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Bye. Hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia. Every Wednesday, we recap our old shows with all new commentary and updates and insights.
00:02:33
You are welcome. Today we're recapping episode 65, which we named pre-milked cereal, which makes total sense in a minute, we swear.
00:02:40
Yeah, we're going to explain everything. This episode came out on April 20th, 2017.
00:02:45
420, bro. All right, let's listen to the intro of episode 65. Should we podcast?
00:02:56
Are these the new mics? Not yet. yes let's podcast okay let's podcast so early in the day to podcast doesn't this podcast feel like
00:03:08
we should do it at night yes this is definitely a nocturnal podcast yeah like with the lights off
00:03:14
should we shut some stuff down maybe make it spooky should we should you get your central
00:03:20
system to shut it all oh you know the the clapper for the entire thing i have because i'm rich
00:03:26
oh nothing happened oh hi hey guys this is my favorite murder that's karen kilgariff and that's
00:03:36
georgia hardstark we're here to talk to you about true crime are you ready are you ready for this
00:03:40
we haven't planned any of this conversation no not at all although it did have a kind of a lilting
00:03:46
choreographed quality that's just how we naturally are with each other that's just us that's us we
00:03:53
We don't write anything down. We don't prepare in any way. We're just like the TV show, This Is Us.
00:03:59
That's us. Same exact thing. I'm sure it's great though. Speaking of TV, this is a good segue that we wrote.
00:04:10
That we rehearsed four times. Oh, it just turns out. Oh, that's weird. I just got real TV again after like moving in and being like, we don't need TV.
00:04:20
Let's just, we'll just do Roku and blah, blah, blah, and all these things. Didn't work?
00:04:24
No. And I was like, I just want to turn like a food show on while I stuff a tamale into my
00:04:29
mouth in the middle of the day. Yeah. Like I don't want to have to boop, boop, pop and find the thing and then like watch the
00:04:34
thing. Yeah. I just want to watch HGTV for five minutes. You want to dive into the stream of TV that's already happening as opposed to hunt out specific.
00:04:44
because I find when I go hunt out specific things, I don't like it when I find, like it makes me go,
00:04:52
oh, I don't actually like this. Like my food gets cold while I'm, because I can't eat in silence.
00:04:57
I have this problem with that. Me too. So yeah, it's like you're scrolling, like fine, I can watch an episode
00:05:03
or like five minutes of Friends while I fucking eat this tamale. Again, the tamale, I mean, let's be honest,
00:05:07
I'm eating cereal for lunch. Was tamale the choice you made? Like this will impress people.
00:05:12
No, because they're frozen tamales from Trader Joe's. Those ones that are like, that I just heat up and put salsa on.
00:05:19
And then I'm like, they're half cold. The way you just said that made it sound like you're like, fine, I'll admit it.
00:05:23
I'm eating cereal. I want you to think I'm sitting here eating tamales. Homemade tamales.
00:05:28
Okay, fine. It's homemade cereal. You know, like I like to do. But you made it yourself.
00:05:32
Right. Yeah. It's not that pre-packaged, pre-milked cereal. Gross. Pre-milked? Pre-milked.
00:05:40
I said it. What if you, what was it like powdered milk and you pour water into it and it's like cereal
00:05:45
and I bet the army has that. Yeah, I bet they do. So it's like there's powdered milk and then there's cereal and then there's a little capsule
00:05:51
of water and then you break it. And there like a fucking like shitty spoon attached to the whole thing It part of the thing you break You break a thing Steven trademark that Wait that just reminds me So our friend Guy Branham had a Passover cedar
00:06:08
Seder. Seder. Fuck, I do it wrong every time. What if he just had a Passover cedar tree in his house?
00:06:15
That's how I remembered it that way. I thought Seder, because Seder's like the, like the, you know, a guy with goat legs.
00:06:22
Really? Sater, S-A-T-Y-R. You know, they play the weird heart. Sure, sure, sure.
00:06:27
Anyhow, it doesn't matter. Yeah, guy, Brenham Sater. How is it? It was, of course, lovely.
00:06:35
He writes basically like a whole play. Everyone at the table has parts and you have to like follow along.
00:06:41
You say the prayers, but then there's other things and we play games. It's hilarious and really fun.
00:06:47
But at one point, he served quail. What? He served quail and I was eating it. And then I flicked out the tiniest wishbone.
00:07:00
And then I did the, I was sitting next to a guy named Matt, who was super cool. Who's a writer that I now know.
00:07:06
And so we snapped the wishbone and I fucking won. Yeah, you did. I got my wish. Man, I haven't had a wishbone since I was a kid, probably at a Seder.
00:07:15
Was that exciting? I'm like, that makes me so excited. Isn't that funny? And it was a tiny one because it was from a quail.
00:07:20
So it was like, it flicked out. And then I was like, hold on a second. I think I just found a wishbone.
00:07:25
It was like that big. Cue the email from fucking animal rights activists saying, Karen, you know that wishbone was part of this animal's life and happiness.
00:07:33
That's right. Now it's part of my happiness because it's going to bring me my wish.
00:07:38
Give it. What was your wish? Tell us. I can't. We won't tell anyone. Because then it won't come true.
00:07:41
Right. That's not a thing. Just eternal love. That's all. Now it's not going to come true.
00:07:48
Well, you tricked me. Did you eat gefilte fish? No. That's my favorite. It wasn't served.
00:07:56
He did. So every year he does a different theme. Oh. It's not standard traditional Jewish food.
00:08:03
So it was Syrian food. Oh, wow. It was a series of dishes that one more delicious than the next.
00:08:09
A series of Syrian food? A series of Syrian food. A series of Syrian serving? No.
00:08:16
Mm-hmm. Forget it. No, you had it. Well, there's Syrian Jews. I mean, that's cool.
00:08:22
Are there? Yeah. Tell me about them. I have never met them, but I'm sure they're there.
00:08:27
I bet they are. Okay. That's amazing. Television. Yes. Oh, and speaking of, you really quickly plugged the Guy Brennan TV show that you're on.
00:08:36
Oh, that's... Because we're talking about TV and Guy Brennan. It's so funny. And again, what a great segue.
00:08:41
I mean... Thanks for remembering your line. Except we never get to what we're actually talking about. It's all scripted, but we never actually...
00:08:47
The segues are great, but they never talk about. Yeah. They just lead us away from topics.
00:08:52
That's why people hate this podcast. I am on a television show called Talk Show, The Game Show.
00:09:00
Guy Branham is the host. He's also our legal representative. But he is also a talk show host on a game show on True TV Network.
00:09:08
So good. It's Wednesday nights at 10 o'clock. Two episodes have already played. Tomorrow night will be the third episode.
00:09:15
Is that Friday night or Wednesday night? Wednesday night. Oh, shoot. So last night. So next week.
00:09:20
Whatever. I'm sure they're playing it. I've seen it constantly. They're playing it
00:09:24
over and over. Yeah, I bet they repeat it. But I wish this was earlier because I think this, they're like,
00:09:32
now it's all they're watching the ratings to see if they're going to pick it up.
00:09:35
Please everyone Wednesday. Set your alarm clocks. I guess I'll tweet about it. But anyway, anyway.
00:09:42
I got TV finally. And then I watched, which means I get all access to fucking ID and, you know,
00:09:51
Dateline and all this shit. And everyone's like, did you watch Casey? The like three part Casey
00:09:55
Anthony thing. Right. And so I was like, all right, this is my job. I'm going to do this.
00:10:00
Can I just say, I saw those tweets and questions and hey, watch this and whatever. And I purposely
00:10:06
don't watch anything about Casey Anthony. I don't like that. I don't find anything in that story.
00:10:12
I was just going to say that. Really? I just don't give a shit about her. I don't want to know.
00:10:18
I don't want to know. It's just horrible. Because I hate that story so much. Me too.
00:10:22
And I was going to say, I just fucking couldn't watch it. Like, I know it's like my job and I should watch it and talk about it.
00:10:26
I was just like, fuck this cunt, man. She just sucks so hard. But I don't understand why she...
00:10:34
Is this the glamorization of female criminals in that way where it's like, so she's a young hot girl that has a child that went to a party and maybe killed her child.
00:10:46
But like, are we reporting about her more than other people because she's like a skinny white
00:10:53
girl that was like at a party? Is it the same thing as that other girl that killed her boyfriend?
00:10:59
Right. I think they get lumped together a lot. I think what it is, is the cold heartedness in which
00:11:05
like it just she's such a deep deep narcissist that it's hard to watch like her jail cell
00:11:13
you know conversations with her parents where you know when she first gets arrested is like me me me
00:11:20
me not my daughter's dead there's nothing about like my baby is dead it's like i can't believe
00:11:26
this is happening to me and i this isn't fair and it's just like her poor parents have to come to
00:11:33
the realization that they raised a piece of shit narcissist who killed what could have been a not
00:11:38
piece of shit narcissist or grandchild. And now they like have to stick with her. It's almost like
00:11:45
this thing of this is all we have left is to stick with this kid, the one who sucked.
00:11:50
I can't tell if it's because I haven't had enough Diet Coke today, but I feel nauseous right now
00:11:54
talking about her It makes me nauseous because there other cold hearted bitches in the world but this is like saying let pay more attention to her because she
00:12:05
weighs 97 pounds. I just hate the Nancy Grace Vidal for this particular story. And it's the
00:12:12
same one with the other one where I would, I was always like, why are we talking about her?
00:12:16
Yes. Why are we talking about her? And it's the same thing. It's this kind of like,
00:12:20
can you believe this hot bitch is this much of a cunt basically can you believe hot bitches are
00:12:26
cunts who knew yes who fucking knew there's so many different types of cunts out there yeah
00:12:32
it's like can you believe not hot bitches are funny yes because that's what they fucking needed
00:12:37
to do yeah that's the standard actually yeah that's that's the most common is we're not hot
00:12:44
that's why we're funny we didn't grow up i'm not talking to you i i meant that for
00:12:49
I didn't mean that in an accusatory way. Well, then you should see some photos of me as a kid because you ain't wrong.
00:12:55
Oh my God, I got a perm and I have braces. Anyways. Yeah. So Casey Anthony, no thanks.
00:13:04
Stupid idiot. Awful. It's just sad and then awful. There's nothing in there that I go, oh, this is fascinating.
00:13:13
Yeah. I just go, this is a tragedy. Yeah. Yeah. It's ugly. Rough stuff. I wrote shit down.
00:13:20
Do you have any? What do you want to? Oh, I do. Well, this is I wanted to read you because I read this this morning on Twitter.
00:13:28
It said there's a, I guess, a website called L.A. And it basically is all the stuff around L.A.
00:13:35
L.A. Oh, I love L.A. Yeah. They do it in all different cities. Yeah. Surely it's owned by Rupert Murdoch or someone like that.
00:13:43
But it brings me my local news. And the headline this morning was dead body found in car parked in Filipino town.
00:13:51
And let me just, this is a short thing. I will read you. A body was discovered inside a vehicle parked in the middle of the street along the 300 block of West Lake Avenue.
00:14:00
Or is that stopped? That's, that's, well, turns out they, people found it at 210 in the morning.
00:14:07
The body of a male Hispanic in his thirties was found in the backseat of a black Hyundai.
00:14:13
It had an Uber sticker. it's believed to have been towed to that location that it was discovered at.
00:14:20
Not driven, towed there. A spokeswoman for the LAPD told a LAist... My mouth is just... I'm not being quiet.
00:14:28
My mouth is just dropped open. It's crazy that the department cannot confirm these claims
00:14:33
that detectives and the coroner are continuing their investigation of the case. So basically, this is what probably they got the scoop on the scene,
00:14:42
but no one's going to confirm those things. We're never going to hear about it again.
00:14:45
That's what's so crazy about these things that you hear about. And then there's just a couple tweets of the pictures of the car sitting there with the cops all around it.
00:14:52
Oh, my God. But the idea, it's so scary. I've been taking Uber over and over for the past couple weeks.
00:15:01
My first thought is that he's a driver. Right? Right. Yes, me too. Yeah. And someone put him in the backseat after killing him.
00:15:10
My dad's about to start driving Uber, so that ain't happening anymore. Oh, yeah.
00:15:14
You know, he used to be a taxi driver in like North Hollywood. Marty was? Yeah. And like down the street from where he was like parked waiting late at night to get his next call.
00:15:26
Some cab driver got shot in the back of the head from the back of the seat. And he's like quitting.
00:15:31
Yeah. So now he's thinking of becoming an Uber driver. And it's like, fuck, dude.
00:15:36
Either you're going to have a really great story, stories to tell, or you're going to be parked in the middle of fucking Filipino town.
00:15:42
Well, who knows? I mean, like, who knows? I want to hear about this story so bad. That's so crazy.
00:15:50
I thought that's bananas. Like what? I want the story. Yeah. Oh, I have a podcast recommendation corner. So this podcast called The Vanished,
00:16:03
which obviously talks about people who vanished. It's like a true crime podcast.
00:16:07
I mean, let me explain this to you. No, I needed a little bit of an underline. Don't worry.
