Search Captions & Ask AI

Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 57: Live At The Fox Theater

August 13, 2025 /

This episode of My Favorite Murder covers the Speed Freak Killers, Herbert Mullen, and various live show experiences. Hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark discuss the gruesome murders committed by Mullen, who believed he needed to sacrifice people to prevent earthquakes. They also share humorous anecdotes from their live performance at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California, including audience interactions and merchandise updates.

Karen and Georgia recount the chilling story of Herbert Mullen, who killed 13 people in the 1970s while claiming he was preventing natural disasters. Mullen's mental health issues and his delusions about needing to make sacrifices are highlighted, along with the details of his murders, confessions, and eventual arrest.

The episode also features a hometown murder story shared by an audience member named Chloe, who recounts the tragic double murder of Marlene Olive's parents in Tara Linda, California. The hosts engage with Chloe and discuss the implications of the case, including the murderer’s eventual release.

Throughout the episode, the hosts maintain a balance of humor and seriousness, reflecting on the nature of true crime and their experiences on tour.

Listeners are encouraged to stay engaged with the podcast and its community, with a reminder to stay sexy and don’t get murdered.

TLDR

Hosts discuss the Speed Freak Killers and Herbert Mullen's murders while sharing live show experiences and a hometown murder story from an audience member.

Episode

1:21:21
00:00:00
This is exactly right. of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Wireless plan
00:00:33
as of January 2026. For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein from Business History.
00:00:39
In our new series, American Genius, we tell the stories of three great writers who changed the way business works in America.
00:00:47
Our first episode is about Benjamin Franklin, who, among many other things, was a best-selling business writer.
00:00:53
Take a listen. He's writing this much later in his life, consciously creating this image of himself.
00:01:02
And I do want to emphasize how unusual this model is at the time, this self-made man myth, because you don't want to be self-made.
00:01:12
It's low class to be self-made. You know, this idea that we have today is the opposite, right?
00:01:18
And it comes from Franklin. Today, there is the derisive term nepo-baiting. Well, exactly right.
00:01:23
And these days, if you are a billionaire, You had better have a Benjamin Franklin story about starting in a garage, coming up with the idea from nothing.
00:01:33
And here is Benjamin Franklin inventing it right before our eyes. This has been brought to you by Odoo.
00:01:39
To listen to more of our American Genius series, listen to business history. New episodes release every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:49
Who doesn't love warm, carby comfort? Satisfying sandwiches, loaded bagels, rich mac and cheese.
00:01:55
Crate-worthy and smart, Hero Bread's loaves, bagels, and noodles have just 0-5 gram snack carbs, 0 gram sugar, and up to 19 grams of protein and 32 grams of fiber per serving.
00:02:04
Hero Bread bakes with heart-healthy olive oil and delivers a soft, fluffy, flavorful experience you love.
00:02:09
Shop now on Hero.co. Use code IHEART for 10% off. That's Hero.co. Per serving, not a low-calorie food.
00:02:16
Some products contain allulose. See nutrition info on Hero.co for sodium and sugar content.
00:02:20
Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway. For you, saved days are here. Now through June 23rd, find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point.
00:02:28
Look for in-store tags to earn on eligible items from Kinder, Ghost Energy, Cottonelle,
00:02:33
Ben & Jerry's, and Popsicle. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings.
00:02:39
Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery.
00:02:46
Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. My favorite world.
00:03:23
At the Fox Theater. These live show titles are brilliant. I'll say so myself. I will say so myself.
00:03:31
Do it. This episode came out February 23rd, 2017. Almost 10 years ago. Oh, no. In two years.
00:03:39
Okay. Thank you. All right, let's get into the intro of episode that was only eight years ago, number 57.
00:03:53
Wow, you came! Hi, Oakland! What's up? Wow. This is so exciting. Should we scream really quick?
00:04:33
Okay, ready? That does feel good. Yeah, our friend does. That's good. Our friend Lizzie Cooperman told us that her secret before going on stage and not being nervous is just scream into her hands.
00:04:48
It's really... That felt good. ...therapeutic. I may have damaged my instrument a little bit, though.
00:04:56
This is fucking crazy. Isn't it? Hi. Somebody tweeted a picture from the audience of the stage,
00:05:09
and the frontispiece looks like Beyonce from the Grammys, doesn't it? Do you think she dressed up like the interior of the Fox Theater on purpose?
00:05:18
Make me look. Give me that fox look, she said. Who's from Oakland and who's from not Oakland?
00:05:27
Cheers! Either way. There you go. Ask a seven-part question to kick it off. We definitely want you to be yelling the whole time.
00:05:36
So let's see. Basically. Who's from San Leandro? Who's from Dublin? This is Karen's fucking city, can you tell?
00:05:46
Top of the Hill Daily City, anybody? Not me. I mean They from places Anyway That cool We don Oh that was my cousin Stevie
00:06:07
Oh, by the way, 110 of my family members are here tonight, so. I love it. I know, I looked on our guest list and I was like, kill Gareth, kill Gareth, kill Gareth.
00:06:20
Yay. Represent. We represent in the Bay. I love it Lots of people do Should we do a quick outfit?
00:06:30
Yes Walk it across Let's do it Watch my tights Yes There you go Those are cat tights if you can't see from the balcony
00:06:44
Little tail in the back Little cats No, no Thank you, no I got a pocket dress pockets pockets
00:06:57
pockets pockets I'll never stop yelling pockets at the top of my lungs we were having like a conversation
00:07:09
backstage of like what you know a serious one and then she goes like this and I went oh pockets
00:07:13
right in there should we sit do you want me to tell you a quick story about this dress yes
00:07:20
It's going to be fast. It's going to be fast. Always. I'm not asking you. I'm asking her.
00:07:26
We went to the outlet malls in Los Angeles. We went to the Kate Spade store. I walked in.
00:07:31
I was like, I have to get... Oh, really quick. Sidebar. In the middle of the dress story.
00:07:40
Oaken, we just want you to know, this is the first night of our tour. We're starting it with you guys.
00:07:46
Right here. Amazing. Amazing. Crazy. Crazy. Anyway, I'm at the outlet malls. Kate Spade store. Had to get my tour long
00:07:58
dress. Has to be black. That's the rule we made up that we're now stuck in permanently. It sucks.
00:08:04
There's no black dresses, it turns out, that are flattering. I'm constantly obsessively buying
00:08:08
black dresses. I go in. I see a dress. It's this one on the rack. It fits me. It's my size. It has
00:08:15
pockets. I'm like, what the fuck? God is with me. I look at the price tag. It says $219. I was like,
00:08:23
hey, listen, I'm going to wear it for what? 50 shows or something like that. So are we doing
00:08:29
one dress for all the shows? Yes. The entire run. Really? These dresses are going to smell so bad
00:08:37
when we're done. It's true. Imagine. So I'm like, here, my mother's voice in my head. It's a key
00:08:45
piece, you're going to be able to wear it over and over again. Right, right. It's worth the money.
00:08:50
When you spend more, you get more. Yeah. So I'm like, all right, Pat. So I take the dress up to the counter, put it on the counter.
00:08:59
This is a classic outlet sale, outlet store tale. $79, motherfuckers. Pockets, pockets, pockets, pockets, pockets.
00:09:12
I'll never say what it is, Pat. She just laughed. She just kept walking. Walking down telegraph pockets.
00:09:23
Kevin in the door. Okay. Let's see what else. Are we really wearing these the whole thing?
00:09:31
No, no, no. We can't. That's crazy. We're actually going to wear them all weekend, though.
00:09:34
So if you see photos that look like it's here and you're like, I don't remember them doing that.
00:09:38
It's because we're not. No. I'm just going to keep wearing them up and down the coast.
00:09:42
But they're still going to smell really bad by Monday, for sure. Well, and then we can burn them in a pile.
00:09:48
Like bitches. Oh, we have an exclusive merch announcement. Here's why. Merch corner.
00:10:06
Oops, the shirts got fucked up. Corner, corner, corner, everybody. Oops, yeah. the shirts that are available tonight
00:10:14
here at the Fox Theater in Oakland. We're going to call them exclusive. We're not calling them mistake shirts.
00:10:20
No. They're exclusive. They're exclusive to this weekend. So if you were on the fence,
00:10:28
I don't know, are people, then get, I mean, it's weird. Get one. Look, it doesn't need to have our name on it
00:10:35
to make it our shirt. That's the thing. And listen, it doesn't mean the name of the podcast
00:10:39
on the front or anywhere. even on the shirt. Why reference the name of the show that the shirt belongs
00:10:45
to when you're on the tour? Someone will see you in that and you'll know they're in the know when they're like, I know
00:10:51
what that's from, even though it doesn't say the name of what it is or the name of the
00:10:55
host on it. Or any name at all, really. It's just some words. Yeah, it's because we knew you guys
00:11:01
were like, you know, everyone else needs our name on it because we're going to forget.
00:11:05
So, exclusive merch tonight only. And tomorrow night. And tomorrow. Also tomorrow.
00:11:13
Weekend. It's a weekend shit merch. Merch. Merch. Super special merch. Should we sit down?
00:11:20
Let's sit down. Are we going to... Is this correct? Not all forward. Like, why have a table and then just sit out there?
00:11:28
I know I'm doing this. That's weird. We've never sat on these sides before. Oh, should we switch it around?
00:11:34
I don't know. Yeah. It's just, you know... Let's just make it right. Yeah, there we go.
00:11:41
What's it called when you are... So, okay. We can't hear you and we don't want to know what you're saying.
00:11:50
So that's Karen. That's not how this works. That Karen I Georgia Oh yeah hi Welcome to My Favorite Murder everybody Welcome to My Favorite Murder I shouldn have done that I don know why I did that
00:12:05
Alright, welcome to my allergies. Before we start, I do have one piece of news that might be exciting for everybody that I saw.
00:12:12
Somebody tweeted it to us, secondhand from another murder, you know. You can now on Waze get Dateline's Keith Morrison's voice for your GPS.
00:12:21
Did you hear about that? I saw that. Did you listen? No, did you? No, but I want it.
00:12:27
Could you imagine that creep telling you how to get around town? Hilarious. I love it.
00:12:33
It's such a great idea. I feel like I would prefer Lieutenant Joe Kenda, though.
00:12:38
That would be mine. Oh, man, really? Yeah. He's just snow snarky the whole time.
00:12:43
Everything would be like a thing where one time I turned down this street. He's like, okay, Joe.
00:12:49
Just trying to get to Target. I bet he says, I bet he says, flip a Yui. You know, instead of making a U-turn,
00:12:56
you can never go back, but turn left and... No, just keep going. A lot of that kind of hardcore stuff.
00:13:03
Oh, God. At least it's not Nancy Grace. She went there. One more thing, just really quick.
00:13:12
So I went home really quick to Petaluma, California, to see the... Oh. My God, what if my whole hometown came to see me at the Fox?
00:13:21
I thought you hated me. So I was eating breakfast with my dad, and I said to my dad,
00:13:30
