01:19:10
Yeah. The local newspapers go fucking nuts with rumors and speculation. Everyone is like being fucking targeted or fingered, including this prominent local citizen who had died of a heart attack days after she disappeared, you know, or that had been transients or someone that had a crush on her because she was so beautiful.
01:19:30
But she was also, you know, not she was dating, but not, you know, she was Catholic.
01:19:37
You know what I mean? Sure. detectives question more than 500 people in the weeks following the murder but behind the scenes
01:19:44
detectives they don't talk about this in public and the newspapers don't really talk about this
01:19:48
they are focusing on a 27 year old priest named john fight what yeah a priest okay fight it's f-e-i-t
01:19:59
had recently finished his seminary training in san antonio and his name kept turning up in their
01:20:05
investigation. So he had recently come into town. He was a bright and well, he was bright and well
01:20:11
mannered. He had dark hair and hornwritten glasses. He looked like he'd be in Weezer.
01:20:15
You know what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah. He struck parishioners though, as aloof and a bit of a
01:20:22
loner and seemed ambivalent about his vocation. When he was asked why he had joined the priesthood,
01:20:28
he said, I just want to give it a try. I'm sorry. But if God isn't in that sentence or Jesus,
01:20:37
there's some fucking. You can't say that out loud. Was he new to Catholicism? You got it.
01:20:44
You got to like be in it to win it. Like if anyone asked either of us why we want to do true crime podcast,
01:20:50
it'd be like a passionate plea of how interested in fucking crime we are. That's right.
01:20:54
And we're not. And talking. Talking to God. Right. Mostly talking. But also like to not, it's almost that very glib, flippant thing of cocky.
01:21:04
Like it's, here's my funny joke. And like, really it's none of your business. Right.
01:21:08
Is what he's saying. Right. Which you're not supposed to say. Anyone who's asking you is like being earnest and being like, tell me, I want to connect
01:21:16
to you. You're a priest. I'm looking for some fucking guidance and some wisdom. Can I get a fucking.
01:21:21
Amen, please. There you go. on the night of irene's disappearance father fight had heard confessions and taken part in
01:21:32
a midnight mass he'd also admitted to his superiors that he had met privately with irene
01:21:38
in the church rectory and i wrote in parentheses the house because i didn't know what a rectory was
01:21:44
i thought it was an office the church's office i thought it was you know where he went and
01:21:48
wrote out his, I thought it was an office. It's a house. Right. I didn't know that. It's the priest house, but it's connected to the church.
01:21:56
So it kind of is like an office. Do all the priests live there or just the one head priest?
01:22:01
It's kind of like case by case. Like in my hometown, St. Vincent's, they live at the rectory. But you can also go there. At my mom's funeral,
01:22:12
we went to talk to the priest in the rectory, like in a downstairs office. Doesn't rectory sound like it should be like a side room office?
01:22:20
Well, it sounds like factory. It's where they're just churning out Jesus statues all
01:22:24
day and night. But I mean, I think it's like, it's basically you know, the church hall is where people like have their
01:22:32
Sunday coffee clutches or whatever. The rectory is where you'd go and you're like, we need to plan a funeral. We need to plan a wedding.
01:22:40
There's some serious shit happening here. This is the business. And then upstairs
01:22:44
the priests live. And then it's the busy bodies next door. Yes. Making fucking, I was going to say kugel
01:22:50
but they don't need kugel. No, they actually, they banned kugel. Long ago. Alright, I get it. So the
01:22:56
rectory is, okay. And that was viewed by other priests as really inappropriate to take anyone, especially a fucking
01:23:02
hot 25 year old lovely woman. Alright. So. Well yeah, because unless she has called, like
01:23:10
if it was a parish business, she would have called like the lady, the lady that runs the office and been like,
01:23:17
I need to make an appointment. But this was for confession specifically. Oh yeah.
01:23:20
No, you do that in the confession booth. There's a, there's a booth that is titled for the thing she was doing.
01:23:26
They had people build it right into the church. So people specifically, you can sit there and pray and then look at people getting confession.
01:23:35
That's the whole idea of confession. Well, he took her to the rectory. Gross. Pass.
01:23:39
Okay. Yeah. It's. Mm hmm. It's problematic. Yes, it is. Also, several church goers who stood in his confession line, which had fucking stalled out because he fucking picked her out and took her to the rectory to talk.