00:16:13
So they have this one episode. Oh, I forgot what number it is, but it's the episode called
00:16:19
the Mimi Lewis story. Mimi. Oh no, what number is it? Stephen. No, it's called the Mimi Lewis
00:16:28
story. And it's really incredible because it's not about, it's about this girl, Mimi Lewis,
00:16:33
who vanished. She was 14, but it's the whole episode is a conversation with this woman named
00:16:38
Sandy Roberts, who runs this nonprofit called Halos Investigation, where they try to find
00:16:43
missing teens. And their mission is to stop getting the label Runaway put on teens and
00:16:53
juveniles who disappear. And it's a really good episode, especially for parents of teenagers and
00:17:01
young kids about how this happens, what happens, how they're lured, the internet. And they're
00:17:07
saying, she's saying, let's stop saying that they're runaways and let's start saying that
00:17:12
they were lured away, which is like, suddenly makes you care so much more. Yes. Because it's this like automatic thing of when you're like, oh, she ran away, then she
00:17:21
deserves whatever happened to her. Yeah. But it's like, no, if someone manipulated her and, you know, that kind of thing, and
00:17:29
she was having a hard time at home and, you know, and was lured away. And there's like a bunch of stuff about sex trafficking and what that means, which is
00:17:37
I mean, it's a really good episode. Wow, that's very cool. Yeah, it kind of moved me a lot.
00:17:42
And that's Vanished. Vanished, the Vanished. It's the Mimi Lewis episode. Cool. Yeah.
00:17:49
Oh, my sister sent me, so my sister is a big creeper on the Facebook page. She likes to go on there and look around silently and secretly And then she text me things that she sees and likes on there She like vetting it for you Exactly
00:18:06
And so this one was the day after the Milwaukee show. And she sent me a text that said, this made me tear up a little.
00:18:14
Look at the amazing community you guys created. And then it said, went to see the MFM last night in Milwaukee.
00:18:23
My friend and I went to get dinner beforehand and it was like murderinos descended on Milwaukee.
00:18:28
It was the best ever. Basically everyone we passed, I would whisper, shoot, I would whisper to my friend, they're
00:18:36
totally here for the show. Definitely a murderino. When we were at bars before and after you slowly watched groups growing larger and larger
00:18:44
as separate groups would realize that we are all were murderinos and joined together.
00:18:50
Why can't that be the normal bar scene? That would be a dream. Thank you, Karen and Georgia.
00:18:55
And all, I think it cuts off at the bottom. It says, I think it says, and all murderinos everywhere.
00:19:02
But I love that so much because actually we didn't create this community. You guys have created it for yourselves
00:19:11
and we're just up here kind of like reading these stories and recording these podcasts.
00:19:16
But you guys are the boots on the ground that are like, every time we have a VIP
00:19:20
meet and greet after a show, people will tell us, I met them in line. Now I'm hanging out with that
00:19:27
girl. Like it's the cutest thing in the world. I think that's what the live shows have done
00:19:30
probably the most for us is make us like actually see all of these people who are like, the shows
00:19:37
are so positive. And I'm always like, if people are like, I'm scared to go alone. And it's like,
00:19:42
no, you're going to meet a hundred fucking cool people that are your friends. It's just such a
00:19:45
cool thing. And it's not like they all get together because of our podcast. They get together
00:19:51
over their love of true crime, which we all feel so in the dark about because you're not supposed
00:19:57
to talk about it. And then- It's people I think who aren't really the types of people. Like it's
00:20:01
like somebody like me who I'm not going to be the kind of person who's like, hey, what are you
00:20:05
interested in? I'm always like, arms crossed. And I think when people, it's a, you know, I just a
00:20:12
second ago said it's so cute. And that's the worst. I hate that word. I don't know why I used it.
00:20:16
Cause what it really is, is a very empowering, cool, like it's almost like skipping over.
00:20:23
It's almost like a weird Tinder for friends where you don't have, you go, oh, I know this person
00:20:28
already. I don't have to like make excuses or pretend I don't like a thing I like. I already
00:20:34
have this thing in common. And then we go from there, which is very cool. And it's just to us,
00:20:40
it's just a it's thrilling to be able to be a part of this thing that you guys are doing
00:20:46
definitely this is listen we didn't know this would be a thing hey listen hey listen look and
00:20:53
listen listen and learn listen and kind of learn we didn't know and we fucking love it and we're so
00:21:00
like proud of you so proud of you blessed we're proud of you we're grateful we're proud of you
00:21:06
for going to shows and getting into the mix. Yeah, thank you for supporting us. Hey, is it Birthday Corner?
00:21:17
Oh, it is Birthday Corner. Is it Birthday Corner, Steven? That's right. It's Steven's Birthday Corner.
00:21:22
It's Steven's Birthday Corner. Hey. That was very neat. He doesn't want this. Yeah, I thought you were going to give a good hi.
00:21:31
Say hi, birthday boy. Hello. It's like we're at TGI Fridays and he knows that someone's about to come singing
00:21:37
and we're all just like, oh, it's going to come sing. The worst feeling or you're waiting for that sombrero
00:21:41
to get thrown down onto your head. Have you ever done that to someone whose birthday it wasn't?
00:21:44
Oh, shit. That's twisted. Can I tell it? Well, I won't tell it now because we're trying to give a birthday greeting.
00:21:50
But one time people did that and they were talking about me before I came back from the bathroom
00:21:54
and I thought they were talking shit about me and I started crying. And then they were like,
00:21:59
and then I just sat down at the table like full pouting. Oh my God. And everything got super uncomfortable.
00:22:04
And then it was like, happy birthday. And when I realized what it was. Like they were actually doing the nice.
00:22:10
That's like, so shows you what your brain does. The worst. That's incorrect. Yeah.
00:22:14
When you're in a bad situation, it was already a bad situation. And it's like, okay.
00:22:18
Anyway. Stephen, this is about you. This is about Stephen. This is about you. For one second.
00:22:22
Here's the thing in a card. Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. It's a big old thing of whiskey.
00:22:26
George is presenting Stephen with his birthday gift from us. It's organic. And we're making you open it on camera.
00:22:32
So much pressure. On camera There's so much pressure to like this I can do it with one hand
00:22:37
Okay, good There's cat fur on the tape It's great Perfect It's part of the present, right?
00:22:41
Don't judge me It's from Elvis and Mimi They wanted to add something That's what they
00:22:45
Oh, I didn't add that It's all they could afford Elvis and It says California Six Woods Malt
00:22:51
No, don't give them a shout out They didn't We paid for this I'll cut that out Yeah, yeah, yeah
00:22:55
Cut that out Steven Slow hand It's organic whiskey That's so cool Oh my gosh, my favorite
00:23:01
Okay, open the card though The card's the important part. Organic whiskey, my favorite.
00:23:06
Organic whiskey. My favorite. It's vegan gluten-free whiskey with a bear on the front.
00:23:11
It's also non-alcoholic. We hope that's it. We're worried about you. It's just root beer.
00:23:16
This is an intervention. Oh, my gosh. Oh, should I read it? Yeah. Oh, okay. We want you.
00:23:21
Dear Stephen, thank you so much for everything. We've donated $300. Oh, my gosh.
00:23:26
To Santidore in your name because you know you love the kitties. Happy birthday, Karen in Georgia.
00:23:31
Oh, thank you. Santa Door is a really great cat, I don't want to call it a shelter.
00:23:35
Yeah, it's rescue. Cat rescue down close in our neighborhood. Yeah, it's, oh my gosh.
00:23:41
That you love. Yeah, yeah, I've done work with them before. The Christy Keefe has been on my podcast,
00:23:47
The Perkast. This is so amazing. Yeah, it's like, because I've seen that you can do that.
00:23:51
You can like basically like sponsor a cat. Oh my God, thank you. So we, well, we just gave it to them.
00:23:55
I said, this is for Stephen Ray Morris. I like that that actually, The feel of all of that really turned into a, look what we did for you.
00:24:04
I know. Look at how good we are. Can I say that Vince was like pushing hard for like the past month.
00:24:09
We're like, where do I get Steven? And he just kept saying, what about a house kimono he can wear around the house?
00:24:14
He just kept. And I was like, what the fuck? Why are you fucking pushing for this?
00:24:19
I don't know. I could just see Steven enjoying a house kimono. And I was like, he has a roommate.
00:24:22
Just lounging around. Yeah. Big sleeves. I mean, this is great. I mean, for a second, it was like pull out a cat.
00:24:29
Just like, here's a new cat We got you a cat Do you want a cat? You can take that
00:24:34
They're everywhere Why don't we take the $300 back And then buy a cat Buy a cat Like at a cat
00:24:38
What were they called? Mill Mill Oh no This is much better Oh my gosh, thank you so much
00:24:44
Happy birthday Happy birthday 30th Yeah, 30th Oh my god Yeah, the big 3-0 I wanted people to think I was 20
00:24:50
But it's okay Also, you're fired Oh, okay Oh yeah We don't have anyone over 30 in our
00:24:55
Oh no It's ageism We totally support it. Steven, what are you going to in your next 30 years?
00:25:04
Let's hear a short-term goal. Let's hear a long-term goal. How are you going to reposition yourself for the next 30?
00:25:12
I like it. I want to invest in real estate. I feel like that's smart. It is. It's like, what would we say?
00:25:21
I want to eat a million things. Have more donut companies make donuts with my face.
00:25:26
Yes, that's smart. And then have like a cat ranch, maybe just open it. That sounds amazing.
00:25:32
Really huge cats, like horse sized cats. Cool. Like it's all Maine Coons, like the biggest cats you've ever seen.
00:25:37
Children riding cats. I think that's, I mean, that feels like giving back, you know?
00:25:42
Yes. Smart. These are all positive things. What's one insane, stupid thing you're going to do?
00:25:48
I mean, the one like, because I kind of feel like I'm doing what I love for a living now.
00:25:54
And I feel really lucky to feel that way. But there's always like that one insane thing that you're like, oh, if I had this, like I've always wanted to learn how to fly an airplane.
00:26:04
That's one thing that like I feel like when you can afford the gas money, because like renting, like learning how to fly isn't that expensive.
00:26:10
But renting, buying the gas is the expensive part. That's interesting. And I've always wanted to like learn how to fly a plane.
00:26:16
Stephen, here's OK. Now we're going to make a solid plan. You do that. You take the next.
00:26:21
How long does it take? 18 months. Learn to fly planes. And then we get a private plane.
00:26:27
I knew you were going there. Right? Yeah. And we go international. Yeah. Fly over international waters.
00:26:34
Yes. No rules apply. Nope. We're going to buy a plane. We stay in international waters.
00:26:38
And Karen and I are on the wings the whole time. We Amelia Earhart the fuck out of this tour.
00:26:44
That means we die on an island. Yep. Cool. Oh, wait. Is that how it ended? Oh, yeah.
00:26:49
They're pretty sure they found off an island her plane. Wait, really? Yeah. Oh. Sorry.
00:26:54
Oh, no, no, no. She's still alive. Happy birthday. Amelia Earhart died of starvation.
00:27:00
30 is your bad news birthday. It turns out Amelia Earhart is dead. Can I just say too that-
00:27:06
It's part of growing up. Yeah. Santa's not real. Oh, shit. Careful, careful. The 30s are your best.
00:27:11
The 20s, you couldn't fucking pay me to do my 20s again. No, I'm stoked to be 30.
00:27:15
Yeah, good. I'm really excited. Good. 20s are a disaster. But 30s, I would say this about your 30s.
00:27:20
30s, because you're out of your 20s, you think, now I know. Now I get it. Just remember that you do not know.
00:27:26
Yeah. And that once you're in the position of that, then you can kind of like be flexible.
00:27:31
But my big mistake in my 30s is like, ugh, I'm so much smarter now. And I think that made me even stupider.
00:27:37
Mine was that I have to grow up now and you don't have to. Like people who are like, I'm 32 and I'm going to marry my boyfriend.
00:27:43
And I'm like, don't fucking do that. You don't even, you're 32. Like just don't take anything like relationships and jobs and whatever situation you're in as
00:27:53
seriously as you think you're supposed to when you're in your 30s. Like you can wait till your
00:27:57
later 30s, which I'm about to be, to do that. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Thank you. Stephen. Oh my gosh.
00:28:03
And now you give us advice. Well, the carriage thing was kind of in the real estate.
00:28:10
You're right. Real estate was good advice. I was kind of hinting that you two idiots who don't
00:28:16
spend your money well should. Happy birthday to our friend Stephen. Well done. We're glad you're
00:28:22
here yeah we're very glad we have you here yeah thank you um and soon you'll be paid for your work
00:28:27
someone we were getting interviewed for something and someone was like can i just ask do you pay steven like almost like you put him through so much shit
00:28:36
do you at least pay him and i'm like yes people are they're very concerned that we're me that we
00:28:42
really are mean to you like yeah yeah which is not true so there's three hundred dollars of charity
00:28:47
to prove we're not. You dick. Oh, no. I love it. Okay, good. That's why he's here.
00:28:55
You got a sister. You know what it's like to be treated like shit. He knows. All three of us know
00:28:59
what it's like to be treated like a sibling. Anyways. That's right. That's why we treat
00:29:04
at will however we want coming from a victim stance. Now, I do have a corrections corner.
00:29:13
Okay. We talked about it a little bit in Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago, but I am forced to say to the nation and the world.
00:29:23
I forgot about it. Everyone's holding their breath. Cherry Hill. Everyone knows Cherry Hill's in New Jersey. Everyone knows that. Every,
00:29:30
every single person on this planet. I don't. I certainly didn't. And neither do the producers of City Confidential because
00:29:38
they really led me to believe that Cherry Hill was in Pennsylvania. Tell everyone, because I just love this, where it's like, so you did your murder a week ago before the live show aired.
00:29:49
Yeah. And it was about... Fred Newlander. Right. The murdering rabbi. Yeah. And I thought maybe you were like I did it once on accident but you thought it was there I didn know Yeah Now the problem with it really is that I feel like some other part of my brain did know
00:30:07
that like the first indoor mall was in New Jersey. That just makes good sense. I guess. Yeah. You're
00:30:12
right. Who the fuck? No. Context clues. No. No, you're right. I mean, I don't, I'll just write
00:30:18
down whatever and then say whatever. Middle of Pennsylvania, like middle of nowhere,
00:30:22
not near Pittsburgh has to be so boring that they're like, put a mall here because everyone's
00:30:27
so bored. All they do is like cause trouble. Let's give them a place to go. Give them a nice indoor mall.