hey, do you want me to get you a murderino baseball hat? And he goes, huh, how about you...
00:13:36
Yeah. He goes, how about you get me a shirt, but instead of a monogram, it's just got a little dead body on it.
00:13:48
And I texted her, and I was like, guess what we're making next. yeah I'm like he just wants you to go get him a shirt somewhere else he doesn't even want one of
00:13:56
he might just need shirts weirdly my dad he I saw him last weekend and he pointed to his hat
00:14:02
and it was a New York City hat and he's like I'm ready for my trip to New York when you go there
00:14:07
and I'm like because you want to go see my show he's just like no I want to go to New York so
00:14:11
I'm taking my dad to New York all right Marty's coming yeah nice yeah all right right that's a
00:14:17
good way to find out your dad's coming to your show. Also, they have a, this is okay, they have a whole
00:14:24
vintage Ouija board, like, display at the SFO airport. Do I have to say SFO airport or do you say
00:14:33
SFO? You can say whatever you want. It doesn't really matter. It's like a huge, like, a bunch of
00:14:38
cabinets of, like, really fucking old Ouija boards and, like, the like. It's awesome. You can't touch them,
00:14:44
can you? No. Don't touch those. Oh, I love them. That's bad luck. Eh, luck doesn't exist.
00:14:50
Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting. What else? That kind of sounds rad, actually.
00:14:57
Yeah, that's gorgeous. That's it. Do you want to kick it off? Let's get into this thing.
00:15:03
Let's do it. Is it murder time? All right, we're back. We're back and we're planning our latest tour.
00:15:14
Just a moment of me telling everybody the price I thought I was going to pay on that dress and then the actual price and the absolute ovation that we received from a sale.
00:15:25
Murderinos love a bargain. That's one thing about us. How could we not love a bargain?
00:15:31
It's like we were in a commercial for like, you know, Kohl's or something. And when they say what the bargain is, cheer for it.
00:15:37
Cheer. Everybody cheers. Maybe we'll get an integration going where it's like TJ Maxx and My Favorite Murder.
00:15:44
And then somebody comes up and scans. You scan a tag and then it's like... And then the audience pops up and cheers for you.
00:15:52
So stoked. Well, it's really funny that we're recording this one today because this morning I literally
00:15:56
started my tour dress shopping. Oh, where'd you start it? You're gonna love it. Play Clothes in Burbank.
00:16:05
Are you gonna have them make you something? No, but you know what I'm talking about, right?
00:16:09
It's like one of the greatest vintage shops in town. Burbank has like this secret little area of vintage clothing stores that just have treasures.
00:16:18
And so I tried on a bunch of dresses today. Mostly leopard print? I would do it.
00:16:24
A 60s leopard print? I mean, that'd be incredible. Yeah. This is a consideration now.
00:16:30
We're going to go back on the road. Are we going to do what we did before? I think I'm going to bust out entirely from my clogs rebellion against my sister
00:16:37
and do something new with the shoe. Are you? I think, I don't think I'm going to do black, any black.
00:16:43
That's my new. I just don't want. I think that's exciting. Yeah. Like, I just don't, I want to wear something a little more whimsical.
00:16:48
So that's what I'm looking for is something that makes me laugh a little bit, you know?
00:16:51
Okay. Sure. That's fun. Yeah. Like something a woman going to a key party who's a little drunk on martinis and Capri
00:17:00
cigarettes would wear. Awesome. Okay, that's your mood board. Yeah, what's yours?
00:17:06
I think I should go... God. So you're sorry. Do you have a little bit of a 70s direction?
00:17:14
It's going to be between like 50s and like late 70s. Yeah. If there's something 80 that's hilarious with shoulder pads,
00:17:22
I'm not ashamed. I'll do it. So what are you doing? What if I do turn of the century?
00:17:28
and it's more like a, it's like a field marm. So I have one of those like, I have the dress that's like,
00:17:37
the shirt that gets cinched at the top and then gets like, you get like a corset on the bottom.
00:17:44
And you have like tie-on pockets. Yes. Those tie-on pockets that they had back then
00:17:49
that they put under their dress. Yes. It's almost like there's skirts. There several layers of skirts and aprons Yes like several That go on separately that someone has to help you fucking tie on Yes And then a shawl that ties around the waist and in the back
00:18:08
Yeah. And then you put the final apron over the top. Can I suggest an accessory?
00:18:13
Sure. A goat. Just a live baby goat. Walk on. But it's, I'm wearing a gorgeous $10,000 bracelet
00:18:22
that the goat's chain is attached to my bracelet. Or you can go turn of the last century
00:18:30
and just go straight up 90s, 1990s. Oh, fuck. What if you went, I'm going turn of the century,
00:18:37
but it's so fucking turn of the 21st. So it's just what? A choker, some speed, a loud voice, goldschlager.
00:18:46
Yeah. Oh, we'll make a fine pair. Camelwides. Just stumbling on camelwides. Just stumbling on stage, the two of us.
00:18:56
I mean, I think the way we stumbled on stage, and I definitely remember, this was the place where the backstage was so fancy.
00:19:04
Like, we were kind of blown away. Right. In Oakland. Right? Remember that? Yeah.
00:19:08
And your whole family was there. Yes. Of course. And my cousin Stevie afterwards told me
00:19:14
that he did not know what he was going to and didn't understand. And then when he got there,
00:19:20
and when we walked out in the ovation, we got made him cry. But then like they listened to the podcast since they were sought live.
00:19:29
That's like a, you know, testament, I think. It is. It's like we sold him on it.
00:19:36
Yeah. But he's actually Kate Winkler Dawson's number one fan. I don't know if I saw him.
00:19:39
Hell yeah. He loves her and loved Tenfolds, More Wicked and all of it. So they really became a podcast
00:19:49
family after the fact, but I had to sell out the Fox Theater in Oakland before they would leave.
00:19:56
That's all it takes, folks, to get your family to be proud of you. Yes, that's right. Just a little bit of showbiz. Wait, and this, was this a show where,
00:20:05
not this one, but the second night Nora came out and did a cartwheel? That's right. That's what I was thinking of. She definitely did a cartwheel on stage because we
00:20:12
were like, you're never going to get a chance like this again. Come out on stage.
00:20:15
Come and do it. She did it. If it was eight years ago, she was like 12 or something.
00:20:20
Yeah. No, she was like nine. Now she's going to college. Wow. She's basically prepping right now to go move into the dorms.
00:20:29
Jesus. It's so crazy. And I'm prepping to move into a retirement home. And I'm not prepping for anything.
00:20:35
I'm just letting life take me where it's going to take me. You're in the 90s, baby.
00:20:40
I actually am going to try to put an outfit idea together that would be, well, here's what it would
00:20:47
be. Why am I pretending that I have to think about it? It would be way too short for my butt plaid
00:20:53
mini skirt. Yeah. With a giant safety pin, like giant ridiculous safety pin. Remember those?
00:21:00
Like a mini kilt for a girl. Yes. And a baby doll t-shirt that says like my, the one I loved so
00:21:08
much, which was fuck the environment. Or no, sorry. I hate the environment. You know, you get
00:21:13
one of those. Yeah. Black tights that have runs in them. Yeah. Doc boots and a little cardigan
00:21:20
sweater. Lunchbox as your purse. Lunchbox is a purse filled with drugs. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We had
00:21:27
that. Barrettes. Fucking barrettes and bobby pins. Hell yeah. Barrettes that just sit on your hair
00:21:34
because they're not really working. Choker. Choker. Tongue ring, maybe? Not for me.
00:21:41
Belly button ring. I mean, my dumb salmon tattoo. I got a massage the other day and it was just like the first 10 minutes
00:21:50
and it was such a great massage. And then I remembered I have a salmon tattoo. And I was like, I wanted to say something.
00:21:57
I'm like, don't say anything. It's just too bad for you. I always forget it's there.
00:22:02
I forget my hearts are on my butt too. It's just not my problem, you know? Yeah, that's right.
00:22:07
It's everybody else's problem. I guarantee you she's seen way worse tattoos than that.
00:22:13
I guarantee you. Hopefully. Like way, like that she should have been apologized to for.
00:22:18
And your salmon's not that. My salmon is field and stream approved. Anyway, we should be talking about this show.
00:22:24
All right, let's get on to the show. Should we get started? Yes. We're about to get into Georgia's story.
00:22:31
Ugh. This one is forgot. that I've covered this. That's how like bad this one is.
00:22:37
Then I was like, I'll never do this one. And then I was looking at this and I'm like,
00:22:41
oh, I've done this one. At a live show. At a fucking, what was I thinking? Well, but also,
00:22:46
you know what you're thinking? We're a true crime podcast and we're going to tell these people
00:22:49
true crime stories and we didn't really understand that we could control the reception and the vibe.
00:22:55
But also it's a very relevant and very compelling local story. It's, yeah, it's a very like,
00:23:02
every local knows it. They want to hear it. And so I did it. And so she did it. So now let's get into Georgia's story about the Speed Freak Killers.
00:23:13
Love bread, baked goods, and pasta, but not the way they make you feel? What if I told you there are macro-friendly options that don't taste like sawdust and sadness?
00:23:21
Satisfying sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles that can stand up to your favorite chunky sauces.
00:23:25
All delicious, crave-worthy, and smart. Each serving of Hero Bread has up to 19 grams of protein and 32 grams of fiber.
00:23:32
and just zero to five grams net carbs and zero grams sugar hero bread bakes with heart healthy
00:23:38
olive oil and delivers this soft fluffy flavorful experience you love breakfast burritos smear
00:23:43
loaded bagels real mac and cheese hero bread bakes loaves bagels and tortillas that don't
00:23:48
taste or feel like cardboard noodles that don't fall apart in hearty sauces plus limited edition
00:23:53
small batch bakes like the two grams net carb hero croissant or one gram net carb hero cheddar
00:23:58
biscuit handmade in a situation. Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway. For you, save days are here now through June 23rd.
00:24:18
Find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point. Look for in-store tags to earn on eligible items from Kinder,
00:24:25
Ghost Energy, Cottonelle, Ben & Jerry's, and Popsicle. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings.
00:24:32
Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery.
00:24:39
Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. This is Radhi Dabluk here from A Really Good Cry.
00:24:46
Most wellness routines fail somewhere between day one motivation and where did I put that powder?
00:24:51
That's where Gruen's comes in. Grooms packs over 20 vitamins and minerals, greens and prebiotics into a snack pack of tiny delicious gummies.
00:25:00
No powders, no pills, just a simple way to support gut health, beauty, energy, immunity, recovery and cognition.
00:25:06
Plus the ingredients in Grooms are backed by over 35,000 research publications. It's a convenient, comprehensive formula designed for real life.
00:25:14
Get up to 52% off with code CRY at Grooms.co. That's code CRY at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O.
00:25:24
Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:25:30
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Lily Chu, the author of the Audible original romantic comedy Just Kiss Already.
00:25:38
It's a story about a forensic anthropologist who secretly writes mystery novels,
