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00:01:56
Hello. And welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia. You see, every Wednesday, we transport you to a simpler time back when the iPhone 7 was cutting edge and Suicide Squad dominated the box office.
00:02:19
That's right. So join us as we take you back to August 11th, 2016, because now you can basically all be day one listeners.
00:02:26
And today we're recapping episode 29, which at the time we named 29 with the German spelling of the word nine.
00:02:35
Twenty-nine, I think is how you pronounce it. Seems problematic to me in the light of 2025.
00:02:41
In the light of everything, everything is problematic. Yeah, that's very true. So let's listen to the intro to episode 29.
00:02:53
Welcome to My Favorite Murder. that's karen kilgarith that is georgia hard start you know no one can tell our voices apart still
00:03:01
i know it's pretty weird someone sent us a um i love when the true the um hometown murders are
00:03:08
people sending in like i know secret information about the case you already covered yes because i
00:03:14
know people from the whatever the fuck we love that and someone was like last week sent us one
00:03:19
i was like karen i'm sorry to disappoint you but it was my case yeah i was like i'm sorry
00:03:25
no we're sorry to disappoint you there's that happens a lot when people talk about i love when
00:03:31
i think they say like karen says oh my fucking god during when george is telling it whatever it
00:03:37
was it was like the reverse and i knew it was for sure because it was like one of your phrases yeah
00:03:42
um jesus fucking christ but yeah i mean i i just think it's precious it's so weird i feel like i
00:03:49
mean we're such different people there was a fucking thing on facebook that was like are you
00:03:53
a Karen or a Georgia did you see that and it made me sad oh no why because I was like nobody wants
00:03:58
to be me were they both bad no everyone loves you and I'm not I was just everyone's like I'm a Karen
00:04:05
but my best friend is a Georgia so that's fine I'm a Karen how do we and then people were like
00:04:14
it's funny how people will explain to other people how you can tell the difference between us and it's
00:04:19
that you sing everything. Yes. That's me. And I also have a scratchy voice because sometimes,
00:04:25
sometimes late at night I smoke cigarettes. You do not. Yeah, I do. Do you, Karen? Yeah,
00:04:30
sometimes. And you can tell, you can actually, you can tell how many I've been smoking. Cause
00:04:35
like right now I've been smoking. I don't know why I'm scandalized by this. Maybe it's because
00:04:39
you never told me. And I feel like I thought we knew, I thought I knew you. No, I don't. Also
00:04:45
because it's such a special thing that you do alone. And I think it's wonderful that you have that time to yourself.
00:04:51
Well, sometimes at my house, like I'm home at the end of the night and you have a great backyard.
00:04:55
What else are you going to use it for? I go sit in that backyard. Sometimes I just stick my feet right in that pool.
00:04:59
You're living the life I want to live. It's pretty. I don't mind it, but it's also like I'm tired and I don't get to drink anymore and I don't get
00:05:09
to do anything anymore. So I'll just smoke a little hand rolled Valley. shag cigarettes. You used to hand the roll of them yourself. Yeah. Karen, this is why everyone
00:05:20
wanted to be you because I'm so fucking European. They were saying like, Karen's a badass and I
00:05:26
want to be, I think it's because I'm scared of everything and talk about therapy. That's all it
00:05:29
is, is, is you are honest about your anxieties. And I'm always like, just try to kill me, which is
00:05:35
the most insane thing. Every once in a while, it'll hit me where I'm like, oh, I've actually
00:05:39
said that out loud in permanently these recordings are permanent there's nothing we can do about it
00:05:45
and i've actually been like i don't care when the end days come there's gonna be no record of this
00:05:51
so it doesn matter when what happens the end days come oh yeah yeah yeah this is all gonna be wiped off but well the grid gonna go down and it won matter what recorded because we won be able to access it delta is the first fucking is the first airplane line that go down no it
00:06:05
just went down like yesterday delta what they had like a blackout and really at their main hub and
00:06:11
everything was grounded and it's like across the country yeah they're like there was just a glitch
00:06:15
and you're like bullshit bullshit i whenever i hear those things and i was like someone there
00:06:19
was just a glitch no way uh-uh don't even no there was that was the lizard men that are underneath
00:06:26
the denver airport they are they're down there and they're fucking with the mainframe man don't even
00:06:33
how much did you love as soon as i heard this on stranger things that they had a fucking um
00:06:42
MK Ultra line like storyline. Did you watch it all? No, I think I have like two left or three
00:06:50
left. Have you been to the possible Eleven's mom's house yet? No. Yes. They mentioned MK Ultra.
00:07:01
Oh, that's why she's like that? Yeah, because she was one of the people they were experimenting on.
00:07:06
Has anyone listened to this? I don't want to I don't want to spoil it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spoilers.
00:07:10
uh okay i missed that detail i just thought they say mk old tranny holy shit yeah oh that makes me
00:07:19
like it 1000 times more yeah okay i have to go back and get through i have to on be honest when
00:07:25
i binge watch shows especially on netflix and you just can like it hit enter on the blue box and you
00:07:31
just keep going there'll be times where i just fall asleep and i don't even know which one i'm
00:07:35
on i just wake up and keep watching whatever's on i have the kind of insomnia that you can't
00:07:39
fall asleep in front of television. I've never fallen asleep in front of maybe wrestling.
00:07:46
That's Vince's fault. Wow. We couldn't be more different. That's how I fall asleep every night.
00:07:50
It's very bad for you to sleep in front of TV. Well, now I wonder how bad it is. I can't fall
00:07:55
asleep now without listening to the Sleep With Me podcast. Like I can't. You're his slave. I'm his
00:08:01
slave. So I wonder if someday they're going to be like, it's worse than falling asleep to TV
00:08:08
because he's infiltrating my dreams. That's right. Well, if he is from NK Ultra, you're screwed.
00:08:13
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of okay with it. Do you think he's so great? You're fine with it? I'm fine
00:08:18
with it. Whatever his agenda might be. Like same with Elvis when everyone is like, oh, you know,
00:08:23
you get a virus from cats and it takes over your brain and makes you a zombie. I'm like, I don't
00:08:26
care. He's so cute. He's so nice. He's so sweet. If he thinks I need to be a zombie, then I'll,
00:08:33
you know, he knows what's best for me. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And also, you know, you're
00:08:37
going to go whether you're a zombie for a cat or you get hit by a bus you are going to leave this
00:08:43
earthly plane so just accept it yeah his head smells like a library book the girl who was in
00:08:51
love with her cat all right uh do you have housekeeping i have a housekeeping that makes
00:08:58
me very happy oh good um because it's twofold housekeeping it was a tweet that my hero nico
00:09:04
case singer songwriter um nico case tweeted you got a tiny little happy clap from steven just now
00:09:11
yay we love her love nico case um don't tell me that the connection was lost and there was a loading
00:09:17
error phone no well basically she retweeted um this story i'm pretty sure it was from the cbc
00:09:24
about how their government the canadian government is now opening an investigation on all the missing
00:09:31
indigenous women in Canada. So that's like all the women. So, you know, like Robert Picton,
00:09:37
I'm going to eventually do one on him if you don't beat me to it. He's the pig farmer in Canada
00:09:43
that was just murdering women and they think it was in the hundreds. Did he feed?
00:09:48
Yeah. Yeah. It's a bad one. It's so dark. I wouldn't tackle that. It's yours. Okay.
00:09:53
Because it's too dark? It's too... It's too something for me, but I don't know what yet. Too many pigs? Too many pigs, man. No, it's just, yeah, I don't know.
00:10:07
Well, so there's... It's to making a murderer. Oh, okay. In a lot of different ways. Go ahead.
00:10:13
Well, there's just a, there's been a bunch of, and this is very, in America, I think our version of
00:10:19
it is women of color, black women that get murdered. And it's just as if no one talks about
00:10:24
it. Isn't, you see all the little blonde girls are always on the news if they are go missing or
00:10:29
murdered yeah but it doesn't happen with black women and so the canadian version i think is
00:10:34
indigenous women indian women is the incorrect term for it but um so the there's the highway of
00:10:41
tears where women go disappearing on it uh robert picked and they named another guy that i didn't
00:10:45
recognize the name um i hope picton is the right last name you know what i want to do mass murders
00:10:50
because i feel like i won't give enough time to each of the women i'd rather do a this is what
00:10:55
the victim was who the victim was their story right then here's who the murderer was and it's
00:11:02
like and there's 19 women right yeah no then that's okay this is bad that's yours but anyway
00:11:07
it's it it's like hundreds of indigenous indigenous women have gone missing in the last say
00:11:14
if i could open this article i would god i would be accurate with sorry but no that's okay you want
00:11:19
to pop i have i can give you my wi-fi connection uh i know every time you get upset that let's
00:11:24
pause it. No, no, no, no. It's fine. Cause the general idea is just what Nico Case was trying
00:11:28
to get the word out about. And I, I retweeted it on our Twitter feed as well as just the government
00:11:35
is trying to do something about it. They're trying to find the women. They're trying to
00:11:39
investigate the murders. They're trying to actually put a focus and say, these women are important,
00:11:44
just as important as anybody else. And we're going to do something about this, which is humongous
00:11:49
that a country like on the whole would just admit that they haven't up until this point.
00:11:54
And now they going to That incredible It really great That amazing It very hopeful to me about like this It feels like a new era in crime Thank you Um
00:12:07
the, the name of the article is just how an unflinching gaze on missing and murdered
00:12:11
indigenous women might move Canada forward. Incredible. Very cool. And it was, I was right.
00:12:17
is this ABC news. I'll take it. If it's even that small, I will take an accuracy moment. I will not
00:12:25
take it away from you. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's, I mean, that's really the whole story.
00:12:29
That's, I'm still trying to think of a way that we can donate part of the proceeds or
00:12:35
like help some way with the untested rape kit situation. Marsha, Mariska, Mariska Hargitay. Thank you.
00:12:43
I want to give her all my money and like do it. help Georgia was in a manic episode and Karen she gave a multi-millionaire all her money and
00:12:54
Karen totally was like do it so so Georgia's suing Karen I think that's it it all ends in a lawsuit
00:13:02
between you and I oh I didn't see that coming because of my undiagnosed manic no I don't have
00:13:08
that we call it the big giveaway Georgia really just no no no I think that's a really good idea
00:13:13
I would love to the proceeds of something that we earn money for because this podcast goes to those untested.
00:13:19
Well, we have live shows like you guys were in the fucking process of like having live shows be a part of our lives.
00:13:26
Yeah. And a part of your lives, Texas. We're going to invite people. Texas. What?
00:13:32
We got some numbers back. That was a brag. But we got some numbers back. And hey, Texas, turns out you like us.
00:13:38
I was so surprised by that. We both started laughing so hard. but it makes sense.
00:13:43
Yeah. That's Texas. Texas has some good murders. Texas knows what they're talking about in terms of murder.
00:13:50
Can I just say that once we got all this, we got all this like information about our numbers and then we were driving
00:13:55
home and we almost had to pull over to start crying with how happy we both were,
00:13:59
but how well this is how like how, what a great. It's pretty nice. It's pretty great.
00:14:04
It's pretty nice that we're, we're getting popular because we talk about death. Yeah.
00:14:09
I think that's lovely. I love you guys. Thanks for listening. Okay. I also want to say really quickly that in therapy, one of the things I talked about was that how crazy I am and how much anxiety I have.
00:14:22
Because when I go to the back of my building to do laundry, I lock my front door.
00:14:26
And how crazy is that that I think someone's going to break in? And then I read an article.
00:14:30
There's a fucking Echo Park rapist. And one of the ways he got into her house was when she was doing fucking laundry in the back of her apartment.
00:14:36
And she left her door unlocked and went in. there is, it's, it's not anxiety when you're just being careful. I texted my therapist,
00:14:44
the article. And said in your face, bitch. No, cause she was like, you know, yeah. Now she doesn't
00:14:50
want to see me anymore. And now she said, find someone else. No, she, cause she was like, you
00:14:54
know, we're allowed to take certain precautions and that's okay. And you can do that. But when
00:14:58
you start, you know, blah, blah, blah, then it's, so she supported it. And I was like, I feel so
00:15:03
justified uh well also that's good i mean jesus christ good to know right yes hey there's no shame
00:15:11
in locking things double i lock people will walk by in the crosswalk and they're part of my brain
00:15:17
goes they might be able to hear it if you lock the door whatever and it's like i don't give a
00:15:21
shit doesn't matter much louder voice that says sorry to offend you but you don't get to in case
00:15:26
you had the idea right maybe you're on some white drugs so like when you're sitting at a stop sign
00:15:31
and someone goes to walk by and you go click to lock your car door. Yeah. Yeah. And you're like, oh, they're going to get mad at me.
00:15:37
Fuck you. Well, because sometimes. You look creepy. That's a good way to let someone know they look creepy.
00:15:40
Yeah. I get the idea because you're giving me the eye. Yeah. So yeah. Don't. We've said this a million times.
00:15:48
Fuck politeness. Fuck politeness. Yeah. There could be new listeners who don't yet know to fuck politeness.
00:15:54
Oh, yeah. Fuck politeness. And well, you'll learn. There's a ton of stuff. I have a lot of experiences in my life that'll make you make you question. How about if you're
00:16:07
going between the laundry room and your house, lock your goddamn door, lock your fucking door,
00:16:11
lock your, if you live in a major city or not at your house, lock your door. It feels really good
00:16:16
because literally that, that was a worry. Every single time I walk out back is I come in the door
00:16:22
and I check for the cats because if the cats were still out where they were, that meant no one was
00:16:27
in there because but if they were hiding that would mean someone came in the house right that's
00:16:31
crazy no it's not that's a good theory that's a theory based on observation yeah
00:16:37
and we're back hey if you're still listening from texas thank you yeah thanks incredible
00:16:47
what a miracle texas was there in the beginning they were there hard for us they do that they do
00:16:53
everything a little hard like they're yeah they're like they rep and they're there
00:16:58
that made me think of wasn't it in texas i believe dallas when the women got into our van to go to
00:17:06
the theater and the driver was just like yeah no they just thought it was like one of the ubers or
00:17:12
something and the driver was just like yeah i guess these are the two girls yeah that was they
00:17:17
And then we met them as they returned to the hotel and returned to not being us.
00:17:25
Yeah. And they were very funny. That's Texas to me. That's Texas in my heart. It was a beautiful night.
00:17:33
It's so funny that that was the beginning of Are You a Karen? Are You a Georgia?
00:17:36
I know. That was like the BuzzFeed days. Crazy. Oh, yeah. 1,000 years ago. That was a BuzzFeed quiz.
00:17:46
So exciting. Like this is when everything was just like popping off in a really unexpected, insane way.
00:17:53
Like we just didn know what the hell was happening We really didn We thought it was kind of funny And as I said a thousand times I thought it was going to wrap up in three to five weeks
00:18:06
And you never covered Robert Pickton, which I think is a good thing, right? I do too.
00:18:11
I was going to, remember that show we did the first time we did a show in Vancouver,
00:18:15
I was going to cover him at that Vancouver show. Remember we were in that high rise hotel that was like,
00:18:20
we had like, we were on the 18th floor or something. We had these amazing views.
00:18:24
Wasn't I sick? And so I was an hour late because I was napping and just like didn't put the time correct because I was like, because I was like literally had a cold on stage.
00:18:34
Yeah. Yes. There was also one also in Vancouver where I went downstairs and couldn't find where Vince was meeting us.
00:18:42
So you were on one side of the hotel and I was on the other and I could not figure out where you were.
00:18:46
Yeah. Do you remember that one where it's like everything was like this weird delay or just kind of like what's going on?
00:18:53
That's what touring is. It's just a delay to get to a place to wait. Yeah. To do homework.
00:19:00
Right. And not look at anything about the city. And then have 3,000 people cheer for you.
00:19:07
So, yeah. Did you see this update that Robert Pickton was murdered in prison just this past June?
00:19:13
Right. Yeah. Wow. I mean, not a surprise. He's one of the worst serial killers of all time.
00:19:19
He is one of the worst predators of women and marginalized women. And like that story and all of that corruption around that story is so fucking dark that when I went to do it in Vancouver, like, oh, this is your guy's hometown.
00:19:33
It's like nobody wants to recount basically this kind of like internal corruption that allows women with no voice to just be brutalized over and over and over.
00:19:48
No, there's a few of these murders that I feel like we'll never do. And we've talked about it. This is one of them. The Speedbox. Toybox Killer, the Speedfree Killer. And then Charles Ng, I feel like we'll never do. Just because like you read it. And it's just there's just it's just an empty pit of fucking horribleness.
00:20:12
I think, too, it's like that's how you kind of learn the shape of when you're doing a podcast. It's like we very early on understood that we were going to do this podcast our way. You know, for example, talking for 45 minutes at the beginning about everything but true crime, et cetera, et cetera.
00:20:31
But like just because to follow the pattern of standardized true crime is like is a very difficult.
00:20:39
Those shows that do it that are actually journalist led and thoroughly researched and are like are invaluable.
00:20:46
Compassion. Yeah. Yes. But it's like just to retell these stories is it's just the darkness is tough.
00:20:55
You need something more than that for sure. Especially in a quarantine, for example.
00:21:00
Right, right. Which we were in for quite a while, if I remember correctly. Yeah, we were in for quite a while.
00:21:07
Real quick, before we get into your story, we did mention Marissa Hargitay's nonprofit. It's still going on. It's called the Joyful Heart Foundation.
00:21:14
And since 2004, Joyful Heart has been a leading national organization with a mission to transform society's response to sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, support survivors healing and end this violence forever.
00:21:27
Yes. You can donate or learn more about the Joyful Heart Foundation by going to joyfulheartfoundation.org. I mean, I think Mariska Hargitay is like a legend now for having played Olivia Benson on SVU for years and years and then basically turning all of that work into this activism that's really been very effective. And like, it's just the coolest. She's the coolest.
00:21:54
Yeah. And hey, while we're here, let's donate 10 grand to the Joyful Heart Foundation.
00:22:00
Love it. Great idea. Cool. How do you get these ideas? It's just, they just come into my mind. I don't even know how.
00:22:08
Speaking of ideas coming from nowhere, let's listen to your epic story. This is like a classic.
00:22:15
Karen telling the story of John List. If you spend all day waiting to take your bra off, it might be time for Third Love.
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Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. so i've known about this one for a long time because it was made famous by that great american
00:24:37
television show america's most wanted hell yeah do you remember the america's most wanted about
00:24:43
john list the man who killed his entire family and then disappeared for 19 years yes yes you do
00:24:49
yes well that's my favorite murder for this week let me hear it i'm going to tell you all about it
00:24:56
All right. So John List was a successful businessman. He was a devout lifelong Lutheran.
00:25:03
He was a Sunday school teacher. He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father of three.
00:25:08
His family lived with his mother, so their grandmother, in a sprawling 19 room mansion
00:25:15
called Bree's Knoll in Westfield, New Jersey. But behind closed doors, things were not going well.
00:25:23
shocking this is me kind of trying to write like a you know 2020 version of this this is this is a
00:25:30
narrative this is i'm really trying to put something into this and it might not really
00:25:35
work out that well because it feels a bit sweaty right now i feel like i'm trying well it's hot in
00:25:40
here it also is very hot it's summer in los angeles so john lifts lists wife helen which
00:25:48
they didn't none of this you knew from america's most wanted oh i love this stuff tell me his wife
00:25:53
Helen was an alcoholic who was verbally abusive and unstable. She sounds fun. When you see the
00:25:59
picture of the List family, her eyes are going in two different directions. Was she dressed well
00:26:04
though? Yes. It was the picture I think was from like the mid sixties. So they look like any family.
00:26:10
Oh my God. I just picture her at like a party and she's just drunk and like, but she looks amazing.
00:26:16
Yes. I love it. Like she's got like a Jackie O outfit on, but her face is like, is just like kooky eyes and like bubbles above her head like talking loudly about their bedroom
00:26:26
secrets oh yeah girl you just nailed it shut up okay ready oh my god so uh she demanded that that
00:26:35
john buy her that colonial mansion in westfield which is a very ritzy apparently town in new jersey
00:26:42
or was in the 60s and 70s um when john landed his high status position as bank vice president and
00:26:50
comptroller, which is one of my favorite words in the English language. So good.
00:26:54
Comptroller. I don't know what it means. I love to say it. I'm running for comptroller this
00:26:59
this year. Okay. So what no one knew is that John had recently been fired from being the bank
00:27:08
president and comptroller stress. And he, even though he was an ambitious career man, could
00:27:14
never hold a job for more than a couple of years because of his personality problems,
00:27:20
personality issues, quote unquote. Oh my God. But he couldn't let his family know that he'd
00:27:26
gotten fired. So every day he got up and he put on a suit and he grabbed his briefcase and he went
00:27:31
to the train station like he was going to work. Those people terrify me. Yes. It's such deep
00:27:37
denial. It's insane denial of like, everything's fine. And then there's crazy things boiling
00:27:44
underneath those those people man yeah so he would sit at the train station and read newspapers
00:27:50
all day until it was time to quote unquote come home from work holy shit right and meanwhile he
00:27:56
was skimming money off of his mother's bank account so he could pay his crazy mortgage on
00:28:02
his colonial 19 room mansion um and all the other bills are piling up so in short john list was
00:28:11
Lutheran fuck up under pressure. That's what I wrote. That's good. So here's his plan.
00:28:20
He on the morning of November 9th, 1971, after his children had left for school,
00:28:27
John walked into the kitchen where his wife was drinking her morning coffee at the kitchen table.
00:28:32
And he walked up and he shot her in the back of the head with a nine millimeter handgun.
00:28:37
Then he went upstairs to the third floor of their mansion where his mother had her own like what are the sweet yes her own little apartment wing wing
00:28:47
yeah a wing of the mansion and he shot her in the head right over her left eye which to me
00:28:54
sounds like he shot her face to face oh yeah which is pretty intense jesus then he drove to the bank
00:29:01
and he closed his account and his mother's accounts and he cashed in his mother's savings
00:29:06
bonds. He came home. He went to a study. He collected some old photos and documents concerning
00:29:11
the mansion's history, and he put them in a neat pile on his desk, and he composed a letter,
00:29:17
a thank you letter to John Whitkey, who was a descendant of the original owner of the house.
00:29:21
The shit. You know, the important stuff. Yeah, yeah. And then he also wrote four other letters. He called Barbara Bader, who was the woman who
00:29:29
carpooled his sons, John and Fred, to Roosevelt Junior High School, and she had done that for
00:29:34
the last time that morning. He made an excuse that the whole family was leaving to go to North
00:29:39
Carolina the next morning because Helen's mother was extremely ill. And he promised that he would
00:29:45
let her know when they were coming back. Then he canceled the newspaper milk delivery. And he asked
00:29:51
the post office to hold the mail until further notice Was there going to be further notice Absolutely not No So now it lunchtime So he made himself a lunch sat down at the table where he had just shot his wife and then
00:30:08
cleaned up the blood off the table. Bologna or cold meatloaf? I would guess bologna because he's
00:30:15
just like, he's all business. He just wants to get proteins and calories. Bologna on white with
00:30:21
mustard with mustard only and some do they have potato chips back then i would don't think john
00:30:26
list would eat potato chips i think he would eat two sandwiches instead of having a delicious side
00:30:31
karen that was the best that was what i was looking for because i love food details that's
00:30:37
my opinion of john list no that was that was beautiful yeah that's the kind of stuff i can't
00:30:43
understand that like that's such a dude move oh yeah where i'm like you could have chips the only
00:30:48
thing you want with a sandwich yeah or you're just gonna double down pickle slices pickles are nice
00:30:53
yeah but i always you know me and the starches oh right well sure everyone can start but you just
00:30:58
don't keep them in your house i don't eat them all that's right i mean not you one one so
00:31:04
then he went around and cut himself out of every family photo in the entire house why is that the
00:31:12
craziest part that is to me i did it as a standalone because it's the creepiest fact
00:31:18
to me in this whole case it's so fucking creepy that is so creepy then come now it's early
00:31:26
afternoon so he's waiting for his children to come home from school patricia who was 16 a drama nerd
00:31:35
and it was the it was 1971 so she had been caught smoking pot oh she was the coolest she was cool
00:31:42
and she came home he shot her in the back of the head honey then his son frederick the youngest who
00:31:49
was 13 came home he shot him in the back of the head so they didn't even know that their father
00:31:54
no and he and he actually in the court later revealed that that he did it his wife and his
00:32:01
kids back of the head so that they didn't know what happened but mom is a different story his
00:32:06
mother was a different story which is very telling to me let's get yeah tell me more but then also
00:32:10
So John Jr. is a different story. The 15 year old who was named after him and supposedly his favorite.
00:32:16
There was like a couple different versions of this. Some said he just came straight home from school.
00:32:22
But the one I like the best, which is the one I will tell, is that he had a soccer game that day.
00:32:28
So John List drove to the school, watched his son's soccer game, drove him home, tried to shoot him.
00:32:36
But he maybe saw the gun and freaked out. so he ended up shooting him in the face and chest over 10 times wow so overkill crazy fucking
00:32:48
overkill yeah and knew what was happening as as it went once in the chest and once in the face
00:32:54
i get something went worse than wrong that or he hated him more like something went especially
00:33:02
wrong for 10 times yes because this was a man that was doing it like uh neatly and cleanly and
00:33:10
pretending systematically he was like checking off a list sure but when it came this guy wasn't
00:33:16
john jr didn't play ball and made it hard for him and i think that's like the rage came oh yeah like
00:33:22
how dare you you're making this too hard for me not even like you're showing me how what horrible
00:33:27
I am. No, no, no. You're ruining my plan. You're ruining my good time. Oh, my God. It's hideous.
00:33:33
So then he dragged he got sleeping bags from down from the basement and he put all the bodies on the
00:33:40
sleeping bags, then dragged them into the back of the house. To what room? The ballroom. Yes.
00:33:49
Yeah. They had a ballroom in this mansion that wasn't even decorated or furnished in any way.
00:33:54
That's how big this house was. And so he pulled his wife and three children's dead bodies on sleeping bags back into the ballroom. He put a piece of cloth over each of their faces and he left them there, turned it into basically like a makeshift morgue. Then he fed the children's pet fish in the 20 gallon tank in the dining room, went upstairs and went to sleep.
00:34:21
holy shit yeah so he's are the fish okay that's the kind of thought this man is having
00:34:28
are the fish okay is this i mean as much as because i need to put a name on things is this
00:34:33
sociopath um oh i'm we'll talk about the name later but i he probably i mean i don't know
00:34:41
enough anytime it's like clearly you have no feelings yeah that's what i want to label it as
00:34:45
Me too, but yeah, it's almost true. But he is, the real term for this guy is a family annihilator.
00:34:50
Yeah. And it's like a thing that happens and there's a couple different kinds. And they'll never kill anyone else again.
00:34:56
Kind of a thing? Yes, right. It's a situational thing for them. Yeah, tell me more.
00:35:02
Okay. So the next morning he gets up, he gets dressed, he goes downstairs, he turns the thermostat all the way down.
00:35:09
He turns on every light in the house. and then he leaves the house and he leaves westfield forever now the weird thing is
00:35:20
no one noticed of course no one in the neighborhood noticed that this family was not there
00:35:26
and that's because they this family did not socialize which is kind of common if you have
00:35:31
a crazy drunk mom like they stayed in they didn't talk to anybody the neighbors knew john list
00:35:37
as the guy who mowed his lawn in a suit and tie. Jesus. I think the most suspicious part would be
00:35:43
that all the lights are on. That's right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like nobody, especially in a 19 room mansion.
00:35:50
Yeah. You're like, sorry, nobody's in the greenhouse. Nobody in the brightest house on the block It they not having a party um so because of all this careful planning and because they were basically anti and reclusive um it took a full month for anybody to
00:36:13
actually discover these bodies a month a full month um so the neighbors noticed that these
00:36:19
lights were on day and night and that they were always on and that they started burning out
00:36:24
and that's when they started getting suspicious oh that's creepy can you imagine seeing like
00:36:28
one room is out and then the next room is out yeah and never comes back on so clear and no one's
00:36:34
coming in or out of the house so something super creepy is happening up there but also you don't
00:36:39
want to think about it because what could it be that would be that weird yeah but who does
00:36:43
this is the most cinematic i think of all the stories because patty's drama teacher is the one
00:36:50
who's like, I don't like the smell of this. Oh my God. His name was Edwin Ileano.
00:36:57
And he thought it was weird that the entire family was gone that long. And also he, he had a terrible feeling because Patty once told him if his family goes on
00:37:05
vacation, my dad has killed us. I knew she talked to him about something. Yeah. She said that?
00:37:12
She said it to him. So, uh, after, you know, 28 days, oh, and he'd also met him once and thought he was super
00:37:19
weird. Oh my God. So after 28 days, Edwin Iliano convinces his associate, Barbara Sheridan, to go to the house with him to check on Patty.
00:37:30
And they drive up there. They try to look into some windows. And their being there makes the neighbors call the cops because they see people finally on the property.
00:37:40
And when the cops show up, Edwin explains to them, it's, oh, the neighbors, William and Shirley Cunick are their names.
00:37:49
They're the ones that called the police. And patrol officers George Zahelsnik and Charles Heller were the first to arrive.
00:37:57
So Ileano explains what's going on, and the officers decide they're going to force open a window and go inside.
00:38:03
And when they open that window, they're hit with the smell of death. Thank you. So I forgot.
00:38:09
This might be my creepiest detail. Oh, good. when they go into the house the first thing they notice is that there's organ music playing loudly
00:38:19
over the house intercom i'm gonna cry i'm gonna cry because there's an intercom in this house
00:38:25
okay and because there's organ music so you're jealous of the intercom yeah because that's so
00:38:29
cool yeah and organ music is the creepiest thing i've ever heard john list set up they kept calling
00:38:34
it a recorder and all these articles that i read yeah when you do research you realize everyone
00:38:39
rips everybody off. It's hilarious. Insane. So calling something a recorder makes no sense. It
00:38:45
sounds like it's the instrument children play in grammar school, which would be even creepier.
00:38:50
Just a child playing the recorder really loud. Oh, God, no. Okay, I was gonna go deep. Go on.
00:38:57
He had set up a thing that just played this music on a loop until you physically turned it off
00:39:04
and then set it to play over the intercom. What was like an old machine or something? I guess so.
00:39:09
I mean, they call a recorder, maybe a recording device or like a reel to reel. Yeah, that sounds right.
00:39:15
Because it was 71. Let's go with that. So. Oh, I said two things organ music is good for ice skating and mass murdering.
00:39:25
See, it's I'm trying too hard now. Need to keep it conversational. So upstairs in the study, they find a five page letter that list had written to his pastor, Eugene Renwinkle.
00:39:38
Sorry. i don't know it's it's like bad writing like what should we name the old pastor of the lutheran
00:39:45
church eugene renwinkel oh my god um so in that letter he said he felt the 70s were a sinful time
00:39:51
and that his family was beginning to succumb to temptation especially his daughter because of her
00:39:57
interest in acting which is an occupation that list viewed as being particularly corrupt and
00:40:02
linked to Satan, which is true. So I fucking slayed them all. What the? Yeah, so the holy religious thing to do
00:40:09
is kill everybody. John. So he thought it was like a mercy killing. That's exactly right.
00:40:17
He saw too much evil in the world. He had killed his family to save their souls.
00:40:21
That's very nice of you, you fucking dick. And also, how giving. Now, he said he didn't kill himself
00:40:27
because... Yeah, well, let's hear it. He didn't kill himself because suicide is a mortal sin.
00:40:35
That would definitely bar him from heaven as opposed to murdering five people where you're still in a gray area
00:40:43
that can be negotiated. What are you talking about? Narcissism, extreme narcissism, sociopathy.
00:40:49
Definitely narcissism. I don't think the sociopath thing might not apply only because this is the one-off.
00:40:58
People get mad. It's a five-off. sorry that's five up okay we're not saying all narcissists are murderers right that but however
00:41:07
this is an extreme case of narcissists yeah it's a it's a element in this personality disorder yeah
00:41:14
uh i'm a narcissist i've never killed anybody except for in comedy okay okay uh later a reporter who covered the trial described hearing this letter when it was
00:41:26
read aloud in court and he said quote i'll never forget the audible sigh of shock from the jury
00:41:32
and spectators when the last line of lists letter letter was read p.s mother is in the hallway in
00:41:39
the attic third floor she was too heavy to move oh my god dang that's your mom yeah it's like a
00:41:47
moving like a moving box that you just like couldn't yeah someone take care of that upstairs
00:41:52
like it's your mother do you think you might have had a slight problem with her Yeah Yeah Okay So a nationwide man hunt is launched but he got a month lead time
00:42:06
He's, he's way ahead. Police investigated hundreds of leads without success. All reliable photographs of list had been destroyed.
00:42:13
So it wasn't, I was creeped out. Yeah. Turns out it was kind of like super smart.
00:42:19
Yeah. Oh, I didn't get, I didn't catch onto that. I did not either. the family car was found
00:42:26
at Kennedy Airport but there was no evidence he had boarded a flight he was gone
00:42:30
and would remain gone for 18 years wow then on May 21st 1989 forward forward into the 80s
00:42:39
yay the murders were recounted on America's Most Wanted which at the time had been on the air
00:42:44
less than a year oh my god and it featured an age progressed age progressed sorry
00:42:50
age progressed clay bust sculpted by the forensic artist Frank Bender, and it turned out to bear an almost exact resemblance
00:43:00
to Liszt's appearance. Maybe I'm making this up, but I fucking remember seeing this.
00:43:04
No, you remember, because I'm about to hold up a picture to you. I'm so excited.
00:43:10
All right. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I was nine, so I was old enough to remember this.
00:43:13
Yes, and this was, I remember it. I was 19. Oh, grandma and baby. Give me a hug.
00:43:20
Bender consulted a forensic psychologist and created a psychological profile of List.
00:43:25
He looked at photographs of List's parents and predicted what he would look like as he aged.
00:43:29
Holy shit. He gave him a receding hairline and sagging jaws. Bender was particularly lauded for one final touch
00:43:35
he added to his completed artwork. It was a pair of glasses. Bender believed List would not be vain enough
00:43:41
to wear contact lenses. However, he said List would have worn a pair of glasses different from those he wore before the murders.
00:43:47
He said they would be a pair with thick, dark frames. he and the psychologist theorized that list would do this to hide in a sense he would want to disguise
00:43:57
the fact that he was a failure and appear more important than he really was holy shit so he put
00:44:03
these big old glasses remember that dude i remember this is real john list and this is that sculpture
00:44:11
fuck it's fucking like exact oh my god you guys look this up right now steven isn't that crazy
00:44:17
we'll put it we'll put it on uh social media oh i'll put this on our insta but this frank bender
00:44:24
nailed it so literally less than two weeks later they got a ton of calls but less than two weeks
00:44:29
later they find him in virginia um and the hilarious part is in the court uh john list
00:44:37
reveals he was watching the show that night with his new wife and he was quoted as saying i was
00:44:44
perspiring like anything but his wife didn't recognize him but no way she had a fucking
00:44:50
she had a veil of i can't over her fucking eyes and i bet a little vin rose a little rose a little
00:44:59
bottle of rose she had all kinds of different veils uh yeah a veil yeah okay so they go to trial
00:45:08
he explained that he had lost his job he explained he was dealing with his wife's alcoholism and
00:45:19
trial reveal her untreated tertiary syphilis that she had contracted from her first husband
00:45:27
an army lieutenant who was killed in combat in korea and concealed for 18 years so his crazy wife
00:45:34
that used to verbally abuse him and publicly uh oh i maybe i skipped that part but there's oh no
00:45:40
it's in this part um he says in court that she used to publicly um insult him about uh wait did
00:45:50
i guess that completely yes you go you absolutely guessed it out of the blue yeah well syphilis
00:45:57
makes you go fucking bananas um he list said by by then the disease and her excessive alcohol
00:46:04
consumption had according to testimony transfer transformed her from an attractive young woman
00:46:09
to an unkempt paranoid recluse who frequently and often publicly disparaged list comparing his
00:46:17
sexual skills unfavorably to those of her first husband the one who gave her syphilis
00:46:22
and syphilis. Jesus, that scared the shit out of me. So here's me playing the prosecuting attorney.
00:46:28
Mr. List, can you explain how your wife often disparages your sexual skills in public if she's
00:46:34
a recluse? No more questions, your honor. And I turn around, slam my blazer down onto the chair.
00:46:41
All right. So basically, John List makes all these excuses in court. He's like, I have PTSD from being in the army. Um, I, uh, what's, what else do you say? I, oh, wait, a
00:46:57
smoker. He, oh, it was my wife. My kids were going crazy. I was abused as a child.
00:47:07
My father always told me that you had to provide for your family and that you had to do this and
00:47:12
you had to do that. And I, and I wasn't doing anything, any of those things. Cause I lost my
00:47:16
job, blah, blah, blah. So a court appointed psychiatrist testified Liss suffered from
00:47:22
obsessive compulsive personality disorder. And he only saw two solutions to a situation,
00:47:30
accept welfare or kill his family and send them to heaven. And welfare was unacceptable because
00:47:37
it would expose him and his family to ridicule and violate his authoritarian father's teachings,
00:47:41
blah blah blah so this is a common thing with family annihilators they say that there are two
00:47:48
types and one is a livid coercive killer and those are the ones that are usually abusive
00:47:55
and they kill the family when the family tries to run away from that so It's years of abuse, years of abuse.
00:48:01
The family tries to escape and then it's like, we see those all the time. I'll teach you all.
00:48:05
Yes. But the other kind is the civil reputable killer. And they're motivated by a perverse form of altruism.
00:48:13
So it's his way of rescuing the family from shame and hardship. Yeah. And in his obsessive compulsive narcissism,
00:48:21
John List didn't choose to fix his own problems, but instead he fixated on the family problems and the problems of society.
00:48:29
um 81 of family annihilators kill themselves after killing their family um so that's when
00:48:38
in my opinion john list's argument of this i was doing the best for the family breaks down
00:48:44
because he went on to live a happy life for 19 years yeah uh in colorado and what sorry the part
00:48:53
that i was skipping over is he basically told everybody what happened was the day after the
00:48:57
murders he took the train from new jersey to michigan and then from michigan to colorado
00:49:02
he settled in denver he took an accounting job as robert peter bob clark and that's subtle yeah
00:49:11
kind of plain but then also exciting yeah exciting in a way pick one of those names um
00:49:17
he was uh the controller at a paper box manufacturer outside denver he was they said
00:49:23
controller i want to say cop troller you know what it's our fucking story to tell that's right
00:49:27
And then what he do he joined the Lutheran congregation Ran a carpool for shut-in church members
00:49:33
And met an army PX clerk named Dolores Miller And married her in 1985 It's almost like he's trying to prove to himself
00:49:41
That he's actually a good person It was just circumstantial It was them His wife, his alcoholic syphilitic wife
00:49:50
His hippie daughter His rebellious children They ruined it for him I feel like in the 50s that might have worked better than in the 70s and 80s, especially the 80s.
00:50:04
But that came to an end, it seems like. Right. Well, that was also the oldest version of there's only a father that's the breadwinner.
00:50:15
It's never the mother and no one gets divorced. And this is the American dream. You have to have a house and two kids.
00:50:21
All that bullshit everyone got sold. Yeah. that everyone kind of had to swallow whole basically also john list um was abused as a
00:50:32
child which is a very common thing in family and i annihilators because um they get they feel
00:50:39
powerless they felt powerless as children so when they have families they're exerting power over the
00:50:44
family to give them that power now they're in charge exactly and then when that doesn't work
00:50:50
they don't know how to deal with it oh man when when the 70s come and the daughter's like i'm
00:50:54
gonna go crazy yeah when there's a fucking cultural revolution throughout the country
00:50:58
and your daughter's like i think i might want to act yeah instead of being a devout lutheran yeah
00:51:03
uh yeah so they they're trying to create the the life they never had that they fantasized of as
00:51:11
abused children right and then when that goes to shit they're just like well we're starting over
00:51:16
essentially. I guess this has a great twist ending. Oh, good. He was convicted of five
00:51:30
counts of murder and the judge said, John Emmell List is without remorse and without honor.
00:51:40
After 18 years, five months, and 22 days, it's now time for the voices of Helen,
00:51:45
Alma, Patrick, Patricia, frederick and john f list to rise from the grave that's beautiful and he imposed a sentence of five
00:51:53
terms of life imprisonment to be served consecutively it was the maximum penalty
00:51:58
and list died of pneumonia in prison on march 21st 2008 well his body was not claimed because
00:52:07
who's gonna fucking claim it he lived for a long time he really did the second wife didn't return
00:52:13
the call and the morgue was like oh we have your she's like that ain't my hello but eventually
00:52:19
someone took him back and he was buried next to his mother in michigan oh she's like fuck this guy
00:52:24
yeah get out of here you shot me the fucking face and then wouldn't even carry me to the ballroom
00:52:29
but are you ready for this twist ending that oh that's not it yeah this is it so somebody burnt
00:52:36
down breeze knoll the great the great mansion some that no one's ever even looked into who might
00:52:43
have done it they just did it um could have been a ghost fire um there's a new jersey ghost fire
00:52:50
um but destroyed along with the home was the ballroom stained glass skylight which was a
00:52:59
signed tiffany original oh she's worth at least a hundred thousand dollars at the time
00:53:04
which would have covered his expenses. It was right there the whole time in that room you didn't go in
00:53:15
because you couldn't deal with it. Oh, my God. That's going to be someone's new ringtone, by the way.
00:53:23
That's John List, everybody. Oh, also, because he disappeared in 71, and D.B. Cooper,
00:53:32
they thought he was D.B. Cooper for a while. Because he kind of looks like that sketch.
00:53:36
Yeah, Mr. Vague. Oh, for sure. And D.B. Cooper stole $200,000, which was kind of around,
00:53:43
they figured around how much John List owed. Are they sure it wasn't him? John List vehemently denied it from jail.
00:53:51
That's how fucking boring this guy is. I don know man No I insist I not D Cooper I don know It could have been cool if you were Yeah but maybe he doesn I bet it was him No I don think this guy would have jumped out of a plane
00:54:05
He was too scared to tell his wife he got fired. Okay. You know? Okay, maybe he thought, I don't know, do Lutherans like Jesus?
00:54:13
Maybe he thought Jesus would help out? Yeah. Jesus did help out. He gave him a beautiful skylight, a Tiffany skylight.
00:54:21
The Lord said it was right there all along. You know that whoever burnt that house down is fucking bummed.
00:54:25
They didn't know that, too. Yeah. There was some real estate agent that ran up at the last.
00:54:29
What are you doing? No, no, no. At least get the thing. You ghosts and your arson.
00:54:37
Okay, we're back. Remember when Conan O'Brien guested on our show and told us this story like we had never heard it before?
00:54:45
Yeah. But also, I mean, why would he, you know, have ever listened to this podcast?
00:54:51
But also that he was in the courtroom when John Lisp. Oh, my God. He's just. He's a super gigantic murderino.
00:54:59
But he also was like, the assumption was, we didn't know what he was talking about.
00:55:03
It's just like, sir. It wasn't a little like, you've maybe never heard of this one.
00:55:06
And it's like, try me. Either that or just I'm fucking telling this story. And it's like, oh, I have some details too.
00:55:13
Okay. You're right. You're right. One of which, God damn, I think about it literally once a week.
00:55:19
Yeah. is that John List did all of that because he was broke. And meanwhile, in that mansion that he felt pressured to buy,
00:55:28
there was a Tiffany fixture. Glass ceiling. It was the glass ceiling. Like a skylight.
00:55:34
Yeah. Or was it a light fixture? I can't remember. But either way, it was worth over $100,000 enough to get him out of debt.
00:55:43
Let me throw this in there. Okay. Do you think, aka, I bet he still would have found something later to kill them all for.
00:55:52
He would have sold that Skylighter light thing, used a hundred grand. He still would have fucking killed them on something else.
00:55:59
I feel like a family annihilator. Yeah. The problem isn't actually debt. Totally.
00:56:04
You're right. Yes. It's not getting out of debt and everything's fine and everyone's happy.
00:56:08
It's he wanted to and he found a way to do it. Yeah. There wasn't a magic key that was going to solve it.
00:56:14
And also just that the whole topic of family annihilators, it's so intense. It's so way out there. It's just, and it's crazy because now those stories are coming up more and more.
00:56:25
Yeah. And he, specifically this story is just so cold and calculated. The whole cutting the face out of his face out of the pictures and just, I mean, it's just so sick. Are there any updates? I know he's dead, but anything more?
00:56:42
Here, this is what's important. I've learned what a comptroller is. Webster's Dictionary defines a comptroller as a management-level professional who oversees financial reporting and accounting. Also, while he was on the run, John took a job as a controller, which we also didn't understand or care about in the original story.
00:57:01
Turns out controllers work for private companies doing the exact same thing. Comptrollers work for governments and nonprofits doing that job.
00:57:10
So it turns out a man whose financial irresponsibility led him to murder his entire family actually worked in accounting.
00:57:18
That was supposed to be his specialty. Yeah. He can't do anything right. The irony.
00:57:24
The irony is everywhere with this John List story. Also, the John Liz story is the America's Most Wanted element that makes it such a legendary true crime story.
00:57:34
And that his fucking new wife was sitting next to him and didn't recognize him or just, you know, maybe something in her head did.
00:57:41
But it's like a movie. Can you imagine? Jesus. Can you imagine? This is why Conan loved the story so much.
00:57:48
Okay. It's time for Georgia's story that she does on this episode about the death of Warina Wright.
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Goodbye All right All right What yours So I have one that I learned about recently because it happened recently And we going to Karen we going to do a little play
01:00:07
Okay. This whole, this theme, what is this theme? Drama. Drama teachers. All right.
01:00:14
You mean for this episode? Yeah. Yeah. The drama teachers episode. All right. So.
01:00:20
Warina Wright. W-A-R-R-I-E-N-A. lorina right was 26 from new zealand and she went to queensland australia on july 29th 2014
01:00:33
uh just celebrated friends wedding checks into a motel on august 6th and then on the
01:00:40
the following day is like let's see who's on tinder do you know this one no okay so she fucking
01:00:46
tinder is beautiful girl she looks like a little bit a little gothy but not you know she's hot
01:00:51
So she finds Gable Toasty's Tinder. He's this like hot ladies man. They meet up outside of a bar on the 6th.
01:01:08
I just want to say by the next morning, Marina will be dead after falling from his Gable's 14th floor balcony.
01:01:17
That's how this goes. That's not good. back to that night by 9 p.m. they're in his apartment on the 14th floor this beautiful building
01:01:26
so somehow gable which is a great name isn't it it's his first name a first name i don't know
01:01:36
kind of like it um for some reason he starts recording what's going on inside with a voice
01:01:43
recorder police somehow extracted it from um like mobile phones that were found i think it was tried
01:01:50
they tried to delete he tried to delete it it didn't happen they were able to get it
01:01:53
so so there's um there's a whole uh there's a whole conversation that's recorded so yeah
01:02:02
so i'm gonna read but i yeah okay i'm gonna read i highlighted your parts okay oh you're
01:02:09
you're warina i'm gable but let me read it to you also okay so at 1 a.m the sound recorder started
01:02:18
and uh it's later ceased but the recording starts music's heard and 20 seconds into the recording
01:02:26
the man states fuck me at 102 a.m the man asks the female to chill and have a drink
01:02:33
and she says she is I'm a psycho drunk and do not test me then at 105 between 105 and 108
01:02:42
the pair talk about death the male says throw me off the balcony and that's it this is it boom
01:02:48
then at 116 AM there's laughing sounds are heard and sounds of hitting are heard as well
01:02:58
but the music continues to play in the background and that was scary and there are soft sounds of groaning
01:03:05
at 1.29am the male says I don't like getting beaten up at 1.36am the argument begins when the
01:03:15
female says she's leaving and can't find her iPhone she says are you going to fucking untie me because
01:03:21
I will fucking destroy your jaw oh my god and then Vince unlocked the door and scared
01:03:29
the ever loving hi baby oh man elvis and sabrel um okay you're gonna untie me blah blah blah so at 138 the man says i should have
01:03:52
never given you so much to drink i thought we were gonna have fun and then he asks her to calm
01:03:57
down. At 1.41 a.m., the man asks the female to stay but says, you're just a bit violent. He offers
01:04:04
to cook some food and the conversation calms down. At 1.53 a.m., more drinks are poured.
01:04:10
Stop drinking, you guys. Yeah. You already decided the drinking's bad. Yeah. At 2 a.m.,
01:04:16
the occupant of the apartment below is woken up by the noise. At 2.10 a.m., in the audio recording,
01:04:24
the male tells the female to relax and threatens to kick her arse ass at 2 11 a.m there's sounds
01:04:32
of a struggle a minute later the sounds of rocks possibly being thrown in the apartment is heard
01:04:37
at 2 14 the man says that's enough you've worn out your welcome you have to leave the female
01:04:43
out of breath says okay at 2 15 a.m the man says i thought you were kidding and i have taken enough
01:04:50
this is fucking bullshit you're lucky i haven't chucked you off my balcony you goddamn psycho
01:04:54
little bitch at 2 16 a.m the female who is breathing heavily accuses him of being sexist and
01:05:00
then says lay off to which the male replies seriously what at 2 17 a.m the man says you're
01:05:06
a goddamn psycho i'm going to let you go i'm going to walk you out of this apartment just the way you
01:05:11
are you are not going to collect any of your belongings you are just going to walk out and
01:05:15
i'm going to slam the door on you do you understand if you try and pull anything i'll knock you out
01:05:19
Do you understand? The female says, I'm so sorry. I don't care. Okay. So the fall.
01:05:27
At 2.17 a.m., sounds of struggling and heavy breathing are heard. The man says, let go of it.
01:05:32
Let go. Let go. Let go. At 2.18, the first choking sounds are heard. Breathing slows.
01:05:39
Male. Let it go. Sounds of a metallic object dropping is heard. At 2.20 a.m., a door unlocks and the female states, no.
01:05:48
The sound of glass of glass door possibly being hit 220 The man says who the fuck do you think you are Hey the female says no no no no no no no no The male says you tried to kill me huh Well why did you try and hit me with that Shut your filthy mouth
01:06:05
The female. I'm not going to scream. Screams now. But she's screaming, no, no, no, no, no, no.
01:06:09
The man says, it's all on recording. You know, it's all being recorded. The female, a lot more no's.
01:06:14
Just let me go home. The male says, I would, but you've been a bad girl. And then the sounds are heard of a door slamming shut.
01:06:21
a police at this point alleged that um he left her out on the balcony missed right on the balcony
01:06:28
the female says just let me go home just let me go home at 2 21 a.m a female's final words are
01:06:35
heard just let me go home faint screaming is heard you look you're looking at me like i'm gonna
01:06:39
it's horrible okay so put that down all right so the occupant in the apartment below his here's a female repeatedly shouting no
01:06:51
and then sees two legs dangling down so what's going on right now is either she's crazy and drunk and jumping or she's terrified of this person and trying to get
01:07:06
to the balcony below yeah so the witness says in a matter of seconds i saw the person fall
01:07:12
from the balcony above mine. At 221, a call is placed from Gable's phone to his lawyer.
01:07:19
The call doesn't connect. At 223, a triple O, which I'm guessing is 911, call is placed by the woman
01:07:25
in the apartment below. Police arrive at the scene and at the same time, the fob key to his apartment
01:07:33
is activated. Closed caption cameras capture a male believed to be Gable approaching the front entrance
01:07:40
of the apartment and he walks back to the elevator and rides it to the basement at 229 sounds of walking are heard
01:07:47
in the audio recording which is still going from earlier in the night so he has the phone or
01:07:52
whatever he's using to record what's going on with him or in the apartment with him with him he's like
01:07:57
in the in the so sorry he's recording this entire evening he's recording the whole thing and people
01:08:03
said he might have done it because he was like a creepy pervert and like to record these things or
01:08:07
he took home a lot of women and this is a way to like assure that nothing oh you know just have it
01:08:14
if they go crazy or if yeah either way it's sketchy yeah at 3 10 a.m he orders a pizza
01:08:22
what yeah he says um a pizza of pizza supreme please he orders a fucking slice of pizza
01:08:30
at 3 23 a.m a call is placed to his father he says hello dad i might have gotten a bit of a situation
01:08:39
i went i met a girl for a date she started getting aggressive um we kept drinking and i think she
01:08:47
thought it was like a joke and she kept like beating me up because she was really drunk and
01:08:52
i forced her out on the balcony and i think she might have jumped off and the dad says oh no
01:08:58
um are you okay yeah so there's a million cops booking walking around i'm fucked up i don't have
01:09:06
to do the um he says i don't know i like i tackled her on my floor inside the building and i never
01:09:14
forced her over the edge so the dad picks him up and uh eventually he's arrested and uh
01:09:27
so yeah so he's claiming he's innocent she jumped he has nothing to do with it he didn't push her
01:09:34
over the edge it's not murder he's um he's set for trial on august on october 13th 2016 but he's
01:09:43
free right now he's out on bond and he he can't stop talking he's posting shit on like bodybuilders
01:09:48
dot com oh no he's just he doesn't understand why people are blamed he he has to be somewhat
01:09:56
narcissistic yeah oh you mean like he needs to say his what his side of it is yeah but he's also
01:10:01
saying things about how many women he's been with and he's never hurt them so he's like bragging
01:10:06
about that how nice his apartment was um how well he does saying it's a witch hunt
01:10:14
but they but prosecutors think he could be convicted for murder because she was reportedly in fear of her life and was trying to flee
01:10:22
him to the apartment below. Who says that in those neighbors? The prosecutors say that. Oh,
01:10:27
okay. And I'm really interested. I really like, not like, but I'm really interested in murder by
01:10:32
suicide. I think it's really interesting. Like there's that one case of, there was the road
01:10:38
rage incidents on a bridge in Detroit. And this man was coming at the woman who had rear-ended
01:10:45
him and she jumped off the bridge to get away from him. Yeah. That's, that was actually a very
01:10:50
famous like one of the earliest law and orders really yes oh wow yeah well and he was convicted
01:10:56
of murder or maybe manslaughter because you just didn't know where else to go it was just like
01:11:01
trying to get away yeah but also the idea of recording an entire evening just to be sure
01:11:10
in and of itself is suspicious to me maybe what do you need to be sure of that you have been in
01:11:16
a position where this has been a problem for you or maybe she just already was being a little crazy
01:11:21
oh so he started the recording yeah not to i'm not victim blaming they were clearly very drunk
01:11:28
well maybe he liked to record his his sex sex but but yeah you're right i mean like she
01:11:36
the things that she's doing don't make a lot of sense it's not it's not like it's uh doesn't seem
01:11:42
like she's the only victim at the beginning. Yeah. It sounds, from what he's saying,
01:11:48
but here's the thing. He's the only one who knows it's being recorded. So what he's saying about her attacking him
01:11:54
is very specific. And someone on like a Reddit said, or maybe on the Facebook page said,
01:12:00
And when my boyfriend was beating me up, he'd say, he'd yell, stop it. What are you doing to me?
01:12:06
Why are you doing this? To like get the neighbors to think that she was doing something to him or just to fuck with her in her mind.
01:12:16
So it could be that. It could just be. And what it sounds like happened from when I read the transcript, which I fucking stayed up all night reading it.
01:12:24
it was like it's so crazy is um you know they were having rough sex maybe she wasn't completely
01:12:30
coherent she comes to and is freaked out by it and is trying to get out but doesn't know how and
01:12:37
he's telling her to calm down because he tells her to calm down a couple times right i think at one
01:12:41
point she realized what was happening and picked something up to throw at him and he gets so angry
01:12:46
at that because you can hear him say like you've been a bad girl she's trying to defend herself he
01:12:52
He's like, I'm going to have to lock you out on the balcony to protect myself. But the whole time she's been the victim and she's freaking the fuck out.
01:13:03
And she's drunk and fucked up. And so she thinks the best option is to go over the side of the edge and get to the balcony below.
01:13:12
Yeah, that's like something from a movie. It only works when stuntmen do it. Yeah, anyone in their right mind would never try that.
01:13:19
And so she clearly wasn't in her right mind. And is there proof that we know that she, if she drank, like, I know people who are almost like allergic to alcohol where they have one drink and they're just like legless and out of their minds.
01:13:32
No, I don't know. It's not like that. I don't know what her blood alcohol level was.
01:13:35
I don't know if they tested her for drugs. Maybe they're keeping all of that for the trial.
01:13:39
Yeah. It sounds like that's the story he's trying to push with this recording. Yeah.
01:13:44
Is like, you've gone crazy. But he's feeding her alcohol too. Yeah. So even if it's like, well, look how drunk she was.
01:13:53
I mean, his own recording is going to be the thing that convicts him, I feel like.
01:13:59
Well, it's super weird to, I can't imagine if something terrible happened at my house, like horrifying, like a person committed suicide, I wouldn't be ordering pizza an hour later.
01:14:15
No, I mean, I wonder if he was so fucked up and didn't know what was going on, it would almost be like he would go lay down or something or go hide or, you know, like, I don't think.
01:14:26
But also if you, I mean, this also, it just immediately makes me think of The Night Of because The Night Of presents you the story where you completely.
01:14:35
I haven't watched it. I have only watched the first episode. Oh, OK. But I mean, just in general, you empathize with the person that they put in front of you.
01:14:42
Right. Because that's the story you're getting. Right. Which is what happens a lot of the time is, is whoever gets ahold of that narrative.
01:14:48
Yeah. Then you go, oh yeah, yeah. No, he would never do that. He's so nice or whatever story.
01:14:55
Yeah. And what people present you. And then the media. And then the shit that they talk about the other person.
01:15:00
So in a way, not to defend him, I know, I have no idea what's going on in this one.
01:15:00
Yeah. This is crazy. But it makes sense then that if he kind of out on his own he trying to control the narrative by tweeting things and posting shit on bodybuilders or whatever you said I mean like then he that a person that just
01:15:20
scrambling and making mistakes. Yeah. I feel like the harder you try to defend yourself
01:15:26
on social media, the worse you seem and the more people can pick it apart. Yes, for sure. Because I mean, you know, web sleuths have got, have gotten ahold of this,
01:15:35
the website web sleuths have gotten a hold of this and are like picking it apart and they think
01:15:40
there's been some comments by by fake accounts he's made and just know too much about the
01:15:46
details details oh shit yeah it's like he he's his own worst fucking enemy well and also he's
01:15:54
he's paying a lot of attention to this the process of this right which is very strange yeah it's
01:16:02
going to be a hard one i feel like it's going to be a hard one so sorry this just happened days ago
01:16:06
2014 oh oh okay but he's being i i you know it's australia so i don't know i feel like he's being
01:16:13
indicted or there's going to be a trial to indict him on the on uh in october oh okay wow from what
01:16:20
i can tell from australian legal he's isn't that fucked up yeah i it's poor the poor girl but this
01:16:30
whole situation guys don't meet strangers on tinder not oh man i'm gonna get in trouble for
01:16:35
slut shaming that's not slut shaming but it's so crazy that people just like that's just dating
01:16:41
though yeah but i mean like how about the girl that girl in santa monica that knew the guy for
01:16:46
a year roof eater drank i mean bad things happen to people it just happened yeah you're right but
01:16:53
But this seems weird because the idea that a person is recording an entire evening and their foreknowledge of that recording and not telling the other person, there's a manipulation on the surface of that that's suspicious.
01:17:11
For sure. and to me it's suspicious to say i record this because just in case something happens and i need
01:17:19
to defend myself or it's like but that's not an accurate defense because we can't see what's
01:17:23
actually happening it's just your playlet it's also weird at the very end when he's like i'm i've
01:17:28
been recording that like he uses it to throw it in her face somehow almost like you can't prove
01:17:34
anything yeah you can't prove anything or like why would he use that against her if he you know
01:17:42
if nothing had happened that he could call the cops for or press charges for well also he never
01:17:46
called the cops right no and he didn't let her go either like at one point she was like i'm getting
01:17:51
my shit and i'm leaving where's my phone and he like stopped her from leaving yeah so she was
01:17:57
freaked out and wanted to leave too both of them you know if you had a person this just we'll throw
01:18:04
this out there if you were a person in your house you met on a tinder date so you don't know them
01:18:08
you guys are drinking they get a little crazy you're you're the guy so they it's a girl that
01:18:13
tries to beat you up so it's like painful irritating not yeah not life-threatening
01:18:17
you when they want to go what would be the why why would you keep them there yeah like this is a crazy if you keeping a crazy person in your apartment yeah it quote so crazy Yeah That you know you making more problems Yeah Like when if they you just go yeah
01:18:36
get out. What are you trying to get out of the situation? If you want to keep the person who's
01:18:40
crazy and abusive toward you around there, you're getting something out of it or it's not
01:18:45
as it seems. Right. Well, there's a third option that I mean, abusive people, you know,
01:18:53
it's the gaslighting technique where abusive people are like, why are you being so crazy?
01:18:57
Like this isn't that big of a deal. Right. And, and the people who that works on,
01:19:03
it, it works very well. Well, and also you would get violent if you were like, say tied up against your will or woke up,
01:19:10
whatever the scenario was where you would try your best to like, what are, what are the rocks that got thrown indoors?
01:19:18
I don't know what the rocks are. I wonder if, I mean, I wonder if she was just almost incapacitated, almost incoherent.
01:19:24
You know what I mean? Where it's like, you're not yet. You're just like, you're aware that you're in a situation that's not good.
01:19:30
Because she's not forming complete sentences most of the time. Yeah. She's just saying little things.
01:19:36
She's reacting. Right. That's right. Hmm. That's crazy. I know. And then you have to assume she was naked on the balcony too.
01:19:47
Oh, really? I think so. she's definitely barefoot but i don't i'm not sure if she's naked oh okay check that out i didn't i
01:19:56
didn't think facts and things well yeah that's fucked up right yeah i've been thinking about
01:20:03
that one for a lot for a long time are you okay i mean no no i just those ones just make me keep
01:20:09
on thinking about it. I know. The idea of recording an evening is super insane to me.
01:20:17
Yeah. And also just like this weird day and age that we live in where like you could be
01:20:21
recorded in any time. Yeah. Like right now. Oh, shit. Oh, my God. Wait, what are these
01:20:27
microphones doing on our faces? Okay, we're back. Yeah, this one is so rough. Are there
01:20:37
any case updates on this? Yeah, I have a couple case updates. After a week-long trial in October
01:20:42
of 2016, a Supreme Court jury in Brisbane acquitted Gable Totsi of both murder and
01:20:51
manslaughter charges in the death of Lorena Wright. So I had done this story before I had
01:20:58
even gone to trial, and he was acquitted. And since then, Totsi has been going by a different
01:21:05
name and his name has popped up in the news a few times since usually tied to stories about his
01:21:09
dating life or drinking habits and just like fuel his notoriety and there's just some you know he
01:21:17
gets into trouble it seems like it's just i want to know what really happened i don't know if we
01:21:21
ever will that night you know and so it's hard to be like he got acquitted so you want to be like
01:21:27
you don't want to talk shit on this person because what if he's not if he's innocent yeah this whole
01:21:33
That thing was this terrible happenstance that was, I mean, all of it is just so baffling.
01:21:40
Yeah. And it just like such a sad tragic unnecessary death of this young woman And that really what it comes down to Yeah that right That right So let talk about the new title because incredibly we titled this 29 German Spelling of Nine
01:21:56
But I bet I made that up. I don't remember. But I don't think that would be something you suggested.
01:22:03
I really don't think I would have. But who's to say? You know? I mean, it's who's to say.
01:22:08
Literally. But also it's just kind of like, we're just trying to get this stuff done.
01:22:13
I wonder how much longer it is until we stop fucking naming things after numbers.
01:22:17
It's got to be pretty close. If we're 29 is the fucking, is all we got. We just were like, we need a different gimmick here.
01:22:26
Please. All right. So if we were naming the episode today based on things we said in the episode,
01:22:32
we could call it happy clap, which I love because that's what Stephen does when Karen talks about Nico Case, which is the cutest.
01:22:40
I see Steven sitting cross-legged on the floor doing his da-da-da-da-da happy clap.
01:22:44
His quiet sound guy happy clap. Yeah. Also, all the cookies, which is what Georgia says Elvis is with Vince
01:22:50
because Vince gives him all the cookies. Yeah, that's when we had to make Vince and the cats go in a different room,
01:22:56
go in the one bedroom of my one-bedroom apartment. We were recording and he couldn't make a noise or come out or do anything.
01:23:03
Yeah. He was like, and also we were out there for an hour and 45 minutes most of the time.
01:23:09
We really were. And once in a while I'd scream, Vince, what was the name of that movie?
01:23:15
Oh, that cute little apartment. Prayers up to Vince Averill once again for being there from day one.
01:23:22
Still doing it. Still putting in his hours. He really is. Thank you guys for listening to this episode of Rewind and for sticking with us and still being here.
01:23:31
Yes, we rewind every Wednesday, so come back and we'll be doing episode 30 next week.
01:23:36
That's right. And until then, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
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Sci-fi, comedy, romance, thrillers, and more. With Cal talking to guests who help break down what makes each story worth listening to.
01:24:32
It's a fun, easy way to discover your next great audiobook. Check out Earsay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:24:40
Goodbye! Pandora Jewelry brings the sparkle to summer, now with even better prices.
01:24:44
Shop now for up to 50% off select jewelry featuring personalized pieces to must-have summer favorites.
01:24:50
Timeless jewelry made to move with you through every moment. Shop in-store or online now through July 5th.
01:24:56
Terms and conditions apply. See Pandora.net for more details. Goodbye.