00:30:34
Give them a mall. Like New Jersey is kind of fun. They have like cool weird shit to do.
00:30:38
Don't they? I don't know. I don't either. I clearly don't know anything about any, what I said to people when we were on tour was in
00:30:47
California, you can't just go to another state real fast, which is how they were making it sound
00:30:52
in the city confidential. Like the daughter lived in Philly. And so she like drove into Cherry Hill.
00:30:58
So like that just led me to believe you can't just drive in. If you're in LA and you want to drive in from Nevada, that's going to take a while. I mean, it just doesn't
00:31:10
make sense to someone that lives on this part of the planet. You know what? Fuck it. Fuck it all.
00:31:15
Who fucking cares? Fuck it all. Fuck it all. That's the tagline of this podcast.
00:31:24
Why am I the one singing now? Because it's fun. You got to do it. And also you can do it.
00:31:29
You try to act like you can't and you can't. Okay. You just did it. You're right.
00:31:33
I did it. Where are we now? Should we talk about the theme of this podcast? Yes.
00:31:38
Murder? Oh, not singing. Not Elvis. And we're back. Are you surprised that we used to have like nine topics at the top of every show?
00:31:52
Because I am. That's so many corners. Yeah, but it set a precedent. So now when we don't have more than like three, I feel like we're not giving everything we have.
00:32:02
Right. Yeah. So like what's the happy medium? Six and a half. Having never started this podcast.
00:32:09
Don't say that, Karen. How about it really has taken me a long time to get used to recording this podcast during the day.
00:32:15
Like, I still feel like this is a it's dark out. Let's record. Yeah. But I guess now that we're in the studio where it's always dark out inside.
00:32:23
Yes. It's OK. It's always nighttime in here. It is. And you walk out, you're like, how is it still fucking light out?
00:32:29
When you go outside and it's full sun and over 90 degrees. Right. It's like leaving a party at 5 a.m.
00:32:35
Oh, God. Yeah. That was the worst. This is my way of introducing white drugs into the current recording schedule.
00:32:42
We're never having started. We're doing fucking white drugs. and fucking pre-milk cereal now in 2025 in today's America exists.
00:32:51
It's real. We were like, what's the word? Visionaries? Yeah. Yeah. In 2017, we were like, why isn't this a thing?
00:32:59
And Kellogg was like, guess what? 2022, they launched Insta Bowls, single serve cereal bowls containing dry cereal plus powdered milk,
00:33:08
which I've never had powdered milk before. Have you? I had it at camp. And? It's not pleasant at all.
00:33:14
It's not milk. If you are from a dairy-based community, like I was, Dairy Proud, our creameries, our bread and butter, literally.
00:33:23
Your livelihood. And powdered milk doesn't taste right. Well, it tastes a little bit like creamer.
00:33:30
Right. It's a little chalky, kind of powdery. It's abomination-y. But then some people grew up on it where it's more convenient, it's cheaper, whatever.
00:33:39
And also, once you get that sugar cereal in there, you're fine. It's like powdered coffee where you're like, I know that this is not fresh brewed, fucking fresh ground beans, but I want coffee right now.
00:33:49
Yes. And so I will live with this. I will take the caffeine hit any way you serve it up to me.
00:33:54
Right. And in a couple of days, I fucking like it. I find myself liking it. And it's cheap.
00:33:59
I prefer it. Yes. I want that spoon sound in the mug. What I think is funny is, like, is this for people who go camping or something?
00:34:07
Because basically when you're eating cereal, as LL Cool J said, milk, cereal. I mean, you don't mess with the most basic, beautiful recipe of regular milk cereal.
00:34:19
It sounds like a government cheese situation. Yeah, I think it might be. Or are you camping the, what's that trail that everyone loves?
00:34:26
The Oregon Trail? Pacific Northwest? Either one. The Appalachian Trail? Yeah, all of them.
00:34:33
There's all those ones. If you're hiking them, you need powdered fucking milk. I mean, no judgment.
00:34:37
You can powder your milk all you want or whatever or not have it. Argue with us about it.
00:34:43
Let's debate this thing. Let's get it going. Anyway, congratulations on inventing powdered milk cereal.
00:34:50
Yeah. Congratulations, us. Yes, finally. Also, very cute that we're talking about basically going all the listeners are getting together
00:34:58
and creating their murderino subsets, communities, you know, whatever, the groups,
00:35:05
and being able to like reflect on that. Basically, if it's a little over a year old.
00:35:10
So we're really seeing the kind of effects of this is actually a thing that they're doing by themselves.
00:35:15
Totally. Like they're realizing that there are other people that they can count on
00:35:18
who are into the same things and don't think they're weird or do think they're weird,
00:35:22
but like that about them. Yes, like the weirdness. Yeah. They would never speak at work and suddenly they go, oh my God, are you serious?
00:35:28
Right. You know what I know. Yeah. We've just had 10 years of that now and it's been fucking incredible.
00:35:33
It's so cool. It's one of the best, absolute best parts of this podcast is like how many people have like come together through it.
00:35:40
Yeah. Watching a community build itself around bullshit you and your friends say once a week is quite an experience.
00:35:50
And we get all the credit. And we get a bunch of money. And I got to move out of my dark little weird fucking house and into a beautiful mid dream home That right I think I was still renting at this point the Podloft It hadn all blown up yet
00:36:05
And I was like, oh my God, I have a dishwasher. Like that was, that was a game changer.
00:36:11
And high ceilings in that second apartment. High fucking ceilings in the Podloft apartment.
00:36:14
And a hot tub. And a hot tub with a cat. It wasn't my hot tub. It was a community hot tub. But I am
00:36:19
not picky when it comes to hot tubs. You made it your own hot tub. That's right.
00:36:22
You were out there every goddamn night putting in the work. I was. You know, it was so great, though, because our balcony overlooked the pool.
00:36:28
So I could be like, is anyone in there? Before I went down there, because a fucking awkward thing of like you start walking towards the jacuzzi.
00:36:33
Someone's in there. They see you. You can't turn around and walk the other way. You just lock eyes and then get in as you're staring.
00:36:39
In like hot soupy water. Let's make human soup together. So what are you watching on Netflix?
00:36:47
Just there's no way. Nope. So I could peek out the window. So if someone was in there by the time I got down there, I would just be so disappointed.
00:36:54
But usually it was like. Then you're like looking up and you're like, where are the security cameras?
00:36:59
OK, checking this area. Like you got to spend some laps. Yeah, I'd like to do it's a freezing cold pool.
00:37:04
I'm just going to jump in there. All right. Well, should we get into your story?
00:37:10
This one. How do you feel about this one today? Just seeing seeing it. Well, first of all, I just saw a tick tock where they were talking about it's been like 15 years.
00:37:18
This one. Ronnie Chasen's murder has not been solved. Holy shit. There's lots of theories.
00:37:24
The person who basically did all of the work on Ronnie Chasen's murder, which was a mystery when it happened and continues to be till this day, is a Hollywood reporter reporter from the time named Gary Baum.
00:37:38
Right. And so it was basically him putting the story together, going down to the records hall, all this stuff, which I will talk about next episode, that put it all together.
00:37:48
And when I was covering the story, I was watching a TV show called Hollywood and Crime, which was a play on Hollywood and Vine.
00:37:56
That's really. So it's just like Hollywood based murders. And so I watched the episode of that and just kind of like took notes like I used to do with I Survived.
00:38:05
It's like, how does this story go? But it turns out and they didn't credit Gary Baume on the show.
00:38:11
Like the one person that brought this to everybody knows all these answers. I mean, it taught us so much about like up top.
00:38:17
Here's what you do. And we'll talk about it, but I think I'm glad it happened because it gave us an opportunity.
00:38:23
But it was also back in the day. It's just funny going back on these shows where it's like having to like re-approach these huge mistakes.
00:38:30
Right. Then we're very public mistakes where it's like, oh, that's horrible and this is all bad.
00:38:37
And also then you get that sense of the haters standing right outside the door, ready to hate.
00:38:42
Like you got to watch your back because they're watching it too. So that's everything that's about to happen is this is about to happen in this story.
00:38:49
All right. So let's get into Karen's story about Ronnie Chasen. Summer clothes should feel easy and still look polished.
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00:43:04
Do you want to go first or you go first? Steven, birthday. Karen goes first. Is it me?
00:43:09
Cool. All right, then. Steven, it's your birthday. You got to pick whoever you want to go first.
00:43:12
Steven, it's your birthday. Okay. Well, tonight, today, this afternoon, I'm going to do the murder of Hollywood super publicist, Ronnie Chasen. Do you know this one?
00:43:29
Is it a she? Yes. I think, I don't know anything about it. Okay. Take me there. I'm taking you back to 2010. Where were you in 2010? Where did you live?
00:43:39
I was 30. What? Yeah. yeah dude i'm liking this i was 30 i was living in a studio apartment in hollywood
00:43:50
it's really cute it was like 800 a month which is the most hilarious thing i've ever heard
00:43:55
i thought you said i was really cute i was really cute uh yeah that's it go ahead i have a shitty
00:44:02
desk job that i fucking hated and i had no idea that my life would be what it is today and i'm
00:44:07
i am so glad i didn't because then it wouldn't have happened did you wish and wish and hope that
00:44:11
that you would not work at a desk anymore? Oh my God. Because I have to tell you when I,
00:44:17
I had two different jobs in my early twenties that both brought me such intense,
00:44:24
soul sucking sorrow. That was my life until I was 30. Yeah. And I thought it would be that forever.
00:44:30
But I feel like when you're going through that, you think this, because I feel this bad about it,
00:44:34
that means it's going to happen forever. But actually if you feel that bad about it,
00:44:39
it means it won't continue on. Well, in my opinion, I fucking hustled my ass off and to grasp
00:44:44
anything that wouldn't get me there and keep me there. And that turned into a blog. Yeah. Blog.
00:44:50
Yep. Um, I like used to think like, maybe if I just get married and have a baby, I can have some
00:44:56
time off. Like that's how bad it was. I was just like, yeah, get me out of here. I'll have a baby.
00:45:02
Yeah. I mean, they, they do solve that problem, but babies will get you out of the office.
00:45:07
Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah. And sometimes keep you from ever returning. Let me make this about me.
00:45:14
You asked. I did ask you. I want to know. Because it was, it's weird to think. So it was seven years ago.
00:45:22
So Steven, you were 23. What were you doing? What were you doing, Steven? I was just about to go to grad school in London.
00:45:31
He's better than us. Bonjour, bonjour. I dropped out immediately, so. Oh, great.
00:45:37
Okay. Bonjour, bonjour in London. Karen doesn't know where Cherry Hill is. She doesn't know
00:45:43
what language. I get offended by anyone that leaves the country or gets an education. It
00:45:49
really pisses me off. Me too. Me myself, if it was seven years ago. Where were you? Where
00:45:55
was Karen? I was, um, God, I was in a very- You were married. No, I, you know where I
00:46:05
was. I was in New York. I had just left my ex. I was like, I can't do this. And I bailed and went
00:46:12
to New York. And I was in New York. This is when I got into podcasts because I was in New York.
00:46:18
I knew about three people in the entire city. I had a job, luckily. And I would just come home.
00:46:26
I would work all week. And then I would come home. And on the weekends, I would sit
00:46:29
at this weird little chopping block table in the kitchen. I would smoke out the window.
00:46:34
don't smoke it's bad for you and i would listen to dave anthony and greg barrett's podcast walking
00:46:40
the room oh my god and they would fight and blather and like it was the funniest thing it
00:46:46
was just like and it was just like being in the room with them yeah so it was a weird way that's
00:46:51
why when people freak out and go like i can't believe i'm meeting you you don't understand and
00:46:55
i always grab them and i'm like i do understand it's like everybody goes through awful things and
00:47:01
needs that kind of like companionship. And that's, it got me through kind of one of the hardest times
00:47:08
of my adult life was pretending that I was having a conversation with Dave Anthony and Greg Barrett.
00:47:13
My whole studio apartment was painted while I listened to podcasts on a like huge iPod.
00:47:19
Yeah. Like someone had given me. One of those big thick blocky ones. Yes. All right. You guys,
00:47:24
We get it. We understand. So who got killed? Okay. Now I take you back to November 16th of that year.
00:47:32
Okay. In Hollywood. So one of Hollywood's most powerful and beloved publicist, Ronnie Chasen has just left the premiere party for the movie Burlesque.
00:47:45
The Christina Aguilera share joint Burlesque at the W Hotel. Ronnie's the publicist for the movie.
00:47:53
We were there last night. What's that? We were there yesterday. Yeah, that's right.
00:47:56
Oh, this one's really folding over and over. So she was the publicist for the movie's producer, Donald Deline.
00:48:03
She was also the publicist for the lighting designer, Peggy Eisenhower, and for the composer, Diane Warren, who'd written a song for this movie.
00:48:12
She worked the room and she was now driving home down Sunset Boulevard. It was 1228 a.m. when Ronnie's Mercedes came to a stop at the left turn lane
00:48:22
in the intersection of Whittier and Sunset. So if you've never been to L.A. before, most people know about the Sunset Strip.