00:25:42
an actress who adapts his book into a film, and what happens when a meme and a media tour collide with a slow burn romance.
00:25:51
It's performed by Simu Liu and Philippa Su, and it is an absolute blast. When you actually hear the performance, you realize that other people are taking your words
00:26:03
and what you thought was kind of a straightforward sentence like, the cat in the corner is black.
00:26:09
In my head, it's the cat in the corner is black, not the dog, not the gerbil. But someone else might say it, the cat in the corner is black.
00:26:17
That's always fascinating to me. How they just bring in all these different nuances and really make it fun and interesting and distinctive.
00:26:24
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:39
Who's first? I'm first. You're first. I'm first this week. All right. This is a real fun one.
00:26:47
Don't look. Why do you keep... Literally, this piece of paper has been, anytime it's within two
00:26:52
feet of me, she snatches it away and goes, don't look. Because I would look. I get the point of
00:26:57
the podcast. I'm not going to fucking sneak and read it and be like, uh-huh. Because I would look.
00:27:03
I'm amazed I haven't looked at yours yet. Heard this already. All right. So let's talk about two dudes who are total pieces of shit.
00:27:13
Great. Also known as the Speed Freak Killers. Uh-oh. Nobody. We'll see. Nobody knows about him.
00:27:23
Okay. But a bunch of Speed Freaks in the audience are like, uh-oh, is it me? Shit.
00:27:28
They found out. They found out. Arrest this man. And then they come in. That would actually be an amazing end of this show.
00:27:35
It would be like a Phil Collins concert. You saw me when you were drowning, and you did not lend a hand.
00:27:46
That's not how it goes. Actually, there was a kid who drove me here from my hotel,
00:27:54
and I was telling him about the podcast that I was listening to about Boston Stranglers, and he was like,
00:27:58
never heard of them. And I'm like, oh, you're 21, and you don't know about murder.
00:28:02
Yeah. Anyways. Okay. He's about to. Speed freak. Jared, listen up. Was his name Jared?
00:28:08
Lauren Herzog and Wesley Schermantine Jr. were childhood friends. They grew up on the same street, like right by each other in a farming town called Linden, California.
00:28:20
Yeah, fucked. They, hold on. They might actually just like the names of towns in California.
00:28:28
Is that what you're doing? Woohoo. It's like those people who eat, like, they're at a restaurant
00:28:33
and someone else is getting sung Happy Birthday and they have to sing along with it, too.
00:28:37
And you're like, do you? Yeah, they don't know you. Okay, they grew up together.
00:28:43
It's 95 miles east of California. They were hunters. They graduated high school in 84,
00:28:48
and they gained a reputation as meth users. Hey, me too. Not in 1984, though. It's believed that Herzog and Schermantyne began murdering people
00:29:00
when they were around 18 or 19, although it's possible it started earlier than that, even.
00:29:05
So, Shermantine would brag to his friends and families about making people disappear,
00:29:09
which is what you want in a sibling. Their family's like, I'm going to take that in the way that I choose to interpret it.
00:29:18
Oh, are you a magician? You can make people disappear? Finally, you have an interest that we can get into.
00:29:24
Let's see you do it. Do it. Okay, their first known victim was in 1985, a 16-year-old Stockton, California girl named Chevy Wheeler disappeared, it says.
00:29:40
She had been dating 19-year-old Wesley and had ditched school that day to hang out with him.
00:29:47
Don't hang out with your 19-year-old boyfriend when you ditch your school, man. Be cool, stay in school.
00:29:54
Then you get to be this one No we dropped out of college We really didn finish any school at all Skin of my teeth Okay So then so she had been dating him
00:30:05
She left to hang out with him. Never seen again. Her blood was found in his cabin that he had.
00:30:12
But the district attorney didn't think the DNA evidence was definitive. So, nope.
00:30:17
Well, he's the one that would know. In 1984. No. No. It's just splattered willy-nilly.
00:30:25
Blood is meaningless to me. Yeah, I know. I'm a lawyer. What does it mean, you know?
00:30:29
So then in 98, so that was 85. Now we're in 98, and then Cindy Vander Heiden, she's 25, the San Joaquin Valley,
00:30:37
disappears from the Linden Bar Inn, which sounds like a fucking dive bar that you don't want to be in.
00:30:42
Even if, like, in the inn, I-N-N, at the end of any bar, you don't go there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:30:48
No. She had been seen talking to Lauren and Wesley, and actually Lauren had dated her older sister
00:30:54
so they knew each other and supposedly they all left together, the three of them.
00:30:59
Then her car is found by her dad the next day like outside of local cemetery and it's like a new car
00:31:04
and the dad was like, what the fuck is her car doing there? And like they panic and it's really sad.
00:31:10
Then so she disappears and then the cops are like, wait a second. He has something to do,
00:31:17
Wesley has something to do with Cindy's disappearance and they were like 13 years later, earlier,
00:31:23
this other one, they're like putting the pieces together. So they can't get his DNA,
00:31:28
but they repossess his car when he doesn't pay for it, pay the payments, and they fucking swab that shit.
00:31:34
All that meaningless DNA is suddenly relevant. Suddenly it's 98 and people give a shit.
00:31:39
Hi. Okay, can I tell you about his tattoos real quick? Please. Lauren had made and fueled by hate and restrained by reality.
00:31:50
Sorry, say it again. Made and fueled by hate and restrained by reality. But he's already killed two people?
00:31:59
Yeah, so he's not being restrained by anything. Sounds like our government. Also, um...
00:32:04
That's why I whispered that. I didn't know what you said. Oh, I said sounds like our government.
00:32:10
Oh, wow. Then I get shot. Send hit mail to Georgia at Georgia. What was it? I just wondered what the picture underneath that phrase was like.
00:32:27
Just like a seal with a ball on its nose or something. I don't know. Like a baby chick?
00:32:33
Just like the Notre Dame Irishman. Restrained by reality. You know it was a Tasmanian devil.
00:32:41
And he's wearing cut off jeans. Totally. Yeah. Just all mad. He also had a tattoo on his right foot that said,
00:32:48
Made the devil do it. Made the devil do it? Yeah, unless I'm... No, I copied and pasted that.
00:32:55
Made the devil do it. So his foot made the devil do something? Apparently. The devil's like, dude, I'm good.
00:33:03
Don't involve me in your bullshit, the devil said. I can do it without meth. So, I don't even...
00:33:10
So, he's... Okay, this motherfucker is married with children, of course. And then he offers to give DNA once they start looking into Wesley, his buddy Wesley.
00:33:20
So the police pick him up. They're going to bring him to the station. And in the car on the way to the station, he starts fucking crying.
00:33:26
And asks what he can do to get out of this. Wait, he may have been crying about those tattoos, though.
00:33:32
Fair enough. I don't even like the Tasmanian devil anymore. I was made by hate. It feels bad to hate.
00:33:40
And so he gets interrogated for 17 hours, confesses to the murder of Cindy. He says that they met her at a bar.
00:33:49
They were going to go do drugs. Wesley did everything, attempts to rape her. She resists.
00:33:55
They pull over. Bad things happen. And so Lauren was like stabbing Cindy. Or Lauren said that when Wesley was stabbing Cindy, he said, just let it come natural.
00:34:08
I know. He told detectives that Wesley was responsible for at least 24 murders. Holy shit.
00:34:14
He doesn't confess to anything himself, though, and just makes it seem like he's an accomplice.
00:34:17
Of course. Sure. You're just standing by. Yeah, hang out. Murder again? I wanted to go to Dave and Buster's.
00:34:24
God damn it. He said we could go after, so I said okay. All right. So next day, Wesley's arrested.
00:34:29
Lauren keeps talking, tells him about the 84 killing spree that they just shot two fucking
00:34:34
random dudes who were hanging out outside their car. and he confesses to killing a man,
00:34:40
a 41-year-old man named Henry Howell. He's at the side of his road with his broken car
00:34:44
and they just go up and shoot him. It's in 1984 in Hope Valley. In 2000, 34-year-old Wesley goes on trial for four murders,
00:34:54
but Lauren's confession of what happened, his 17-hour interrogation, is inadmissible because the tape couldn't be cross-examined.
00:35:02
the jury finds him guilty though of first degree murder in all four cases he's offered a deal to
00:35:10
sentencing that the death penalty would be off the table if they told him where the bodies of
00:35:14
cindy and chevy were but he also wanted the twenty thousand dollar reward that had been offered for
00:35:20
their whereabouts sure absolutely he found them you should absolutely get twenty thousand dollars
00:35:26
of the reward for finding you the murderer. Right. That is totally how it works.
00:35:32
Exactly. Sounds like our government. Let's just keep doing it. Let's just keep doing it all night long.
00:35:40
It's fine. We're going to Vancouver tomorrow. We can just stay there if we need to.
00:35:43
I forgot my passport. Oh, that's right. Yeah. It's being worked out. My husband is a dear, sweet angel
00:35:53
who's FedExing things. Okay so Okay the family about the reward says go fuck yourself Yeah No no no no Good They said so he sentenced to death Then Lauren is tried for the murder of five people
00:36:06
including Cindy. His video is admissible now. He's found guilty of first degree and three killings,
00:36:11
and he gets life without the possibility of parole. But wait, nope, it gets worse.
00:36:16
In 2004, a state appeals court overturned Lauren's conviction, saying the police coerced his confession
00:36:23
during the long interrogations. And they said that the police ignored his rights to remain silent, deprived him of all this shit.
00:36:31
A new trial order, but Herzog's lawyer worked out a plea deal with the prosecutors.
00:36:36
He agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and accessory to murder in exchange for a 14-year sentence with credit for a time surge.
00:36:44
So he's out on parole on September 18, 2010. Wait a second. It's 2017. Yeah. He lives in a shitty home.
00:36:57
They keep an eye on him. He's got all this tracking device. But don't worry, guys.
00:37:01
He kills himself. So he basically, when he finds out that Wesley is going to tell them where the bodies are,
00:37:08
he's like, oh, shit, and kills himself. He is offered $33,000, Wesley is, by a bounty hunter to tell him where the bodies are.
00:37:17
Whoa. I know. I think he tricked him, though. So let's see. he provides maps to five burial sites
00:37:26
where his victims could be found referring to one of them as their bone yard and they find Cindy and Chevy's bodies
00:37:34
and there's three separate burial sites and human remains are found there at least 300 human bones of varying size
00:37:42
as well as coats, shoes, purses and jewelry from a well on the land in rural North California
00:37:50
Yeah. I thought you, for a second, I thought they fucking shipped some bones. Let's go over here.
00:37:57
They found other remains in a well. And so dental records identify Cindy and Chevy.
00:38:07
And they find almost 1,000 human bone fragments in an old abandoned well. And including a woman named Joanne Hobson.
00:38:16
She was 16 years old, went missing in 85. and Wesley claims that there are as many as 72 victims.
00:38:22
72? In that amount of time. Can you believe that, like, I didn't even hear about these dudes.
00:38:31
No, I've never heard of this. I've seen their names, but actually when I was doing this research,
00:38:36
I had a go- There's no place that just explains what happened and, like, who disappeared.