01:23:52
Oh that night told detectives that he seemed to have been absent from the sanctuary for long periods of time And another priest Father John O reported seeing scratches on his hands when they drank coffee together at midnight mass
01:24:09
Then detectives learned that on March 23rd, so that's three weeks before Irene disappeared
01:24:16
and her body was found, that a woman had been attacked at a Catholic church 12 miles from
01:24:21
that church. The one where Irene went to. 12 miles away 20 year old college student maria america guerrera had visited sacred heart church
01:24:31
in edinburgh and noticed a young man with dark hair and horn room glasses weezer uh sitting alone
01:24:37
in one of the back pews and in her mind she was like that i think she had an immediate reaction
01:24:43
to him he made me nervous but she was like calm down uh maria you're in the church you're in the
01:24:48
fucking house of god nothing can go wrong right you know she let her guard down yeah which is
01:24:52
totally understandable in a church of course in a church yeah when she went to the altar and knelt
01:24:56
at the communion rail a man grabbed her from behind and tried to put a rag over her mouth
01:25:03
holy shit yeah she fucking fought the shit out of him and when he put his hand back over her mouth
01:25:09
to silence her because she was screaming he she bit the shit out of his fingers until he drew blood
01:25:14
she drew blood yes that's you know what i'm saying yeah she ran out the side door of the church she
01:25:19
escaped. And in her sworn statement, she said that she thought her attacker was a priest.
01:25:24
That was the first feeling she got, which was very controversial. Yes. You know what I'm saying?
01:25:29
I bet. Because this is the 50s or the 60s? This is like, this is 1960. So we're technically still in the 50s. So I wrote about this, that
01:25:35
this is, this is a long time before the sexual allegations against priests started to come
01:25:40
out and people believed them. This wasn't until the 90s that these allegations came
01:25:45
out against priests sexually molesting children and it wasn't even until way later that people
01:25:50
believed them well and and of course horrible document i mean amazing documentary i wrote this
01:25:56
down there was is it the um it's uh deliver us from evil and there's a guy in it that talks about
01:26:03
when he got molested by a priest being driven in the police the priest's car because they he didn't
01:26:09
have a dad and so he's like i'll take him out to ice cream or whatever gets molested in the priest
01:26:13
card the priest drops him off he walks into the house says to the mom what just happened the mother
01:26:18
slaps him across the face and says how dare you ever say that and then the priest continues visiting
01:26:24
their house for years to come it's the most upsetting it's just children against adults
01:26:30
and there's no everyone's like no fucking way it's not even children against adults it's children
01:26:35
against God's chosen people and these highly religious people, which I don't completely
01:26:43
understand, which is why I was excited to talk to you about this because you were raised
01:26:46
Catholic. They're infallible. They are infallible. And you talking badly against a priest is talking badly against Jesus fucking Christ.
01:26:56
That's right. Right. It's this it's it's like pre-Vatican two shit where it's like it's old, like when the
01:27:03
popes used to control everybody and they were the richest people and they fuck anything they wanted.
01:27:07
And it was just all about power and money. And basically these, yeah, this is why people who were pedophiles went into the priesthood
01:27:19
because they went in with carte blanche. And we're not saying that Catholicism is bad religion, that priests are bad people,
01:27:24
that any, you know, we're not, I'm not talking shit on any of this. It's just this reality of a, of a really bad period that happened that, uh, we need to
01:27:33
acknowledge. Well, yeah. And I mean, I think at this point it's so been acknowledged.
01:27:37
Most of the people that I know that are good Catholics and that are faith based, like they
01:27:43
don't, they, they still believe in, they have a relationship with God and spirituality,
01:27:46
but most of the adults that I know because of the stuff that's happened in the Catholic
01:27:51
church are incredible. And I don't just mean like people my age, I mean like people, my parents age.
01:27:56
that are just so, uh, it's like you, you can't look at that power structure and go, this should
01:28:03
continue. This is, this is going great. They've handled stuff great and it should continue.
01:28:08
There's, there are very few people that feel that way. Right. Cause it's just so,
01:28:12
what a horrible thing. You can't give people absolute power like that. No, no, not at all.
01:28:18
Especially that access, that access to families. But, but I have to say this too,
01:28:23
like there are priests in my in st vincent's that are some of the best people i've ever met
01:28:29
absolutely and it's just that kind of like it's almost like the bad ones steal the good yes the
01:28:34
goodwill from the good ones definitely um because those ones it's like what what a great effect they
01:28:40
have on people's lives yes that's how it all works definitely um so okay so yeah so this is
01:28:49
way before any of these things came to light. So at Sunday mass after Irene's funeral,
01:28:54
just to show you how protected priests were, the priest told the congregation that he knew there were rumors that a priest
01:29:01
was involved in Irene's murder. And he said, quote, it is impossible that a priest would commit a crime like this.
01:29:07
Don't speak of it. Don't even let yourself think it. He said that himself at to the congregation.
01:29:15
Uh huh. Yeah. Right. in late April detectives drained the irrigation canal where they had found Irene's body
01:29:23
and on the bottom was a light green Eastman Kodaslide viewer with a long black cord
01:29:29
so like a slide viewer like a picture viewer like one of these? yeah but like to the wall
01:29:38
oh okay like a slideshow thing yeah we call those Kodaslide viewers at our house
01:29:45
You know, there is a photo of it online if you look it up. I mean, like of the actual one.