00:48:30
which is like the most famous part of Sunset Boulevard. It starts, the Sunset Strip starts at Crescent Heights
00:48:35
and it goes all the way down a little bit past Doheny. And basically along that strip,
00:48:41
you've got the Chateau Marmont Hotel, you've got the Comedy Store, you've got the Viper Room,
00:48:47
you've got the Whiskey and you've got the Roxy. Used to be Tower Records is there.
00:48:52
Book Soup is there. There's a little, a very tony, shishi chunk called the Sunset Plaza
00:48:58
that has restaurants and like the Armani store, fancy shopping, fancy eating. And it's basically the,
00:49:08
it takes you right into Beverly Hills. So once you get past that part, the Sunset Plaza portion basically takes a turn
00:49:16
and then suddenly there's trees and there's big, tall green hedges that are blocking off humongous mansions
00:49:23
that they don't want you to look at. And it becomes like this gorgeous green drive.
00:49:29
And a little further down on that drive, you've got the Beverly Hills Hotel that costs $1,000 a night to stay there.
00:49:37
Jesus, seriously. Did you know that? How much does it cost? $1,000 a night. Did you say $1,000 a night?
00:49:43
At the Beverly Hills Hotel, yeah. Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, I was clicking to see how far down sunset it was.
00:49:49
And when you click on it, that hilarious Google thing happens where it's as if you're trying to book yourself there.
00:49:54
And it's like over, it's like, I think it's 1098 a night. What? Yeah, because it's like, you know, the polo club.
00:50:02
It's like the famous- That's so much money. Yeah. They only want rich people there.
00:50:06
Oh, fuck you. Or people that saved up, whatever. No, go stay somewhere else. But anyway, what I'm saying is,
00:50:13
this is the end of Sunset Boulevard, because if you keep on driving, you end up at the beach, basically.
00:50:18
You drive past Bel Air, which is- The richest, richest. Yeah. UCLA. and then ultimately the beach.
00:50:27
And that's a sharp contrast to where Sunset Boulevard starts, which is on basically Oliveira Street downtown.
00:50:37
13 miles away, it has, I would say, near the majority of Los Angeles has 47,000 homeless people.
00:50:47
so the two ends of this street couldn't be more different and when you get into Beverly Hills the
00:50:56
weirdest thing about this anybody that lives in Los Angeles knows like you don't go into Beverly
00:51:01
Hills if you don't have a reason to go there right um especially at night it's empty basically
00:51:07
so it's like if you if she's driving on sunset at 12 38 at night there's no cars on the road
00:51:14
There's certainly no pedestrians ever. It's a big wide street and it's empty. It's pristine, perfect, not a drop of litter anywhere.
00:51:23
And it's completely empty. So most people, because LA and Hollywood is an industry town,
00:51:32
most people are in bed at that time. All those rich people that live behind those hedges
00:51:35
work their asses off and get up at five in the morning. So it's always, you know, like lights out at 10 o'clock
00:51:42
over on that side of town. unless your job is premiere parties, which was Ronnie Chasen's job.
00:51:49
That keeps you out a little bit later. So by 2010, Ronnie Chasen's clients had netted around 150 Oscar nominations.
00:51:57
Oh my God. Seven of them had won Best Picture, including a three-peat between 2008 and 2010.
00:52:05
So she represented people that either worked on or made No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Hurt Locker.
00:52:12
Wow. Tell us what a publicist does exactly. Not just the people listening, but myself as well.
00:52:17
Okay. So a publicist is the person that makes sure that the press and the media know about their client's successes or career at the time. So like for her, like for publicists, like around Oscar time or award season is like the busiest time because that's when they want everybody to be on talk shows. They want everybody to be interviewed for newspapers and magazines and stuff.
00:52:45
And they don't reach out to you. Publicists reach out to them. Exactly. So they're basically, they would call and say, you know, my client, Steven, has this amazing podcast called The Purrcast that everyone's talking about these days. And you've got to get him before he goes big. So let's get some placement here, here and here.
00:53:05
And they basically are like an amazing stage mom where they talk about you like you are going to be the next thing.
00:53:13
And because everything in LA is about you don't want the current hot thing. You want the next big thing.
00:53:20
So that's the publicists deal in the world of that. Then they also just deal in the day-to-day of actually booking people on talk shows.
00:53:27
And like the, all the stories of, from my experience of working on talk shows is when
00:53:34
something bad happens, like say someone cancels or flakes or say your show has to go down.
00:53:39
Cause like the electricity went off or something, the people you don't want to have to deal with
00:53:44
are the publicists because they're the people that come in and act on behalf of celebrities
00:53:48
and they're the bad guy. So a celebrity will never be the one that's like, I don't want to
00:53:53
a publicist will be the one that like they can do it for this reason this reason but we can do it here And because I know you disappointed I can also get you this person So they just a master politician
00:54:05
They are a, they're a cheerleader and they hustle 24 seven. Okay. It's, it's an insanely hard job.
00:54:14
I would never want to do it. And it's a certain type of person that can do it. Yeah.
00:54:18
Cause you really do have to. I couldn't fucking do that. Are you kidding me? No way.
00:54:21
I mean, you, you're on the phone all the time. Yeah. And you have to like, you have to like play the game the hardest, I think, because you are really like a salesperson, but for people. And so it's sometimes it's that, I mean, you've seen, you can watch it in movies. There's all kinds of movies about insider Hollywood stuff, but like there are those times where publicists can make a star because it's like you just by a series of, of happenstance, it's like something will happen on a production and say,
00:54:53
somebody breaks their leg and they drop out and then they have to get replaced. Well,
00:54:58
a team comes together and then starts pitching and fixing. I mean, this is a completely made up
00:55:05
scenario. I don't know what the actual technical thing is, but a publicist is the kind of person
00:55:09
that can come in and sell you on an unknown and actually make someone's career. And they do that
00:55:18
more often than like a direct, you know, it's always like a director discovered me or whatever.
00:55:22
And it's usually like a publicist or a casting director. Also, they're women who like believe in people and watch people and, and like vouch for people.
00:55:32
And, and if someone owes them a favor, they could be like, well, put this person in your
00:55:36
movies, my client. Exactly. Okay. It's all about favors and what, if something happens, then you owe them a favor or they
00:55:44
owe you a favor. So then you get, or they're reliable. They always bring me the right people.
00:55:49
And this is the person I call first. In TV, that's what it all is. Like when you start to learn and I barely know that side because that's the booking side, which I never had to deal with.
00:55:59
And I wouldn't have been able to because I can't organize anything. And they're the most organized people in the world.
00:56:04
But that's all they do all day is have those conversations where it's like, well, since you owe us the one from that.
00:56:10
Now we we want this person on the day that their show comes out. It's all like it's crazy politics.
00:56:16
It's amazing. So she was friends with a woman named Lily Zanuck And she has a second name in there
00:56:24
And I didn't write it down And then I couldn't find it It's something Zanuck And I don't know if that means that she was married
00:56:31
So it's like hyphenated? It was hyphenated So maybe it's just important to her That her original name was in there
00:56:36
But I didn't write it down Anyhow, this woman was friends with Ronnie Chasen And she was also a producer
00:56:44
who won Best Picture with her husband, Richard Zanuck, they made Driving Miss Daisy.
00:56:49
Oh, wow. And Lily Zanuck was quoted as saying, the Driving Miss Daisy campaign was all Ronnie
00:56:56
and that's why I thanked her twice at the Oscars. Wow. Yeah. So it's just that kind of like,
00:57:01
the people in the business know who makes the engine go, basically. And a lot of times it's publicists.
00:57:08
So Ronnie Chasen was born Veronica Cohen in Kingston, New York in 1946. She grew up in the Bronx.
00:57:14
She moved to LA to be an actress and she changed her last name so that she had the same name
00:57:19
as the famous restaurant Chasen's. Oh, wow. Yeah. Smart. Yes. It's super smart because it's like Chasen's is like an insider celebrity restaurant.
00:57:27
Is she or isn't she part of that family? Yeah. You just are like, oh yeah, you better get a Chasen in here.
00:57:32
She was on Guiding Light. She was on the Patty Duke show. She's gorgeous. Like just, she looked like every other blonde actress in the sixties or seventies.
00:57:43
I should, I'm not actually sure. I'm sure she would hate me saying exactly when she was at that age, but basically eventually
00:57:51
she transitions into PR and she builds this huge career and she's just a hustler.
00:57:56
And she's, everyone said she was just, she was known for being brassy and unapologetically
00:58:02
pushy. She just didn't give a shit. And she was also really honest. So she would tell people to their face
00:58:07
Like She said She had a friend named Kathy Berlin Who was a New York publicist And Kathy Berlin said
00:58:18
I used to say that Ronnie got half her pieces placed Because people would just say
00:58:22
Enough already She would just wear them down So She was also known as being People adored her obviously
00:58:32
People like to talk about people being big assholes in this business. But in my opinion, especially for women, you can't be that big of an asshole
00:58:40
and get by. People have to love you and you have to have loyalty. There's to be some charm thrown in there.
00:58:49
There's got to be, yeah. You've got to build loyalty to be as successful as this woman was.
00:58:54
And there's a story that someone told, because someone who really loved her, who said she got a
00:58:59
lot of flack because she used to always take a doggy bag home no matter what fancy dinner she
00:59:05
was at no matter what fancy restaurant everybody being trying to be hollywood she'd always take her
00:59:10
food home in a doggy bag and so people would like whisper oh she cheap or oh she whatever
00:59:15
and what she actually did was she would take her food her leftovers to her mom's house so her mom
00:59:22
could eat the fancy food that she was eating and like in and she would share the like hollywood
00:59:27
night with her mom. Isn't that lovely? That's so sweet. I know. It's really hard for me to learn
00:59:32
that you can't take half your food home at meetings. I mean, you can. No, you can't. I'm
00:59:40
so bad at wasting food. I know I'm done. I could eat that at home in my underpants.
00:59:47
Yeah, but I have to say this. My dad told me this a long time ago. My dad told me this when I was
00:59:51
like seven where I was like really thanks for this amazing advice But he was like don salt your food before you taste it Right And it was that whole story of there was like somebody lost a job because it shows that like you need to be able to try things and decide how they are as they are
01:00:06
Don't just decide you need to salt it. You're assuming things. That's right. Hey, seven-year-old.
01:00:11
Thanks, dad. That's really helped. You'll always get by, kid. And I have. Yeah. So that's, I was just going to say that's a similar thing where there could be somebody that you eat with that watches you take your food home because you want to keep it and goes, she's a smart, frugal customer that doesn't give a shit who's watching her.
01:00:31
Those are always the stories in Hollywood anyways. People going, not going along with the flow and being like, I want my fucking doggy bag full of grilled cheese or whatever.
01:00:40
Anyhow, let's get back to biz. so we're now it's a long hard night of work for ronnie chase and she pulls up at this intersection
01:00:51
in beverly hills between sunset and whittier no other cars as we've said no pedestrians um
01:00:57
in that situation it's not unheard of for a hollywood bigwig to just go ahead and take a left
01:01:02
on a red it's their it's their neighborhood they do what they want anyway they take forever those
01:01:08
They take forever and no one's going to see it. No one's going to see it. But Ronnie didn't do that.
01:01:14
She waited for the green and that's when she was ambushed by a lone gunman. He approached the passenger side of her car and he shot her four times through the window.
01:01:26
Holy shit. She was hit twice in the chest, once in her upper right arm and once through her right shoulder.
01:01:33
That bullet went into her heart. And it was that shot that was believed to have killed her.
01:01:37
Her car then took the left and drove down Whittier South and glided a quarter of a mile down that windy street until it hit a light pole and crashed and set off the passenger airbags and was basically a car accident.
01:01:55
A couple minutes later, a couple passing in a car spotted the accident and pulled over, saw what happened, called 911.
01:02:04
but people had already called because they heard gunshots in Beverly Hills. So everybody was calling the Beverly Hills police.
01:02:11
Ronnie Chasen was rushed to Cedars Sinai hospital and she was pronounced dead at 1 12 AM.
01:02:17
So most people assumed when they heard about this, it was either a carjacking or someone had taken out a hit on her because it's
01:02:26
such a weird, the idea in just to give you a sense, I got most of this information from an article that Gary Baum, not Guy Branum, Gary Baum wrote
01:02:41
for the Hollywood Reporter. And when he wrote this article, it was 2016. And in the article,
01:02:48
he said, there have been no homicides in Beverly Hills since 2011. What? So in that five years, zero homicides in Beverly Hills.
01:02:59
insane yeah um i think someone would want to kill his wife i mean there there had been the five
01:03:06
years previous there had been five homicides um two of them had been that exact thing um domestic
01:03:14
abuse domestic homicides and um those were solved and then there were two other ones that were
01:03:21
solved and one was the shooting death of mark ruffalo's brother which i'd never heard of mark
01:03:27
Ruffalo was a hair. Mark Ruffalo's had a brother, I believe his name was Scott and he was a hairdresser
01:03:33
and he lived in Beverly Hills and he was shot to death in his house. What the fuck? Yeah. And they
01:03:39
never solved it. Who did it? They don't know. I know. Right. So anyway, that's like it for Beverly
01:03:48
Hills. Now we talk about fucking, you know, Filipino town. The thing we were just talking
01:03:53
about earlier where it's like how many homicides are there in a month much less in years and years
01:03:59
in 10 years they'd had five yeah and then there was this so it's insane anyway which is the reason
01:04:07
the movie beverly hills cop worked so well right because truly nothing bad happens there it's the
01:04:13
home of all the rich people yeah everyone watch it it's such a good movie it holds up it holds up
01:04:17
so well. Okay. Sorry. So I lost my place. So also just know this, Ronnie Chasen's estate was worth
01:04:26
$6.1 million at the time of her death. Holy shit. Yeah. So she was doing very well for herself.