00:38:41
It's always, like, there's an article about these two women who disappeared. There's an article about him killing himself.
00:38:46
There's, like, little fragments, but there's nothing recent. It's not all underneath the one.
00:38:50
No, so I had to make it. Just like... And maybe make up some facts, whatever. I don't know, tattoos. You're not going to know
00:39:00
if he has those tattoos. You're not. He's dead. That's crazy. Well, that's... Because that's so many. I know.
00:39:07
I mean, why would you make... I don't know. It's just this, like... If it was from, like,
00:39:11
84 to 98, there's a lot of time in there. Yes. Well, they also believe that he's connected, they're connected
00:39:18
Almost 14 years. Is it 14? I don't know. Yes. They also believe that they may be connected to the 88 disappearance of nine-year-old Michelle
00:39:34
Garrick from Hayward. Remember that one? She was abducted on November 19th, 1988, in broad daylight outside a grocery store.
00:39:42
She found her scooter. It had been moved next to a parked car, and she goes to get it.
00:39:46
some motherfucker grabs her and puts her in the car and they draw what's it called when they draw on your face?
00:39:54
Sketch. Thank you. I thought you said what's it called when they draw on your face?
00:40:00
I'm like falling asleep at a frat party? What the fuck is what is this story? Composite sketch.
00:40:08
Got it. It looks just fucking like Lauren. It's just creepy. And so her case was the first missing child case to be featured on America's Most Wanted.
00:40:21
So Wesley, one of the speed freak dudes, wrote a letter saying that Lauren committed,
00:40:27
and I don't know, that's a copy and paste mistake, that he said that they should look into what happened to that Hayward girl
00:40:35
and actually found shoes at the bottom of the well that looked like the one she was wearing that day.
00:40:41
I know, sweet baby. Okay, so Central Valley Department destroyed a bunch of missing persons record, though, so we might not ever know that.
00:40:50
Okay, and the other suspected victims that have been, that are looked like is Terry Ann Forcher from Reno, Dina McCann.
00:41:01
She was last seen getting gas near Lodi while two men were bothering her. and then Kimberly and Billy
00:41:09
disappeared from Stockton and Robin Armtrout whose body was found stabbed to death
00:41:14
and was last seen getting into a car with two men and the car matched the description of Wesley's
00:41:19
so he's still on death row and he's like opening up a lot more now and he said that's good
00:41:25
he's doing some poetry and stuff like really accessing his feelings he's like doing the thing of like oh yeah I fucked up
00:41:34
okay I get it my son won't talk to me anymore so I know how these parents feel of losing their children.
00:41:38
Not even fucking kidding you. Well, I mean, look. I don't know. There's nothing else to say about that.
00:41:44
I thought we were going to have some wisdom for me. Look, here's the thing. Look, meth is bad.
00:41:48
Yeah. It really is. He says now, to think about all that stuff I did, I try not to I would have nightmares Fuck you pal Night motherfucker Wow Speed freak killers The speed freak killers everybody
00:42:06
Shit. Yeah, that's your fucking doing, Northern California. You guys didn't do it.
00:42:17
And we're back. Okay, do you have updates for this case? I do. As of May 2023, San Joaquin County detectives Jeremy Davis, who grew up in Herman's neighborhood, and Chris, I know.
00:42:30
I mean, they're all like locals, and it's small townie blue collar, you know? Yeah.
00:42:34
And Chris Sturney are methodically reviewing decades of unsolved cases, particularly in rural areas between Stockton and Tracy, to look for patterns and possible links to Shermantine and Herzog.
00:42:46
And so items recovered in 2012, like a ring, sandals, and a locket, are now being publicly
00:42:51
released by investigators in hopes someone recognizes those items and helps identify
00:42:57
the mysterious Jane Doe from the well. Can you imagine, like, you have a missing daughter and you have to go look at those
00:43:04
items online to try to see if you recognize? No, I can't imagine. And the article about that, there's an article in the Sacramento News and Review by Scott
00:43:14
Thomas Anderson, and it's a really great article if you want to read about that. It's got some
00:43:17
stuff about the Golden State Killer as well. And it's just, you know, more heartbreak.
00:43:21
Yeah. And then due to California's changing stance on the death penalty, Wesley Shermantine
00:43:25
was moved off of death row in 2024. He remains in prison and hopefully always will.
00:43:33
Those murders were horrific. So bad. I'm glad I did them and we got them out of the way and we never have to do them again
00:43:39
until we do the next rewind of this. That's right. Then we have to look it all in the face once again.
00:43:45
All right. Well, let's get into Karen's story about Herbert Mullen. Love bread, baked goods, and pasta, but not the way they make you feel?
00:43:57
What if I told you there are macro-friendly options that don't taste like sawdust and sadness?
00:44:02
Satisfying sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles that can stand up to your favorite chunky sauces.
00:44:07
All delicious. Crave-worthy and smart, each serving of Hero Bread has up to 19 grams of protein and 32 grams of fiber,
00:44:14
and just 0 to 5 grams net carbs and 0 grams sugar. Hero Bread bakes with heart-healthy olive oil and delivers the soft, fluffy, flavorful experience you love.
00:44:23
Breakfast burritos, schmear-loaded bagels, real mac and cheese. Hero Bread bakes loaves, bagels, and tortillas that don't taste or feel like cardboard.
00:44:31
Noodles that don't fall apart in hearty sauces. Plus, limited edition small batch bakes like the 2 grams net carb Hero Croissant or 1 gram net carb Hero Cheddar Biscuit.
00:44:40
Handmade in a Sonoma-based French bakery. Shop now on Hero.co. Use code IHEART for 10% off.
00:44:46
That's Hero.co. Per serving, not a low-calorie food. Some products contain allulose.
00:44:50
See nutrition info on Hero.co for sodium and sugar content. Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway.
00:44:56
For you, save days are here now through June 23rd. Find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point.
00:45:03
Look for in-store tags to earn on eligible items from Kinder, Ghost Energy, Cottonelle, Ben & Jerry's, and Popsicle.
00:45:10
Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more.
00:45:16
Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery.
00:45:21
Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. Most wellness routines fail somewhere between day one motivation and where did I put that powder?
00:45:30
That's where Groon's comes in. Grooms packs over 20 vitamins and minerals, greens and prebiotics into a snack pack of tiny delicious gummies.
00:45:39
No powders, no pills, just a simple way to support gut health, beauty, energy, immunity, recovery and cognition.
00:45:45
Plus the ingredients in Grooms are backed by over 35,000 research publications. It's a convenient, comprehensive formula designed for real life.
00:45:53
Get up to 52% off with code CRY at Grooms.co. That's code CRY at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O.
00:46:27
lied with a slow burn romance. It's performed by Simu Liu and Philippa Su, and it is an absolute
00:46:35
blast. When you actually hear the performance, you realize that other people are taking your words
00:46:42
and what you thought was kind of a straightforward sentence like, the cat in the corner is black.
00:46:48
In my head, it's the cat in the corner is black, not the dog, not the gerbil. But someone else
00:46:53
might say it, the cat in the corner is black. That's always fascinating to me. How they just
00:46:58
bring in all these different nuances and really make it fun and interesting and distinctive.
00:47:04
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get
00:47:09
your podcasts. All right, now I get comfy. Oh, now you're going to dig in? yeah let's do it
00:47:23
wow mine also did drugs he did a lot of drugs my guy he doesn't really have a funny nickname like many of them do
00:47:38
although you've probably heard of him his name is Herbert Mullen and Herbert Mullen
00:47:44
thank you Herbert Mullen is the serial killer from from Fenton, California, near Santa Cruz,
00:47:55
and represent Go Banana Slug, Is that a thing? Yeah, this UC Santa Cruz mascot is a banana slug.
00:48:07
Yes. Is she fucking with me? Really? The children, they got to vote on their own mascot.
00:48:14
And because irony is fun, they chose a banana slug. No, no. Never let children choose anything important.
00:48:20
When I was in soccer, we were the teal tornado. You just get to pick your own stupid things and kids are dumb.
00:48:27
Well, I mean, it is college. Oh, Jesus. Christ. That's even worse. Wow. Yeah. I'm disappointed.
00:48:36
They love pot. Who doesn't? So Herbert Mellon was the guy, you may have heard of him.
00:48:44
It happened in the 70s. He was the one that was active at the same time as Edmund Kemper, the co-ed killer
00:48:50
who was also in Santa Cruz. So Santa Cruz in the early 70s had two full-on serial killers at the same time.
00:49:00
Earning it the nickname Murderville, USA. No. Yeah. Our own little Santa Cruz. Work, live, play.
00:49:10
Murderville, USA. Murder. Hide. Bum out. But unlike Edmund Kemper, Herbert Mullen was killing for our benefit.
00:49:22
He believed that he had to make human sacrifices so that earthquakes wouldn't hit California.
00:49:30
Did anyone ever tell him that earthquakes are kind of fun, though? No, he's clearly very scared of earthquakes.
00:49:36
What an idiot. He didn't want them to happen. Let me tell you about him. I'll tell you a little bit about him.
00:49:42
So he was born on April 18, 1947, to a very strict Catholic family. He was in high school.
00:49:49
He was good-looking, athletic, and polite. The trifecta. No. Be careful. I'm telling you, it is not good to peak in high school.
00:49:59
Psychotic or charming? Yeah. Somewhere in between is what you want. If you're hiding behind those beautiful teeth, good luck.
00:50:07
Yeah. He was actually voted most likely to succeed. And he did, I guess. And he, well, some saw it as a success.
00:50:17
After graduating in 1965, he went to college. He majored in engineering. And he considered following in his father's footsteps of joining the military.
00:50:26
but the turning point of his otherwise normal life came around the time when his best friend
00:50:34
was killed in a car accident and this was the first moment where he uh his a psychotic episode
00:50:43
was triggered so he was right at the age where schizophrenia starts to show um in young men
00:50:50
and basically it was the stress and the grief he had this psychotic episode and his behavior became
00:50:56
to change entirely. And his family started to get really scared of him. So his friend died. He
00:51:03
built a shrine in his room to his friend. He started arranging all the furniture in his room
00:51:09
around the shrine, and he was sit at it for hours and hours alone. He had to break up with his
00:51:17
girlfriend, explaining to her that he thought he was turning gay because of the shrine.
00:51:23
You know how you just turn into a game. Just slowly turning, turning, turning. He was going to let her know when he turned entirely.
00:51:31
But he didn't feel comfortable leading her on. I'm lying about all that part. He became obsessed with the concept of reincarnation.
00:51:40
And he became increasingly paranoid. And he started hearing voices. So his behavior was really scaring his family.
00:51:47
Because he was starting to do super weird things. Like beg his sister for sex. What?
00:51:55
So gay. Such a gay move. And he also was doing a thing that he began to compulsively imitate every movement his brother-in-law made.
00:52:10
Oh, God. His sister was also married. So it was sinful in many ways that he was begging her for sex.
00:52:16