01:29:51
So it's got a long cord on it. It at the bottom of the irrigation canal where they think her body was thrown in And they also find a candelabra that belonged to the church John Fite is like oh yeah I bought that Koda slide thing last summer
01:30:06
He's like, oh yeah, that was mine. And that candelabra belongs to the church. So what he probably strangled her with,
01:30:13
and what he probably hit her with a fucking head with, is at the bottom of the fucking canal.
01:30:17
And he raises his fucking hand and is like, that's mine. Wow. Yeah. Because kind of in the confidence of knowing no one can do anything about it.
01:30:25
Who fucking? Yeah, maybe. Who knows? So finally, the priest sits down with the detectives in early May.
01:30:32
He provides a, of course, meticulous account of his actions on Easter weekend. He says that he had counseled Irene in the Sacred Heart Rectory.
01:30:39
He said, yeah, I totally did that because she had some information she wanted to give
01:30:42
me that was private. So I brought her. That's why I brought her in there. because the confession booth
01:30:48
which is a muffled closet that no one can hear from the outside of wasn't private enough. She could only scream her
01:30:56
confession is the problem. Jesus. He saw her leave though at whatever time and then he had these
01:31:03
dumb excuses for why he had cuts on his hand and he's like and goodbye. Polygraph tests
01:31:09
implicate him in both Irene's murder and the attack on Maria Guerrera a couple weeks earlier.
01:31:16
And in August, Father Fight is indicted for assault with intent to rape Maria Guerrera.
01:31:22
Oh, shit. Yeah. The jury though motherfucking deadlocks and the proceedings end in
01:31:27
a mistrial. And so rather than face a second trial, in 1962, Father Fight pleads no contest
01:31:35
to reduce charges of aggravated assault, gets fined $500, and that's it. takes that right out of the
01:31:46
goodbye he takes it right out of the church the collection plate I'm losing all of my terminology
01:31:55
I mean Jesus Christ that's the guy Jesus Christ Jesus can see and hear you if you're trying
01:32:04
to rape people in church clearly yeah you fucking lunatic so it's now alleged that the district
01:32:11
attorney at the time and church leaders cut a deal to stop the investigation into John Fite to protect the reputation of the church.
01:32:20
Also, most elected officials at the time in the it's the Hildegault County were Catholic, mostly elected leaders.
01:32:29
Yeah. And it was at a time when none other than fucking Senator John F. Kennedy is running for the president for president that year, who is a fucking Catholic.
01:32:39
that's right it's he's the only he's there's never been a catholic president before he's the
01:32:45
there's only one other catholic that had ever been a nominee for president oh and one of the
01:32:50
major parties he had lost so and and was it dewey i don't remember i didn't even write it down
01:32:57
that wasn't an honest question i wouldn't have known um an anti-catholic prejudice is
01:33:04
fucking big time so they're like we need kennedy to win we're all fucking catholics
01:33:08
let's not give them a reason to hate Catholics. Oh, okay. So like for political reasons. Yeah, including
01:33:16
JFK being fucking elected. Wow. And like, you know, it's Texas. It's a big fucking place.
01:33:22
God, that's so funny to think. I just always, it's just my own weird bias. Like I used to think
01:33:28
everyone was Catholic. When I was a kid, I just assumed everyone was Catholic. That's so interesting.
01:33:33
Well, you went to a Catholic school. I went to Catholic school, but also our town was just small and mostly Christian. Although then later on, I learned that there
01:33:43
was a big bunch of, um, Petaluma was like one of the biggest, uh, receivers of, um,
01:33:52
of, uh, immigrants after world war two of, uh, Jewish, um, people who are running from
01:34:01
the war refugees. Thank you. Where do they live now? They still live there. there's a couple temples in Petaluma yeah okay because I think one or two of the families had
01:34:14
like chicken farms so they're like everybody go out and work on go work on the chicken ranch very
01:34:18
cool all right yeah interesting that could be a lie no no you said it no I believe it I'm almost
01:34:26
positive I read that somewhere it's true it feels so true it feels really good in my heart great
01:34:32
Okay. So basically that means no murder charges are ever filed against Father Fight.
01:34:38
And shortly after the killing, the church transfers him to a far away monastery.
01:34:44
So in the 60s, he spent some time at a treatment center for troubled priests in New Mexico and at monasteries in multiple states.
01:34:51
Hold hold the phone, please. I will not. I want to go to a treatment center for troubled priests and kick them all in the dick.
01:35:00
write the horror movie that needs to be written out of that i mean like the children come and
01:35:04
attack and kill them all oh my god it's like children of the corn but at a fucking monastery
01:35:10
for troubled quote troubled troubled priests where it's revenge the children come out of the fields
01:35:17
it's called here in trouble peace priests you're in trouble you're in trouble i heard what you did
01:35:22
this past summer right said jesus said jesus to the lord that's fucked up who everyone in that neighborhood where that
01:35:33
place was just like move away. Well remember when we watched what was the really great documentary
01:35:40
on Netflix over the summer? The Keepers? Yeah. And he went and visited the house
01:35:46
where all of the priests had gotten sent to and they lived and they were all child molesters and shit.