01:04:33
She was also single, no kids. She's, you know, like a working lady. So three weeks after the
01:04:41
night of the shooting, the Beverly Hills Police Department holds a press conference and states
01:04:45
that the case has been closed. The suspect was an ex-con named Harold Smith who had served time twice for robbery once
01:04:56
in 1998 for a purse snatching where when the woman resisted, he broke her jaw. And that happened on Doheny Boulevard,
01:05:06
which was about a quarter of a mile east of where Ronnie Chasen had been shot. Oh, shit.
01:05:12
And so this is how they found Harold Smith, a neighbor of his. So he lived in this place called the Harvey Apartments, which is on Santa Monica Boulevard.
01:05:23
Just it's actually just north of Santa Monica Boulevard, kind of behind Paramount over there.
01:05:30
It's basically Santa Monica and Western, which is not a great neighborhood. So and this apartment building was not good at all.
01:05:40
It was mostly, it was a lot of drug addicts and just people who were just getting by.
01:05:47
It was bad news. So a neighbor of Harold Smith calls in a tip to America Most Wanted saying that he had shown up Harold Smith had shown up at this neighbor apartment 90 minutes after the killing in Beverly Hills asking if anything had been
01:06:07
reported on TV, and then saying that he needed to go back to Beverly Hills because he had left his
01:06:12
bike there. Oh, no. And then the neighbor said he saw the report of Ronnie Chasen's murder on the
01:06:19
news and he knew he put it all together. Right. So at 5.30 p.m. on December 1st, after Beverly Hills police get this tip, they go out to
01:06:30
question Harold Smith. They find him in the lobby of the Harvey Apartments. And when they identify themselves to him as police, Harold pulls a .38 out of his pocket
01:06:39
and shoots himself in the head. Shut the fuck up. How did I not fucking know this part?
01:06:44
I know. It's crazy. I've never heard this part. I knew about this shooting. Yeah, me too.
01:06:48
But I've never heard this part. Oh my God. Okay. So this neighbor that had called in the tip,
01:06:59
he had been keeping some boxes for Harold Smith because Harold had been evicted from the Harvey apartment
01:07:07
six days before. And that's why Harold came back to that guy's house that night.
01:07:14
Some of his stuff was there. so um the police find this out or know this and go up to the neighbor's house and start looking
01:07:24
through harold smith's stuff that's in the in the neighbor's apartment and there they find four spent
01:07:31
shell casings um among smith's belongings and they test those against the ballistics and the
01:07:38
ronnie chase murder they're a match the police announce they have their guy and the case is
01:07:44
closed. They took such a confident position at this press conference that even though they had
01:07:56
not looked into her bank statements, they had not looked onto a hard drive of her computer,
01:08:01
they had not checked her cell phone records. They eventually got to that the following March,
01:08:08
but at the time they made that announcement, they had not looked into almost anything in her life.
01:08:13
And the fact that she, a lot of people make note of the fact that she had an estate with no heirs worth $6.1 million.
01:08:21
And a family, you know, she, sorry, so I'll just finish this. The following July, Beverly Hills Police issued a news release stating that it completed the exhaustive investigation.
01:08:35
And without a doubt, it's the conclusion of robbery homicide detectives that the sole perpetrator of this heinous crime was Harold Martin Smith.
01:08:44
So last year, the Beverly Hills Police finally released the files on this case, and they were partially redacted.
01:08:54
So you couldn't read everything in them. But this reporter that wrote for the Hollywood Reporter read the ballistics report.
01:09:02
And it actually, the ballistics report actually says that although the two guns in this case have similar characteristics, they're not, they're too insignificant for identification.
01:09:15
So actually the ballistics report does not confirm that he was their guy at all.
01:09:22
The files also reveal that the police did not dust for fingerprints on the right side of the car, which was where the shots were fired from.
01:09:30
What? No fingerprints dusted over there. They also never released the security camera footage from the neighborhood.
01:09:38
Yeah. The night. Everyone has security cameras. It's fucking Beverly Hills. Yeah.
01:09:43
And a man named T.T. Williams Jr., who was a retired LAPD homicide detective, he gets called to testify about police procedure a lot.
01:09:54
he was stated as saying this about the lack of video footage memorializing Smith near the crime.
01:10:02
He said, quote, there has to be some security cameras in that neighborhood that would have caught him.
01:10:07
I mean, Beverly Hills, give me a break. You've got a black man supposedly on a bike
01:10:12
in the middle of the night. He'd be stopped 15 times. Fuck yeah. He would have stood out like a sore thumb.
01:10:18
Seriously. And not surprisingly, they never released the footage from the lobby of the Harvey Apartments
01:10:25
the night of Harold Smith's suicide, and they had security cameras in that lobby.
01:10:34
Wow. So that whole moment where the cops identify themselves, that's all on camera, no one's ever seen that footage.
01:10:41
Wow. Also of note, the gun that Harold Smith pulled out of his pocket and shot himself to death with
01:10:51
was later determined to have been reported stolen three years earlier by a retired LAPD officer from his home in Santa Clarita.
01:11:01
Oh. Okay. Just a little, a bit of a question mark there. Okay. Guns get stolen all the time, then they go on the black market,
01:11:11
anyone can have them, yes. Okay, but go on. The fact that it was a cop's gun, a retired policeman's gun,
01:11:18
I think isn't good. Totally. That's not good. It's a, it's the, oh, I said, it's exactly that.
01:11:25
Oh, I can connect those, which I'm not going to say, but. Well, I mean. That's all.
01:11:30
It just, so I'll end with this, which I think is very interesting. It's a quote from a man named Stan Kephart, who is a former police chief in Arizona.
01:11:39
And he also serves as an expert witness in cases involving law enforcement operational standards.
01:11:45
And he said this, it's not what you think about a suspect. It's what you can prove.
01:11:49
And it appears that there is room for doubt that Harold Smith is the perpetrator in this case.
01:11:56
Holy shit. They didn't really prove... factually, that he was the perpetrator. They just basically said he was unclosed the case and he's dead.
01:12:06
Yeah. He can't defend himself. Wow. It's so interesting when you hear like, well, he had this and he did this that night and
01:12:13
this thing happened and he's done this in the past. And you're like, yeah, okay.
01:12:16
He's obviously, he obviously did it the end, but you don't think about the, like the deep,
01:12:22
the deep evidence or the basic things like fingerprinting that side of the car or the
01:12:29
obvious things like security cameras, you just hear these blanket statements and you're like,
01:12:36
duh, but. Well, you go, that's easy. Like that's an easy, you tell me that a black ex-con
01:12:45
is shot somebody. Oh, this, here's the other thing. Her purse was still in the car. It's a
01:12:51
Prada bag. It was on the passenger seat. So he, so they're saying that he shot into this car four
01:12:58
times and didn't take anything. There was nothing taken from the car. So he just, it's not a smash
01:13:05
and grab. It's not his style. It's not his MO, which we do know can escalate. But in this case,
01:13:12
he didn't even steal anything. So now he's gone straight to murder. So basically he's not even a,
01:13:18
it's not robbery anymore. It just doesn't make sense for someone to do that there either.
01:13:24
because you can't then blend in with the rest of the city. You can't go hide in someone's backyard.
01:13:30
No. You're just, you're like a waiting, what do they call it? Duck? A sitting duck.
01:13:37
Well, also you, so that actually takes apart a bunch of things because they figured out that that neighbor who said
01:13:44
that he put it all together because he knew then it was Ronnie Chasen's murder, her name wasn't released until the next morning.
01:13:52
So there was no way he could have known that during that conversation. Also, if it was 90 minutes after the shooting took place, how did he get back to those apartments that fast?
01:14:05
That's true. Especially if he left his bike. Right. So what did he leave his bike and jump on a night bus from Beverly Hills into Hollywood?
01:14:14
And in that case, then they should have had the bus driver testify. Right. Or that would have been in the report that someone had seen him coming back.
01:14:23
That would have all been added to the argument that it was him. You're right. Also, there were, and I mean, this isn't even speculation.
01:14:31
It's just kind of random facts. But there were family members in her family that in her, she had rewritten a new will in 2006, but they couldn't find that will.
01:14:42
So they went off of her 1994 will. And in that will, she gave the majority of her estate to one of her nieces.
01:14:50
Oh no. And she had another niece that in the will, it said, I knowingly and being aware of the implications this might cause, leave you $10.
01:15:06
94. I mean, maybe she was a drug addict then, then sucked. And then 96, they're like, all right.
01:15:12
I just don't understand how, don't you have to file a will with a lawyer? No. In fact, I watched this thing, Joy Bay, it was whatever, maybe headline news or whatever,
01:15:23
Joy Bayhart was the host of it. It was just a YouTube video. But this woman on it said, you actually can write on a napkin, this is my last will and
01:15:32
testament. It doesn't have to be filed anywhere. If you sign it and you are of sound mind, it's legal.
01:15:37
That seems so absurd because it's like, it's just, then someone can pick it up out of your fucking sock drawer, light it on fire, and there's no will.
01:15:48
And I'm the next of kin. You know what I mean? Yes. Like you would think you'd want to get it notarized and give it to someone.
01:15:55
Well, you should keep it in a safe place. Yeah. Definitely. But it's just the legality of it.
01:16:00
It doesn't need a lawyer's anything. This is what this woman on this thing said, that it doesn't need a notary or anything.
01:16:10
It seems such a, it's like, it's that thing of like, well, if you can get away with it, then congratulations.
01:16:17
There's no, no one will look into it. With what? What are you talking about? With burning someone's will or like getting rid of the 2006 will.
01:16:25
Right. Then. Yes, that's exactly right. Well, yeah. But that, I mean, that's why you keep things in, you know, something like a will you would keep in a, what do you call that?
01:16:36
Safety deposit box. Yeah. But what if she goes and, yeah, totally. When you don't give out those keys.
01:16:42
Yeah. I've never had a safety deposit box, but I will only have one key when I do.
01:16:46
I have a PO box and it's very exciting. It's like, you feel like a grownup. Anyway, I think that's a fascinating one because I saw, oh, there's a show called Demons in the City of Angels.
01:16:59
which is which it's hilarious that it's like specific only to Los Angeles but this that's
01:17:07
what caught my attention because it started and I watched it going oh I do want to know how this
01:17:12
turned out because I remember hearing about it and then hearing nothing yeah and basically it's
01:17:17
just them going um we kind of don't buy it and isn't it interesting that you and I who remember
01:17:23
this happening and it kind of being, you know, if, you know, it was in your industry than mine,
01:17:30
like we had never heard about it again. Like, it's almost like, yeah, we got, like they got
01:17:34
the guy really low key, not maybe not letting a lot of reporters into the press conference.
01:17:40
Does that make sense? Yeah. You know what I mean? It's interesting that we never heard anything more
01:17:45
about it. She had a bunch of friends in this article. It was, it made me sad because I feel,
01:17:49
it's like you know this type of woman. You know this lady. Oh, yeah. It like she smart and sharp and like pushy enough to make to be in the top of the business and such a hard business They all her friends say if it was her friend that died in a suspicious way
01:18:08
she wouldn't rest until she found out what really happened. And she wouldn't take no for an answer.
01:18:13
And she would, so that's, it's really sad because I think it's that thing of like,
01:18:17
there's a lot of people going, I wish I could do something or I wish I knew something.
01:18:20
Or maybe they're right. And am I supposed to do something even if I think the cops are right?
01:18:24
Like, what do I do? You know? It's just so, it's just too convenient. Like to find who the fuck keeps four spent shell casings
01:18:33
in their like box, in their boxes in their shitty apartment. You didn't chuck them into the LA river
01:18:38
as you were walking home in 90 minutes? But you leave your bike at the scene of the crime.
01:18:41
Sure. Like, none of it. Also, how do you get back across town in night? You can't get anywhere in 90 minutes in Los Angeles.
01:18:51
No, not even in a fucking car. I mean the traffic Anyway That's great, that was really interesting
01:18:57
I never followed up on that Hopefully, we'll hear more about it soon They were trying to make a documentary about it
01:19:06
But they were having a lot of problems Well, it's funny Because we're having a theme today
01:19:13
Oh, really? Los Angeles What did the LAPD do? Really? Really? Racial issues, what happened, tampering, etc.
01:19:28
Wow. But first I have to pee. Sorry. This is where the commercial will go. Okay, we are back. Karen, any updates?
01:19:41
Well, I guess the update and I, in the next episode, you will hear the next Rewind episode,
01:19:46
we'll talk about the Gary Baum misattribution. And I explain it there, but it was essentially me cutting and pasting Wikipedia, you know, writing down, Googling this, watching that TV show, that then the one direct quote from Gary Bell was the only attribution when in fact the entire layout of the story was because of his investigative journalism.
01:20:10
Right. And so it's great because this basically opened my eyes to like the only reason we were able to tell stories. And I think I said this on the next episode. So we'll go over all of it. But it's like we can only do this because of true crime journalists and investigative journalists.
01:20:25
That's like what we're doing is we're gabbing about the things we watch that other people created about the true crime story.
01:20:32
Exactly. So now when you listen, and I think from this moment on, we intro the story and then we say.
01:20:37
Like some of the sources. Some of the sources. We name our sources every time. And we did that here and there, like throughout our stories before, but we never specifically did that and put in the show notes.
01:20:47
Right. So that's just so important. And there was no one else to copy that did it that way.
01:20:51
So we were just kind of doing it the way it was done, which is not an excuse. And clearly, the credit needs to go to Gary Baume.
01:20:58
So I think it now has after these, you know, eight years. But to talk about Ronnie Chasen's murder, there are no true updates on the case.
01:21:08
But Gary Baume, the journalist, continues to call attention to it and the patterns in law enforcement that basically he talks about profiling and killing black suspects in cases like these.
01:21:20
So following the George Floyd protests in 2021, the Beverly Hills Police Department was sued for disproportionately arresting black pedestrians the previous year.
01:21:29
OK, so because of that, the police chief at the time, a woman named Sandra Spagnoli, she retired after facing a series of lawsuits about that, including allegations of racist remarks.
01:21:42
And the city of Beverly Hills had to pay out millions. So when Spagnoli's replacement, a man named Mark Stainbrook, joined the squad or was promoted to that job and was installed in December of 2021, journalist Gary Baum called for him to reopen the murder of Ronnie Chasen for the sake of justice.
01:22:02
Essentially like you can't let this just go unsolved, which is incredible just years and years later.
01:22:08
And he also called out the silence in Hollywood itself in the entertainment industry. They had the opportunity to cause a ruckus and get some answers in this murder. And nobody said a word.
01:22:20
Totally. Which is super weird and very true. But I do think that that was a time where like we are now used to like voting with your wallet and saying something in social media and whatever, where it's like that was the kind of thing where in especially the entertainment industry, no one sticks their neck out for fucking anybody unless they're going to be guaranteed that they're going to make money or be protected or whatever it is.
01:22:44
Whatever it is. But if you're going to be the first one to stand up and be some sort of whistleblower, guaranteed you're by yourself. That's how this business kind of works. So it doesn't surprise me that people didn't stand up and go, I demand this thing. Also, I think a lot of people were like, how did that happen? Who would have done it? Is it somebody on the inside?
01:23:04
Yeah. Yeah. What do you think it is? Do you think it's just a... To me, it seems like such a specific hit. And that, to me, where it happened on Sunset, if I'm not mistaken.
01:23:15
Right by the Beverly Hills Hotel? Yep. And it's just a weird, it's like they would have had to have known that was a good spot because no one's there.
01:23:24
No one's there. It's like, unless it's 5 to 7. It's 9 to 11 or 5 to 7. That's a place that's mostly residential.
01:23:34
Totally. So it would be a perfect place. It's super dark. It's a huge intersection.
01:23:38
So like someone walking their dog across the street wouldn't actually see anything because it's such a big street.
01:23:43
And it's Beverly Hills. So it's real quiet and it's everybody's there's high hedges.
01:23:48
It's not like people are looking out their window at you. It just to me felt like very inside in that way where it like it wasn like a carjacking on Hollywood Boulevard where it like holy shit this crazy thing It like over as quiet Yeah Crazy That just a theory Okay Okay So let get into Georgia story now about the murder of Mytris Richardson
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Goodbye. So this is one I've wanted to do for a while, but it's scary to tackle because it's kind of big.
01:27:11
Like, it's, and it's, every time I go back to look into it, it's just like, it's a lot.
01:27:20
Okay. This is the story of Maitrese Richardson. Do you know this one? You probably will once I tell you.
01:27:29
So 7 p.m., around 7 p.m. on the night of September 17th, 2009, 24-year-old Maitrese Richardson
01:27:37
pulls her Honda Civic into the parking lot of Joffrey's, which is a fancy pants restaurant on the Pacific Coast Highway.
01:27:45
Do you know what I'm talking about? It's one of those like Joffrey's. It's like super fancy pants.
01:27:52
Like on the coast? Like on the coast in Malibu. Yeah, yeah. It's very like it's spelled Joffrey, not Jeffrey.
01:27:58
You know what I mean? While she's there from the valet to ordering her food, interacting with other patrons. Her behavior is erratic and bizarre, but she wasn't threatening
01:28:12
in any way. When the bill came for 89.51, Matrice couldn't pay. So when she was confronted by staff,
01:28:21
she announced that she had come to avenge Michael Jackson's death. Oh no. I know. Management decides to call the police and they say, we have a guest here who was refusing
01:28:32
to pay her bill. And we think she may, she sounds really crazy. She may be on drugs or something.
01:28:38
But my Teresa Richardson wasn't on drugs. She's a 24-year-old smart and beautiful African-American
01:28:45
woman from South LA. She'd graduated from California State University, Fullerton,
01:28:50
with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology the year before. And at the time, she worked as an
01:28:56
administrative assistant at a freight company, but she wanted to work with children. And at the
01:29:02
time she volunteered as a mentor for at-risk children and worked with kids at a cheerleading
01:29:06
camp. So it's not really known why she was in Malibu though, which was 40 miles from her home.
01:29:14
They think maybe she was visiting the campus of Pepperdine, which is right by Joffrey's,
01:29:19
you know, to look at the campus. But just sorry, side note, I told my mom when I was a junior in
01:29:26
high school that I wanted to go to Pepperdine because my friend Jen Mason's older sister,
01:29:31
Becky, went there. And my mother laughed in my face and said, who's going to pay for that?
01:29:36
Yeah. Because Pepperdine is insanely expensive. Volleyball college on the beach, basically.
01:29:42
It's Tony. It's for the rich. It's for rich people. Okay. As is Joffrey's, which is how you build an dinner for one person I could do that at Applebee I mean let be honest I had a lunch today with Vince So let be realistic here I swear to God sometimes when I get a pretzel as an appetizer I could just eat nine pretzels
01:30:12
Do it. Okay. Cheese sauce? Well, I mean, that's crucial. I'm not going to eat them dry.
01:30:19
What do I look like? Big and soft and then have like a thing of that cheese sauce.
01:30:23
Am I a monster? Mustard. I hate when they try to get creative. Okay. I hate when they try to be like, this stupid aioli or whatever the fuck.
01:30:32
Oh, no, no, no. And then, oh, like a, it's a mustard that's got spicy honey in it.
01:30:38
No, no. Just give me cheese sauce like they serve at Applebee's. That's all we want.
01:30:44
That's all anyone wants. Cheese soup, but we can't and we know it because a polite society says it's not okay unless you're in like Wisconsin.
01:30:52
Right. So give me a bread to dip it in it and be okay with it. Fine. I'll pretend it's a dip.
01:30:56
Fine. Fine. It's the same thing with onion soup. Like I just want to eat bread and cheese with a spoon.
01:31:01
But fine. You can put a little broth underneath it. Whatever. If you need me to be that fine.
01:31:05
Okay. Sorry. That was a real left turn. Cheerleading camp. So they don't know why she was there,
01:31:14
but it seems that she was suffering at the time of a previously undiagnosed manic episode,
01:31:21
which is also evidenced by her Facebook posts recently, which were incoherent and rambling.
01:31:29
She said things like, there are signs everywhere, smile with a smiley face. And then another said, I just want to sleep, lol, but you know me and my crazy ideas.
01:31:40
Let's see where they take me, smiley face. Yeah. So that's like- Did she not know she was manic?
01:31:46
From what I can tell, no. And her mom, I think they were all very surprised by it, by the fact that this is, they think that's what happened for sure.
01:31:55
But nobody knew what was going to happen. Yeah. It seems like it was undiagnosed and unknown.
01:32:00
I'm sorry to ask this, but when was this? 2009. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. No, no one listens in the beginning of what year it is.
01:32:09
You know what I mean? It's hard to focus. Yeah. I just get to the story. Yeah. I settled down.
01:32:13
I'm still thinking of stuff I said, my story, my thing. 2009. Where were you? You were near 2010. Oh my God. This is like, it's like we picked a theme for
01:32:24
this episode. That's so true. We didn't. That weird chunk of time. We're just like,
01:32:28
it's like our periods are synced, but our murders are synced instead. It's all coming together in the red tent, Steven. Yeah. Steven's writing this one down
01:32:36
because he's blushing so hard. He loves a good period joke. Sisters. Sisters. Signs. Three nights after that last post she wrote, she's at Joffrey's going through this shit. Three LAPD deputies arrive. They call Matrice's, it's Maitrice, I believe, not Matrice.
01:33:00
Maitrese's great grandmother who offers to pay the bill, but she would have had a fax and image of her credit card, which she wasn't able to do because who the fuck has a fucking fax machine?
01:33:11
In 2009, yeah. Don't you hate that? Yeah. So they were like, nope, sorry, grandma.
01:33:15
Sorry, great grandma. You can't do this. They search her car and they find a very small amount of marijuana as well as bottles of vodka and tequila and half a case of beer, but they gave her a field sobriety test and she passed.
01:33:30
Okay. So I'm sorry, but the officers could have placed Matrice in an involuntary psychiatric hold based on her odd behavior, but they said that that would have required a lot of paperwork and a trip to the hospital.
01:33:47
So instead they arrested her on charges of suspicion of not paying for the meal and possession of less than one ounce of marijuana, and they took her to Lost Hills Police Department.
01:33:57
Uh-oh. I know. Upon her arrest, her phone, purse, and money are locked in her car, and the car is towed to a tow yard.
01:34:04
What? Why? She's going to need that after. Well, I don't know. Lost Hills Police Department, again, fancy pants police department, and a fancy pants part of Malibu, like, really nice area.
01:34:20
It's the same station where Mel Gibson was taken after being pulled over for drunk driving and yelling anti-Semitic slurs.
01:34:27
same station but but they let him keep his purse well well they escorted him from lost hills to his
01:34:35
toad car that because they treat famous and rich people which is what their neighborhood is and
01:34:41
white people remember in the big lebowski stay out of my beach community he throws a mug at
01:34:46
big lebowski's face it's like that yeah yeah and stay out of my beach community it's just like that. Unfortunately, my trees didn't receive the same treatment
01:34:57
as a famous asshole. My trees, his mother called the lost hill station around 10 PM.
01:35:03
And all of these phone calls you can hear on YouTube. And I fucking listened to them.
01:35:07
Oh no. She's asking if they're going to book her and release her that night and saying it's dark
01:35:14
and she doesn't have a car and I don't want her wandering. And she's like, I'll come pick her up
01:35:17
right now. But if you keep her overnight, that's fine. I'll get her in the morning. I just want to
01:35:21
know you're not going to release her. And this woman is, you know, she's clearly upset, but she's
01:35:26
just like, I don't know what's happening. I'll deal with it. She's a together woman. Yeah.
01:35:32
She's, the mother said she's not from that area. And I would hate to wake up to a morning report
01:35:37
saying girl lost somewhere and her head chopped off. But the deputy assured my Teresa's mother
01:35:43
not to worry. I can't breathe. Hold on. Okay. But yet at 1230 in the morning, my trees with only
01:35:53
the clothes on her back and without a purse, money, or her phone was released into the darkness and
01:36:00
of the Santa Monica Mountains. Why? Which you and I, like, let's set the stage again
01:36:05
from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica Mountain in Malibu. It is fucking remote. It's huge houses on a lot of land
01:36:13
that butt up against the Santa Monica Mountains, which are not pretty hiking trails.
01:36:18
They're fucking wilderness. Yeah, it's scrub brush. It's, there's no, there's nothing commercial around there.
01:36:25
No, well, that's what they said too, is nothing was open at that point. All businesses are closed.
01:36:29
that close at like six. Yes. And there's, it's like even the businesses that are,
01:36:33
there are really few and far between. It's not like you're going to walk up and get,
01:36:37
yeah, you have to basically be down in the city of Malibu to be close to anything.
01:36:42
And the Santa Monica mountain is where all the mountain lions live. And it's really rocky and hilly.
01:36:48
I went to Jewish camp there and it was totally wilderness. I mean, it was not cute.
01:36:54
Yes. It's not the city. No, it's really not. And this is a city girl. who had never been out in the wilderness like this.
01:37:02
So all businesses are closed. Public transportation doesn't really exist out there.
01:37:07
You know, they have like bus to the shopping center and back, but not, you know, real transportation.
01:37:12
And she's 11 miles from her car at the Malibu tow yard. The walk would have taken her up and down hills,
01:37:18
through a tunnel along the shoulder of a highway, winding through the mountains,
01:37:22
which I fucking have driven there and you get carsick just from driving. It's a crazy mountain.
01:37:27
Also, I'll tell you this, from my research, 11 miles, just so you know, it's 13 miles from Beverly Hills to downtown Los
01:37:36
Angeles. So she would have had to walk slightly less than that long all the way down sunset.
01:37:42
That's ridiculous. That's a day's walk. So when her mom calls the next morning, she finds out that my trees have been released. And I listened to the fucking message, the call,
01:37:57
and the officer is blowing her off. And she's like, how long do I have to wait to file a missing persons report?
01:38:04
And he's like, well, wait a couple hours and then call us back. They're being very casual.
01:38:10
And she's like, she doesn't know the area. She didn't have anything on her. What the hell's going on?
01:38:13
And they were very flippant about it. And were like, let me try to track things down.
01:38:19
Call me in a couple hours. Which is like, can you imagine waiting for your child
01:38:21
for a couple hours? and then and then she said you know she doesn't know the area
01:38:31
and she's in a depressive state so she probably had some clue you know that something was triggering
01:38:36
yeah so at 530 that morning a homeowner in Cold Canyon which is right next to the actual
01:38:44
Santa Monica Mountain Canyon called Lost Hills to say that there was a prowler walking around
01:38:49
he told the dispatcher that the prowler had been sitting kind of sprawled out on these wooden steps in the back of the house, but had disappeared into the surrounding wilderness.
01:38:58
And other neighbors said that they heard and saw Maitrese either leaving or attempting to enter
01:39:03
the man's home, and that they heard loud screams in a vacant home around the time that she went
01:39:10
missing. But they searched the area and didn't find anything. And later they searched the area.
01:39:16
They called the police. I don't know if they came. That was the last time Maitrese was seen alive.
01:39:22
She disappeared into the Santa Monica Mountains and for five months, the Lost Hills, so she disappeared.
01:39:32
Super crazy wilderness, gone. With only her clothes that she had on, t-shirt, jeans, sneakers.
01:39:39
So for five months, Lost Hills insisted that there was no surveillance tape of the police station because they wanted to see this.
01:39:47
You know, like what happened? When did she leave? What state was she in? But they miraculously found the tape five months later sitting on a desk.
01:39:57
According to Mitrice's mother, the tape shows her daughter in an obvious psychological distress inside the intake towel.
01:40:05
She clutches at the MASH screening and is rocking side to side like a small child, says a cousin of hers.
01:40:13
But a spokesperson for the department said about releasing her, She exhibited no signs of mental illness or intoxication.
01:40:20
She was fine. She's an adult. Okay. But you don't let them go without a fucking wallet or cell phone.
01:40:28
Yeah. None of this makes sense. Like it doesn't add up. Is she an adult? Then what's like,
01:40:36
then why are you treating her? Why would you lock her purse away? Yeah. And not answer questions to her parents.
01:40:43
Okay. Don't worry. It gets worse. Okay. Like it always does. So the station log shows that my trees made four phone calls to her grandmother, but AT&T phone records don't reflect those calls for whatever reason.
01:40:59
So the surveillance tape also shows a deputy leaving the station right after my trees was released, like leaving towards where she was going.
01:41:07
But the deputy maintained that he wasn't at the station before the tapes were released. He said he wasn't there that night.
01:41:13
Then when he was caught in his lie, he stated, the night this nonsense happened, I was one of the guys that kept away from this, minding my own business.
01:41:22
Which is like what that insinuates that something was going on that you kept out of.
01:41:29
Well, also, it's your job to be at the police station and take care of the people that are at the police station.
01:41:36
That's not nonsense. Right. That's your job of a person's in distress. This isn't, this is a person that is in mental distress.
01:41:46
Well, the nonsense could have been, you know, the actions police took when she got there,
01:41:53
whatever happened to her there if anything happened to her there I speculating So that the nonsense he could have been talking about You know what I mean So it wasn until three months later January 2010
01:42:07
that Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department conducted. So three months later, conducts one
01:42:12
of the largest scale searches in the history of the department. Over 300 volunteers trained in
01:42:17
search and rescue participate in the 18 square mile search of the area of Malibu Canyon and the
01:42:24
hills of Malibu Creek State Park, they find racially and sexually offensive graffiti on the
01:42:29
walls of a culvert in the canyon. The graffiti was freshly painted and the paint cans, brushes,
01:42:34
and other potential evidence was left at the scene. And Matrice wasn't found. Finally, almost a year
01:42:41
after she disappeared from the station, in August 2010, park rangers who were looking to see if
01:42:47
marijuana growers had returned to Dark Canyon, they stumble on Matrice's naked, mummified body.
01:42:54
She was in a very secluded creek bed in Malibu Canyon with the clothes she was wearing the night she disappeared scattered around.
01:43:02
Oh, so they had been taken off of her? Yeah. Or she took them off? Now, here's the most fucked up thing.
01:43:09
Okay. Okay. Deputies, by protocol, should have waited for the coroner to arrive so that Mitrice's remains could be photographed, the site inspected for clues, and the crime scene established.
01:43:20
Instead, against orders by the coroner, who later said that he, quote, was very clear with officials, the deputies bagged Richardson's remains and airlifted them by helicopter.
01:43:32
Whoa. Before the coroner could even get there. Whoa. This is, okay. The coroner said that he could not think of another case in which police agency had moved entire skeletal remains without coroner's approval.
01:43:45
to prove this point months later my trice's mother to so i can so this is proof my trice
01:43:52
how badly it was done my trice's mother was visiting the site where her body where her
01:43:56
daughter's body was found and found a finger bone that belonged to my trice left behind in the dessert
01:44:01
in the dessert in the dirt oh my god i think there's an article that they're with her and they
01:44:08
find that. That's insane. Finds in the spot, oh look, and digs out a fucking finger bone
01:44:15
that had been left behind because the proper people didn't. Did they eventually prove it
01:44:20
really was hers? Yeah, it was her for sure. And there've also been small toe bones, finger,
01:44:27
and vertebrae found left behind. And also the bones from her neck, there's bones from her neck,
01:44:32
foot and hand missing from, you know, her body, her remains. So what? Yeah. The fuck. This was
01:44:41
such a crazy case because I, I followed it step by step. So her leaving, I was like, what happened?
01:44:47
And everyone was like, what could have happened to her? And then you see the video, the surveillance
01:44:51
video and you're like, oh, that's some shady shit. Then they find her body and then the bones are
01:44:56
fucked. It's just like, it just keeps getting worse. So the disturbance made it so that the
01:45:03
coroner was unable to determine how she died. Right. I think that would be the idea. Right.
01:45:09
And the jeans, belt, and black bra that were discovered a few feet from her body,
01:45:16
they were found, but they were not tested for signs of foul play and were buried along with her.
01:45:21
So they weren't tested for any DNA, any, you know, ripping or anything that would have.
01:45:29
This is like that thing. It's, it just reminds me of like it, where you don't know what things you need to be
01:45:37
in place until you realize they're not in place. So it's like once a coroner tells people don't move that body and the police airlift
01:45:44
the body away. Shouldn't then those police be frozen in no longer, they're no longer active
01:45:52
duty in this case because they're clearly hiding something. Like there should be protocol for the
01:45:59
coroner to then go to some other police chief. Yeah. And this is where, so this article I was
01:46:05
going to, that I got a lot of info on, it's a Newsweek article by Alexander Nazarian, who,
01:46:11
This article is really great because he talks a lot about the LAPD corruption and why this could have taken place and the rampant racism that was going on at the time to a point where the second in command is going to prison for 15 years because of corruption.
01:46:29
So it's incredibly corrupt. There's like, you know, rampant anti-rampant racism. And so he tells, I don't talk about a lot in this, but he tells background of why this is so obvious and, you know, could have happened this way.
01:46:47
When you, and I think most people that are into true crime watched the ESPN 30 by 30 of Jay Simpson.
01:46:57
Yeah. That part of the Daryl Gates era of the LAPD was so shocking and eye-opening to me. And it going all the way back to the riots in the 60s, it's just so crazy how long this has been a humongous problem in Los Angeles that hasn't been solved or even really addressed.
01:47:24
Addressed, really. Addressed, yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. And it's not happening anymore.
01:47:30
It hasn't changed at all. No. It's just hidden better. And we've put a Band-Aid over some of the things to make it look less horrifying, but it's still there.
01:47:44
Well and also it just the it the rationalist the justification of using the violence and the crime that happens in the day to day to then justify any behavior on the part I mean it just it sucks I have plenty I have a bunch of people who are police people in my family I not anti It down to the person though especially in this
01:48:09
day and age, it's down to the person because it's just such a, it's like such a closed,
01:48:18
you know, like it's a frat basically. Well, yeah. And in LA and I'm sure a lot of other cities
01:48:22
specifically the cards are stacked against you if you're not white and you don't have money.
01:48:28
Yes. And you're, you know, the cards are stacked against you. You're not, you don't start at zero sum at all.
01:48:37
Yeah. And I, yeah, I don't, you know, I don't want to forget that as someone who
01:48:42
lives here and knows that I'm fucking privileged as shit to be wearing that. Well, and also just, we don't have to think about.
01:48:51
Totally. How bad it could be. I mean, this is like saying you can't be mentally ill or you will just be almost literally thrown to the wolves. It's insanity. And what did happen to her at that police station. Then it opens up that whole door.
01:49:08
The mental illness thing is incredible because it's like, you should have taken her and admitted her for psychiatric treatment
01:49:15
because she was mentally unstable and unsound to make her own decisions. And not only did you not do that and keep her in prison
01:49:23
or keep her in jail until her mother could come or someone could come, you let her out without money, without a jacket, without any...
01:49:32
You knew she wasn't going to get anywhere. It's not like she could have hitchhiked.
01:49:36
or maybe she did hitchhike and that's what happened, but they're still culpable.
01:49:40
Right. Well, yeah. Also, what's the, if you know, see, that's the thing is this isn't just a random
01:49:45
person that they don't know and like, well, too bad for you. And you're an adult. There's someone
01:49:49
contacting you, telling you what the situation is, telling you there are concerns and you still do
01:49:55
the thing against that person's wishes. That's what makes, leads me to believe something else
01:50:00
was taking place because why would you hide? Why would you say we just let her go and she left and
01:50:06
it's not our problem? She's an adult. It makes that feels like cover up, cover up, cover up.
01:50:10
Well, it's so crazy. The mom specifically was like, she doesn't know the area and I don't want
01:50:14
her to get killed. But what's so frustrating to me listening to the tape of her mother calling is
01:50:19
this feeling of nobody. I think a lot about when you call the cops and they don't help you,
01:50:27
what do you, you can't call the cops again. Like that's your last, that's your last,
01:50:34
that's supposed to be the last option is you call the cops and they help you. But it's so sad to be
01:50:39
like the minute, the minute they told her to wait two hours and she hung up the phone, I picture her
01:50:44
in her house and her family having to wait two hours. That's insane. And she's not a runaway.
01:50:54
You know, you let, you guys let her out and the minute they're like, oh shit, then they're culpable and they're open for her.
01:51:01
When also it doesn't make sense because it's like, oh, if you're going to treat this person like, oh, they're, look, she went to a restaurant.
01:51:06
She ate $80 worth of food and she couldn't pay for it. And we arrested her. Okay.
01:51:11
Got it. Yeah. All of that makes sense to me. Yeah. It is illegal to do that thing.
01:51:16
And there, but there, then you learn there are extenuating circumstances. and it so clearly it wasn't that big of a crime to you if you just released her the next day
01:51:26
so you didn't there this isn't you're not holding her for a robbery or what would that be you're
01:51:34
not holding her that's not stealing well when i when i was a teen no like in seventh grade and
01:51:40
got caught stealing you know they give you a ticket like they ticket you like cop would yeah
01:51:46
And you move on, you know? Yeah. It's like, well, why didn't that just happen? Well, it's because they've been searched her car and found, you know.
01:51:57
But then they're not holding her for drugs. They're not holding her for liquor. No, because she took a sobriety test and she passed.
01:52:02
Yeah. Fuck. It doesn't, it's just like, you can't justify the police action in this because nothing is adding up to this is a criminal.
01:52:15
and so we treated her like a criminal. It's like, you know, this is a person, this is say a criminal who ate $80 worth of food
01:52:24
that she couldn't pay for in a manic episode where people do way crazier shit than that.
01:52:30
Well, yeah, we've talked about Elisa Lam and how that could have been how she got in the water tank,
01:52:35
which, you know, if you compare these two cases, it's like, yeah, you do crazy shit
01:52:40
when you're going through a manic episode. Yes. But also the lost, I feel like you're talking about, we're talking about a police department or a police, yeah, police department, Lost Hills, that deals mostly with rich white people upset about something.
01:52:56
They don't know how to deal with something like this. And so they, I don't know.
01:53:03
Yeah. Yeah. So I think that makes a big difference. It's not like it was, you know, the Hollywood Police Department, which also wouldn't have
01:53:11
been as big of a deal because if they let her out in Hollywood, she'd have fucking places
01:53:14
to go. Well, and also I would think that they would be much more used to dealing with people with
01:53:18
mental illness, the Hollywood Police Department. Like there's that one on Wilcox that's just like never not hopping day and night.
01:53:24
There's somebody pulling in or pulling out of that. Because that's my sneak up to get out of Hollywood and go home.
01:53:31
Don't tell anyone the sneaks, Wilcox. That's my sneak. at Wilcox, man. That's like,
01:53:36
that's the North South fountain. Yeah. But totally. But I mean, like, you're right.
01:53:41
It's like, it's almost like a privileged police department because they don't have
01:53:45
that much happening there. So they don't have experience with these sorts of things.
01:53:48
And when they do, it's like some crazily rich, drunk white woman. Or Mel Gibson.
01:53:54
Who's like, fuck you. Or Mel Gibson who or I think didn also they pull over Reese Witherspoon and she said do you know who I am Is that I bet you right I pretty sure that happened in Malibu But anyway whatever
01:54:06
That's that kind of thing of like, everyone's kind of living up to this certain.
01:54:10
So it's suddenly like, oh, there's a black girl that ate food she couldn't pay for.
01:54:15
So now we're going to treat her like the criminal she is. Well, okay. But then that means you would, that would mean process her in a criminal way that keeps
01:54:24
her safe at least. That the thing of the mom going, please don't let her go. That's just...
01:54:32
We have to get plumbers. So my beautiful new house is now having plumbing problems.
01:54:41
Is everybody? I don't know. But I hope that's not a ghost. It's just plumbing problems. It just suddenly
01:54:48
starts like it's about to overflow with like fucking... With racial tension? All right.
01:54:57
Yes, all of that is correct. They find her body. All these bones are missing. They can't determine how she died.
01:55:09
And then her shit's not tested for foul play. Okay, then there's no explanation given for why investigators were never able to find her Vans sneakers
01:55:21
or her t-shirt that she was wearing when she disappeared. So her jeans, belt, and black bra were there,
01:55:29
which is like, you could be like, well, animals came and got them. But it's like, why would they pick a pair of shoes and a t-shirt
01:55:36
and not all this other stuff? And her body wasn't messed with? It's not. Right. Also, that makes me think of those stories about the deaths on Mount Hood.
01:55:48
I mean, no, Crater Lake. like the Crater Lake stories that I did in Portland. And one of them, there was a guy
01:55:55
that they found his body like years later and it was a skeleton sitting in jeans.
01:56:01
Like jeans don't just come off. It's not, animals can't take your jeans off. Right, right.
01:56:10
Yes. Animals can't take your jeans off is what Steven's writing down right now, I can tell.
01:56:16
Don't think about what he's doing. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. We need a booth to put him in where we can't see him.
01:56:21
But also, going back to the Elisa Lam thing, she took her clothes off too. Right.
01:56:26
That's the thing that happens to manic people. Yeah. And I think another thing people don't understand is how fucking cold it gets in the...
01:56:35
I know LA is warm all the time, but in the mountains in LA, and especially in Malibu by the ocean...
01:56:39
You're next to the ocean. Really fucking cold. It's cold. So maybe she was having hypothermia, which is a thing that they take their clothes off,
01:56:46
But then why wouldn't they have found the rest of them, you know, traced her, the trail she took and found the other stuff?
01:56:54
Okay. Mitrice's parents have maintained that their daughter should never have been released on her own by the sheriff's department.
01:57:04
They filed several lawsuits against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for releasing her from jail, even though they claim she was experiencing severe bipolar disorder at the time.
01:57:14
In 2011, they won a civil lawsuit against the county. However, two reports by the Office of Independent Review found the LAPD not culpable for Mitrice's death, deeming it was not a homicide and there was no foul play.
01:57:32
Then why did they airlift the fucking body against the coroner's wishes? And the coroner couldn't say how she died, so how can you definitively say it was not a homicide?
01:57:42
Yeah, because, yeah. Who gave that report? court yeah well you don't have the neck bones to test to see if she was choked to death because you
01:57:48
fucking left them behind yeah it's months later yeah the body has been out there for months yeah
01:57:54
sorry yeah no so i'm yelling at you you're the one that told me the story um and they also clear they were also cleared of any wrongdoing in how to how it handled
01:58:07
discovery of her remains. So they were like, and also it's fine. Okay. Sounds great.
01:58:18
Rhonda Hampton, who's the woman that Alexander Nazarian from the Newsweek article,
01:58:23
like kind of goes around with and interviews her. She was a psychologist at one time in an office
01:58:29
where my trees had interned. So she's really devoted to finding answers. She's just this
01:58:33
really awesome woman. She filed a dozen complaints about the various deputies involved in Mitrice's
01:58:40
case. Nine of these were registered with the Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau,
01:58:44
but they are treating them as, instead of, let's see, they're treating them as service complaints,
01:58:52
not matters of potential criminality, which is like, they're just belittling them, you know,
01:58:58
or, yeah, minimizing them. On December 30th, 2016, which is recently, results of the criminal investigation
01:59:05
into the handling of Maitrice's case concluded that there was insufficient evidence
01:59:10
to support criminal prosecution of anyone involved in the handling of the case. And either way,
01:59:16
the statute of limitations for concealment or tampering of evidence, like the surveillance tapes,
01:59:22
had passed. Wow. The end. I mean, that sucks. Yeah, that's just straight up shit-tastic.
01:59:36
And I mean, fuck, man. So that was a theme of the day of suck-tastic shit. It's almost, well, it's like rich police departments
01:59:50
getting caught doing what they want and then covering it. and not getting any kind of not getting in trouble for it.
02:00:03
Yeah, that's the thing about opening the door to prosecuting police then opens the door.
02:00:09
I understand that thinking, that it opens this door to like anybody. Yeah, it's like it goes deeper and deeper, you know.
02:00:21
But still, it has to get solved because there are such, it's like, it's the most natural thing in the world.
02:00:27
the exploitation of power. It's like you give a man a gun and say, you have the legal right to use this on whoever you want,
02:00:36
you know, to your discretion. It's so much power for one person to have, man or woman or whoever has it.
02:00:44
They're just people. They're people like you and me that just are now police. Like they're not, they're my neighbor.
02:00:51
They're like any old dude. They're your fucking ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. They're not.
02:00:56
And there are also people who are being traumatized by what they see in the streets every day.
02:01:00
Or like, what's it called when you just stop caring about it? Apathy? Yeah. Yeah.
02:01:08
But there's like real things going on. Did you ever watch Southland? It was such a good show.
02:01:13
It was such a good show. My good friend Sean Hattesey was one of the stars. Oh. And he was the best.
02:01:21
But there was a character on it that used to take a ton of pills because he had like an on the job injury, but he didn't want, he couldn't go out on disability.
02:01:31
So he was just in tons of pain all the time and then just taking tons and tons of like painkillers.
02:01:37
And it just is like, it was just the most fascinating, like it's, there's a why behind all of this.
02:01:43
It needs to get analyzed and it needs to get fixed. Yeah. And that's like, part of it is that where it's just like, you're going out there, you're in pain, you deal with the worst society has to offer every single day as your job.
02:01:56
And you have to make split second decisions on what's going to happen to who and why.
02:02:01
Yeah. And you have to stand behind those or else you're going to look weak and your whole department's going to look weak.
02:02:06
Yeah. And you can't, yeah, it's just, it's rough. I do have a good piece of news.
02:02:16
If we could actually finish this on like an uptick. Let's do it. Which is kind of interesting because again on the LAist,
02:02:25
I saw an article this morning that the LAPD is revising their use of force policy
02:02:32
with an eye toward de-escalation. Oh my God, I love that. Can you fucking believe that shit?
02:02:39
That's the word that needs to be in place constantly. De-escalation. De-escalation.
02:02:45
You can do that. So it said, on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Police Commission approved a revised...
02:02:52
I'm trying to read this article and someone's calling me. Who is it? I almost picked it up.
02:03:02
Oh, shoot. I have to text somebody now. Now I have to wait till they stop calling me so I can go back to my thing.
02:03:08
Stop it. Who calls anybody? I mean... Okay. Okay. We'll come back in here. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Police Commission...
02:03:16
Don't cut that, Stephen. Don't you dare. That's real. I was bragging about getting calls.
02:03:23
On Tuesday the Los Angeles Police Commission approved a revised use of force policy that favors de over use of deadly force The new policy requires officers to try and
02:03:34
de-escalate situations using non-lethal force whenever possible before firing their guns.
02:03:39
That's a huge step somewhere. It always blows my mind when, yeah, it always blows my mind when
02:03:46
someone, a cop shoots to kill someone when you could have just shot them in the shoulder or in
02:03:51
the knee or anywhere. You don't have to shoot them in the head. Like on Los Feliz Boulevard
02:03:56
near where we live, like not a few months ago, some guy, I don't know what he was doing,
02:04:02
but cops shot him right in the fucking head. And it's like, if you thought he was burglarizing
02:04:08
someone, he definitely didn't have a weapon. Just shoot him in the fucking knee, man.
02:04:13
Yeah. There just needs to be more tools and more options. I think it's becoming such a
02:04:19
like all or nothing. Yeah. I mean, who knows? I don't know. I'm just saying from what I read and these reports and the fact that, you know, these
02:04:28
videos that go up where it's like the cop that just, there was a jaywalker. Did you see that?
02:04:34
It's just another one. It's a video that during all the other horrible things that are happening, people are going,
02:04:39
can we please retweet this and make this a story too? Because it's a guy that's jaywalking.
02:04:43
The cop comes and just fucking cold cocks him and gets him on the ground and just starts
02:04:47
beating the shit out of him. jaywalking it's that stuff where it's just like that stuff has to stop yeah and that's that one
02:04:55
guy who was a fucking piece of shit you know it's not like that unfortunately he represents
02:05:01
the entirety of his you know of tired of his job but it's probably this fucking asshole and maybe
02:05:08
his partner's like jesus i've been warning them that this guy's insane or whatever i mean yeah
02:05:13
it's just it's awful i know okay we're back do you have updates on this story i do so i mean i've just followed this one i always
02:05:25
every couple months i'll look it up on reddit to see if there's anything new going on
02:05:29
in 2019 facing pressure from dr ronda hampton and the family then la county sheriff alex
02:05:35
villanueva ordered a new review of my teresa's case villanueva told abc eyewitness news that the
02:05:41
case was reviewed from top to bottom by a team of LASD detectives. Their findings were that the
02:05:47
death remains unresolved. So those aren't really findings. Without new information, they still
02:05:53
don't know the actual cause of death. They have since added a department-wide policy that ensures
02:05:59
arrestees are told they can voluntarily remain at the jail until morning hours. I just think of her
02:06:06
being released in such a state, in such a place with no resources. And it just breaks my fucking
02:06:14
heart. It's horrible. It's just like you're left to yourself. Yeah. Mytrice's mother, Latice
02:06:19
Richardson, wrote a book called Mytrice, A Mother's Journey from Despair to Desire about
02:06:24
Mytrice and her own struggles with mental health. She says this was cathartic. Mytrice's father,
02:06:29
Michael Richardson, told ABC, people say, hey, you got to move on. You never move on,
02:06:35
but you carry on. There's no statute of limitations on murder, and all of those who loved
02:06:40
Mytris Richardson hope someone will come forward to finally solve the mystery of her death.
02:06:45
And her family settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the County of Los Angeles and the Los
02:06:49
Angeles County Sheriff Department in September 2011 As part of the settlement the county and the LASD denied any wrongdoing or liability There still in reward money for information on Mitrice case
02:07:04
being offered by the cities of Malibu and Calabasas. Any tips can be submitted through
02:07:10
lacrimestoppers.org. And our friends over at Pushkin produced a really incredible podcast
02:07:17
called Lost Hills, a podcast that investigates the dark side of Malibu, which you wouldn't think
02:07:23
there is any, but turns out... Of course there is. There's a lot. Yeah. Season four covers
02:07:28
my Therese Richardson and is hosted by journalist Dana Goodyear. So I highly recommend
02:07:33
Lost Hills. Yeah. That's a great podcast. Okay. So we're going to wrap this episode up.
02:07:39
So here's the wrap up originally. Here you go. Can I tell you a thing that's funny?
02:07:47
so Vince sent me this article today that this this wife this ex-wife of her her husband's
02:07:58
dying of cancer that's not funny um and he's like a couple days away from dying he's kind of out of
02:08:04
it and she wanted him to die with a happy thought in his head so she told him that Trump had been
02:08:10
impeached. I almost started crying when I heard that. Isn't that sweet? And he believed it and he
02:08:17
was like, okay, I'm so glad to hear that. And then he died. It's so touching, but it's also so awful.
02:08:28
It's, it's where we're at. Hey man. It is where we're at. Making the best of it by talking about murder. We're doing it. Happy birthday, Stephen.
02:08:38
Happy birthday, Stephen. Please do something about police corruption as soon as you can in your 30s.
02:08:44
Stephen, would you please? You have one job to stop police corruption. Please. Can we please?
02:08:55
Okay, we're back. So this episode was originally titled, as we discussed, pre-milked cereal.
02:09:00
If we were naming it today, would we call it happy birthday, Stephen? Probably not.
02:09:04
I mean, not today. Not today. Not today, Stephen. On today's money. But. Not with my kids.
02:09:10
Not in my backyard. But maybe we would call it. The tiniest wishbone, which was me referencing Passover Seder with Guy Branum.
02:09:19
Love it. And breaking a little wishbone. Where do you think the Matt guy is now who lost to you?
02:09:25
You think he's okay? You think he's still suffering? I think it's Matt Bomer, star of Stage and Screen.
02:09:31
You think he saw the success of this podcast just blow up and he's like, oh man, my podcast would have been.
02:09:37
if I had gotten the tiniest wishbone. He's like, she wished for a podcast and it came true.
02:09:42
Fuck, so did I. Or we could call it, you'll always get by kid, which I said. That's right.
02:09:48
Trying to think about what Jim would have said, what home Jim would have said back in the day
02:09:51
to little Karen. What he said back in the day was, don't salt food before you eat it.
02:09:56
It's so my dad to be like, I'm seven. He's screaming, never seven years old. And he's like, you know, the CEOs do this and that
02:10:05
or like never turn your back on the sea, where it's just like... He's like, I don't have a lot of lessons to teach you,
02:10:10
but I'm going to teach them all at seven. Yeah. So you'll remember them. So you'll just remember how to behave
02:10:15
when you're at those big business dinners. And now do you salt your food out of just fucking spite I think of it every fucking time Because sometimes you know when you get scrambled eggs you like I know for a fact these need salt No they need salt Yes scrambled eggs and maybe French fries are like
02:10:31
You're safe with it. Yeah. But if it's going to be people, it's almost like my dad was saying, hey, there's ways people can judge you, which you would never guess.
02:10:39
And that's what it's like. Oh, no. Paranoia. I'm that person. Someone's always judging you.
02:10:43
Oh, just for salting my food? Or it's like. Yeah. That's not a great lesson. There's also, I have a P.O. box and it's very exciting.
02:10:53
That's because you said you don't have a safety deposit box. I didn't either. But you do have a P.O. box.
02:11:00
I do have a P.O. box, which feels pretty fucking fancy. I mean, it always has. All right.
02:11:05
Well, thanks for listening to this episode of Rewind. We're going to let us in 2017 and Elvis say goodbye.
02:11:12
Who better? thanks for listening you guys you're fucking gorgeous people with beautiful souls and hearts
02:11:22
thank you so much and stay sexy and don't get murdered bye bye oh elvis elvis do you cut this part where we're just talking and he doesn't come sometimes elvis you want a cookie
02:11:37
oh come on elvis you want a cookie oh he's just a dick about it now he walked he waited till he got to the mic elvis want a cookie
02:11:49
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