The movement was sex. Yeah. Is that the movement? No, no. Just every movement. So this is actually a real disorder called echopraxia.
00:52:25
Really? Yes. Echopraxia is when you have the compulsion to imitate every single thing a person does.
00:52:31
Even if you don't even want to, you just have to keep doing it. It's a compulsion.
00:52:34
And echolalia is the compulsion to repeat anything someone says. Whoa. What's the compulsion to want to screw your sister?
00:52:43
Gross. I guess that's called Game of Thrones. Yay! What? What? Thank you. All the way up in the back.
00:52:51
Fucking pro over here. Okay, so in the early 70s, in an attempt to calm himself,
00:52:59
he began to take huge doses of LSD. What a perfect solution. He also was taking a lot of amphetamines.
00:53:09
No. Yeah, just a little bit to bring him up after he went into that other dimension.
00:53:14
That sounds like a, no. For a little energy. I'm not a doctor but if you're feeling paranoid
00:53:22
think you're seeing things acid isn't the way it's just not it's a non-solution and if you're paranoid
00:53:30
and think you're seeing things because you're on acid meth isn't the way yeah that's right
00:53:34
let's not don't double down no no no no yeah don't go into the white drug area like pick a drug
00:53:40
no don't do drugs you guys don't do drugs but if you're but if you're gonna you know
00:53:45
listen you know Ow. You know. You know. Just hit myself in the face with the mic.
00:53:50
What's up? You missed it. I wanted to tell you that. Oh I wrote here maybe try some aromatic oils It fun Don you you love yourself at that moment Writing is fun I was having a great time drinking this huge thing of coffee
00:54:07
I was enjoying myself. So, Herbert came to believe that his friend's death had been a part of a grand cosmic plan,
00:54:15
and he changed his college major from engineering to philosophy. He became obsessed with reincarnation, religion, and, take note, impending natural disasters.
00:54:25
Uh-oh. So, in 1969, he was finally diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia,
00:54:32
and he allowed his family to commit him to Mendocino State Hospital, one of the many state hospitals that doesn't exist anymore
00:54:40
because they cut the funding for mental health, which is fucked. Let's see what we can do to fix that.
00:54:46
America? Did your mom work there? Mendocino's way up north, but she did work in a state hospital, yeah.
00:54:55
You can't let a city go by, can you? Well, all of California has come to see us tonight.
00:55:01
It's so exciting. I don't know a single person here. No. There's nobody on my...
00:55:09
No, there was. You don't know. What if you find out that you do? Okay, so Herbert spent the following years...
00:55:18
Oh, sorry, he went to Mendocino State Hospital. I preach, preach, preach. And then the back half of that was he checked himself out six weeks later.
00:55:26
So then he spent the following years drifting around Northern California, working small-time jobs, spending short periods of time in various mental institutions.
00:55:34
He practiced yoga, meditation, ate a macrobiotic diet, yet he was vocally ultra-conservative.
00:55:41
And essential oils, probably. Maybe he was using some essential oils, which was my idea.
00:55:47
He spent time as an amateur boxer. He actually had to be forcibly removed from the ring
00:55:54
when he wouldn't stop beating his opponent. Hey, you're an amateur. You don't have to kill that guy.
00:56:01
At one point, he attempted to join the priesthood. And they were like, no thanks.
00:56:09
Which is really saying something. All right. So, in this time, Herbert is fixating on impending natural disasters, of course also doing tons of
00:56:22
acid, and he comes up with a theory. He becomes convinced that nature requires a blood sacrifice
00:56:29
to keep the next big earthquake from hitting California. He theorized that the violence
00:56:36
during the Vietnam War had been enough bloodshed to control earthquakes throughout the late 60s,
00:56:41
But now that the war was over, there was nothing to stop the big one from destroying the state.
00:56:48
I mean, how does he know the percentage of blood to, like, the percentage of years, like, the number of years?
00:56:53
You know what I mean? I know. Because he was an engineer? No, I know. It's like a typical, like, oh, actually, it's this much blood.
00:57:00
Like, of course. This is how many people were killed in Vietnam. And you calculate that.
00:57:04
No Herbert. Herbert believed that because his birthday was April 18th, same day as the 1906 earthquake that leveled San Francisco
00:57:20
and the death day of Albert Einstein, that this made him the leader of his generation.
00:57:28
That's all you need is fucking a birthday. One good birthday. And as the leader, it was his job to make sure enough people die
00:57:37
to prevent the big one from killing everyone. so he had to begin murdering people
00:57:42
for the good of mankind before that and I swear to God this is a classic cut and paste
00:57:49
before that he had considered relocating to Canada wish you'd done that then you'd have your murder for tomorrow
00:58:00
that's right just do Herbert Mullen up there so it turns out Herbert Mullen hates maple syrup
00:58:07
alright So it starts on October 13th, 1972. Herbert Mullen is 24 years old. He drives home to visit his parents.
00:58:18
Oh, in Felton, California. Sorry, not Fenton. I said Fenton. It's Felton. My apologies to the mayor and the comptroller.
00:58:31
So if you don't know, Felton is this tiny town. It's north of Santa Cruz on the 9.
00:58:38
it's right in those like right give it up for the nine everybody one of the better
00:58:43
small highways of california there's redwoods everywhere it's actually gorgeous okay it's so
00:58:50
gorgeous perfect place to put a body of it that's right um it's also where i went to camp oh my god
00:58:57
so yeah camp st andrews children's live bodies at a camp i mean it wait for it okay so
00:59:05
as he's driving down, he's going back to visit his parents, and he later tells police that this
00:59:14
is when he received a telepathic message from his father saying, Herb, I want you to kill me,
00:59:19
somebody. So you don't listen to your parents all your life, and this is when you're going to
00:59:25
fucking start listening to your, come on, Herb. Dad's drinking a ham beer, ham's beer at home,
00:59:31
I didn't do it. Bring me into this shit. Okay. So, Herbert Mullen sees, as he's driving on the 9,
00:59:40
he sees a homeless man named Lawrence White who is on the side of the road. So what he does is he pulls over and he lifts the hood of his car,
00:59:47
feigning car trouble. And when the man comes over to ask if he needs any help, Herbert Mullen bludgeons him to death with a baseball bat and leaves his body where it lays And that man is found a few days later Days A few days later On the side of the road Yeah because it like way up in forest land
01:00:07
It's remote. So less than two weeks later, it gets worse. Should I sing this song?
01:00:13
It gets so much worse. And it really did. No, thank you. Oh, thank you. But also it really does.
01:00:22
Two weeks later, Herbert picked up a hitchhiker named Mary Guilfoyle, who was a student at UC Santa Cruz.
01:00:31
Don't cheer for it. Because, listen to this. Flugs? He stabbed her in the heart in his car.
01:00:39
Then he brought her body into the woods near the roadside. He cut her open. He hanged her intestines from tree branches.
01:00:48
and he examined them for pollution. Yes. For fuck's sake. Her remains weren't found for several months.
01:00:58
And when they were discovered, the police assumed that this murder was the work of Edmund Kemper.
01:01:05
Because, you know, they weren't like, oh, it could be another fucking serial killer in Santa Cruz.
01:01:13
You know, that other one. Yeah. Why don't you guys just go on that roller coaster down by the sea and relax?
01:01:22
All right. So Mary Guilfoyle's murder haunted Mullins. So to the point where on November 2nd, All Souls Day, he walked into Las Gadas Catholic Church.
01:01:32
He took confession with Father Henry Thompson, and he confessed everything. He talked about these murders in detail.
01:01:41
but then when he was done, a voice told him that this priest was offering himself up
01:01:48
as a sacrifice. How many times do I have to warn you? So, Mullen stabbed Father Tomsy to death
01:01:58
in the confessional and then walked out of the church. But then how do we know that he said all that to him?
01:02:04
Sorry? How do we know that he confessed all that to him then? He told the police everything.
01:02:08
Oh, I get the other one. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He proudly told his own story at the end of this insanity.
01:02:15
Okay. So, then he tries to enlist in the Marine Corps. A natural next step. And though he did pass both the physical and psychiatric exams...
01:02:29
What? Yeah. He was rejected when they brought up his arrest record and saw his history of bizarre behavior.
01:02:38
Also, he was colorblind. But otherwise, you're fine. That's fine. What? Flat feet? Get out of here!
01:02:51
He later claimed that he never would have become a serial killer if he had just been accepted into the Marines.
01:02:57
You've already killed three fucking people, dude. It's kind of a fake excuse. You have to admit.
01:03:03
Maybe. So this rejection affects him a lot to the point where he stops taking massive amounts of acid
01:03:10
every day. But his severe, violent, paranoid schizophrenia is out of control, totally untreated.
01:03:20
He believes that this rejection from the Marines is just another example of the conspiracy against
01:03:26
him in his life. He also accuses his parents of participating in this conspiracy. He accuses them
01:03:34
of being, quote, killjoy reincarnationalists, which is not a real thing, who believed their next lives would be more enjoyable
01:03:44
if they made the current lives of others miserable. Oh, man, can you imagine just being a parent?
01:03:49
You're like, I want to have babies. I do too. I love you. And then you just have this fucking asshole.
01:03:53
Yeah. You just birth an asshole out onto the fucking table. Man. Tough. But also, it's kind of funny
01:04:02
because then also then I just think of like when you're 13, it's kind of just a teenage mentality of like,
01:04:09
my parents live to make everyone else's lives awful. They're reincarnationists. Fucking reincarnationalists.
01:04:18
All right. So, swept up in his paranoid delusions, Mullen decides to kill Jim Gennaro,
01:04:25
his high school pot dealer. Oh. That's a weird choice. It doesn't work that way, Herbert.
01:04:34
He believes that because Jim sold him pot, that he was part of the plot to destroy his mind
01:04:41
and that he had to avenge himself. The guy's like, I fucking sold you oregano, dude.
01:04:46
Yeah. Damn it. It was a pot. Why isn't it ever your fault, Herb? Why isn't it on you ever?
01:04:52
All right. So around the same time, a voice told Mullen to buy a gun because it would be a cleaner way of killing people.
01:05:02
On January 25th, 1973, Herbert Mullen drove to Jim Gennaro's house or where Jim Gennaro lived when they were in high school.
01:05:12
When he got there, he met current resident Kathy Francis. And she explained that Gennaro didn't live there anymore.
01:05:20
Herbert explained that he was a friend of Jim's and so Kathy gave Mullen Jim's new address.
01:05:27
That night, Mullen drove to the Janera's new home and shot and killed Jim Janera and his wife, Joan, and then stabbed them both repeatedly post-mortem.
01:05:39
Oh, no. Yeah. He then went back and murdered Kathy Francis. No! I thought she got away!
01:05:49
And her two young sons. No! Fuck, man. Guys it in the name my favorite murder you know what I mean Oh man Because both Jim Gennaro and Kathy Francis husband had dealt drugs at one time
01:06:09
the police assumed that both of the murders, being the same MO, had to be drug-related.
01:06:15
Less than two weeks later, Mullen saw four teenage boys camping in Henry Cowell Redwood State Park.