01:35:51
Keepers is still fucking great. Everyone should watch it. It's so good. Listen, if you want to have a binge weekend
01:35:56
of terrible shit, you should watch Deliver Us From Evil, which You just need to, you need to watch it's historical information that you need to know about.
01:36:05
It's just fucking life lessons. And you just need to like calm your pessimism a little bit.
01:36:12
Optimism. I was going to say, well, it also there's, it's that thing of, it feels like a very new
01:36:18
cultural thing where it's like, everybody's got to get real with the fact that, that true
01:36:24
sociopaths and psychopaths move in this world in exactly these unexpected ways. they are baseball coaches.
01:36:31
They are priests. They move into their boy scout. They manipulate and they're good at it.
01:36:37
They're good at it. And you're not and you need to get okay with that. Yes. If you are a single parent, you've got to keep your eye double peeled.
01:36:44
You've got to triple check all the people that want to be in your child's life. All that stuff.
01:36:49
Which we're saying that to people who know it by heart. I mean like that. Yeah, but you forget that shit, man.
01:36:54
Like when it's you and your people and a guy you're dating, of course it's fine.
01:36:59
You know what I mean? It's like, of course, you don't think about it in terms of your own life.
01:37:03
You think about it outside of you. Yes. It's just so it's I remember reading that Sports Illustrated thing about how many baseball
01:37:12
coaches like little league coaches were pedophiles. And it's just the most frightening and insane thing.
01:37:19
I want to read that. You got to read it. It's insane. I'm pretty sure it was the cover of Sports Illustrated like 10 years ago.
01:37:25
Oh, my God. I need to read that. It's so crazy because it's then they're, they're in the lives.
01:37:29
They're right there with all the sports and everything's dude and sports and couldn't be
01:37:32
safer and games. And we need to go to this and practices. And then they, then that's how they select the ones who don't have anybody that's going
01:37:40
to come and beat the shit out of them. If they do anything to the kid, they like, that's how they spot vulnerable children and
01:37:46
people who are, I mean, it's just the most fucked up thing. Very awful. Um, also, okay.
01:37:52
Also the movie spotlight, which came out recently. Amazing. is about that too so watch so have a nice binge weekend oh and then watch bob's burgers
01:38:00
oh and big mouth to get yourself to feel better yes big mouth is amazing big mouth's so good okay
01:38:07
new mexico monasteries oh here's fun at one point here's fun here's a here's fun here's fun
01:38:17
at one point he served as a supervisor charged with clearing priests for assignments to churches
01:38:22
So the priest who got sent to the fucking, you're a terrible person, get out of this
01:38:27
town, they're going to fucking murder you. Yeah. The attempted rapist priest. They sent him to these places and these monasteries and our fucking friend John Fite was on the
01:38:35
fucking clearinghouse to let them go back into the goddamn world. Good. This motherfucker.
01:38:40
Healthy. Yeah. Just good decisions all around being made. Everybody. At every level.
01:38:45
We have one open seat. Who should we fill with? John Fite. Wait, is the devil not available?
01:38:51
Okay, then. Right. So one of the men that he held clear for parish was James Porter, who isn't the guy from Deliver Us From Evil, but could be a child molester convicted of assaulting more than 100 victims.
01:39:05
He was a priest. He was like, get him back in there. Yeah, you're in the game. Yeah, fucking dick. OK.
01:39:11
John Fite left the priesthood in 1972 and moved to Phoenix, worked as an insurance salesman, got married, had kids and grandkids, lives a fucking normal goddamn life.
01:39:23
Whoa. Meanwhile, Irene's parents, Nick and Josefina Garza, they both passed away in the 90s without ever seeing anyone prosecuted for Irene's murder.
01:39:33
But they were assured by people in the church that Father Fight, who they always fucking suspected, would be punished by the church if they found out anything had been done.
01:39:46
And they were assured that this was a bigger sentence handed than any court could hand down.
01:39:51
And so they're like, OK, great, because they still fucking believe in the Catholic Church.
01:39:55
Right. They were fucking Catholics. Well, yeah. So April 2002. Let's jump ahead.
01:40:00
OK. All right. Good. 42 years after the murder of Irene Garza, a former monk named Dale Tashney, who had left the priesthood more than 30 years earlier to marry.
01:40:11
Suddenly he gets a fucking conscience. He says that in the summer of 1963, he was asked to counsel John Fite while he while John stayed at the monastery where this guy Dale was a fucking priest monk.
01:40:27
during their six months of counseling John Fite told Tashney of the night that Irene died
01:40:35
this guy called the fucking investigator and was like let me tell you something he told him that Father Fite
01:40:41
had asked her to come to the church rectory had heard her confession and after the confession
01:40:47
he had restrained Irene maybe bound and gagged her he had fondled her breasts and before he returned to the sanctuary
01:40:56
to hear confessions, he had moved her to the rectory basement. And later that evening, he
01:41:01
moved her to another location. Then on Easter Sunday, so she's still alive. Then on Easter
01:41:07
Sunday, he put Irene in a bathtub and placed a bag over her head. And as he was leaving
01:41:13
the bathroom, he heard her say, I can't breathe. I can't breathe. And then Tashini said, when
01:41:20
he came back later on that day or early evening, he found her dead in the bathtub. And then
01:41:26
that night, he put her in a car and took her and dropped her off along a roadside
01:41:35
where there was a canal. Tashini had kept it to himself out of a sense of religious obligation
01:41:42
for more than four decades. He didn't tell anyone. It's like he confessed to him and you can't
01:41:48
in terms of being a priest that hears confession, you're not allowed to repeat it I mean I feel so grateful that he came forward and said stuff but at the same time it like some this person this man murdered this woman It doesn that then that not
01:42:08
a priest. Then that's not a priest anymore. The man who murdered someone is not, doesn't get to
01:42:14
have that. No, but everybody gets it. It's not just for priests. It's that's the, that's like,
01:42:19
they're talking to God through you and you don't get to intervene because they're asking for
01:42:23
forgiveness. And so you have to be that no matter what somebody says to you as a priest, you have
01:42:28
to say you're forgiven. He was counseling him. So it wasn't confession. I mean, I don't know if
01:42:33
technically. Yeah. Well, I bet you they'd say it was just for the protection. Right. But the other
01:42:38
thing is, wasn't she found brutally beaten? Yeah. So that's bullshit. She was beaten and raped while
01:42:44
unconscious. So clearly he left some shit out or they just tell you everything in this article.
01:42:49
because it's too much. But I would bet you that he's basically saying, well, I just did a couple of things.
01:42:56
I walked away and she died. And then she's, I mean, it's unfortunate. He's basically telling the story to this other priest,
01:43:02
like too bad that happened, as opposed to you finally fucking attack this woman.
01:43:07
Well, one of the things that Kashni said was he didn't show what I would consider to be compunction
01:43:13
or sorrow or grief or anything like that. So he had kept it to himself. And then he at this point in 2002, he's in his 70s and he had a change of heart.
01:43:24
And he was like, I'll fucking testify. Like, let's do. Wow. Yeah. Which is incredible.
01:43:29
So Texas Rangers then begin to reinvestigate the case when he's contacted fight.
01:43:35
Who's now 69 year olds says that man doesn't exist anymore and he won't say anything else.
01:43:41
Like the man who who raped and murdered a woman. Yeah, he does do. Yeah, he does.
01:43:45
Sorry. He's in you. so rangers also interviewed father o'brien who back then was like i saw scratches on his hands
01:43:53
and he tells the rangers that a few months after the murder fight uh he had confronted fight about
01:44:00
whether he had killed irene and the priest had told him everything so he too was like yep i know
01:44:04
everything i'll fucking testify oh shit um and yeah he'll tell everything so and i would say this
01:44:12
too. This was back. I think that people very rarely broke that. Like if I'm telling you,
01:44:19
if I'm giving you confession, you're like, basically you have to forgive me the end.
01:44:22
You don't get to say anything. That's in like, you know, police TV shows all the time.
01:44:27
Is that not true anymore? Well, no, I'm saying, I think back then no one would ever break it. Whereas nowadays,
01:44:33
I think it's like now everyone's seeing the reason that that rule is put into place,
01:44:38
maybe not have been for the best reasons. Right. Or that there were many more people that would exploit it than anyone would expect.
01:44:45
Yeah, that's true. Am I getting Catholic defensive? Sorry. That's okay. So then in July 2002, the Brownsville Herald ran a front page story on Irene's murder
01:44:58
and the suspicion about John Fite. And so Hildegault County District Attorney Renee Guerrera was asked if he planned to pursue
01:45:06
an indictment in the case because they were like, we have all this fucking evidence now,
01:45:09
including two people who he told murdered Irene and they're willing to testify. And this guy, Renee, was like, can it be said, quote, can it be solved?
01:45:19
Well, I guess if you believe that pigs can fly, anything is possible. And then he said, why would anyone be haunted by her death?
01:45:25
She died. Her killer got away. So he fucking flippantly. Who is this guy? This guy, Renee Guerrera.
01:45:31
He's a fucking Hildigo. No, wait. Hidalgo? Thank you. Oh, my God. I only say that because of the movie starring Viggo Mortensen about him and his horse.
01:45:44
Hidalgo. Hidalgo, yeah. Thank you, Jesus. Yeah. So at the time. So then he got all this negative publicity and he's like, OK, fine.
01:45:53
Sorry, he was the prosecutor, though? He was the district attorney. Oh, OK, OK. So he got all this negative publicity because her fucking family is still alive.
01:46:00
Her parents aren't. But the rest of her family is like, we fucking care that she died.
01:46:04
Yeah. So he in 2004, he asked he has two of his prosecutors present the evidence to a grand jury to indict John fight.
01:46:11
But they don't fucking call either of those priests to testify, the ones who he told that he killed them.
01:46:18
And so, of course, in 2004, the jury declined to indict him and no build the case.
01:46:24
So that was the chance to fucking finally before John fight dies to get him held responsible for the murder of Irene.
01:46:32
And those two priests had said that they would testify. They wanted to. They were waiting by the fucking phone to be called up to testify.
01:46:38
And they just didn't do it. They didn't call them. And it turns out, of course, Renee Guerrero was Catholic.
01:46:44
Yeah. Right. Yeah. So 10 fucking years later in 2014, there's a district attorney's race in Hidalgo County.
01:46:55
And finally, Renee gets fucking beat by Ricardo Rodriguez. And in his race, he promised he would reexamine the case of elected.
01:47:04
Oh, shit. So fucking Ricardo is elected. Wow. Great. They spent a year and two months reexamining the case and all the evidence.
01:47:12
And more than 57 fucking years after the murder of Irene Garza, 83-year-old John Fite is finally fucking arrested in Arizona for first-degree murder.
01:47:23
Former monk Dale fucking Tashney, 88 years old, fucking testifies. Dang it. 88 years old.
01:47:30
now when you say monk does it say anything else about that him being a monk there's just a photo
01:47:37
of him with that hair you know what i'm saying he's got the robes and the hair you're like oh
01:47:43
honey you must have been dedicated because my god he looks like he's on space balls i'm just
01:47:48
i just trying to figure out what that is if he like a christian brother or what like his specific deal was i sure it very involved but i don understand okay i just knew that it was like a monk but he was like but it was like priests were hanging
01:48:05
out with him. Yeah. I don't know. He's just in a different kind of like setup. Catholic thing.
01:48:11
Yeah. Okay. Maybe he made wine. The hair though. Yeah. My God. So Dale, what's up?
01:48:18
88 year old Dale testifies against him. December 8th. What's the date today? The 12th?
01:48:23
Yes. December fucking 8th, 2017. Fucking four days ago. Oh, shit. Yeah. After a six day trial in the Hidalgo County Courthouse in Edinburgh, a jury fucking convicted
01:48:36
John Fite. Whoa. Now 85 year old ex priest of murdering Irene Garza. And he received a life sentence in prison.
01:48:45
Oh, my God. Yeah. This just fucking came out. That's incredible. 1960 is when it happened.
01:48:52
and fucking what are we 2017 yeah she was still alive today irene would be 83 years old
01:48:59
in a letter written to a friend uh right before she died she stated that she's happier than she's
01:49:05
ever been and said to her friend remember the last time we talked i told you i was afraid of death
01:49:11
well i think i'm cured you see i've been going to communion and mass daily And you can't imagine the courage and faith and happiness it's given me.
01:49:21
And that's the story of the murder of Irene Garza by motherfucker John fight. Wow.
01:49:31
I can't believe that ended well. I know. Right. It never happens in the Catholic church.
01:49:37
Every time it's a Catholic church story. Yeah. It frustrates you. It disgusts you.
01:49:42
Called cases to goes crazy. So he's like in one of those walkers in court that are also chairs that you see.
01:49:50
Trying to look all old. And a couple of things he said when he got arrested were like, I don't understand.
01:49:56
This happened in 1960. His excuse of, I don't understand this was happening now.
01:50:00
This was so long ago. And this woman says to him, there's no statute of limitations on murder.
01:50:05
He's trying to play it off like, this was so long ago. Yeah, why are you guys making a big deal about this?
01:50:10
Yeah, exactly. He's acting like a confused old man. Yeah. And he's a fucking sexual predator and murderer.
01:50:16
Well, also, it doesn't matter how old he is. It doesn't matter how old he is. It doesn't matter what his opinion about it is.
01:50:22
Or that he's a grandpa or whatever. It sucks for them. His confusion is not relevant.
01:50:26
You already were confused. That's why you're like this. So your opinion about it and how you see it is not valid.
01:50:33
Because according to you, no one's life matters. Right. And any woman is an object you get to grab.
01:50:39
Who died in 1960? Who cares? No. No, a lot of people care. A lot of people care.
01:50:44
And a lot of people are tired of people like that guy exploiting positions of not just
01:50:51
power, but automatic trust. Yeah. It's that thing. That's what's so gross. Yeah.
01:50:56
Can you imagine going into a church or like, I can't imagine going into a church and getting
01:51:01
a creepy vibe of like, oh no, the guy that works here is scaring me. Yeah. That's the exact opposite of how churches are supposed to work.
01:51:09
Well, there should be no such thing as automatic trust. Yeah. I mean, it sucks. But even, you know, you're fucking pediatrician or you're fucking, you know, you're, um, what's
01:51:21
it called? Anything. There's just, there's no such thing anymore. Right. And there never was.
01:51:27
We just let it happen. Right. Yeah. It's, it's okay to be, just be aware. Be careful and thank God for the internet and checky, checky, checky.
01:51:37
Check everyone's fucking. Everything. record yeah wow that's amazing yeah such a good story thank you um um hi hi that was an intense
01:51:50
episode i know yeah there's a there's a lot of feelings okay we're back what are the updates
01:52:00
for this case john fate was incarcerated at the wj estelle unit in huntsville texas and died of
01:52:07
natural causes on February 12th, 2020. So pretty recently, actually. On Buried Bones, also Kate
01:52:14
and Paul cover the murder of Irene Garza on their episode called Sacred Heart. So a lot of Kate
01:52:21
Winkler-Dawson getting in there and being professional. Yeah, well, it's a Texas story.
01:52:24
That's right. So it's probably one that would be closer to her heart, right? Okay. Well, it's time to get into good things of the week then.
01:52:30
Let's do it. Anything good this week for you? I guess it was so fun to do those live shows. We had, I had such a good time.
01:52:43
You can say we, I did too. Speaking for you, but like, it's just such a joy to have that be a job.
01:52:49
It's insane. Because I'm always prepared. Like I really hate leaving my house and I hate leaving my dogs and
01:52:54
I get a little stressy for that, but it's always just that we have so much fun. And then there's
01:53:00
people that just like give us really nice presents and say really nice things. I, one thing that I
01:53:06
guess gets me is a lot of people talk to me about my mom. Yeah. And it's like, it's brought up a lot.
01:53:12
It gets brought up a lot of like, it's a young women who are like, I'm a psych nurse or I'm
01:53:18
studying to be a nurse, but there's a lot of my mom passed away recently too. And you really helped
01:53:22
me just by talking about it. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, I don't know. It's, um, you know,
01:53:29
it's, it's cool when we get to go out and hear from people about like the meaning of things,
01:53:35
because to us it's like I just go, oh, well, I just did a very interesting murder case in a mediocre manner
01:53:45
in our way. And then we talked about a bunch of bullshit. It's like, I don't know, it just is very meaningful.
01:53:51
It's just like such a nice feeling. You know we have like lots of friends we don know As we say at the end of every show it like we thank you guys for letting us do this as a job The two of us are fucking blown away by the fact that our lives have turned into this incredible thing because of this podcast that we started on a fucking whim
01:54:12
It's super weird. It's super weird. It is. And fun. We didn't expect this. We are in awe of all of you guys who are like these incredible people.
01:54:23
people and p and like showing up like i barely leave my house to do anything so like when i stand
01:54:28
there and like it's like a theater full of people who have all like went and bought tickets and
01:54:33
showed up and some have signs and some have uh it's just crazy shirts they made yeah cookies
01:54:41
and crafts and mugs yeah it's just really i just feel super lucky every time we come home from a
01:54:47
trip or anytime we go on a fucking trip for the show it's it's mind-boggling yeah it's so fun and
01:54:54
uh yeah so i think we're about to end the year with a hundred episodes yes so i guess maybe it's
01:55:00
just thank you guys for letting us do this incredible thing this year has been fucking
01:55:04
bananas and awesome and we're honored it's incredible it's beautiful we fucking appreciate
01:55:09
it so much we really do and thank you and thanks for uh i don't know thanks for being thanks for
01:55:16
thanks for liking it yeah it's weird it is what's your thing that's the same thing i'm gonna go
01:55:23
same see share are we gonna do shares we're gonna shame shame it we're gonna shame we're
01:55:28
shame share shame share uh okay cool i love it i do too okay we're back we are back i think it's
01:55:39
interesting i know you have a different opinion than me about the live shows so is that because
01:55:45
Because I'm just my good thing of the week is I'm grateful that I get to do live shows.
01:55:48
I love the live shows. I don't like the travel touring part. Oh, gotcha. And that's not even true because Vince gets to come.
01:55:56
So it's great. We've fine tuned it now. We have. It's gotten much better. But it was really fun when it was the three of us on this adventure.
01:56:05
It's totally fun. It just got exhausting to come home, then have two or three days getting ready to leave again.
01:56:13
Yes. And then another crazy five days of traveling and working and, you know. And it kept going.
01:56:19
Like it wasn't, we would plan like a three month tour and then it would get tacked on and tacked on.
01:56:24
So we started really becoming, I hate to say it, road dogs. We were road dogs. I hate to say it.
01:56:28
You'd love to say it. I did love to say it and I love to do it. I don't know what point we were like, hey, maybe we should stop looking for the cheapest hotels and actually stay somewhere that we are excited about.
01:56:39
Like give us something to look forward to. Yes. It was the hotel near the airport in Palm Beach that the entire hotel smelled like chlorine.
01:56:46
And that's when you said it first. I did. Because I wanted to say it, but I was like, well, I will spend money.
01:56:53
And you go, we're always going to stay in nice hotels now because that makes it too hard.
01:57:00
I became a diva about it. I was like, if we're going to do this, I want there to be this little shining part of it that we're excited about.
01:57:09
Where there's not a strong smell that keeps you up at night. Yeah. and like chicken wing fucking bones in the hallway.
01:57:15
That place was legendary. Yeah, it was great. It was underwater. It changed us. It was just a pool.
01:57:20
We were hallucinating. We're just sleeping in a pool. We slept in a pool. Okay, so this episode we entitled Shin Kick.
01:57:28
But today if we were naming it, we could call it, of course, Sounds of the Podcast Train,
01:57:34
which is how we started being... Of the Podcast Train. Oh, hilarious. The Sounds of the Podcast Train.
01:57:41
Clumsily clumbering. Legendary. Also, Wingdings was made for us. It was very true.
01:57:47
Of course, All Up in That Tomb where I'm describing to you about Easter. Has that ever been said in the history of history about Jesus?
01:57:59
I mean, it's possible that maybe some Christian rappers did it in the 90s. Sure.
01:58:04
Could be. I'm ripping them off. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it, right? I think that's this week's episode of Rewind.
01:58:11
We have done it. Let's say goodbye and let Elvis say goodbye from The Podloft in 2017.
01:58:21
Well, then stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis? Want a cookie? That was a definitive yes.
01:58:32
You want a cookie? A cookie? In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins,
01:58:41
but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?
01:58:47
I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
01:58:54
Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
01:58:58
My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police.
01:59:04
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:59:15
When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable?
01:59:21
Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy, a weekly podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist.
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It's Mental Health Month. Let's figure out what actually works. I didn't care about my life circumstance when I listened to that stuff.
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Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 90
    Most shocking
  • 90
    Most intense
  • 90
    Biggest twist
  • 85
    Most heartbreaking

Episode Highlights

  • My Favorite Murder
    Karen and Georgia discuss their unique take on crime and storytelling.
    “We'll never lie to you.”
    @ 03m 37s
    June 03, 2026
  • Book Recommendation: Amy
    A gripping true crime book about a young girl's disappearance.
    “I'm totally obsessed with it.”
    @ 16m 26s
    June 03, 2026
  • A Hanukkah Miracle
    Unexpectedly resolving family tensions over lunch instead of therapy.
    “So everything's good now.”
    @ 21m 37s
    June 03, 2026
  • The Haunted Doll
    A creepy gift that circulates among friends, raising questions about its past.
    “It's like a hot potato, but with a terrifying doll.”
    @ 30m 09s
    June 03, 2026
  • Jennifer's Pressure to Succeed
    Jennifer faces immense pressure from her family to excel academically and in extracurriculars.
    “All you do is like these extracurricular activities we've chosen for you very specifically.”
    @ 44m 16s
    June 03, 2026
  • The Plan
    Jennifer and Daniel plot to kill her parents for their life insurance money.
    “They start setting up a thing where she has a separate SIM card and iPhone.”
    @ 01h 02m 12s
    June 03, 2026
  • The Interrogation
    Jennifer's interrogation reveals the extent of her deception.
    “They use something uh I think it was called...”
    @ 01h 03m 46s
    June 03, 2026
  • The Tragic Story of Irene Garza
    Irene Garza, a beloved teacher, disappeared before Easter in 1960, leading to a shocking investigation.
    “Buckle the fuck up.”
    @ 01h 13m 29s
    June 03, 2026
  • The Power of the Church
    A discussion on the infallibility of priests and the protection they receive.
    “It's children against God's chosen people.”
    @ 01h 26m 35s
    June 03, 2026
  • A Shocking Confession
    A former monk reveals the truth about Irene's murder decades later.
    “He had restrained Irene, maybe bound and gagged her.”
    @ 01h 40m 41s
    June 03, 2026
  • Flippant Remarks from the DA
    The district attorney's dismissive attitude towards Irene's murder case raises eyebrows.
    “Can it be solved? Well, I guess if you believe that pigs can fly, anything is possible.”
    @ 01h 45m 19s
    June 03, 2026
  • The Importance of Trust
    Discussion on the erosion of trust in institutions due to abuse and exploitation.
    “There should be no such thing as automatic trust.”
    @ 01h 51m 12s
    June 03, 2026

Episode Quotes

  • Wingdings was made for us.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 99: Shin Kick
  • It's like a hot potato, but with a terrifying doll.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 99: Shin Kick
  • It's just to be like I'm just average.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 99: Shin Kick
  • Wow. Amazing.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 99: Shin Kick
  • He said, 'It is impossible that a priest would commit a crime like this.'.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 99: Shin Kick
  • There's no statute of limitations on murder.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 99: Shin Kick

Key Moments

  • Podcasting Fun01:32
  • Haunted Doll28:31
  • Pressure to Succeed43:09
  • The Plan1:01:52
  • Interrogation1:03:46
  • Case Updates1:10:07
  • Investigation Begins1:18:34
  • Final Reflections1:49:33

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown