00:00:00
This is Exactly Right. of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:36
When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable?
00:00:41
Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy, a weekly podcast from me, a DJ and licensed
00:00:47
therapist. It's Mental Health Month. Let's figure out what actually works. I didn't care about my life circumstance when I listened to that stuff.
00:00:55
It didn't matter to me. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for you every day.
00:01:00
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search DJ Hester Prince Music is Therapy, and start listening now.
00:01:05
This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,
00:01:16
one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS
00:01:23
and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app,
00:01:31
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia.
00:01:55
It is Wednesday and that means that we're recapping one of our old shows with all new commentary and updates and insights.
00:02:02
Beautiful insights. And today we're recapping episode 37, which we named Liminal Space.
00:02:07
Remember? I love that. So join us now as we take you back to October 6, 2016. This was a wonderful year for podcasting, as well as, ironically, for Drake.
00:02:19
He was dating Rihanna. He had no idea what the future held for him, that he would be viciously, viciously roasted at a Super Bowl.
00:02:29
Named and fucking roasted. Named and shamed. And I'm there for it. So let's listen to the intro of episode 37.
00:02:39
Let's settle in. How do we look from this angle? It's very odd. It's weird, right? We switched
00:02:46
seats tonight. I think it's good for the liminal space creative upset. Whoa. You know about that?
00:02:54
No. There's this thing. I can't. I talked about it. Oh, maybe it's on the other podcast,
00:02:59
but i have seven i'm sorry you have another oh i didn't tell you we haven't discussed that so let's
00:03:06
cut cut can we cut um there's a thing they call it's the space that you get into when you're unsure
00:03:13
um or you're upset or like right after something shocking happens or whatever it's they call it liminal space and when you're in that place your brain is working like at peak
00:03:26
at top performance. So that's why like when they, it's good, if you're a creative person,
00:03:32
if you get too comfortable in anything or feel too secure, it's bad because then you can't
00:03:37
like the, the thoughts don't come the right way. But if you, you know, like get into a thing,
00:03:42
like that's why like sometimes in standup, when you're on stage, like, you know, you're going to
00:03:47
open with a couple of jokes, but then you go into something new and weird because you can come up
00:03:51
with something you didn't even know you were thinking of. That's cool. So as you're saying,
00:03:54
stop going to the same cafe for me every day and ordering two scrambled eggs and a side of fruit
00:03:59
and an Americano every single fucking day of my life. Well, I mean, are you writing somewhere near
00:04:04
there or like, yes, yeah, I would. Or you could order something different or go to a different
00:04:10
cafe. Just do something that will make you uncomfortable so that your brain works differently.
00:04:14
I love it. I'm doing it. Getting out of a pattern. Okay. And that's what this is right now, Georgia.
00:04:20
This of you and I looking at each other from a totally different perspective. Yeah.
00:04:26
We just switch couches, everyone. Yeah. It's not that big of a deal, actually. It is.
00:04:31
Like from the very beginning, that's how we've done it. So this is neat. I mean, episode 37, it's going to be all about like the brand new thing.
00:04:38
Also, now we're talking about the Bible. So open your holy books. There's so much murder in the Bible.
00:04:45
There really is. We should do a biblical episode. That would be so boring. that would just put me back to like fucking grammar and high school it's like
00:04:56
these stories again scream my story at you too the whole story is gonna be in caps like the angriest none yeah in all of
00:05:04
saint francis grammar school totally okay um this is our first so i was thinking that this is our first episode back from
00:05:10
the last episode was a live episode yes which is so awesome it went really well it was it went well which on to i can now tell
00:05:19
you that I'm surprised yeah because I was like who the fuck knows what this is gonna be like
00:05:27
you and I sitting here talking about stuff we know what that it with that amounts to but like
00:05:34
having people react in real time and whether or not they were going to I mean obviously if they
00:05:40
were there they were slightly on board yeah but those people I'm not worried about it's like does
00:05:44
it translate to like I'm not gonna be totally honest I don't fucking listen to live episodes
00:05:49
of podcasts no i don't either no way i'm like that that doesn't that doesn't translate i'm not
00:05:53
going to do that i don want to hear you like pointing at things and talking about them right or yeah or just having a whole experience without me Because in these it feels like when I listen to podcasts I like I there too
00:06:05
Yeah. That's the whole fun of it, I think. Yeah. So yes, I, but I was, I was just nervous and I kind of was like, I don't know.
00:06:14
I was nervous about me because you've never seen me on stage before. No, I'm too much of a narcissist to be nervous about you.
00:06:21
I mean, let's I was like, you're on your own. OK, sink or swim. I got to get mine.
00:06:29
You know what I think? What if we added Dave Anthony permanently to the podcast?
00:06:34
Well, we probably shouldn't talk about this right now. But Dave, I did a show with Dave Anthony the other night.
00:06:39
And he was like, I think we should start doing like every three months. Oh, my God.
00:06:44
We all we all do all our podcasts together. That was like that was great. And also that was my sister's suggestion.
00:06:51
Shut up. I swear to God, she's batting a thousand. She was like, Dave was so funny on your show.
00:06:57
I don't think I add a lot to the dollop. I just like laughing at whatever the fuck Garrett says.
00:07:01
You do though. You do. But here's the thing. It's learning to elbow your way into comedy conversations.
00:07:09
No way. Takes a while. That's scary. It's scary. And also it's that thing of like, well, am I going to stop this?
00:07:16
Is the thing I'm going to say going to be worth it to stop what's happening? It's a really hard thing to do.
00:07:21
interrupting people especially people who are like like fucking legit comedians that have been
00:07:27
doing this for years and years is not my thing it's well and also if you do it and it's like a
00:07:33
like a half tepid response it makes you never want to say anything again like a stupid idiot
00:07:37
yeah when people would laugh when i said something i wanted to go hug and eat each and every one of
00:07:42
them so much you guys don't understand how hard this is for me but you did great it didn't seem
00:07:48
like you were having a hard time at all no i had a lot of fun i did feel bad fuck it once you're in
00:07:52
the moment exactly well and it's for fun those guys love you dave thinks you're fucking hilarious
00:07:58
that's so nice yeah and never say that to my face but i appreciate no no he can't okay he's got
00:08:03
emotional problems everyone go the dollop live their last one we're guests on it so if you really
00:08:08
fucking love the live episode yeah we were that's how we warmed it up that's how we heated it up
00:08:14
That was nice. Yeah. So the live episode, that was awesome. It was super fun. And also we get to meet a bunch of people, which is very cool afterwards, which I have
00:08:23
to say, I went backstage because I was like, I don't want to meet people. Like, I don't, I don't think I'll be good at it.
00:08:30
I don't like the idea of it. And then I was standing back there and you were already talking to somebody.
00:08:35
And I'm like, what am I doing? Like, that's not allowed. And then the second I walked out, whoever the first person I was that talked to, I was
00:08:41
just like, hey, what's going on? And they were so regular and normal. It wasn't like I had to do anything.
00:08:46
It was just like having a nice conversation with a person that was happy. I've had years and years of experience
00:08:52
of like talking to strangers because Allie and I do the like cocktail, like food thing.
00:08:57
And you go to these like cocktail parties and food parties and you have to fucking just talk to people
00:09:00
and it's scary and hard. But the more you do it, the more you're just used to it.
00:09:05
And it's not a big deal. Yeah. Especially strangers. But what was I going to say?
00:09:10
I don't, I guess this would be a good, Oh, and the episode before that was the Jean Benet episode.
00:09:14
So it wasn't like a regular format. That's right. So this is like the first time we've done a regular format.
00:09:20
Like we're back for a long time. Yeah. From camp. It's been, that's right. It's been, my legs are really tan.
00:09:27
My legs don't tan, only my arms. And I'm burnt on the back of my neck. It's weird.
00:09:32
And I'm starting to wear this necklace all the time that I never wore before. You know.
00:09:36
Friendship bracelet. It's camp stuff. It's camp stuff. It's good luck when it falls off on its own.
00:09:40
You know those fucking bracelets that people wear. Oh, fuck you. That's Kabbalah.
00:09:44
Oh. Fuck you, Madonna. No, I just mean like when you go to some party and it's like sponsored by a company and they're like, put this bracelet on and when it falls off, your wish will come true.
00:09:53
And I just like, it's falling off when I rip it off of my fucking arm. That stuff always makes me want to go, yeah, well, since no wishes that I can think of, like stuff like this has ever come true, I don't need your bracelet.
00:10:05
I'm sorry. Wishes aren't a thing. I'm sorry to tell you this. I'm sorry to tell everyone.
00:10:09
You know what? Karma and wishes are not true. oh god everyone just hung up on the podcast like half the women just hung up on this podcast
00:10:17
sorry i'm sorry mercury's in retrograde what can i say wishes aren't true it's not actually
00:10:22
oh well there's a at work there's a website called is mercury in retrograde and it either
00:10:27
says yes or no and we look it up all the time because people are constantly making that joke
00:10:32
and then we're like wait let's just check and see if it really is actually no yes i just almost
00:10:36
spit this drink out of my nostrils when you said that because it really is no because someone made
00:10:41
that and i just love that that's such a great it's the best i love when people make simple hilarious
00:10:46
stupid things um kat solen our friend who's a director is a true crime enthusiast fucking
00:10:52
talented a shit person i begged her to make us a new design for our shirts and she did it and they
00:10:57
look freaking incredible they look like an old like 1960s pulp fiction book cover and i'm so
00:11:02
happy with them and we're gonna cool we're gonna keep posting new sayings and people can vote for
00:11:06
what the sayings they wanted to be. Oh, did you know, did you see the, what they voted for?
00:11:11
They voted for fuck politeness to be the next one. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Uh, yeah. Anyways.
00:11:18
Yeah. I didn't know there was voting going on. I just fucking decided one. Sweet. You went totally rogue. Sorry. I was going to pass it by you. Of course. I don't
00:11:26
please. Okay. I mean, of all the things I've tried to care about vote away. I feel like we
00:11:32
talked about that a while ago yeah but i just didn't i feel like i'm missing out on life if
00:11:37
there was any tone in that it was not toward you it was um i'm spending a lot of time and this is
00:11:43
not a complaint because i love my job but it's the kind of thing where every once in a while like
00:11:47
i'll pick up my phone and look at email and i'll watch you talking to all these people where i'm
00:11:52
just like thank fucking god because i a control freak and just deal with like i mean just i very grateful for you Thank you You have a hard job I can wait to have you for myself again I can go get tuna fucking melts at Cafe 101
00:12:07
For real. It's been so long. I can pick your fries out and eat all your fries. You can have all the fries.
00:12:13
I can't eat fries anymore. Oh, yay. Good. I can't wait until you're free again. I'm happy and I love your job and I'm so happy for you and it's great.
00:12:22
I'm lying. I fucking want you for myself and I want my favorite murder to be the only thing that matters in your life.
00:12:27
I mean, that would be nice. It will be. But it's also cool because it's whatever.
00:12:35
It's nice to have a job that actually takes up all my time and brain. But then there's things like that where it's just like, oh, is that what's happening?
00:12:43
Good. I love that Daddy has a job, but we miss Daddy at home. Daddy wants to come home.
00:12:48
That's what I'm saying. Hey, let's take a quick pee break and then get started. Great.
00:12:53
The idea that I stated the words, fuck you, Madonna, is a shame to me. It brings shame to my family.
00:13:04
That is not the person I thought I was. That's not how I feel about Madonna. No, but people change.
00:13:09
You change, you grow, you stop hating Madonna for whatever reason. That's true. I think I was going through a really dark time in my life, and I wanted to kind of, you know, forget about who I was and who I grew up as, which was a Madonna wannabe from day one.
00:13:23
Absolutely. Just really changed my life in every way. Don't go for second best. At least we didn't make Fuck You Madonna merch, is all I'll say.
00:13:31
I was smart enough to know. Can you imagine one time I made a Boniva joke about Madonna on the Grammys.
00:13:37
This was like 2018 or even earlier than that because it was kind of like the glory days of Twitter.
00:13:44
Man, those Madonna fans, and I guess I'll just say it, gay men, came after me. Fuck you, bitch.
00:13:50
where I was like, and then I kind of looked at it. I was like, yeah, you know what?
00:13:53
You're right. That's fine. I take it. I delete it. You're right. That's peak fame or peak influence
00:14:01
that people will come after you for talking shit about someone they don't even know.
00:14:06
Yeah. Which I feel like murderinos kind of do that. And I'm so grateful for that.
00:14:11
I think they are Madonna level supporters. I think so too. And we're very lucky.
00:14:16
We are so appreciative of everything you guys do for all that shit talking that goes on
00:14:21
on the Super Bowl, on Twitter, on Instagram. To defend the indefensible, you go out there for your girls knowing.
00:14:30
You're wrong. Of course I didn't mean fuck you, Madonna. She's my hero. Well, let's blame Mercury on retrograde,
00:14:36
which, by the way, it is not right now, but it will be once this comes out. Let's blame Mercury on retrograde.
00:14:44
Is that what it is? Is that what we're supposed to blame? I'm really spiritual, if you didn't know that about me.
00:14:50
Actually, Alison Agosti writes these, shows up for us, put it in the notes. Yeah.
00:14:55
Mercury is not in retrograde right now. But she said that when this comes out, it will be.
00:15:00
It's currently not. While we're speaking. Exactly. But when you're right. But in next Wednesday or maybe in three Wednesdays.
00:15:07
Whatever it is, whenever this is happening to your ears, it's in retrograde. So be careful.
00:15:12
It's on retrograde, in retrograde, around retrograde. Don't slip in the shower is all I'm saying.
00:15:17
And if this is 2035, none of this applies to you, and obviously. And how is your fucking, how's your battery pack?
00:15:25
How's your Judy Jetson skirt? How are you even listening to this? All right. Battery pack.
00:15:31
I don't know. They definitely are wearing big batteries in the future. Everyone has been charged by a battery pack.
00:15:37
Okay, so now it's time to get into the first story on this episode, Liminal Space.
00:15:41
It's Georgia going first this week and covering the Ruth Talia Sias murder. Your husband is not who you think he is.
00:15:53
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
00:15:59
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
00:16:06
Just then, we felt the plane turn in the air. So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.
00:16:16
Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships,
00:16:23
and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,
00:16:29
but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything.
00:16:33
And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.
00:16:39
And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him.
00:16:43
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:17:13
therapy for you every day. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search DJ Hester Prince Music is Therapy
00:17:19
and start listening now. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific
00:17:25
con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed I will be his last target. He is not going to get away
00:17:33
with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.
00:17:40
Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
00:17:45
or wherever you get your podcasts. So let see Who went first four episodes ago Oh my God I want to say I don care You want to go first You want me to go first Uh whatever you want It your choice Okay I gonna go Okay
00:18:08
Is that rude? No. All right. So this one actually speaking of Kat Solon who made her shirts
00:18:16
sign she sent this to me and I'd never heard of it and it's like pretty bananas. Okay. All right.
00:18:22
So we start with 19-year-old Ruth Talia Sayas. We start with 19-year-old Ruth Talia Sayas.
00:18:34
She was raised on the outskirts of the capital in a working-class area of Peru. So outside of a working-class area of Peru.
00:18:42
And she was studying at a local university and she lived with her family. Like normal girl, cute girl, regular 19-year-old.
00:18:50
on saturday july 12th 2012 she was the very first contestant on the new reality show
00:18:58
that was like a quiz show called el valor de la verdad which is translated to the value of the
00:19:07
truth you knew that i just wanted to guess because i i've never taken spanish i mean i know what
00:19:14
Verdad means. So it's a new reality quiz show that's just come to Peru. The show's premise is that a contestant is asked a series of personal questions,
00:19:24
like during an interview, a private interview with a production company or the producers.
00:19:30
Varying seriousness, the questions, and they're hooked up to a fucking polygraph.
00:19:35
Okay. So the contestant is later asked the same questions, but in front of a crazy studio audience.
00:19:42
And it's like, what's that? The money show. Do you want to be a millionaire? Who wants to be a millionaire?
00:19:49
It's like that kind of seriousness level with lights and shit. So they're given their questions again and their answers are voted like by the polygraph,
00:20:02
whether they're true or not. Okay. So for each truthful response that they give, they win money.
00:20:07
if they lie according to the polygraph test they lose all the money they made so they can keep
00:20:15
going with questions and if they're correct and they are not lying about them they win money
00:20:20
and the questions get more and more personal as the show goes on and the contestant has the option
00:20:27
of calling it off after each answer so if they've only won a certain amount they can be like and
00:20:32
they've answered like some really personal question they get done um so she's the very
00:20:36
first contestant on this show, this little 19 year old university student. And she went on because
00:20:43
she wanted to open a salon and she had already saved a ton of money, but she needed the money
00:20:48
from the show to bring her closer to buying that salon. And she was like, okay, making a spectacle
00:20:55
of herself to get the money. So every contestant gets to bring on or has to bring on three guests
00:21:01
to the show who are like sitting there being interviewed and filmed the whole time she's
00:21:05
answering these personal questions so she brings her parents uh it's lian liancio and vilma and
00:21:13
they're like sweet baby angels i watched i watched it um and the dad said that he was afraid of what
00:21:20
i might learn about my daughter oh when he was introduced but they were all jovial they were all
00:21:25
like you know this is going to be fun we're getting some money no one thought it'd be that
00:21:28
insane because they thought their daughter was like a normal human being i mean you know so the
00:21:33
third guest was her boyfriend um brian leva he was a 20 year old cab driver he was raised down
00:21:41
the road from move talia and he'd stuttered since an old boyfriend of his mother had pushed him down
00:21:48
the stairs when he was only eight oh so he's just like this normal dude but he had a stutter um the
00:21:54
host says you seem nervous what are you so nervous about and he said that she may have cheated on me
00:21:59
And he was like a very stone face and like clearly nervous through the whole show.
00:22:04
So here are the questions. Some of the questions she was asked. Have you ever skipped school without your mother's knowledge?
00:22:10
If you found 1000 souls, would you return them? Souls? It's like, oh my money. So she revealed that she had 1000 wandering souls.
00:22:21
Would you return them to their homes? She revealed she had a nose job and that she didn't like her body and that she wished she
00:22:27
was white and that she was only with her boyfriend, Brian, until someone better came along.
00:22:33
The one that was there, the cab driver? Yeah. With the stutter. Yeah. And that she was ashamed of her parents' manners and that she didn't actually work at a call
00:22:42
center like they thought. She danced at a nightclub. Oh, shit. Here we go. Here we go.
00:22:48
So the mom is begging her to stop. And at one point, Brian says, I don't want to hear anymore.
00:22:56
The boyfriend. So, okay, we're at question number 18. And she had won at this point with this question,
00:23:04
she would have won the equivalent of 15,000 US dollars, which is almost 10 months wages.
00:23:13
Wait, no, no, no. I'm sorry. She could have won up to 15,000 US dollars. At that point,
00:23:18
she had won $5,300, which was almost 10 months wages in Lima. With this question, she'll win
00:23:24
this. The question number 18 was, have you ever accepted money for sex? And she answers yes.
00:23:32
And the polygraph confirmed that it was true. And she says just twice, we needed money. We were in a
00:23:38
bad situation. It hasn't happened since, and it won't happen again. And her parents are like
00:23:42
crying and like clearly shaken badly. It's fucked up, man. she said so at that point she was like I'm done
00:23:54
I'm not going to win up to 15,000 US dollars I can't do this anymore I wonder what the other questions were
00:23:59
if that was like That was the one that was only $5,000? Yeah. What were the other questions?
00:24:05
Who knows? She says at the end, my mother, my father, my brother, and sister are the most beautiful things in the world to me.
00:24:13
I love them with all my heart. Brian, forgive me for making you go through this.
00:24:17
And as the credits roll, she goes down on her knees before them and begs them for forgiveness, her parents.
00:24:23
What the fuck? Yeah. What kind of game show is this? Yeah. so the show finally aired on saturday july 12th huge fucking hit like becomes number one
00:24:34
and she becomes like kind of a celebrity in that world but not like in a good way she's just like
00:24:40
talked about all the time and brian her boyfriend becomes a public fool and the peru in peru like
00:24:47
machoism is such a big thing and he was humiliating from all these people and people
00:24:51
people in the small town recognize him and kind of humiliate him and he's like fucking broken
00:24:58
wait sorry but did she get any of that money yeah okay she got all the money she won what she like
00:25:04
she at least got she stopped so she stopped after that true question okay so she was she wasn't lying
00:25:11
about having had money had sex for money so she stopped at basically our equivalent of fifty three
00:25:18
hundred dollars. So he's being followed around by like by the media and being asked all these
00:25:26
questions. Someone asked him how he felt about making being made a fool. And he said, I'm ashamed
00:25:32
all the things I learned on that show. How would you feel? And the news person said, but they say
00:25:38
that if you love someone, you can forgive them. And he says, depends on what they did. The things
00:25:42
she said that day, I can't forgive. But then in other interviews, he says that it had all been a
00:25:47
set up that he and Ruth Talia had broken up months before the taping and she had asked him to pretend
00:25:54
to be her boyfriend on TV and that she'd share the money with him and he hadn't given her any of the
00:25:59
money. So it sounds like he's making this shit up to make himself sound a little bit better, right?
00:26:02
Yeah. Because he's so fucking humiliated. Yeah. Eight weeks after the premiere of the show
00:26:07
on September 11th, 2012, Ruth Talia disappears. So crazy media circus, all the news programs
00:26:17
covered it in lima but one of the hosts called her the prostitute of el valor uh de la verdad
00:26:25
like she was known as like a whore and nobody cared about it because of that and their parents
00:26:30
had to like beg to get me the attention and get this covered and to try to find their daughter
00:26:34
11 days after the disappearance police find a body of a young woman buried in a well and covered by
00:26:43
rocks and concrete on a piece of land on the outskirts of lima and that land belongs to brian's
00:26:50
uncle so later that day oh my god this is so fucked up and there's video of this so the the media and
00:27:00
the mother i'm sorry the father and the sister are at the site where they're excavating trying
00:27:06
to figure out if it's their their sister and daughter and the dad is on the phone on the cell
00:27:12
and like crying and it's awful. And it turns out that it is her and he's just like losing it.
00:27:17
And if you're sensitive, you shouldn't watch him break the fuck down. Then a reporter and her cameraman go to the home where Vilma,
00:27:25
the mother is sitting vigil with some of her friends and doesn't yet know that it was her daughter that was found.
00:27:34
And the reporter says she gave her her condolences and realized she didn't know about it.
00:27:39
And then the reporter said, ma'am, they found your girl. So this fucking reporter told her, which is so ugly.
00:27:48
So Brian's brought in for questioning and he confesses. He says that he called Ruth Talia as she was leaving school and they made plans to meet up.
00:27:57
He says, I waited for her by the bridge. She got into my motor taxi and I said, let's go have some wine.
00:28:02
She says, okay. And they went to his house, his apartment that he rented. and they had sex. And then afterwards they started to fight. And she says, she tells me,
00:28:15
I don't know what I'm going, what I'm doing with a poor motor taxi driver. And he says,
00:28:20
that's when I grabbed her by the throat and that he admitted that he choked her for 30 seconds or
00:28:25
more. And he says, I thought she had passed out. I listened to her heart. I didn't hear anything.
00:28:30
I grabbed her and shook her, but nothing. I got scared. And during the trial, Brian's lawyer
00:28:36
tried to pin the blame on the TV show, saying that they had humiliated him. And so Beto Ortiz,
00:28:46
who's one of the most famous television journalists there, they called him to testify.
00:28:51
So it was later found that the majority of his confession was false. And there was a witness who was a young boy
00:28:58
from the neighborhood. And he said that the night she disappeared, Brian had paid him 50 souls to let him know
00:29:05
when Ruth Talia got off the bus and he said he had seen Brian and another man force her into his motor taxi.
00:29:13
And the court determined that Brian's accomplice was his uncle who owned the property
00:29:18
where her body was found. And the motive was robbery. And they had tried to get Ruth Talia's bank security code
00:29:25
so that they can get the winnings from the show for themselves. And they were both sentenced to life in prison.
00:29:32
so then the second season of el valor de la verdad was uh they only had celebrity contestants
00:29:40
because they said they can deal with the media which is like how could you even have a fucking
00:29:44
second season but at least that's that and uh oh i wanted to say that a lot of this information and
00:29:51
it really hard to find information i mean there no this isn like a story i ever heard about before So the California Sunday Magazine by uh daniel alar con he wrote this really great story about it and that where i got a lot of this information
00:30:06
and then all over the internet as well that is fucking crazy dude the idea the idea that that
00:30:14
show continued on after the first contestant was murdered i mean that's intense remember when
00:30:21
jenny jones the jenny jones show that a lot of young people won't remember it was like one of
00:30:26
those like 90s talk shows like jerry springer had on like a it was like a confession episode of i'm
00:30:33
in love with you and a guy brought on his friend and told this guy that he was gay and he was in
00:30:40
love with him yeah and the guy he told shot and killed him yes i do know that story because my old
00:30:47
boss was one of the EPs on that show and had to go to court. That was like a huge scandal at
00:30:56
telepictures, which was the company for that. No, it was horrible. And it's that kind of thing of
00:31:01
like, what's the line when you're producing TV, everything is two numbers who butts in seats,
00:31:07
eyes on screens. How do you do a show that's going to make people watch it? And especially
00:31:12
in those days of like the early days of spring and jenny jones we have a hit let's just keep going
00:31:18
with this but also why did they have a hit oh they had a hit because it's a girl who is exposed that
00:31:24
it wasn't hit that's not the baby daddy and blah blah blah now they're in a fist fight and all that
00:31:28
shit and like that was the norm so like you had you had they were trying to think of shows and
00:31:35
produce shows that were exploiting the most exploitive well the article scandalous the article
00:31:42
I got a lot of this like basic information from uh was really interesting so the show that this
00:31:49
that the article that this is from where they talk a lot about the actual show and how much
00:31:53
it had to do with it and what like about uh reality shows in Peru was called the contestant
00:31:59
from California Sunday magazine and so they talk a lot about that and it's just like
00:32:04
I mean who who would agree to say those things but if you're in a poor fucking city and you need
00:32:12
money i mean you'll do anything exactly it's total exploitation of people and and also that is such an
00:32:19
ugly version i think there was an american version of that show and it wasn't on for very long oh i
00:32:24
didn't know that because you can't the the nature of a show like that is is scandal so like if people
00:32:31
are admitting things that no one gives a shit about and no one wants to talk about and that
00:32:35
aren't that isn't like borderline then you don't have a good show and they're not going to find
00:32:40
someone who's like, no, I've never had, never got paid for sex. Nope. I work in this place. You know,
00:32:46
they find the most desperate. Yes. They are only going to have people on there that are going to
00:32:50
tell them what they want to hear and, and more so. Yeah. The, one of the weirdest things that I ever
00:32:55
experienced in working in television is there is this very strange subset of people. And if you work
00:33:03
in casting in like any kind of reality version of television, you know, there are people who try to
00:33:09
get on every single show and they're not it's like if it's a show about couples they'll submit
00:33:14
for that if it's a show about um you know whatever the fuck it is they want to they want to be on tv
00:33:20
matchmaking or whatever the fuck they'll do yeah and they'll try to like they know tv well enough
00:33:27
to know that they have to be interesting and certain personality types and and because it's
00:33:31
it is a good way to make money if you you know if you're the right person but don't you just get
00:33:37
one chance yeah you would think but i mean these are people that are just like well we'll go over
00:33:42
here well we'll try to be on the amazing race well we'll try to be on the marriage ref we'll
00:33:46
try to be on this and that's what when i worked on the second season the marriage ref there was
00:33:50
this one tape where they were like brought us down to casting because they're like you're never going
00:33:54
to believe what you're about to see and it's like this weird couple that like it's there's sexual
00:34:00
overtones where you're like this is they don't know that this is inappropriate that like this
00:34:04
isn't going to get them it's just this weird shit and one of the people in that casting department
00:34:10
was like oh yeah we that we had them they tried to be on whatever show she had worked on before
00:34:15
and it's just like these people that are kind of like we know we're kind of interesting and
00:34:19
kind of weirdos and that that works yeah we're very different and we're wild and let's get on
00:34:25
fucking television people just want to get on television do you see that the real world this
00:34:29
season is like everyone thinks they're just going on the real world but for each each person on the
00:34:35
real world they find their like enemy and they have to live in the house too uh and it's like
00:34:40
this show is interesting enough if you cast it well these people are just gonna make their own
00:34:45
fucking and you can edit it back and say because no one's watching tv anymore so they don't have
00:34:51
good ratings so it's not interesting enough to make a ratings hit yeah and that's all anybody
00:34:55
cares about. And because all of television is owned by like four companies, they have this
00:35:01
insane grasp on the money, who gets the money. The story is like, nobody has any money,
00:35:08
but that's actually not true. They're making millions of dollars. Cause even in like a
00:35:12
depression, people still watch TV, people still, you know, advertising still works,
00:35:17
but it's like, it's this, it's really sick and crazy. That kind of shit where you like that thing
00:35:24
where you're watching TV and you're just like, oh, this doesn't, I don't feel like who I'm seeing
00:35:28
is what I'm really seeing. So the idea that your story is about a person who actually did the thing.
00:35:35
A real person. And suffered by it. Yeah. But she, I don't know if she felt, it didn't seem like she was,
00:35:44
I mean, I guess she was kind of embarrassed and stayed at home a lot, but it's like, she didn't seem like she was,
00:35:50
she seemed like confident about having done it for the right reason, for the reason which was to make her life better even though she like you know tore her family apart yeah well you think that that makes your life way worse Yeah Also being murdered Yeah
00:36:05
I mean, because that shame, shame is the thing people can't deal with. Oh, Jesus, no.
00:36:10
Shaming people, especially like you were saying, like that culture where men have to be men,
00:36:16
you can't come out and be like, yeah, sometimes I do this, which is like, you know,
00:36:22
Yeah. Not in a judgmental way of that person's lifestyle, but this is like a cultural thing of where women are supposed to be like wives and mothers and especially here and in Peru.
00:36:33
I feel like it's you're not supposed to. That's not it's like so much less accepted and understood than it is here as it is here.
00:36:42
Crazy. Crazy, right? i mean that's the thing too when you were saying like you should you should watch it because he's
00:36:52
all upset or whatever i would never watch no it bothered me a lot i never watched that
00:36:56
it's the fact that the cops didn't keep him away from the from the cameras is upsetting like his
00:37:04
daughter his other daughter tries to shield his face a couple times but there's nowhere to turn
00:37:08
like there's cameras on every on every single angle of this man telling someone on the other
00:37:14
line that they found his daughter like there's nowhere for him to go to get out of the fucking
00:37:19
out of the camera that's disgusting it's just really sick and sad and then the woman who uh
00:37:27
told the mother inadvertently the reporter yeah the reporter she quit uh doing news after that
00:37:34
wow yeah yeah there's a thing in this article someone's life yeah like to get that story here
00:37:40
They were like, go talk to her now. Go up to the room after she started crying and try to get a conversation with her.
00:37:45
And there's some quotes in her from in this article. It's like how awful she felt and that she quit.
00:37:51
Yeah. Oh, that's. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to sell your soul for one paycheck.
00:37:59
One byline. OK. OK. And we are back, Georgia. Any updates, anything about this case you can talk about?
00:38:08
No updates on this case. that is just so sad because like, I feel like as I was telling it, you just knew what was going to
00:38:14
happen and what a mess was going to be. And it's just so heartbreaking. I will say though, that we
00:38:20
mentioned the Jenny Jones show where a romantic confession leads to murder. And I actually go on
00:38:25
to cover that case in episode 40, which is called Squad Gourds. Yeah. Which we're getting close to.
00:38:31
Also, Daniel Olercon, who wrote about this case in the California Sunday Magazine,
00:38:35
now teaches at Columbia Journalism School. And in 2021, he was awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant.
00:38:42
Wow. Do you know how hard that is to get? No, but it's very hard. You get to be a genius.
00:38:47
So I feel like I can be like, well, I knew him first. And that kind of you're a genius.
00:38:51
Yeah, that kind of like I'm the genius who like knew that he was a genius. You're a genius spotter.
00:38:57
And I think that's that. You're like a really good casting person where like they do not get the credit for literally making the movie come together
00:39:04
the way it's supposed to come together. Do you know what I love doing, though, when I watch a movie is talking over the movie.
00:39:09
And one of the things I like to do is say, I wonder who auditioned for this part.
00:39:13
Yes. I'll be like, can you imagine so-and-so in this part? It would have been totally different.
00:39:17
Yes. You know? Which also was kind of a point, we shouldn't be talking about this,
00:39:21
but this is my sidebar acting class tip. That's what people should be thinking about.
00:39:27
As a person who was very bad at acting and auditioning, it was because I could not keep my eyes on the prize,
00:39:32
which is you are supposed to be bringing something to the role that makes the role come alive.
00:39:37
You're not supposed to be reciting the words so perfectly, whatever. Yeah. Like, I was always like, I'm sweating.
00:39:43
My upper lip is my upper lip sweating or whatever. Where they're like, no, you're supposed to.
00:39:47
I saw. Who is she? Who is Pam from The Office? Why is she? So, yeah, but like when you see people like Johnny, I saw an audition tape for Johnny
00:39:55
Pemberton one time. Oh, he's so funny. And it was like that guy that was the character walked in and sat down and was doing stuff.
00:40:02
And he's like, this is mine. This is me. It's just brilliant. Yeah. I can't act for shit.
00:40:06
So that's really impressive for me. Yeah. Anyway, let's get into some dark, deep shit because this is a famous one.
00:40:14
And I feel like I've heard about this story. Like I'd never heard about it when you told it.
00:40:19
And since you told it, I hear about it all the time. Right. Because it's just brought up a lot because it's so mind boggling.
00:40:27
This is Karen telling the story, the famous story of Dorothea Puente. Your husband is not who you think he is.
00:40:38
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
00:40:43
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
00:40:51
And just then, we felt the plane turn in the air. So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.
00:40:59
Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy. how it shapes our identities and relationships,
00:41:07
and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,
00:41:13
but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything,
00:41:17
and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move,
00:41:23
and he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.
00:41:28
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:35
How much you weigh, Wanda? Right now, I'm about 130. I'm at 183. We should race.
00:41:39
No, I want to leave here with my original hips. On the podcast, The Matchup with Aaliyah,
00:41:44
I pair prominent female athletes with unexpected guests. On a recent episode, I sat down with undisputed boxing champ,
00:41:50
Clarissa Shields, and comedian Wanda Sykes to talk about Wanda's new movie, Undercard,
00:41:54
the art of trash talk and what it really means to be ladylike Open your free iHeartRadio app search The Matchup with Aaliyah and listen now Brought to you by Novartis founding partner of iHeart Women Sports Network
00:42:05
Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nick?
00:42:08
Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. How do we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys?
00:42:15
I honestly don't remember. We were talking about a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey Jonas,
00:42:20
and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.
00:42:26
But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
00:42:31
or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.
00:42:37
You ready for your murder? It's the same one? Yeah. Turns out... Mine is the... Shit, I can't think of the...
00:42:47
What's the Howie Mandel show with all the suitcases? What? it. Suitcase number seven. I don't think so. I don't think so either. I was going to try to
00:42:58
make a joke about that, but I can't remember what it's called. I can't remember what it's called.
00:43:02
And I don't care. What's in the suitcase. You know, that show what's in the suitcase. All right. So
00:43:07
I picked, um, my story this week, actually, my sister suggested this, our number one fan,
00:43:13
our newest and number oneist fan um and she suggested it because when i was in high school
00:43:21
when i graduated from high school she had gone to the jc for two years so by the time i was ready to
00:43:25
go to college she was too and so we both went to sac state which is sacramento state university it
00:43:31
was precious um uh so we both lived moved to and lived in sacramento for like the same amount of
00:43:40
time. And I've of course talked massive shit about Sacramento in this podcast. Wonderful things
00:43:45
happened there, but not to me. Um, and so near the end of right before I moved back home with my
00:43:54
parents, um, as a abject failure, uh, in my early twenties, I lived in this house on F street and
00:44:03
it was in this weird, like Sacramento is weird because as you go downtown closer to the Capitol,
00:44:08
It's like all the old houses, they're old Victorians and stuff. And some of the streets are really gorgeous, but the neighborhood itself is really bad.
00:44:17
And it's a very strange combination because it doesn't look like it should be bad.
00:44:20
But then there's like one night in this apartment across the street, there was an empty lot that
00:44:25
people would just dump garbage in and two homeless people got into a fight. And one of them was beating the other one with a vacuum cleaner that someone had dumped
00:44:35
in this empty lot. Oh my God. It was like that kind of area. And it was a horrible time in my life because I had flunked out of college.
00:44:43
I think I worked at like two different cafes. So I was making like $5 an hour. I remember those days.
00:44:49
And you like, you couldn't get any hours. So you're just like always just scraping together money.
00:44:54
I remember at one point we would, we would rent a VCR from the video store. We did that when I was a kid too.
00:45:01
Yeah. Cause we didn't have one. Totally. But we'd be like, I want to watch a movie.
00:45:05
Oh my God. It was like just dark. And then it was also summertime in Sacramento.
00:45:09
So it's always 110 degrees. So everything's just awful in a special way. Also at the time,
00:45:16
the person I was roommates with, she had this friend, I think she was from high school
00:45:23
and together they were two of the most annoying people. Like I'm surprised I didn't try to punch one of them
00:45:32
because it was like this obnoxious, like like hard girl act but like but it was like the the sacramento version so there's a country
00:45:42
element to it and it was really like just kind of ignorant and rude the kind of girls that are like
00:45:47
i don't get along with other girls exactly yeah i only let guys where it's like well then go
00:45:52
fucking hang out with some guys and get away from me um there was yeah it was a lot of that kind of
00:45:57
stuff or like they'd come home at four in the morning from a club and like knock on the door
00:46:01
and be like, let me in. It was just, everything was, I was livid. I was either livid or scared to death all the time.
00:46:10
So it turns out, come to find out, living in this apartment for a little while, that somebody who came over, put it together and goes,
00:46:19
don't you realize that that is two doors down is Dorothea Puente's house? Who's Dorothea Puente?
00:46:26
Well, Dorothea Puente's is the old lady in Sacramento that got caught. She ran a boarding house for old people and like handicapped people.
00:46:36
And it turned out that she had been murdering them, taking their social security check,
00:46:45
taking it across the street to the dive bar. That was so scary. We never even tried to go there.
00:46:51
So Dorothea Puente is basically, I'll tell you. So here's her story. Let's hear it.
00:46:56
She had a very sad childhood when she was eight. her father died of tuberculosis and the next year her mother died in a car crash.
00:47:03
Fuck, those are like two of the worst ways to die. So she was in an orphanage for a little while and then eventually she had to go live with
00:47:12
family members in Fresno. Oh no. It just gets sad. That's one of the worst places to live.
00:47:17
I mean, so in 1945 when she was 16, she got married for the first time. um so she had between 1946 and 1948 she had two daughters one she went sent to live with
00:47:32
relatives in sacramento and the other one she go up for adoption so she was not um able to deal
00:47:39
with any kind of family situation at all and i think she definitely has some kind of mental
00:47:45
disorder as you will see so i'm sure she probably had it then being a 16 year old newlywed mother
00:47:53
Yeah, who had grown up in an orphanage. Not good. Who had two huge traumatic experiences
00:47:58
when she was young with her parents back to back back to back so yeah facts um that husband that married her when she was 16 left her
00:48:07
and uh left her in 1948 like a couple years later so um she started telling people he died of cancer
00:48:16
um so oh no sorry died of a heart attack uh a couple days after they got married so it was like
00:48:22
even more tragic for her yeah so she's also in throughout this it's like she's basically a
00:48:27
compulsive liar. Yeah. And she started forging checks, which she ends up doing throughout her
00:48:35
life. That's kind of her forte. That's her favorite. That's her favorite crime. It's a weird
00:48:39
crime. It's super weird. And the funny thing is that you get caught and then you get sentenced
00:48:44
for like a couple years and you get out because it's nonviolent. And it's, I don't know, maybe
00:48:49
it's kind of arty. So they're like, no, all right. It's such a weird, you paid your dues.
00:48:53
Like you hear about so many people who are like, they never had a violent offense. They just forged
00:48:56
checks and it's like well that's i would never think to do that it's still a crime i mean yeah
00:49:02
you might have great penmanship and all sure but you're still a criminal uh in 1960 she based and
00:49:09
then she remarried a swede named axel johansson which fuck you know that that was a party oh yeah
00:49:16
waiting to happen of course a violent alcoholic they were married for 14 years um and then they
00:49:24
ended it and then eight years late or sorry um during that marriage two years before she got
00:49:32
divorced uh she was arrested in a brothel she told the cops that she was there visiting a friend
00:49:37
um we don't know what is true about that one of the articles i read said that she ran the brothel
00:49:44
oh fuck but um it seems more likely since uh she only she was arrested and served 90 days
00:49:52
I think she was probably just there, either visiting her friend or visiting some friends,
00:49:59
whatever you might do. Yeah, running a brothel ain't an easy task. That's a big job, and you don't just bail at the first arrest.
00:50:07
So what she ended up doing is going into, she became a nurse's aide, and she started
00:50:12
caring for the disabled and the elderly in private homes. So she turned her life around.
00:50:17
Well, you would like to think that. End of story. Yeah, end of story. So in 1982, she did that for a while.
00:50:25
In 1982, her 61-year-old friend and business partner, Ruth Monroe, who was living in...
00:50:34
So Dorothea had this house on F Street. It's this big Victorian. Two doors down from Karen Kilgariff.
00:50:39
Two doors down from the future miserable home of miserable Karen Kilgariff. So there was an upstairs apartment that she would rent out.
00:50:49
So she rented it out to Ruth Monroe. and they were business partners, which I guess means that they were working together,
00:50:55
taking care of old people and disabled people in private homes. But Ruth died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen.
00:51:06
And Dorothea told the police that Ruth was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill.
00:51:13
So they ruled Ruth's death a suicide. but then a few weeks later the police had to come back because a 74 year old pensioner
00:51:24
named Malcolm McKenzie had accused Dorothea of drugging and stealing from him so he had gone to
00:51:31
the police and said that he had met Dorothea at a local bar called the Zebra Club and that they
00:51:35
had several drinks together which I bet means in the 15s then he invites her back to his apartment
00:51:43
and soon after they arrive he gets dizzy and even though he's conscious he can't move and he has to
00:51:51
sit and watch as she searches his house for valuables takes his rare penny collection and
00:51:59
forces the diamond ring off his finger rare penny can we go back to rare penny collection
00:52:04
i mean fucking cool that is yeah you know it was like in a cardboard book like this with all the
00:52:09
years underneath the slots that makes me happy um but well so she gets convicted of uh three
00:52:16
charges of theft in on august 18th of 1982 and she gets sentenced to five years in jail
00:52:22
for for that wow um what happened to the rare penny collection i we haven't been able to trace
00:52:31
it so we're starting a foundation called find the rare pennies dot gov dot org um
00:52:39
so she's in jail. Okay. And she starts being pen pals with a retiree, a 77 year old retiree named Everson Gilmouth.
00:52:50
And they become friends through the mail. And when she's released in 1985, after only serving three years,
00:52:59
he was there waiting for her to pick her up from jail in his 1980 red Ford pickup.
00:53:04
And everything was okay. And everything turned great. Um, so soon they were making wedding plans and, um, they opened a joint bank account and, uh, they were, they were back in her house in Sacramento.
00:53:19
Um, now we're cutting to five years later. Dorothea hires a handyman to come and put in some wood paneling in her apartment.
00:53:27
and for that work plus he paid her an additional $800 uh she gave him a red 1988
00:53:34
1980 Ford pickup that was in good condition almost totally not used um which she said had
00:53:41
belonged to her ex-boyfriend who lived in Los Angeles yeah where'd she get that um so she asks
00:53:48
this handyman that she hires to build her a six by three by two foot box for her to store you know books and stuff as you do in a fucking coffin Yeah A box that you want to store stuff in Um and then she asked them once she fills it with her books
00:54:10
I'm doing air quotes. You can't see. Um, she says, please take this to my storage depot.
00:54:16
And he agrees and she goes with him. And then on the way she has him pull over and just has him
00:54:22
dump it on a riverbank at a kind of unofficial dump site which it sounds unlikely but again we
00:54:29
did have an unofficial dump site across from our apartment right where you put coffin shaped boxes
00:54:34
yes you know or or beat another person with a vacuum cleaner whatever needs to happen um so
00:54:42
a lot of dumping going on up in sacramento and sutter county so um so they dump that uh and
00:54:51
oh, she just told him the stuff in the box was junk. Well, on January 1st, 1986, a fisherman spots the box.
00:55:03
And it's sitting three feet from the bank of the river. So he calls the police and they open the box and find a badly decomposed,
00:55:12
unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. um well it turns out that dorothea was still collecting everson gilmouth's pension
00:55:22
and she would write letters to his family explaining that um he hadn't contacted them
00:55:27
because he was ill and um so he was basically one of her first victims um now this was now a
00:55:38
she was renting this apartment all the time this was her business and she had 40 new tenants in the
00:55:44
In the house. In the whole house. She was actually approached by a social worker named Peggy Nickerson.
00:55:54
She approached the social worker and just explained to her, just so you know, if people on fixed incomes, people on social security, elderly people,
00:56:04
they can come and stay in my boarding house. Everyone's welcome. Yeah, because she had the best system to offer.
00:56:10
Her prices were really low and she took, quote unquote, took care of the people that worked that lived there because people are nice she made dinner
00:56:17
every night she had everybody come down and sit at dinner together um you know she like made sure
00:56:23
there were people that stayed there that were homeless or like had mental problems she made
00:56:27
sure they showered and clipped their nails and she was real if it was real that'd be so beautiful
00:56:32
i mean yeah right that's the that's the whole lure of it is people need that kind of care and
00:56:39
she's saying that she's, um, going to be able to provide that for them. Uh, so sorry, keep
00:56:47
making that mistake. Um, so she, uh, she also, she was known for taking tough cases. Like all
00:56:59
the social workers were like you, if it's a person that can't get placed anywhere,
00:57:03
you can take them to dorothea's she will take them in um and she collected their monthly mail
00:57:11
um before they saw she paid them in stipends and then she pocketed the rest of their like
00:57:17
social security check or whatever their check was for expenses quote unquote you got a fucking
00:57:22
so parole agents uh would go to visit her um and she had been ordered to stay away from the elderly
00:57:29
and to refrain from handling government checks. Oh my God. But no violations were ever noted.
00:57:39
And they think it's because she was known in social welfare circles as being so good
00:57:45
that they would go in and check and be like, you can't be around old people. You can't stay away from social security checks,
00:57:51
but nothing official would ever go in. Well, in May of 1988, neighbors started complaining of a sickly sweet smell.
00:57:58
so she blamed the aroma on applications of fish emulsion on her on her perfectly tended lawn and
00:58:07
tended to the point where if people walked on her lawn she would scream at them and swear like a
00:58:13
sailor um so she was very protective of her lawn and she did a lot of gardening um so so there was
00:58:23
a man that stayed at the house and people around the neighborhood knew him as chief. He was
00:58:29
schizophrenic and he was an alcoholic and he was homeless. When he went and stayed with Dorothea,
00:58:35
she made him her handyman and she cleaned him all up, made sure that he took a shower all the time,
00:58:40
like made him presentable, made him come and eat dinner with everybody, made him take his, his antipsychotic medication or his meds. So she had him digging in the basement
00:58:53
and carting soil and rubbish away with a wheelbarrow. And he basically, there was a concrete slab on her basement floor.
00:59:02
He was basically digging up the basement floor. What do you need it for, Dorothea?
00:59:09
So he soon afterwards disappeared. And so when there was a second tenant disappeared,
00:59:21
a developmentally disabled man who had schizophrenia, when his social worker reported him missing,
00:59:28
his name was Alberto Montoya, the police came and realized this keeps happening here.
00:59:37
So they were looking around and they noticed in the backyard that there was some ground
00:59:43
that had been recently disturbed. So these investigators went to the car, got the shovels
00:59:49
that were in their car. And they started digging and quickly turned up what looked like shreds of cloth and beef jerky Is the report And so as they trying to find out what under there
01:00:05
one of the investigators said that he thought that he hit a tree root. And so he was whacking at it and jabbing at it with his shovel and it wouldn't move.
01:00:15
So he decides to climb down into the hole where that they had dug up to get to pull it out.
01:00:22
and he wrapped his hands around it, braced himself, started pulling and it broke loose
01:00:28
and it was a leg bone out of the socket. They had to suspect that at that point or they wouldn't have been digging, right?
01:00:37
Yes. So why are you fucking yanking bones? He thought it was a tree root. Come on though, like you're looking for bodies.
01:00:44
But I mean, they're looking, but a tree root is the most likely thing that's going to be there.
01:00:50
So I'm sure that they'd done stuff like that before and it's like yeah i mean that would be there 20 of the time but most of the time it's
01:00:57
that okay um and also i think when bodies that aren't that are buried just straight into the
01:01:04
ground they turn black and brown so it would have probably looked like a tree root too
01:01:08
um so then they start digging up her whole backyard holy shit and uh oh she came out when
01:01:18
he was down in the hole and he had this bone. She came out and when they turned around, they were like,
01:01:24
we just found a human bone. She did, they said, she did this thing where she slapped her hands on her face
01:01:30
like really over the top and in like trying to act like she was surprised. And they immediately were like,
01:01:38
there's something going on. That's the weirdest reaction. Like straight up Home Alone
01:01:42
style. Home Alone style, exactly. That's where they got that from. And apparently neighbors said that she always talked about wanting to be an actress and planning on moving to Los Angeles.
01:01:52
She's a bad actress. Yeah. Yeah. She needed to take some classes. So this body that they eventually dug up was a woman named Leona Carpenter, who was 78 years old.
01:02:07
And one of her very Dorothy is very first victims that stayed in that house. um they basically had the coroner's office came in with heavy machinery and a whole work crew and
01:02:19
just started and forensic anthropologists and started digging up this entire backyard and that
01:02:24
i've seen the news footage that's basically taken from the angle of um because they couldn't get in
01:02:32
yeah so it's basically taken from our back porch holy shit i mean not literally i don't know
01:02:37
because it was 1988 but they they shot it over the fence and you see these cops walking around
01:02:43
and it's just like the you see a lot of uh sheets and like the um when they put out the string and
01:02:50
the stakes yeah you know like this will be the next area oh my god it's so crazy i want to see it
01:02:55
so since dorothea puentes wasn't immediately puente singular wasn't immediately a suspect
01:03:01
um what she i mean like they didn't when they were doing that first digging it wasn't like keep her
01:03:07
right there yeah yeah so she said she was gonna go get a cup of coffee at the hotel up the street
01:03:12
while they were doing that and then she fucking hightails it to los angeles well now they know
01:03:16
it's you dude uh yeah but she i mean she left so she thought she was out of there yeah and she and
01:03:22
she didn't think they were on to her yeah the way that they were so when she gets to los angeles
01:03:28
She goes to a bar and she starts making friends with an old pensioner who's sitting at the
01:03:34
bar. She introduced herself as, I think it was Donna Johansson. What bar do we know?
01:03:40
It didn't. Oh God, I wish. How great. The articles I read didn't say. It's got to be something that we know.
01:03:46
Something divy. Maybe the frolic room. Frolic room. That's exactly what I was thinking.
01:03:51
Yeah. uh but luckily this old pensioner probably been sitting at the bar watching the news a bunch
01:03:58
recognized her from the news and called the cops so they got her down in la and brought her back up
01:04:07
um eventually seven bodies were found buried in her backyard wow um she was charged with a total
01:04:15
nine murders because they uh they um traced back the apparent the apparent suicide of her olds
01:04:26
of ruth and then uh the other guy the other uh the missing guy chief oh man do you think that
01:04:36
grandpa the grandpa the frolic room got a reward i don't know i bet he did um here's what's
01:04:44
interesting when detectives were in that backyard they realized that they were only blocks away
01:04:49
from the home of serial killer morris solomon where they had dug up from that house a bunch of
01:04:58
dead bodies in 1987 who's he i don't know him i have never heard of him either whoa and sacramento
01:05:05
i just gotta say i mean like i've talked about it i've complained about it but like i must be a
01:05:12
little bit right because we've already had i think four serial killers from sacramento on this show
01:05:20
it's chock full of murders it's nutso um so basically at the end of the day she went to trial
01:05:28
in february 1993 she was convicted um of uh three murders sentenced to two life sentences
01:05:37
received life without the possibility of parole. She went to Chow Chilla, the ladies facility.
01:05:46
She always said that all those people died of natural causes and she just buried them there.
01:05:52
And that she herself at age 82 March 27th 2011 died of natural causes in prison Wow Yeah That our girl
01:06:06
Girl, Dorothea. That's our hometown girl. She would take their checks, walk across the street to that dive bar and get her money.
01:06:13
They cash checks at dive bars? They cash checks at... Oh, yeah. Certain bars that are so divey,
01:06:19
they will cash your social security check for you. So like they're like second Friday of every month is like,
01:06:24
you gotta get a couple bartenders on staff. That's right. Because, well, and also it's Sacramento.
01:06:29
Like literally the state capital was blocks away. So they know they're getting their money
01:06:33
if it's a government check. Yeah. They know that thing is good. So they don't, if it's that little old lady
01:06:39
that runs the boarding house, of course they're going to do her a favor. She brings everyone over
01:06:43
and she takes her portion and then she gets it to them. She's so nice. She's taking care of all those people
01:06:47
inside that building. A sink. God, what did it smell like in that fucking building?
01:06:51
Ooh. In that dive bar too. I mean the whole block smelled. I bet it was carpeted. That house? No the dive bar. Oh yes for
01:07:00
sure. Like dark maroon. Yeah like thin dark maroon like bowling alley carpet. I bet they had like a
01:07:05
it was a pretty small and they had a pool table that was too close to one wall so then they had
01:07:11
to cut a pool cue in half so that you could shoot from that side of the table. Is that what they do?
01:07:16
I've never seen that. I've seen it in dive bars. I guess I have not been in like real dive bars then.
01:07:21
You got to become a full-blown alcoholic. It is so fun. I went to one full-blown like real, real dive bar in Savannah, Georgia, but like on the outskirts of it.
01:07:32
And I was like, oh, this isn't a charming L.A. dive bar. There is a Confederate flag on the wall.
01:07:38
And I'm the only Jew who's ever been in here. They should have taken your picture and put it up behind the bar.
01:07:45
That was terrifying. Wow. Yeah. That's so sad. I mean, it's crazy. And when you saw her on the news, like she was on the news all the time.
01:07:57
I don't want to see her picture. I totally remember it. She looks like a cartoon of a little old lady.
01:08:01
No, like not even. Big glasses. She's really short, gray hair, the whole thing. You would never think.
01:08:07
How did she kill everyone? Did she just poison them or drug them? Poison them. I mean, I think so.
01:08:12
Wow. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, that's fucked up. Pretty fucked up. Okay, so now we're ending the show on, we're ending on a positive now.
01:08:25
That's right. One really great thing that happened to us this past week. Right. Right.
01:08:30
So do you have yours? Do you have yours? Sure. A really great thing is that I hung out Sunday evening with a girlfriend that I like a lot
01:08:42
and we've gotten to know each other a lot, but we like had this great deep conversation.
01:08:45
Like we hang out with a lot of people together. Her name's Crystal. but she and I sat at a bar and just fucking talked and we're like I'm not very happy and just like
01:08:53
we're very open with each other in a way that's like hard to find when you're an adult is someone
01:08:58
to like be really open with and and just you know who understands you and you guys can get each other
01:09:04
and that's that's hard to do and we just had this really great conversation and I felt a lot better
01:09:07
after it and kind of feel like I've made a friend oh nice for a long time it's like kind of a deeper
01:09:15
connection and it was nice. That's great. Yeah. That's very good. It's yours. It's all that
01:09:19
matters. Yeah. They say human connection is really, it's nothing else makes people actually
01:09:25
happy except for connecting with other human beings. Really? Yeah. Bullshit. Um, I guess
01:09:32
mine is that, well, I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about that cause it's, it sucks because
01:09:39
all I've been doing is working. So most of mine are work based, which is a little bit lame.
01:09:45
but well you know what I'll I can okay you're proud of yourself yeah yeah no yeah you just can't
01:09:53
um but I mean it's like when you have one thing to talk about where it's people are like hey what's
01:09:57
up with you it's like just don't bother asking it doesn't matter but there's a guy that's a guest
01:10:03
star I guess I just won't say his name and then when when the show's actually on I can say it but
01:10:07
yeah um he's on my episode and he's so funny it's like the most delightful thing in the world I mean
01:10:13
everybody on this show is really good and i'm very excited for this show to come out because i think
01:10:18
people are really gonna like it but this one guy is hilarious and he looks like the guy that i
01:10:24
adored in high school so it makes it even more fun to watch him because it's like it almost looks
01:10:29
like a weird nick it like a mashup like you're rooting for him already because yes but then on
01:10:35
top of that it's the kind of thing where you can't it's like single camera like you can't laugh out
01:10:40
loud when things are happening because they need like perfect quiet and I have to keep my hand over
01:10:45
my mouth he's so funny wow and that's the shit you've written too uh yeah some of it yeah I mean
01:10:50
some of it but um but at one point I went up I had to finally introduce myself because I was actually
01:10:55
he was so funny that I was nervous to I didn't want to be like hey what's up on the road or
01:11:01
whatever I was just kind of like trying to stay away and when I finally did go up to introduce
01:11:05
myself, I said, I, in my head, I thought I was going to say, you know, like you're great or
01:11:13
today's been so great or something like that. But what came out was you're being so funny.
01:11:20
And the second, the last word of that sentence came out of my mouth, I just turned and walked
01:11:25
away. So I was just like, I, hopefully I just won't have stopped. I can't wait till this cuts
01:11:31
and I get to find out who it is. Yes. I mean, some people may have seen him before,
01:11:36
but he's not well known. Okay. I feel like I'm not telling you until it airs either.
01:11:41
You won't tell me. Yeah, we'll keep it a huge secret until next spring because it's a mid-season replacement.
01:11:49
Well, thanks for listening, you guys. Oh, we never introduced what the show was.
01:11:53
Oh, no one knows? No one knows. Oh, that's too bad. This is my favorite murder. This is What the Fuck with Marc Maron.
01:11:59
No. Thanks for listening. And I'm Maren. Go to Twitter, MyFaveMurder, Instagram, MyFaveMurder.
01:12:06
We're on Facebook at MFM Podcast. Our shirts, MyFaveRateMurderShirts.com. Everything.
01:12:14
Thank you so much for listening and supporting and being active, involved people.
01:12:19
We love it. It's very fun. You guys are the best and this is so great. Stay sexy.
01:12:24
Don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Want a cookie? Awesome. The answer's yes.
01:12:38
Okay, we are back from your story. Karen, any updates on Dorothea Puente? Well, I do have an update, which is that I'm blown away that I started this by saying that my sister is the show's newest listener and number one fan, and she's the one that suggested this story.
01:12:55
Yeah. My sister has never listened to this podcast. Really? No. Not once. I think she used to listen in the beginning when we were just chatting, but she has so much anxiety.
01:13:04
She cannot listen to true crime. Like, she can't do it. And so that's just really funny because there's, like, I will have full conversations with multiple people and she'll just be sitting there, like, smiling where I'm like, you could get in here.
01:13:16
You could support me at any time. No, thank you. She's like, that's for no. Yeah.
01:13:21
I'll never give you that satisfaction ultimately. The other one is that I just want to update this for my own credit.
01:13:28
Okay. When I was talking about the person that I was working with on the show that I was working with and I had to keep my mouth covered because he was so funny that I didn't want – you can't laugh out loud on set, obviously.
01:13:39
That whole story was about Tim Robinson from I Think You Should Leave. Oh, my God.
01:13:44
And what show is it? It was the show called Making History. I think there was only five episodes on.
01:13:48
It was very, very short run. I was lucky enough to be the writer on the episode where he showed up as Al Capone.
01:13:56
Oh, wow. Oh, my God. It was a true hang with Tim Robinson before I Think You Should Leave came out.
01:14:02
You were probably also covering your mouth because you hadn't had your teeth fixed yet.
01:14:06
Remember that? I was very, like, demure. Yeah. A demure giggler because my teeth were insane.
01:14:12
Irish teeth. How crazy is that? That like your life is so different now because you have these beautiful pearly whites I can wait to see Tim Robinson again And show him Be like look at these motherfuckers Look at my guffaw now Look at it
01:14:26
Big fan, big fan. Okay, so, but then there are also case updates. Okay. So for the Dorothea Puente case,
01:14:32
which is kind of my college hometown, there was a real joy, and that conversation went on forever on Twitter,
01:14:39
like people from Sacramento being like, why do you have to be like this to us? And, you know, there was a lot of emotion.
01:14:44
That was where the beef from Sacramento started, I think. Yeah. I started and ended that beef all by myself.
01:14:50
And people in Sacramento are like, we don't care about you. Shut up. So in 2010, Dorothea Puente's house was sold at an auction.
01:14:58
So this was the house, a boarding house where she was killing the boarders and taking their Social Security checks and cashing them across the street at the diviest bar my eyes have ever set their eyes upon.
01:15:10
The house was sold at auction for $226,000. Wow. 2010. That still sounds cheap. It's a bargain.
01:15:20
Yeah. According to the Sacramento Bee, the couple who purchased it outbid one other contestant in a packed room.
01:15:26
And everyone was like, stay away from them. Yeah. They're like, so you do want the house where the bodies were buried in the backyard.
01:15:34
You're going to fight someone over winning it. Over living in a haunted house. Oh, my God.
01:15:38
So today the homeowners lean into the house's macabre history and there's, you know, they basically have made it a little bit of a museum.
01:15:47
There's framed photographs on the wall documenting Puente's history there. There's like a mannequin that looks like her on the front porch.
01:15:55
I've seen that. Yeah. But the owners are very clear. They think she obviously was an awful, horrible person, but it's like people are going to.
01:16:03
They're going to come by. They're going to come by. Yeah. I like that they're like, look, we know this is weird.
01:16:08
And we're going to go with it instead of like just pretending everything is fine, la, la, la.
01:16:12
Right. You know? Because you can't have a story like that. And I think that was, you know, obviously what I was talking about when I told it where it's just like we always hear those kinds of horror stories.
01:16:22
But when it's two doors down. Right. Like when these things happen, the block is affected.
01:16:28
The neighbors are affected. Definitely. The price of their homes are affected. Yeah That like I saw recently like a whole slideshow on Instagram of this person going like house to house in L of like the Brady Bunch house the E house the Wonder Years house And you know people in that neighborhood have to get so sick of that probably
01:16:48
And I wonder if I don't think I'd move into a house that people would be taking photos in front of all the time.
01:16:52
I don't think so. I wouldn't want to. Unless the windows were all in the back. Right. And it was really cheap, in which case this was.
01:17:00
So, yeah, good for them. I mean, and I think it's a great area. I think now it's an even better area.
01:17:05
Yeah, good for them. Yeah. All right. Let's stop talking about ourselves. let's stop talking about ourselves through dorothea puente yeah and instead rename this
01:17:16
episode i love liminal space though the idea of it is fun but if we were naming it today
01:17:22
perhaps we would call this episode back from camp because that's what we had joked about in the
01:17:28
beginning oh right so back from camp yeah we're going to the normal format that bought me these
01:17:34
teeth. Yeah. Or we could rename it Daddy Wants to Come Home, which is what I said to you when I
01:17:39
was complaining about having two jobs and wishing I had more time for this podcast.
01:17:44
You're going to have more time for this job and it's going to be the most time consuming job
01:17:49
you've had, like more than having three jobs at once, it turns out. So true. I had to hire people to help me live the rest of my life so I could get this stuff done.
01:18:00
Totally. I want to warn her, it's not going to get better. Oh, she knows. She can feel it in her bones.
01:18:07
She'll have the money for new teeth. So that's really the... Here's the... Yeah, the teeth have always been the goal.
01:18:12
Yeah. Huge piece of Dorito in the corner of my mouth. But I had to say this, and I hope and I'm pretty sure you feel the same exact way.
01:18:22
What an insanely rewarding experience. Like all of it has been. But to now have a job on par with the job I used to have for a different person,
01:18:32
all of the energy, all of the creative ideas, all of the everything getting poured into somebody else
01:18:37
that just walks away like, here's my thing, which is what a writer does for Loon. It is what you
01:18:43
agree to. But to sit there kind of brokenhearted, like I wish it could have been me. And then now
01:18:49
to be here. You're hustling for yourself. It makes it like truly a lovely, joyous thing.
01:18:56
And then to be able to hire people that it like yeah let not hire the people we worked with in the past that have permanently traumatized us Let give the jobs to the people who are like other versions of ourselves People that you know like Danielle Kramer who is Georgia recommendation
01:19:13
knowing her from like Meltdown is our COO and like couldn't have been a better match.
01:19:19
And we want her to not feel like she's hustling for someone else and it's like fucking she hates it.
01:19:23
We want it to be like fun for her and to feel like she's getting something out of it.
01:19:27
That's bigger than just like this fucking guy is walking away. We want to control her and everyone else around us's feelings.
01:19:34
And we're going to. And we do. And we will. And thank you for listening. And yours too.
01:19:39
And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Your husband is not who you think he is.
01:19:53
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
01:19:58
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
01:20:06
He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.
01:20:13
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:20:20
If you live in L.A., you already spend about 89% of your life in a car. So we turned it into a podcast.
01:20:27
On Do You Need a Ride, we pick up our comedian friends, drive around Los Angeles, and discuss what's happening in the world around us.
01:20:34
Cars are very rude to bicyclists, but in this case, it's a bicyclist going out of his way to get in the way of traffic.
01:20:40
All you did was roll your window down. He almost hit that. It's like a talk show, but going 30 miles an hour.
01:20:45
New episodes every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Do You Need a Ride on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:20:54
I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now.
01:21:00
Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all.
01:21:08
As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are and your integrity.
01:21:16
You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeartRadio app,
01:21:22
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.