01:06:22
You been there? Oh, yeah. In fact, I didn't have time to look it up, but that might be where we went to camp.
01:06:28
I'm not kidding. Are you serious? Well, there's a bunch of state parks, but I would like it to be.
01:06:35
These boys were David Olicker, 18, Robert Spector, 18, Brian Card, 19, and Mark Drabelbiss, 15.
01:06:44
Mullins approached them, posing as a park ranger, and told them to leave, claiming that they were polluting the park.
01:06:51
Uh-oh. There's that word again. Fucking hippies. When the boys dismissed him, he pulled the gun, shot them all one by one.
01:07:00
He stole a rifle from that campsite, and then he left. Herbert Mullen's final murder took place on February 13th, 1973.
01:07:08
Holy fuck. 73-year-old Fred Perez was gardening in his front yard. Mullen drove by and shot him with the rifle that he stole from that campsite.
01:07:19
Luckily, a neighbor witnessed the whole thing, wrote down Mullen's license plate number,
01:07:23
called the police, and Herbert Mullen was arrested shortly thereafter with no incident.
01:07:29
It is a nice feeling, isn't it? Yeah. They got him. And he was arrested without incident.
01:07:34
He was just like, yep, all right, we're done here. Wow. But then they get to the police station.
01:07:39
This is kind of my favorite part. Okay. They get to the police station, and Mullen was totally uncooperative.
01:07:45
his response to every question the police asked was, Silence! Oh. Which you have to admit would be kind of fun if you got arrested.
01:07:57
Yeah. The police were like, where were you on that? Silence! I'm going to try it next time I get arrested, I think.
01:08:04
Or really, any time. I mean. You're welcome to. Thank you. Thank you. So. when Edmund Kemper
01:08:14
the co-ed killer was arrested he and Mullen were briefly held in adjoining cells
01:08:20
Santa Cruz besties Santa Cruz best friends killing all around the forest you think baby claims red blood brothers
01:08:29
through the yeah keep it up keep it up you fucking psycho Kemper actually accused Mullen
01:08:39
of stealing his dump sites, which is... Hey, Ed, Ed, relax. He didn't even use dump sites, you fucking idiot.
01:08:48
There's enough for everyone. Eventually, Herbert Mullen confessed to all 13 murders,
01:08:56
explaining to police that these human sacrifices were necessary for earthquake prevention.
01:09:03
Only you can prevent forest fires, he said to the police. and then he yelled, silence!
01:09:10
Is that how they came up with the only you can prevent forest fires? Forest fires.
01:09:15
Oh, did you know that was... He looked a little bit like a bear and they were like, hold on.
01:09:20
And he was naked from the waist down with a hat on. Really deep voice. He also claimed that he had telepathically
01:09:28
asked those four boys at the campsite if he could kill them and that they'd all given him permission.
01:09:34
At least two of them would have been like, fuck now? You know? Yeah, that's when the police began to beat him senseless.
01:09:42
Really? It's not on the internet anywhere, but we can pretty much be assured. Okay.
01:09:48
In the end, Mullen was found guilty of two counts of first degree murder because they proved that Kathy Francis and Jim Gennaro's murders were premeditated.
01:09:57
But everything else, they could not prove that also because he was so insane. So he had eight counts of second degree murder.
01:10:05
Fuck. He was sentenced to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2021 when he is 74 years old.
01:10:16
No. I doubt it'll work. I doubt it'll work out. Probably not. But, you know. Yeah, that's it.
01:10:27
That's all. Pretty good, right? Listen, don't go off your meds, everyone. No. I don't care what the fucking specter of your dad is telling you.
01:10:39
Yeah. Don't go off your meds. Yeah. If you hear voices, and I mean, like, even if there's someone standing behind you in line talking,
01:10:46
get on those meds. Yeah, I agree. Fuck. I agree. Okay, and we're back. Karen, any updates?
01:10:57
Yes. So Herbert Mullen was never granted parole. He died in prison of natural causes in 2022.
01:11:05
So, since I told the story of Herbert Mullen, there have been several either new or expanded mental health facilities that have opened in California.
01:11:16
One in Madera and then one in Santa Rosa, which is the big town near Petaluma. There's Sacramento, Glendora, which is obviously all great.
01:11:25
We need those kinds of facilities, except for that they're for profit. So some of these new facilities have been linked to serious problems like understaffing, patient neglect, and even abuse and death.
01:11:38
So it's an oversight issue. In 2023, voters approved billions in funding to expand behavioral health infrastructure.
01:11:48
But if we don't have stricter regulation, then those problems are just going to keep making things unsafe until all of that stuff gets seriously regulated.
01:11:56
So while there's technically more mental health care Now it's a mixed bag because it doesn't mean better care.
01:12:06
I mean, you can't help but think about the fact that it's like, if it's for profit, why would they want people to get better?
01:12:12
You know, like if a bed is filled, that's good. That's a positive. That doesn't equate getting treatment, right?
01:12:21
Right. So that's just never going to happen. It's never going to happen in that where you're putting the goal way behind the financial gain.
01:12:30
will always be fucked. Totally. But, you know, it seems like such an old argument
01:12:34
when we're literally building concentration camps in this country. This would be a great argument to have
01:12:39
if someone else was in the office, but none of it now matters. No. This is all mute.
01:12:44
This is all a moot point because... That we should put on mute. Let's mute the shit out of it.
01:12:50
The only thing, and lately especially with how egregious and insane everything is getting,
01:12:55
it makes me go like, it almost makes me feel like everybody's going to be able to come together
01:12:59
or at least a larger percentage than could before to say, hey, what we need is oversight and regulation.
01:13:06
Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm serious. Yes, I hope so. I hope so. We'll see if we have that opportunity or if that's taken away from us too.
01:13:13
Hey, you know what we do have an opportunity for though? A hometown. At this live show, Chloe came and she talked about
01:13:22
the very upsetting Tara Linda barbecue murders. Um, I think we have time to do a hometown murder.
01:13:32
I think so, too. Now, here's the cool part. We know who we're going to pick. Yeah.
01:13:41
Because her name is Chloe. Yeah. Chloe? Where are you? No? Oh, she was fucking lying.
01:13:49
She was fucking with us. Is there any way to bring these lights up a little bit?
01:13:53
Chloe, you said you were going to be at the back of the orchestra pit. That's what this is, I think, right?
01:13:58
I hear her. There she comes. Chloe. Chloe, do you know what an orchestra pit is?
01:14:03
Because if you're yelling from anywhere that's not here. Did we forget to tell them that we're going to have someone from the audience come up?
01:14:10
Chloe, you're from Oakland. There she is. There she is. Can you? Yeah, yeah. Go over there.
01:14:21
Look over there. Look at that girl in the plaid shirt. Chloe, listen to my voice.
01:14:26
See that girl that's waving her arms? Go to her. Jesus Christ. We rehearsed this 15 times.
01:14:35
Oh, that poor baby. If she wasn't nervous before. I know. Now we really built it up.
01:14:42
Now I'm mad at her. Get out here, God damn it. These people are waiting. Yay. Yeah.
01:14:55
Good. Hey. You're fine. It's fine. What's going on? I'm just going to throw up. Yeah, so am I.
01:15:03
Hi, you look so cute. That's Georgia. That's Georgia. That's Chloe. I love you so much.
01:15:10
Are you really Chloe? Yes, I am. Chloe tweeted at us. It's fine. I just signed up for Twitter yesterday.
01:15:18
Oh, my God. Let's get her some followers. What's your handle? Oh, God. What's your handle?
01:15:25
We'll get you some followers. Chloe Doors is my name. D-O-O-R-S? R-E-S. Oh. That's adorable.
01:15:31
There's a couple. There she goes. She's going to have at least 2,000 followers by tomorrow.
01:15:37
Here, so let's center up. Let's center up, Chloe. None of this is real, so don't worry.
01:15:41
Let's get a nice stage picture. Chloe, you'll be in the middle. I can't see any of you.
01:15:45
Yeah, I know, right? Just don't look at them. Okay. You have a hometown murder for us.
01:15:50
I wrote it down. Really? Yeah. I can't do this. Okay, all right. I got it. I have to read it.
01:15:56
All right. I mean, we wish you would have memorized it. That's what we do. Just wing it.
01:16:03
Yeah. I'd like to pull a Van Morrison and just face the back of the stage right now.
01:16:08
That's badass. Yes. Radio. Here we go. Stare at my back while I tell you this. We can all do it.
01:16:18
Okay, wait. Let's really quick. Okay. Where are you from? I'm from Fairfax. They love Fairfax.
01:16:26
Tiny, tiny town in Marin, not far from Petaluma. That's right. Who are you here with?
01:16:31
This is why I tweeted you avidly. Okay. Fair Facts. Anyway. Who are you here with?
01:16:37
I'm here with my husband. Hi. Luke and my good friend Katie. I can't see you guys.
01:16:42
I'm pointing out. I can't see you. Just pointing. It's fine. Yay. See you guys tomorrow.
01:16:47
I'm going to hang out with Karen and Georgia tonight. No, she's not. We all get cake.
01:16:52
Oh, I am. Uh-oh. Oh, I am. Okay, so let's hear this hometown story. Is this a Fairfax murder?
01:16:57
No, it's very close. Tara Linda. Okay. Tara Linda. Yes. Super creepy. This is called the barbecue murders I not fucking with you I wrote it down I terrified right now Just read it Tara Linda is like a weird suburban colony of San Rafael It not a town It where
01:17:19
the mall is. It's where you go to go to the mall. That's right. It's eerie. It's super weird there. So I'm just going to read because I will start talking
01:17:28
and barfing all over you guys. That'd be kind of cool. That's what our podcast motto is.
01:17:34
We're super punk rock like that. I was born in 1982. It's Chloe. This is not about you.
01:17:43
It was a rainy day in October. There's this thing about Tara Linda. It just feels like it was stuck in the 80s.
01:17:53
It's like you go there to go to the mall and it's the 80s and it's creepy. And there's a Kaiser up on the hill.
01:17:59
That's all that there is there. and a bunch of tract housing and like a sizzler.
01:18:03
Yeah. I used to get my allergy shots at that Kaiser three times a week. Did you really?
01:18:08
Yeah. Girl. Anyway, this really horrible double murder happened there in 1975. Okay.
01:18:17
Here come my notes. Let's hear them. By a 16-year-old girl named Marlene Olive and her fucking loser boyfriend
01:18:26
named Chuck. Chuck. He was 20. She was 16 and he was 20. It was the 70s. Every 20-year-old in the 70s was named Chuck.
01:18:36
And dating a 16-year-old. And a loser. Yeah. This is the guy that sold drugs to the high school kids, not for money, but to be cool.
01:18:45
Yeah. And remember, we were like, oh, my God. Are you just theorizing? I got that off Wikipedia.
01:18:50
Okay, okay, okay. Girl, you know. Okay. Anyway, they started dating, and Marlene was really troubled, and she was adopted,
01:18:59
and she found out when she was really young that she was adopted on accident, so she was all kinds of fucked up.
01:19:04
She wasn't adopted on accident. She was adopted and she found out on accident. She found out on accident.
01:19:09
I heard some gasps, like, what the fuck? We have a kid now. Now we have the keeper.
01:19:18
I got the wrong luggage at the airport. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. She had a great relationship with her adoptive father,
01:19:27
but her adoptive mother was a schizophrenic alcoholic who was psychotic and was really mean to her
01:19:33
and basically told her that her birth mom was a prostitute and that she was going to be one too.
01:19:38
All the stuff that makes you fucked up. I mean... Yes, and then young Marlene yelled back, sex worker.
01:19:46
Exactly. Exactly. It was the 70s. It was the 70s. And needless to say, it was the 70s.
01:19:57
Marlene got super into the occult. Oh, yeah. It's not real. And doing lots of drugs.
01:20:03
And she hated her mom, obviously, because she was crazy and super mean. And she decided that her parents had to die.
01:20:14
And she also decided that her loser boyfriend had to be the one to kill them. Oh, that's a good call, actually.
01:20:22
Keep your hands clean, Marlene. Right? I mean, 16. Not so dumb. Anyway, she had all the control in the relationship, obviously,
01:20:33
because he agreed to do it. So one day she leaves the house with her dad, and Chuck sneaks in and kills Naomi, her mom,
01:20:42
with a hammer and a knife and some other stuff. And then Marlene's dad, Jim, comes home, finds Chuck,
01:20:54
and Chuck shoots him as well. So both parents are dead. Oh, no. So Chuck and Marlene clean up the place
01:21:04
and take the bodies to this beautiful state park in San Rafael called China Camp.
01:21:10
China Camp, yeah. I've had a Mickey's Big Mouth or two there myself. Oh, my God, like, gorgeous, gorgeous.
01:21:18
I can't go there ever again. Yeah. And also, just FYI, the barbecue pit that they
01:21:25
set the parents on fire in has been removed. So don't try to find it. Yeah, don't worry about it.
01:21:32
You're like, why does this burger taste so good? Hence the barbecue. I'm a vegan.
01:21:40
Set mom and dad on fire. Went home. Kind of right after they did that because logic.
01:21:47
Left them burning. Oh yeah. And then they went to go live in the Olive's home for about three days.
01:21:55
Wow. The plan was to wait until the parents were pronounced dead, and they collected the life
01:22:03
insurance, and then they could go move to Ecuador. Yeah, it's as simple as that.
01:22:08
And live their lives. I can't imagine that plan didn't involve a joint at some point.
01:22:14
Apparently they went to a Yes concert Oh my God Do not blame this on Yes During that time Do not blame this I don even care I don even care Anyway they were caught of course because they idiots
01:22:28
He is in prison for life. She went to some juvenile something. She was 15 or 16.
01:22:34
She was released after two years, moved to L.A., became some superstar in the, like, forgery.
01:22:43
She did a lot of forgery. Oh, yeah. And you now know her as Gwyneth Pouch? I thought that's where you were going.
01:22:51
She's a superstar. Don't say anything. The similarities are uncanny. Uncanny. We all have pasts.
01:22:59
I quickly have two connections to this murder. Besides just being a super weird kid and totally obsessed with this at the age of 10,
01:23:07
I made my mom drive me to the house that happened. That's so cute. When you were 10?
01:23:14
yes and your mom did it oh yeah yes she was like secretly i think kind of into it even though she
01:23:21
was like this is weird if i had a 10 year old everyone says that yeah she was weird she was
01:23:25
into it we drove by um but the really creepy thing is that when i was 13 i started babysitting for a
01:23:30
family about a block away from that house and it's all tract housing there so all the houses are the
01:23:36
same in the best-selling true crime book by Richard Levine about this story called Bad Blood,
01:23:47
a Marin County family murder. Oh, so there's a colon at the end of blood. Okay. He draws a layout of the home where both of these parents were murdered, and it's exactly the same
01:24:02
is the house that I used to babysit in. And I just remember being 13 and putting these kids down and walking around
01:24:08
and being like, this is where this happened. I'm scintillated and excited and terrified.
01:24:14
Pretty much everything I'm feeling right now. I'm done. That's it. Chloe! Chloe, everybody!
01:24:23
Nice! Beautifully done. Beautiful. So good. Really good. from a tweet. We trusted the tweet.
01:24:35
Chloe! I mean... Did you just tell her to go away? What's that? Nothing. That was magical.
01:24:45
Yeah. I love when that happens and it's not like some weird person. I know. It never is.
01:24:51
No. I mean, we've done it twice. Yeah, it's true. That is true. I just like that.
01:24:56
What if we didn't, if we were just like, forget it. We're not going to do that. and then she would have that little folded up piece of paper in her pocket.
01:25:03
But that's not what happened, everybody. It's like someone else now. Here, I'm going to pretend like it was your story, Georgia.
01:25:13
Do you have any updates for Chloe's case? Oh my gosh, Karen. Well, no updates, but we do have a corrections corner, corner, corner.
01:25:20
During the show, Chloe stated that Charles Riley was in prison for life. In fact, Riley was originally granted parole in 2014,
01:25:27
nearly 40 years after his conviction for the 1975 double murder of Naomi and Jim Olive.
01:25:33
The parole board cited his decades of model behavior, completion of rehabilitation programs, and expressed remorse.
01:25:42
Psychological evaluations concluded he posed a low risk of reoffending. Governor Jerry Brown reversed the decision in 2014,
01:25:49
but a state appeals court overturned that reversal in 2015, allowing Riley to be released at the age of 59.
01:25:56
which I mean the whole point is rehabilitation right completely I mean if he if he had to pass
01:26:02
all of those tests and they're like yep we're putting him through every possible stress test
01:26:08
and he's passing yes let him out because he was a very young man when this happened yeah what you
01:26:14
do when you're 20 like yeah now he's 60 yeah but the you know that doesn't help the victims families
01:26:21
it's just such a hard it's a hard discussion to have because it's just impossible to get to a
01:26:26
period about it. Completely. And there's such, the loss is so great that it kind of doesn't matter
01:26:32
on the other side when you start talking about the offender. It's, again, it's like all that
01:26:37
kind of extraneous, like, well, that's a nice idea. Meanwhile, our loved ones are dead. Totally.
01:26:42
Yeah. All right. Well, maybe we'll say hi to Chloe when we're back in Oakland at the Paramount
01:26:48
Theater on October 2nd and 3rd of this year, 2025, our Lord. Nice plug. Thanks. Yeah, I think
01:26:55
at the time of this recording, tickets are still available. Okay, we should talk about titles.
01:27:00
Obviously, as we bragged, this episode was originally titled Live at the Fox Theater.
01:27:05
That's right. But if we were naming it today based on something that was said during the episode, maybe it would be pockets, pockets, pockets.
01:27:15
I think it was so satisfying how much like the sale response, how much people agree with us.
01:27:24
And we agree with them that pockets for women clothes are a necessity A worth a standing ovation Like that one of the many things I learned during this podcast The biggest surprises of this podcast is that people will cheer a dress with pockets And that
01:27:40
makes me like kind of feel okay about the human race, you know? Yes. I think we are doing okay. And I think them playing along with our, let's show off our
01:27:49
outfits like we're five years old is like, this is one of the first times we did that. And it made
01:27:55
it so fun where we're like, oh yeah, this is just, it's all the gals together. Yeah. Especially when
01:28:00
I did a twirl when we were in Texas and showed everyone my underwear on accident. Yeah. Remember
01:28:04
when you broke the back out of that one dress just for fun? I think that might be my favorite
01:28:09
tour memory of all time. I thought about that while I was trying to undress this today because
01:28:12
there were a couple that were like, this fits, quote, but like, there's not a room for a breath.
01:28:17
you know but I think that's when you're on the edge there yeah it loves that tension like you
01:28:23
can't sit comfortably but what's it's a live show why would you no no one's comfortable no um
01:28:30
george also the title could be sounds like our government it oh it's just it never stops
01:28:35
georgia uh was talking about lauren herzog's tattoos during her story and said that line
01:28:42
that's always applicable apparently sounds like our government and of course chloe's classic
01:28:46
we could call it Pullo Van Morrison. I mean, such a good joke. We must. So genius.
01:28:53
Well, that's a live show rewind. Thank you guys for listening. We'll let the Karen and Georgia from then
01:28:59
and there at the Fox Theater say goodbye for us. Yes. Oh, really? Stephen offered to drive up from Los Angeles
01:29:09
to bring my passport. Oh my, okay. I gotta tell you what. ever since Stephen has been promoted
01:29:17
from just like the guy that records our podcast so we don't have to like move the dials and stuff,
01:29:23
we were like, Stephen, you please help us with these emails. And he's like, okay, I totally will.
01:29:27
He's completely organized all of our hometown murder emails. But now he's turned into like the super assistant
01:29:34
where like, what did he say? He was like, he said, what, you want to text him? He was like, hey, I just want to let you know
01:29:43
you're on your way to a hotel and they have a printer so if you need to print out your story, it's there
01:29:47
and I'm like, I don't have fucking hotels work, Stephen. He's doing, he's like calling hotels. Yes,
01:29:54
I need to speak to the business center, please. Do you have paper? She likes this kind of
01:30:00
grain. Don't look her in the eye when she goes into the business center. I actually didn't print it up there and I
01:30:06
was going to send it to them, but it said Speed Freak Killers, the name of the document.
01:30:10
So I was like, I'm going to print it at the venue. Just a little paperwork for my job.
01:30:13
So yes, hi to Stephen Ray Morris for being an angel, baby. Stephen Ray Morris. You know who else is the best?
01:30:21
Who? The Fox Theater in Oakland, California. Thank you guys so much. Thank you all so much.
01:30:28
This is amazing. We love you for coming here. We love you for getting tickets and fucking being a part of our world.
01:30:37
First night of our tour. You were there. First night. You know what? Stay sexy. And don't get murdered!
01:30:48
Bye. Well done, well done. Good job. This episode is brought to you in part by Vital Farms.
01:31:00
Have you noticed that the egg section at the grocery store has gotten very complicated lately?
01:31:04
But Vital Farms makes it simple. Pasture-raised eggs, traceable to the farm. Their hens have outdoor access year-round with fresh air and sunshine
01:31:11
and forage on rotated pastures with local grasses. Every carton can be traced back to the farm it came from
01:31:16
so you can see the pasture where the hens live by visiting vitalfarms.com slash farm.
01:31:21
Look for the black carton in the egg aisle and visit vitalfarms.com to learn more.
01:31:25
Vital Farms, good eggs, no shortcuts. Goodbye. Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway.
01:31:31
For you, save days are here now through June 23rd. Find hot deals throughout the store
01:31:36
and earn four times a point. Look for in-store tags to earn on eligible items from Triscuit, Quaker, Reese's, and Dots pretzels.
01:31:44
Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more.
01:31:49
Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery.
01:31:54
Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project.
01:32:02
One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales. And somehow, none of them talk to each other.
01:32:09
That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together.
01:32:16
From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform.
01:32:21
No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets.
01:32:27
Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system.
01:32:32
Try for free today at odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. That's O-D-O-O-O dot com slash iHeartRadio.

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 80
    Most shocking
  • 80
    Biggest crowd reaction
  • 75
    Most intense
  • 75
    Most surprising

Episode Highlights

  • The Self-Made Man Myth
    Discussion on Benjamin Franklin's unusual self-made man image and its implications.
    “It's low class to be self-made.”
    @ 01m 07s
    August 13, 2025
  • Merch Announcement
    Exclusive merch available at the Fox Theater, despite some production mishaps.
    “They're exclusive to this weekend.”
    @ 10m 18s
    August 13, 2025
  • Family Pride at the Show
    A touching moment as the hosts reflect on their families' pride after a successful show.
    “That's all it takes, folks, to get your family to be proud of you.”
    @ 19m 56s
    August 13, 2025
  • The Speed Freak Killers
    A chilling tale of childhood friends turned murderers, Lauren Herzog and Wesley Schermantine.
    “They might actually just like the names of towns in California.”
    @ 28m 22s
    August 13, 2025
  • Confessions and Consequences
    Lauren confesses to the murder of Cindy, revealing a dark history of violence.
    “He told detectives that Wesley was responsible for at least 24 murders.”
    @ 34m 09s
    August 13, 2025
  • Ongoing Investigations
    Detectives continue to review unsolved cases linked to the Speed Freak Killers.
    “Due to California's changing stance on the death penalty, Wesley Shermantine was moved off of death row.”
    @ 43m 25s
    August 13, 2025
  • Herbert Mullen's Psychotic Break
    After his best friend's death, Mullen's behavior changed dramatically, leading to a psychotic episode.
    “This was the first moment where he had a psychotic episode triggered.”
    @ 50m 43s
    August 13, 2025
  • Mullen's Belief in Sacrifice
    Mullen believed he needed to commit murders to prevent earthquakes in California.
    “He theorized that nature requires a blood sacrifice to keep the next big earthquake from hitting California.”
    @ 56m 29s
    August 13, 2025
  • Mullen's Arrest
    Herbert Mullen was arrested after a neighbor witnessed his final murder and reported him.
    “He was arrested shortly thereafter with no incident.”
    @ 01h 07m 26s
    August 13, 2025
  • Mental Health Facilities Update
    New mental health facilities opened in California, but issues of neglect and abuse persist.
    “It's a mixed bag because it doesn't mean better care.”
    @ 01h 12m 00s
    August 13, 2025
  • Chloe's Hometown Murder Story
    Chloe shares the chilling tale of the Tara Linda barbecue murders from 1975.
    “This is called the barbecue murders, I'm not fucking with you.”
    @ 01h 17m 01s
    August 13, 2025
  • First Night of the Tour
    The excitement of the first night is palpable as the audience is celebrated.
    “We love you for getting tickets and fucking being a part of our world.”
    @ 01h 30m 34s
    August 13, 2025

Episode Quotes

  • Pockets, pockets, pockets, pockets, pockets.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 57: Live At The Fox Theater
  • Love bread, baked goods, and pasta, but not the way they make you feel?
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 57: Live At The Fox Theater
  • Meth is bad.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 57: Live At The Fox Theater
  • He became obsessed with the concept of reincarnation.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 57: Live At The Fox Theater
  • Only you can prevent forest fires, he said to the police.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 57: Live At The Fox Theater
  • She's a superstar.
    Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 57: Live At The Fox Theater

Key Moments

  • American Genius00:39
  • Wellness Routine Failures45:24
  • Psychotic Episode50:43
  • Belief in Sacrifice56:29
  • Mullen's Confession1:08:52
  • Twitter Fame1:15:22
  • Chloe's Story1:17:01
  • First Night1:30:37

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown