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00:01:58
My favorite murder Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstart.
00:02:17
That's Karen Kilgariff. That's the listener. Hi, you guys! Ding dong. And listener, you might enjoy this little anecdote from us being in the office, us getting here.
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It's a summer Friday. So most people don't have to be here past noon, which it is.
00:02:34
I walked in. I'll just tell my side of the story. Okay. I walked in. I needed a brush.
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Of course, I don't have one in my purse. I ran to my office to see if I did. And as I ran to my office, I passed a big box of donuts.
00:02:47
I saw it immediately. So I went in. There was a half of a beautiful classic glazed donut and I picked it up and I took a bite.
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And then I was like, it's such a living alone type of thing where I was like, I was going to toss it back in the bowl.
00:03:02
Just take a bite and be like, well, that's all I want. And instead I was like, well, I guess I'll just eat the rest of this.
00:03:07
So I did that, got myself a cup of coffee, came in here to the studio, sat down.
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And I was like, man, those donuts are good. And you said. I think you ate the half that I just cut.
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We shared a donut without even knowing it. We spiritually and psychically shared that donut.
00:03:24
Because you know what was hard about it? So it was like the dregs of the donuts because people have been here earlier in the day, right?
00:03:30
So it was like clearly had been a big, huge thing of donuts. But there was one in it that is my favorite donut in the world.
00:03:38
Which one? The jelly filled. Oh, yeah. And I was like, can't do that. I'll fucking just peek on this podcast and have a sugar crash.
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It's what we're looking for. It's true. Well, I'm having an Americano, so let's do that instead.
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Okay. So I just had a little dainty bit of the fucking plain one. You know, you just got to deprive yourself of things you love.
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But a donut, I don't know. You've got to deprive yourselves of things you love so that you can be more miserable.
00:04:03
Yes, that's what I learned in the 80s, in my childhood. It's God forbid. I think donuts were always the example used when diet books were talking about dieting
00:04:13
or people or women were talking about what they can't have or whatever. And I think that's probably the main reason why I was like, I'm certainly not hungry.
00:04:21
Yeah. But I'm absolutely going to put that in my mouth. And I had just been like, you should eat less sugar to myself.
00:04:26
But it's like, why not have like this moment in life that is so lovely and wonderful?
00:04:33
Yeah, because a piano could fall on you the second you leave the studio. This is a cartoon.
00:04:37
A piano. A fucking anvil. Any fucking thing. A coyote chasing a roadrunner. A coyote could chase me off the fucking cliff that I'm always on.
00:04:46
Through a hole in the parking lot. You know. So I have a couple follow-ups from last week's episode.
00:04:52
Okay. There's a lot going on. So last week I did a story about the 1916 New Jersey shark attacks, which is a crazy story.
00:05:03
And the whole time George and I discussed whether or not we'd already done this story.
00:05:08
And it happens to us a lot because we've been doing this for almost nine years. For over 400 episodes.
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And that doesn't even include the episodes we haven't posted that were live or that just were so bad.
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We just didn't post. Yeah. There's a couple of those. Yeah. Yeah. We should definitely post those.
00:05:23
We should. So this one, we were both saying, oh, no, I remember this part. I remember this part.
00:05:28
Well, our great staff, headed up by Alejandra Keck, they found out that the reason that we thought that I did it is because I did it, but it was on a live episode of the podcast The Dollop.
00:05:43
That's right. With Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds. So I did do it. You covered it?
00:05:47
I thought they read us a story. Oh, were we both there? Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
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That was the one downtown. No it was the oh was it downtown or was it the one like right by the Beverly Center Remember that one That was the Podfest The hotel That was our first live show ever And that was Podfest and Dave was our guest
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Okay, you're right. Yes, there was the fest downtown that they read to us. I don't know if it was the fest.
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It was their live show for sure. That's all I know. It was live from the Los Angeles Podcast Festival.
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It was. You're right. So, yes, you win this one. I'll take it. I'll fucking give me that donut now.
00:06:22
But it's so hilarious because it was 2016. We did their live show with them the year we started.
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And that's why it's so it was so like real, but also confusing. I want to congratulate everyone on Instagram who was also like, yeah, you guys did this with the dollop.
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How do you not remember? And it's like, how do you remember? I don't remember anything about my life.
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So those are like day ones. The day ones that are just like, why can't you track your own reality?
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Because it's insane. Because this is the most insane timeline, you guys. Yeah. This timeline is out of control.
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I found some old videos on my computer. I was trying to clean out, you know, what are they called?
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Folders. Your cache? Yes. And there are all these videos of me that I made of Elvis in the old apartment where we fucking started.
00:07:09
It's just these little things, you know? And then I was thinking we just got a new refrigerator, which is like our first refrigerator that we've bought.
00:07:16
And like I was thinking about in that Hollywood apartment where we started the podcast in 2016, my hand-me-down refrigerator,
00:07:22
the door where you put the condiments was held together with bungee cord that I had gotten from
00:07:28
the 99 cent store and now I have an ice maker in my fridge which to me is like you know super rich
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that's your fucking you made it and you're in Orange County congratulations you made it all
00:07:38
the way back to Orange County yes so that's why we can't remember anything that's right we started
00:07:44
back then doing that but it's essentially like doing the same thing over and over yeah for eight
00:07:49
and a half years. Look, we started in the middle. Now we're here. So go listen to
00:07:55
The Dollop if you've never listened to it because it's insane. They're great. They're going strong.
00:07:59
So good. And then we you thought to donate, make a nice donation to the World Wildlife
00:08:04
Fund and they have a podcast, it turns out. And the host of the podcast who works there, I guess, I'm assuming.
00:08:12
Seth Larson. Gave us a nice shout out and I think they're going to give us shirts. I think so
00:08:18
too. It's so nice. Their podcast is called Nature Breaking. So you should totally check that out as
00:08:24
well. And thank you to them for the lovely shout out. I mean, we're making friends all the fuck
00:08:29
over the place. We are. Pandas. What? Fucking Seth Larson. Like whom else do we need? Who else is
00:08:36
out there? Do you have anything personal you want to talk about? Yeah. Ice makers. I'm really upset
00:08:41
because. Oh, wait a second. That's funny. The other day I went to get ice out of my ice maker,
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in my freezer, and it wasn't the right shape. So usually mine are the standard cubes that you've seen always.
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Suddenly they were cylindrical cubes. Did you press something on your refrigerator?
00:09:00
Oh, it's racking my brain. Is there an app? I had a party. And so people brought bag ice from the outside and put it in my little tray.
00:09:09
I didn't even think you could do that. Yeah. And so I was like, what the fuck? I was like, who is fucking with me?
00:09:16
It was like I was standing there. Small fucking with you, like the little things people do.
00:09:21
Yeah. Like in Barry when he's like, I'll trade her dog for a dog that looks exactly the same.
00:09:27
That, like little things to fuck with people. Yes, vicious. Actually vicious. So I was kind of scared for three seconds.
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And then I was like, I realized like, you had people over and you asked someone to bring a bag of ice.
00:09:38
That's what actually happened, you fucking weirdo. If you want to be the star of the party, bring a bag of ice.
00:09:44
Everyone needs a bag of ice. Bring it or a dozen donuts. People are so happy. Also, just text your friend.
00:09:50
Ask if they want you to come early to help. Yes. Because you're not that close with them, though.
00:09:55
No, no. Don't be a weirdo. Yeah. But if it's your friend. Yeah. You make that offer.
00:10:00
They don't have to pick up on that offer, but they love you even more. Yeah. You don't even have to do anything.
00:10:04
They're going to say no. It's cool. They're going to say no, especially if they're like a fiercely independent borderline something's wrong with her type of person.
00:10:13
It's all for show. It's all for show. It's all for show because we're videoing this right now.
00:10:20
Okay. Should we do Exactly Right highlights? Sure. Hey, we have a podcast network even.
00:10:26
It's called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights of the wonderful podcasts we have on the network.
00:10:30
So this week on Lady to Lady, the gals are joined by comedian and former Vanderpump Rules star, Billie Lee.
00:10:37
Hell yes. Please tell us everything. And Erin and Erin are back with a new episode of This Podcast Will Kill You.
00:10:44
So this time they're explaining everything you need to know about the dreaded norovirus.
00:10:49
Amazing. Also actor Jim O'Hare, who's famous for playing Jerry Gergich on Parks and Recreation, is Bridger's guest this week on I Said No Gifts.
00:10:56
Jerry. Jerry. And also this is your reminder right now. Hi. That episode nine of Rewind with Karen in Georgia.
00:11:04
So episode nine of My Favorite Murder. And then we add commentary. Can you imagine?
00:11:08
It's called Rewind. Recap. Yeah. It's available now wherever you get your podcasts.
00:11:12
every Wednesday, we're revisiting our earliest episodes and providing case updates, reflecting
00:11:17
on everything that's changed, like refrigerators. It's fucking fascinating content, okay?
00:11:22
You would have believed the refrigerator content that you are guaranteed if you go back and listen
00:11:27
to those. That's right. And so much more. So please listen and subscribe to My Favorite Murder,
00:11:33
if you could. Yes. Subscription. That is a part that like, it took me a long time to get,
00:11:38
And I am in the podcast business. But when you're listening to podcasts, if you go up and hit that plus sign or wherever it says subscribe, if you do it, it is very, very helpful to the podcast that you love.
00:11:50
That's right. So whatever podcast you trying to support that and reviewing is the best way to do it And a little couple stars It just a one thing Everyone who in the podcast industry will thank you for it Give five stars Who cares I mean seriously It not like you recommending some restaurant It not like you going to be kind of maybe
00:12:05
It's not like either you're in or you're out. You're in or out. Come on. Yeah. Also, you must absolutely head to YouTube.com slash Exactly Right Media
00:12:14
so you can check out the newest episode of My Favorite Murder, animated by our best friend Nick Terry.
00:12:20
Still going strong after all this time. Love him. this one is Look for a Goth it's so beautiful
00:12:26
it's from Minnesota 368 go watch it it's so good it features teenage Georgia that's right
00:12:32
and a belly shirt and a collar it's like it means so much to me yeah Georgia gets shown
00:12:37
in her true who she is inside yeah her true spirit yeah but then also it teaches your children
00:12:43
how to stay safe in the world Look for a Goth ooh should we make Look for a Goth merch
00:12:48
absolutely Look for a Goth and it should be binoculars it should be But binoculars with a ton of eyeliner.
00:12:55
What if it's like a stop sign or like a parking sign, but it says look for a goth?
00:13:01
Like it looks like the city's telling you to do it? Yeah. Official. It's like telling you to do it.
00:13:06
Lost? Look for a goth. Almost like a yield shape, like a triangle. Look for a goth and maybe a weird eye in the middle of it.
00:13:13
Yeah. With a goth eye with a winged liner. And two piercings. Two piercings. On the eye.
00:13:19
God, this is how great merch is made. I think we should record at one o'clock every fucking time.
00:13:26
The energy I have right now that we usually don't have because we're recording early for Labor Day.
00:13:30
We usually record at five o'clock at a fucking Monday. What is that? One o'clock on a Friday is the best you've ever felt in your life.
00:13:36
You cannot keep yelling at me like this. That's how excited. Oh, I had the donut and the coffee.
00:13:41
It's the donut. I told you. I told you. Can you imagine if I had a whole one? We can have donuts at five o'clock on Fridays if we want.
00:13:48
It's also the prescribed Adderall, but let's not. Look. Look, listen. There's all different kinds of donuts in this world.
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For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. All right, I go first this week? You do.
00:15:31
You were agreeing and shaking your head no. I don't know why I shook my head no.
00:15:35
Okay, so this story was suggested by a listener named Ellie, and she said, Hi, my favorite murder gang.
00:15:42
I wanted to suggest a story. I don't think you've covered this before. She goes in, basically recaps the whole story, then says there's an amazing ITV drama called The Confession about this story.
00:15:52
And the lead detective wrote a book called Catching a Serial Killer. It's a fascinating story about the human slash police responsibility.
00:16:01
And basically, I thought it would be fascinating to cover this case. So I thought I'd write in Ellie emoji with the with the little sweet smiley cheeks, rosy cheeks, smiley face.
00:16:12
So, Ellie, thank you for that suggestion. It was a great suggestion. And I actually saw the ITV drama.
00:16:19
It sounds so familiar. But I love that we're doing a classic. A classic. Just straight up true crime.
00:16:24
Yeah. It's what we do. It's kind of our thing. So this takes place on March 11, 2011 in Swindon, Wiltshire in southwest England.
00:16:34
It's a Saturday night. A 22-year-old woman named Sean O'Callaghan is headed out for the evening.
00:16:39
Sean's mother, Elaine Pickford, describes her daughter as, quote, always smiling from a very young age, a very happy person, radiant.
00:16:48
Sean has a ton of friends. Tonight she's out with a group of them at a local club called Suju.
00:16:54
And like all of us who go out on Saturday nights, Sean is at Suju until the early morning hours.
00:17:00
I like to loop myself in with those people. That's so you, Karen. I was just thinking.
00:17:04
I mean, I'm just inside. I'm 27. And so I'm repping for her. You are. You're like, where's the after party?
00:17:10
Yeah. So Sean's there with her friends. She stays out late. She only lives a half a mile from the club.
00:17:15
And she lives with her boyfriend, Kevin Reap, in an apartment that they had moved into together about two months prior.
00:17:22
So Kevin's also out with his friends that night. So around 1.30 in the morning, Sean sends Kevin a text that says, quote, where are you?
00:17:32
It's unclear if Sean was hoping to get picked up or to have him meet her or anything.
00:17:36
but Kevin was actually at home asleep when that text went through so he didn't get it and of course he didn't answer right away
00:17:44
Around 2 a.m. Sean decides she's gonna walk the short distance home She won't be seen alive again
00:17:50
This is the story of the police investigation into Sean O disappearance The dangers women face being alone in public spaces and the unveiling of an unexpected killer So the main sources used today are an ITV News documentary called A Confession
00:18:06
as told by ITV News, multiple articles by Stephen Morris. What? Mm-hmm. Where's that middle name?
00:18:14
Stephen Morris writes for The Guardian newspaper, but he also does podcasting. His brother. His brother, Stephen Ray Morris. That's right. And then also a 2012 sentencing
00:18:24
document from the Judiciary of England and Wales. And the rest of the sources are in our show notes.
00:18:31
So we'll just pick right back up. It's now 3.24 in the morning. Kevin Reap wakes up and he notices
00:18:38
his girlfriend, Sean, still isn't home. He looks at his phone. He finally sees that text that she
00:18:44
sent him. So he writes back immediately because she wrote, where are you? He writes back in bed,
00:18:49
where are you? She does not reply. At first, Kevin assumes that Sean's having fun on her night out,
00:18:55
but with every hour that passes and she isn't home, he's getting a sinking feeling that gets
00:19:01
worse and worse. He starts calling around, and when she's not home by 9 a.m., he finally
00:19:07
decides to call her family. Oh, so Sean's mom Elaine remembers that, quote, Kevin had already phoned around hospitals and informed the police. At that time,
00:19:18
I thought it was a bit of an overreaction and that she'd probably just crashed at a friend's house.
00:19:23
But when the family's unable to track her down, the gravity of the situation sets in.
00:19:28
By 9.45 in the morning, Sean is officially reported missing. Fortunately, the Wiltshire police respond swiftly.
00:19:35
Dozens of officers join the search immediately, and they're led by Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher,
00:19:41
who's a respected senior officer, and they all react with urgency and care. So very nice that we are not saying the thing we usually say at this point of a missing persons or this kind of situation, which is like they didn't come.
00:19:55
And when they did, they said she's a runaway or something. That's happened a lot and seems like it's hopefully changing.
00:20:03
But who knows? Every hour that passes is torture for Sean's family. Elaine says, quote, my mind was all over the place.
00:20:10
I remember lying in the dark, unable to sleep, just staring at the ceiling until the birds started singing.
00:20:15
I can't even imagine. So now it's March 20th. A massive team of police officers are conducting an extensive search in the Savernak Forest, which is about 15 miles from Swindon.
00:20:27
It's a vast area. It spans 4,500 acres. And the police, the next day, they reveal why that's where they were searching.
00:20:35
Yeah, I was wondering. Sean's cell phone pinged a nearby tower the night she went missing.
00:20:41
So cell records show her phone continued receiving calls and text messages in the area for 12 hours until the battery died.
00:20:48
Shit. So by March 22nd, hundreds of volunteers have joined the police as they continue searching the Savernak Forest.
00:20:56
That day, an anonymous donor posts a 20,000-pound reward for information that could help locate Sean, and that amount has soon doubled to 40,000 pounds.
00:21:06
That's the equivalent of $80,000 in U.S. dollars. So people were really generous and really trying to solve this problem.
00:21:15
Across the entire region, missing posters with Sean's face printed on them go up in shop windows and on cars.
00:21:22
A vigil is held. Hundreds of people attend the vigil. And a Facebook group devoted to finding Sean amasses tens of thousands of members in no time.
00:21:31
Everyone's desperately trying and doing everything they can to see Sean come home.
00:21:37
As most of us know, the reality when someone is missing is that with every passing hour, the likelihood of finding that person alive gets less and less likely.
00:21:46
But detector Steve Fulcher keeps working with his same initial urgency. And later he'll say, quote, my fear was she could be dead, but I hoped she was alive.
00:21:56
My duty was clear to work to find and protect Sean if I could. It's what any parent would have wanted a police officer to do for Sean.
00:22:04
Wow. So Fulcher and his team do feel like they're getting somewhere because they've been piecing together Sean's last footsteps using the CCTV footage from the area she was last seen walking.
00:22:16
And in this footage, they see a green Toyota taxi, which has the name of a cab company written on it.
00:22:23
So the first time this cab is caught on camera, it drives past Sean. Then the driver turns around and approaches her a second time.
00:22:31
The car is now facing the security camera that captured the whole scene. And the next few moments, they can't see because the car's headlights white out the footage.
00:22:41
Oh, shit. When the cab drives away and the image gets clearer, Sean is no longer on the sidewalk.
00:22:46
Oh, my God. That's so chilling. Yeah. So, Fulcher and his crew immediately get to work tracking this cab down and, of course, the cab's driver.
00:22:55
In the CCTV footage, they notice that a police car drives past the cab. So, they comb through the data captured by what's called on a police car ANPR cameras.
00:23:05
And they automatically capture the registration number of passing cars. Shit. So, now they have the name associated with that cab.
00:23:14
It's Christopher Halliwell. Christopher Hallowell is a 47-year-old local cabbie, a divorced father of three with a criminal record.
00:23:22
He served a stint in prison back in the mid-'80s for burglary. But Hallowell has never been convicted of any violent or sexual offenses.
00:23:30
Still, Detective Fulcher believes Hallowell is who he needs to speak to next, obviously.
00:23:36
So officers start tailing Hallowell. He's seen cleaning the backseat of his cab and throwing away a headrest and seat covers.
00:23:45
Jesus. I mean, right there, you'd just slam your hand on the desk and be like, this is the guy.
00:23:50
Right. Arrest him immediately. So, once he throws those away, officers go and pick them right up.
00:23:56
Nice. Later the same day, investigators follow Hallowell as he heads to the Suju nightclub, where he picks up a few missing posters for Sean.
00:24:06
Yep. The next day, March 23rd, investigators watch as Hallowell burns two of his car's headrests
00:24:13
as well as two pieces of the seats. Why did they let him do that? Well, I'll tell you right now.
00:24:19
Under Detective Fulcher's orders, they don't arrest him. It's obvious to Fulcher Hallowell is feeling nervous.
00:24:26
He wants to spend a bit more time watching him because he thinks there's a chance that Hallowell could leave them inadvertently to Sean.
00:24:34
Oh, right. She hasn't been found yet. Right. Okay. So it's basically if she's being held somewhere, it would be best to not spook him.
00:24:44
Yes. So the plan to keep surveilling Hallowell comes to an abrupt halt on March 24th, which is five days after Sean goes missing, when Hallowell is seen purchasing a, quote, overdose quantity of pills at a supermarket.
00:24:58
So then he's promptly arrested. Meanwhile, his green Toyota cab is parked outside the supermarket, and it has Sean's missing person posters taped up in the back windows.
00:25:09
Creepy. It's what they do. I know. It's so weird. It is. Just the mindset. I'll never, thank God, I'll never fucking understand.
00:25:18
And also just the, what a cover. It's like when people go and they're like, well, then now I'm a pastor of a church.
00:25:25
They like find the thing that seems inarguable. Of course, we'll never doubt you because you're doing this thing.
00:25:31
Right. Or you're getting involved. So you must care a lot. Right. Yeah. Okay. So I'll tell you a little bit about Britain's Police and Criminal Evidence Act.
00:25:40
It's called the PACE Act. It's a law that governs how police handle suspects during investigations.
00:25:46
So this legislation is meant to protect people from police pressure and coercion and to ensure that their rights are upheld during an investigation.
00:25:55
So something Pace makes very clear is that once a suspect has read their rights, they should be taken straight to a police station for questioning, where they will ideally be joined by their attorney.
00:26:06
That said, there are certain times when officers might bend these rules, like when they believe a life is at stake.
00:26:12
And this is called using, quote, emergency powers. So when Hallowell is picked up at the supermarket, police question him on the spot, not at a police station.
00:26:21
And again, those officers can defensively argue that they think Sean could be alive, allowing them to break from those pace requirements.
00:26:29
Yeah, they don't know that those pills are for him or her, right? Right. But Hallowell refuses to say anything without a lawyer.
00:26:36
So meanwhile, Detective Fulcher, he isn't present during this arrest, but he's being kept in the loop.
00:26:41
He knows what's supposed to happen next. Hallowell should be taken to the police station where he'll be questioned with an attorney present.
00:26:47
But Fulcher has this gut feeling that Hallowell is going to shut down in that kind of setting.
00:26:54
So Fulcher decides to take a different route. He tells the officers to drive Hallowell out to a specific remote site where he will meet them so he can look his suspect in the eye and ask him where Sean is directly.
00:27:07
Fulcher will later say, quote, On one hand, I'm aware of Mr. Hallowell's rights, but my main priority is to save Sean's life.
00:27:15
I had to balance Mr. Hallowell's right to remain silent against Sean O'Callaghan's right to live.
00:27:20
In my view, Sean's right to life came first. Yeah. So at the meeting spot, Fulcher still does not read Hallowell his rights.
00:27:28
Instead, he talks to Hallowell casually, man to man, and urges him to, quote, do the right thing.
00:27:35
Fulcher will later say that he felt an opportunity, which he thought could be fleeting, to get information from Hallowell and describes the suspect as being, quote, on a knife edge.
00:27:45
So this tactic ultimately pays off. Hallowell turns to Fulcher and says, quote, have you got a car?
00:27:52
We'll go. So Hallowell is now telling Fulcher where to go as they cross from Swindon into nearby Oxfordshire.
00:28:02
Along the way, he confesses. Hallowell tells Detective Fulcher that he murdered Sean O'Callaghan and hid her body in the Savernack Forest.
00:28:09
And when Hallowell heard the news that the investigation was off to a strong start, he got spooked, which is exactly what Fulcher thought would happen.
00:28:18
And so he took Sean's body and buried her further away from the murder site. in a remote area of Oxfordshire.
00:28:26
So now with this confession, Sean is presumed dead, and those emergency powers under Pace are no longer appropriate.
00:28:34
Oh. Yeah. Her life is not in imminent danger, but Fulcher continues to break protocol.
00:28:41
But what if she's still alive, though? You know? Sure. I think that could be argued.
00:28:46
Like, maybe he's lying. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe she's unconscious but not dead. Like, you know what I mean?
00:28:52
Well, you could. You could argue anything, really. But I think they have to kind of go through logic protocol to be like, there has to be a line where this person's rights are protected.
00:29:02
Right. Because this is the problem of the police, where it's like they do not respect those boundaries and they go all the way into, I own you. I'll hold a gun to your head. I'll do anything I want.
00:29:15
Which is how innocent people get put in prison. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, Fulcher's instincts seem to pay off.
00:29:22
Halliwell looks at Fulcher and says, you and me need to have a chat. So the two men step out of Fulcher's car and they move to a nearby bench where they smoke cigarettes together.
00:29:31
They get back into the car and Halliwell instructs Fulcher to drive about 15 miles away.
00:29:38
And when they get there, they pull over in a secluded spot in Gloucestershire, which Halliwell recognizes because there's a specific dip in this old stone wall running along the road.
00:29:50
And there's a large field on the other side of that wall. Hallowell leads Fulcher into this field methodically counting his steps until he suddenly stops He points to the ground and reveals that another woman is buried there
00:30:06
Shut the fuck up. Oh, my God. Can you imagine how Fulcher or whoever would have felt in that moment?
00:30:14
I just wonder if he went, oh, shit, because I broke this little rule. It's like a little white lie.
00:30:20
Now he's actually really confessing. And what if I can't use any of this? Because he's out of bounds.
00:30:26
Yeah. There's got to be other. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You'll hear about it. Okay.
00:30:31
He says that basically the woman that's buried there is a sex worker he murdered several years earlier.
00:30:37
He claims not to know her name, her age, or what year that took place. After spending four hours with Detective Fulcher, Christopher Halliwell is finally taken back to the police station where he's connected with a lawyer for the first time.
00:30:50
And now he refuses to answer any questions. Mm-hmm. So meanwhile, officers are searching both locations that Hallowell revealed to Fulcher, along with the search of Hallowell's house in Swindon.
00:31:04
Later that same day, March 24th, 2011, five days after Shawna Callahan went missing, investigators find her remains exactly where Hallowell said they would be.
00:31:15
Two days later, on March 26th, a second set of human remains are found in that field in Gloucestershire.
00:31:22
And within a few days, forensic analysts are able to identify that victim through DNA.
00:31:28
It's a 20-year-old missing woman named Becky Godden Edwards who was last seen in the early morning hours on January 3rd, 2003, as she got into a cab outside of a Swindon nightclub.
00:31:42
20. Yeah. Oh, my God. And this is a man who technically wouldn't be considered a serial killer because so much time passed between those two murders.
00:31:54
But that's the problem when we decide that a sex worker's disappearance or death doesn't matter.
00:32:03
Yeah. And also it pisses me off because, you know, the whole like, well, don't walk home alone and you'll be fine.
00:32:09
And it's like, no, no, we won't. It doesn't fucking matter how we get home. It's still fucking treacherous.
00:32:16
Get into a cab and you'll be fine. No. You should have taken a cab. No. Right. Like that's why Vince makes me keep in touch with him the whole, my whole Uber ride home
00:32:23
when I go out. Yeah. It's like, you just, it's impossible to keep yourself safe.
00:32:28
Well, and also we just have to stop talking about what women need to do. Right. And we have to start talking about what men need to do.
00:32:33
And truly some of the things that men need to do are like, if you have a friend that's
00:32:38
a creep and you witness them being a creep. Yeah. And you know that their attitudes about women are disgusting.
00:32:44
You have to tell other people so that nobody is surprised by that. Because also it goes on and on like men keeping secrets for each other.
00:32:53
Right. When it actually the impact is so horrifying. Or defending them in a way that's like, I've never seen him like that.
00:33:00
Yeah. No shit. You wouldn't, dummy. You fucking. Yeah. Okay. And we're back. Yeah.
00:33:07
So this makes a tragedy even sadder because when police go to deliver the devastating news to Becky's mom, Karen Edwards, it's April 4th, 2011.
00:33:23
It's Becky's birthday. Karen later tells reporters, quote, as a teenager, Becky got involved with people who introduced her to drugs.
00:33:31
She left school and her life spiraled. She told me she loved me so much that she couldn't keep putting me through this hell.
00:33:37
And she was leaving and wouldn't come back to me until she was clean. I never saw her again.
00:33:43
Oh, my God, that poor girl. So for nearly a decade, Karen has held on to the hope that Becky might come back.
00:33:50
Yeah. Every year, she'd buy Becky Christmas gifts just in case she returned for what was her favorite holiday.
00:33:58
And Karen says, quote, Becky was a beautiful, intelligent girl. She was my daughter.
00:34:03
She was loved by all her family. so the entire country grieves the loss of these two young women and then in january of 2012
00:34:12
christopher hollowell's day in court finally comes public outrage is now at a fever pitch
00:34:19
there's crowds gathering outside the courthouse for the preliminary hearing people are shouting
00:34:24
banging on the police van that brings him in i mean people have cared very very much about this
00:34:31
case. Inside the courtroom, Sean's mom, Elaine, is waiting to face her daughter's killer. Elaine
00:34:37
says, quote, every day I made sure, this gets me so bad because she is going through hell and she's
00:34:44
trying to scare this guy. So she says, every day I made sure that I sat in the seat closest to him,
00:34:51
sometimes no more than a foot away. I wasn't going to let him intimidate me. We made eye
00:34:56
contact a few times, but he always ended up looking away. Fuck, yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah.
00:35:02
The fucking chutzpah there. So by now, Hallowell's completely backtracked on both confessions.
00:35:09
And now he claims, because you know that lawyer was like, oh yeah, here's how we get out of
00:35:13
this. And now he claims that he made them under duress. On top of that, his defense team argues that everything he said to Detective Fulcher should
00:35:22
be excluded from evidence because Fulcher deliberately ignored Pace rules. The presiding
00:35:28
judge agrees and rules Hallowell's confession is inadmissible in court. It's a huge setback, but still there's such a strong murder case against Hallowell for Sean's
00:35:40
death. I mean, there's so much evidence, CCTV footage, those seat parts from the cab because
00:35:46
the police were like on it and waiting and getting that evidence. That's amazing.
00:35:50
And those seat parts eventually were tested and found to have Sean blood on them Sure So Sean case moves forward The trial is set for 2013 But in October of 2012 Christopher Halliwell decides to plead guilty to Sean O murder
00:36:06
And with Becky's murder, he pointed it out on his own without any coercion. So it's like kind
00:36:10
of not the same thing as, you know what I mean? In my mind, it's like, yeah. I mean, but you can use that same kind of logic you used before where it's like,
00:36:18
but while they were smoking cigarettes, was he like, I will kill you, I'll kill your family.
00:36:21
You could say anything. I mean, no one knows that's the problem. And also just the shocking part of it where it's like, we thought we were here for this horrifying thing that you did, but you're going to just, it's all going to come out.
00:36:35
Yeah. So his pleading guilty spares Sean's family from what, of course, would have been a grueling trial.
00:36:42
Yeah. And for murdering Sean O'Callaghan, Christopher Hallowell receives a life sentence with a minimum prison term of 25 years.
00:36:50
That's the best you get in England. Yeah. And it's a victory. Meanwhile, Becky Godden Edwards' family still wants justice.
00:36:58
But because Hallowell's confession is inadmissible in court, the case for Becky's murder then becomes very weak because that's basically what they had.
00:37:07
And there isn't much other evidence for prosecutors to work with. So most of Detective Steve Fulcher's colleagues herald his police work and his decision making on this case.
00:37:17
They credit him with putting a serious predator and one who no one suspected of being a predator behind bars.
00:37:24
A cab driving predator. But some people, including those close to this case, are split on whether Fulcher's dismissal of PACE rules was justified or not.
00:37:35
Becky's father, John Godden, for example, files a complaint against Fulcher to a British police watchdog group.
00:37:41
He says, quote, it becomes common practice, don't it? When you've been in a job for 30 years, that's the first thing you do.
00:37:48
Read them their rights, get a solicitor. Becky's mother, Karen, on the other hand, is thankful that Fulcher brought the resolution to her daughter's case,
00:37:56
even if it means Hallowell's confession can't be presented to a jury. She'll tell reporters, quote,
00:38:02
To the day I die, I will always be grateful for what he did. He made morally the right decision as a father, as a police officer, and he was just doing his job.
00:38:11
So Detective Fulcher winds up being reprimanded and then resigning over how he handled Christopher Hallowell as a suspect.
00:38:20
But the issues with prosecuting Hallowell undeniably go far beyond Steve Fulcher.
00:38:25
The Wiltshire police in general will wind up being heavily criticized for bungling Becky's case.
00:38:31
Wow. Specifically, after Fulcher resigns, a new lead detective isn't immediately put in charge of Becky's investigation.
00:38:38
So basically it grinds to a halt. An official with Britain's Independent Office for Police Conduct, it's called IOPC, Bell eventually determined, quote,
00:38:48
the force allowed a fog of confusion to develop regarding who was in command. This led to the murder investigation stalling, a lack of appropriate reviews, and obvious lines of inquiry that were potentially capable of securing Hallowell's conviction being overlooked.
00:39:04
Frustratingly, Becky's family is left to advocate for themselves. But thanks to their tireless fight for justice, a new lead detective is put on the case in 2014.
00:39:15
So they just basically said, oh, no, no, no. Yeah. We don't care what's happening in your police department.
00:39:21
Totally. That's three years after Becky's remains are discovered. But with a chain of command now in place, they gain traction quickly.
00:39:29
Investigators managed to piece together damning circumstantial evidence like that Hallowell had just visited a doctor on January 3rd, 2003,
00:39:38
just hours after Becky was last seen alive with, quote, severe scratches to his face and damage to his hand.
00:39:46
Shit. She fucking fought back. Yeah. During this visit, Hallowell told doctors that he'd been assaulted by a passenger he picked up in his cab.
00:39:56
So investigators also learn in the early hours of that same day, January 3rd, 2003,
00:40:02
a mechanic had driven out to a remote location six miles away from where Becky's body was
00:40:08
eventually found to pick up Hallowell after his cab ran out of gas. Holy shit. Yeah.
00:40:15
And it's like, that's that thing you read that and you go, oh yeah, it's a lock.
00:40:18
That was sitting there the whole time. That person who drove out there was sitting there the whole time.
00:40:23
Totally. Didn't know there was anything to tell. Yeah. They find a shovel at Hallowell's home that has what's described as, quote, rare soil on it, matching the dirt found in the field where Becky's remains were discovered.
00:40:38
Ultimately, it won't be until 2015, three years after Hallowell is convicted for Sean's death, that he'll be charged in connection with Becky Godden Edwards' murder.
00:40:49
So according to an article from The Independent, Hallowell tells investigators that he's willing to, quote,
00:40:54
accept responsibility for Miss Godden's murder, provided that the police do not ask further questions about other offenses he may have committed.
00:41:03
End quote. What's up, sketch? They don't seem to take him up on that. Yeah. Because in 2016, the case goes to trial.
00:41:11
This time, Christopher Hallowell makes a bizarre decision to fire his lawyers and represent himself.
00:41:16
The things psychopaths love to do. This is when Shauna Callahan's mother, Elaine, who's still following the legal journey of all of this, really observes her daughter's killer for the first time.
00:41:30
And for her, it's extraordinarily painful. She says, quote, I'd never really heard him speak before, but he took the stand and described in graphic detail how Sean was killed.
00:41:41
As he pleaded guilty to her murder, this was the first time it was said in open court.
00:41:46
So in a way, it was harder than before. Over the next few days, it felt like I was living in two different worlds.
00:41:52
There was my regular life dropping my son at school in the morning and then an hour later sitting in court with Sean murderer It was very intense and at the end of each day I would have a massive headache Oh my God
00:42:06
Yeah. The human psyche is not fucking made for shit like that. I mean, and yet, she got up and did it.
00:42:14
She did. Every day. She did. Yep. Amazing. So finally, on September 19th, 2016, the jury deliberates for just three hours before
00:42:22
finding Christopher Hallowell guilty of Becky Godden Edwards' murder, he's sentenced to life
00:42:28
imprisonment without the possibility of parole, which is a rare sentence in England reserved for
00:42:34
the most brutal criminals. So there's many lingering questions when it comes to this case
00:42:41
and when it comes to his brutality. For example, The Guardian reports on Christopher Hallowell's
00:42:48
quote, fascination with hardcore pornography, including child abuse and bestiality.
00:42:54
Computer search terms he used showed he had an interest in murder, violent sex and rape.
00:43:00
Fuck. End quote. Investigators also discover what the IOPC calls Hallowell's, quote, trophy store.
00:43:08
This is so creepy. And it reminds me of that TikTok video that we were talking about with the guy finding all the shoes around that body of water.
00:43:16
Yeah, yeah. They find in a remote Wiltshire pond, 60 pieces of discarded women's clothing, a boot belonging to Sean O'Callaghan, a shotgun and other suspicious items.
00:43:29
60 pieces of women's clothing. Holy shit. So did he admit to Becky Godden Edwards' murder because he was near the body?
00:43:39
And that was like. Stay here. Stay in this area. Yeah, or just like, well, I'm telling you about this because this was one of the other victims here.
00:43:49
But there's others everywhere. I'm just not going to mention them. But the police are so shocked to be hearing that.
00:43:55
That they're like. They're going to concentrate on that small area instead of. I don't know.
00:44:00
Yeah. I mean, and that I think that a trophy store idea points to this. These are not the only two murders.
00:44:08
Absolutely. Police almost certainly would have found this dump site much, much earlier if they had simply followed up with witnesses who reported seeing a taxi, much like Hallowell's, multiple times in the area back in 2011.
00:44:24
But unfortunately, because of the passage of time, any forensic evidence that was left on those items was already degraded.
00:44:32
Despite his resignation, Steve Fulcher continues to justify his actions. He tells The Guardian in 2017, quote, but for my intervention, Christopher Halliwell would be walking the streets right now.
00:44:44
He definitely killed Sean in March 2011. He definitely killed Becky in early 2003.
00:44:51
You're seriously telling me there's nothing in between or either side? Why would this not be the biggest, most protracted, most vigorous investigation in the history of British policing?
00:45:01
It isn't and it hasn't been. Wow. Mm-hmm. So in 2021, a spokesperson for the Wiltshire Police says, quote, we continue to keep an open mind in relation to any further offenses that Christopher Halliwell may have committed and will follow the evidence wherever that may take us.
00:45:19
Meanwhile, for the families of Sean O'Callaghan and Becky Godden Edwards, the legal proceedings may have ended, but the emotional toll lingers, of course.
00:45:28
In the days since the slight silver lining is both of these families have channeled their grief into a relentless pursuit of justice and reform.
00:45:39
Becky's mother, Karen Edwards, has strongly advocated for more flexibility to PACE laws to allow senior officers like Steve Fulcher to make quick decisions without threat of that evidence not being usable in court.
00:45:52
That makes sense that it's the senior officer who's allowed to do those things for sure.
00:45:55
Yes. Not just anyone. Not just anybody. Absolutely. Yeah. Sean's mother, Elaine, meanwhile, has specifically focused on safety around taxi services.
00:46:05
Her push for reforms to ensure that drivers undergo more rigorous background checks has led to what's known as Sean's law.
00:46:13
Elaine says, quote, it's incredibly poignant and a legacy and lasting testament to Sean that something good has to come from all of this.
00:46:21
Sean was all about helping other people. So to think her name is linked to something that will help the wider public is just amazing.
00:46:29
We're now trying to remember how she was instead of what happened to her. We're getting to the point where we want to include her in our conversations and laugh about times with her.
00:46:40
As hard as that is, we want to be able to do that. Sean deserves that much. Wow.
00:46:46
And that's the story of the investigations into the disappearances of Sean O'Callaghan and Becky Godden-Edwards.
00:46:52
Wow. Yeah, 2003 and 2011 in the same taxi driving ruse. There has to have been something like that's too far apart for it to just be exactly the same MO.
00:47:06
Yes. With nothing in between. It's such a long period of time. Yeah. And I don't even know if I would even have thought of that.
00:47:14
But the trophy area, I mean, like that is it's so eerie and creepy. It's so creepy.
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00:49:00
We're going in a different direction for my story. Great. It's true crime adjacent in that it deals with heady stuff like that.
00:49:08
Okay. But not, it doesn't. But it does, but it doesn't, you know? Just keep doing that over and over and don't tell me the story.
00:49:17
Okay. So I heard about this phenomenon that I'm going to tell you about today. I think it fits with the podcast theme and I think you're going to be fascinated by it too.
00:49:30
Just a warning. This begins with a account of the 9-11. Oh, okay. So I'm going to explain this and then I'll tell you more.
00:49:38
Okay. So we're starting with Ron DeFrancesco. He's a money markets broker. Fun. Your favorite.
00:49:45
Yes. He's sitting at his desk in his office. He's on the 84th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Guess what day it is? Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. Where were you?
00:49:58
I was in my shitty studio apartment on Grace Avenue. And my sister called me and said, she's screaming, calling me saying they attacked the White House. And I immediately assumed she meant aliens. And I was like, here we go.
00:50:14
Oh, my God. And then I got her to calm down and she explained what she was talking about where I was like, don't make phone calls like this.
00:50:20
Like either she had just heard because she was living above an apartment where my cousin was below.
00:50:26
So my cousin ran up and did that to her. And then she called me and did it to me.
00:50:31
My grandma came and woke me up. So it's 8.54 a.m. Ron and his colleagues hear a loud boom.
00:50:38
The lights in the office flicker. And then they see smoke pouring out of the other building, the North Tower.
00:50:44
The consensus among the people on Ron's floor is that a small passenger plane must have crashed into the other tower.
00:50:49
Some people immediately begin to evacuate. But then an announcement over the building's intercom, I didn't know this, tells everyone to stay where they are.
00:50:56
Yeah. And that the emergency is only in the other building, which is what one would think, right?
00:51:02
Yeah. Ron calls his wife and reassures her that he's safe. Then a friend calls Ron at his desk.
00:51:08
He is watching the news and tells Ron to get the hell out of the building. Ron gets up, leaves the office, and walks toward an elevator bank.
00:51:16
And as soon as he's out by the elevators, he hears a deafening roar and the building sways back and forth so violently that Ron thinks the whole thing is about to topple sideways.
00:51:26
The wings of the second plane, which was banking a turn, had just cut through where Ron's office used to be now.
00:51:33
Oh, my God. Instantly causing a massive explosion from the 79th to the 84th floors.
00:51:38
And it's only because Ron was by this particular elevator bank in the farthest part of the floor from the crash that he's alive.
00:51:45
The ceiling above him is opened up and pipes and wires and ductwork are all dangling down into the hallway.
00:51:51
And Ron opens the door to the emergency stairway and books it. The stairs are filled with people also trying to file down and out of the building.
00:52:01
Among them is a co-worker of Ron's name, Brian Clark. The two men start going down the stairs in the flow of traffic.
00:52:07
but after they descend a few flights, the stairwell becomes full of thick smoke.
00:52:11
And so now they're descending through the floors where the second plane's fuselage had hit.
00:52:16
People are coming up from those floors saying there's burning debris in the stairwell and too much smoke to keep going.
00:52:22
And they think the best course of action is to go to the roof where a helicopter could possibly be able to rescue them.
00:52:28
I mean, that's their only hope. Right. A few people who had been walking with Ron and Brian decided to go up with this group, partially because of the smoke in the stairwell.
00:52:37
It's so unbearable. But Ron and Brian hear someone crying out for help from down the stairwell.
00:52:44
A man had become trapped under debris in the stairwell, a flight or two below them, and Brian says, got to go help this guy.
00:52:51
The man is trapped in a pile of debris on the 81st floor, three floors below Ron's office.
00:52:57
And as Ron and Brian work to free him, Ron becomes overcome with the amount of smoke he's breathing in.
00:53:03
And he's forced to leave the two men behind to go down the stairs and get away from the smoke.
00:53:09
He climbs several flights and the stairwell is supposed to have reentry floors where the doors will open back out.
00:53:16
So Ron's trying to find one of those doors to get out of the stairwell and escape the smoke.
00:53:20
But because of a malfunction, they're all locked. He starts again back down, but now the smoke's even worse and he can't get past another pile of big debris.
00:53:31
So the people around Ron are starting to lie down on the floor, unable to keep breathing.
00:53:36
Ron lies down too. He thinks about his wife and their four children. Then a man says to him, quote, get up, Ron.
00:53:44
You can do this. End quote. I think I know what you're about to do and I love it.
00:53:50
Okay. I think you do too. Yeah. Ron and this man start making their way down the stairs.
00:53:54
They break through pieces of drywall and debris but then there an actual fire in the staircase that they come to And the man with Ron tells him that they have to go through the flames There no other way
00:54:05
And together they run through three floors of burning debris while Ron covers his head with his forearms.
00:54:12
Then around the 67th floor, the stairwell is clear and lit. Ron is below the fire.
00:54:18
He has lost track of his companion that he was with, but continues to make his way down the stairs.
00:54:23
He passes a firefighter on his way up. And the firefighter tells him to keep going and to get medical attention once he's out of the building.
00:54:32
And the firefighter continues up the stairs. Finally, Ron makes it to the South Tower's lobby and is directed to a safer exit through the building's basement.
00:54:42
He walks through one more long hallway, approaching daylight where the exit is. And then he hears an unimaginably loud roar and looks behind him to see a fireball coming toward him as the building collapses.
00:54:56
Oh, my God. He runs into the daylight as the fireball blasts him forward. He wakes up three days later in a nearby hospital.
00:55:05
Jesus. I know. And this is really upsetting, but the reason he was directed to the other exit is because people were jumping from the tower and landing in the front main exit.
00:55:15
Yeah. It's just so horrific. That part of it that is less spoken about now. But around the time it happened, there was actual video footage that they ran of that man.
00:55:29
Like, remember it was on the cover of, I think, Time magazine. Just like, oh, my God.
00:55:35
Isn't it crazy that there are adults who listen to this podcast who weren't alive then who don't, who aren't living with that trauma of that day?
00:55:42
They got their own trauma. They sure do. They sure do. Yeah, no, I know. It's such a singular, strange, horrifying event.
00:55:52
Okay. So Ron was the last survivor out of the building before it collapsed. Oh, my God.
00:55:57
So out of 110 floors, only four people above the 81st survived, and he's one of them.
00:56:03
So Brian Clark and the man he pulled from beneath the debris, remember the other guy?
00:56:07
They're also among those four survivors. Oh, good. I fucking know. Like, hero. The second you said that, I was like, oh, now he's going to have guilt and he's all these things.
00:56:17
Incredible. You left him behind. Thank God. And as for the person that had helped Ron get up and run through those flames and urged him on, that person was never really there.
00:56:27
I love it. I love it. It's my favorite. Ron experienced something called third man syndrome.
00:56:34
People like Ron who have drawn on their internal resolve to survive extremely dangerous near-death events
00:56:39
sometimes report that another person appeared to help them or encourage them on.
00:56:45
So today's story is about this phenomenon. Here we go. I'm so overjoyed on this Labor Day.
00:56:53
Right. What a gift. Oy vey. What a gift. So the main sources I used for this story is a book called The Third Man Factor,
00:57:00
Surviving the Impossible by John Geiger, and an episode of National Geographic Explorer called The Angel Effect.
00:57:07
And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So third man syndrome, or also called third man factor, gets its name from one of its most famous cases.
00:57:16
In 1916, the famous Ernest Shackleton, your favorite bearded adventurer. I love that guy.
00:57:23
He attempts to reach the South Pole and it was cut short when his ship was trapped in ice.
00:57:28
Famous story. After being trapped for fucking months, can you imagine? Shackleton led a small group of men to try and sail a small vessel to a whaling station off the coast of Antarctica.
00:57:38
more than a thousand miles away. Over the course of their journey, the men were starving and freezing,
00:57:45
and at the end, they had to make a 24-mile trek on foot. There were three men, but they all reported the presence of a fourth person with them,
00:57:57
encouraging them along at the end to get to the whaling station. Like in the boat?
00:58:03
I think in the whole trek. Like they didn't go, wait a second, you have not been here for months,
00:58:08
and now you're here? I think they were so delirious. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean?
00:58:11
Yeah. From hunger and being freezing that it's just like, okay, well, here's another.
00:58:16
Would you rather be walking across Antarctica or would you rather be stuck in a desert?
00:58:22
Hot or cold? Cold. Cold, really? Yeah, what about you? I hate being cold. I'll take cold.
00:58:28
Do I have a jacket and everything? Like a light. Enough to keep me alive. You only have a Michael Cera-style windbreaker.
00:58:35
You don't have a good jacket. I have enough to keep me alive, right? Yeah. Okay.
00:58:40
And then also, would I not get sunburned in the desert? True, true. So like, okay, say you won't get sunburned and you have enough warmth to keep you alive,
00:58:48
but that's it. I mean. The basics. I was thinking I would pick the desert, but then, sorry, you just pointed out a thing
00:58:54
that I've literally lived with my whole life and forgot, which is that I cannot be in the
00:58:58
sun for that long. Yeah, but you can get sunburned in the fucking freezing in the, what's it called, too?
00:59:03
Yeah, you get like a wind shaft. Yeah. That's a very real thing. I wouldn't go neither.
00:59:07
Oh, great. We're going to pick the third of going to a really nice restaurant. A resort.
00:59:13
Yeah. Let's do it. Where it's 82 degrees at all times. Oh, my God. So this story becomes famous, and the poet T.S. Eliot references it in his poem, The Wasteland.
00:59:24
But for poetic effect, he turned the fourth man into a third man. Fucking artistic license.
00:59:30
Yeah, yeah. So it's third man syndrome. Rule of three. Sure. Let's take it. Listen to this.
00:59:35
The fourth man syndrome. boo not as good no one cares the four amigos no that's one guy's super irritating you just
00:59:43
you're just inviting him because he's your cousin you gotta trim that fat don't try to title it while
00:59:49
we're doing it i swear to god i'm not and don't try to keep bringing up your cousin for some
00:59:54
reason of the documented cases of third man syndrome a huge number of them have happened to people in mountaineering or Arctic exploration disasters or disasters at sea
01:00:06
All things we'll never have to worry about. Truly, I do. Every decision I make is to prevent those things from happening to me.
01:00:13
I mean, maybe sitting in traffic, I'll get a third man syndrome thing. Like, you can go on.
01:00:17
You can. Just keep pressing the brake. Just keep going. Just keep not going. Yeah, just keep screaming at people.
01:00:25
So another one of the most famous examples is of a mountaineer named Frank Smythe who attempted to summit Mount Everest.
01:00:32
Remember that fucking place? Yeah. In 1933, but was caught in a blizzard in what they call the Death Zone.
01:00:38
And just a quick FYI, if you're fascinated by this shit, I covered deaths on Everest in episode 174 called Rough Winds High Water.
01:00:46
Huh. In 2019. That was the name of the episode? Uh-huh. Okay. I still loved doing that one.
01:00:53
That one was just one of my faves. Yeah, that's good. So while he was huddled alone in his tent, he was so sure someone else was with him that he offered the person some of his cake, like a mint cake.
01:01:06
That's how sure he was that there was someone that wasn't just an apparition. Yeah.
01:01:09
Some people theorize that these environments often that have whiteout conditions or vast expanses of water can lead to a kind of sensory deprivation where people are more likely to experience hallucinations, of course.
01:01:21
But because of the wide variety of situations that this has been documented in, a lot of people think the third man is a survival adaptation, a tool people can call on in these extreme situations.
01:01:33
Like it's almost evolved. Some scientists believe in a controversial theory called the bicameral mind.
01:01:40
And they believe that times of extreme stress can affect how the left and right hemispheres of the brain communicate.
01:01:47
And so some of these scientists believe that thousands of years ago, before people were literate, their brains were fundamentally different than they are now.
01:01:54
The theory is that they experience thought in their right brain as another person talking to them and guiding them, which makes sense because it's like inner thoughts.
01:02:04
It's how it feels. It's the gods. Yeah. It's just like, well, I better do that because I got that idea.
01:02:10
Yeah. Someone spoke to me in my head, isn't it? Have you ever seen these people who don't?
01:02:13
There's like a tiny percent of the population that don't have an inner monologue.
01:02:16
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. Where do I fucking what pill do I take? What a joy. What a life.
01:02:22
How quiet and lovely is your life? And then my therapist has told me, of course, that my inner critic is just my inner child trying to keep me safe.
01:02:34
So and I'm like, you're so stupid. Why did you do that? It's my inner child being like, don't try anything anymore because I'm scared of it.
01:02:40
Right. Why am I talking about this? That's right. This is what this is about. It's tangentially relevant.
01:02:45
Sure. But it's also that kind of thing where the being able to be nice to those voices because being mean doesn't work.
01:02:53
No. No matter how good it feels to be like, you shouldn't do that anymore. It's like now you're just doing it more.
01:02:58
Like you can't get rid of the things that need healing. Right. Not with being mean of them.
01:03:04
So they argue that modern humans at a very high threshold of stress can still revert back to that state of mind.
01:03:12
So interesting. Other scientists are going to be shocked at this. Disagree. They disagree.
01:03:17
Four out of five dentists agree. That's right. Some have found parallels in brain activity between people experiencing third man syndrome
01:03:23
and people who have lost limbs and the experience of phantom sensations in those limbs.
01:03:29
This happens because the brain has completely mapped out the way that particular limb would
01:03:33
function in a physical space. And the scientists believe that under stress, the brain can project its entire awareness
01:03:39
of the self into the idea of another person being close by, like a phantom person, like a phantom limb.
01:03:47
Interesting. And other people just generally believe that the third man is what's called a compensatory figure,
01:03:52
an embodiment of a person's own inner resources that they need more than ever at this particular moment.
01:03:58
So any and all. And then, of course, there's a lot of people who believe that they have been helped by a literal guardian angel.
01:04:05
And in fact, that's what our Ron DeFrancesco from the beginning of the story believes he's a practicing Catholic.
01:04:11
He believes it was an angel guiding him out of the tower. Sure. So another one of these accounts is from a person who also believes an angel was with
01:04:19
her, but in her case, it was someone she knew personally. So in August of 1997, a geomicrobiologist named Stephanie Schwab is, oh my God, this
01:04:31
one's so fucked up, is scuba diving in a cave in the Bahamas called Mermaid's Lair.
01:04:35
If you're claustrophobic, you're going to love this story. Hit forward 15, forward 15, forward 15.
01:04:42
Yeah. The cave is accessed from what looks like a shallow area in a mangrove swamp.
01:04:48
And looking at it from the surface, you would think it's just a few feet of water.
01:04:51
But Stephanie, who has explored this cave before, hops into the puddle expertly and navigates to a narrow opening
01:04:58
and begins swimming through small, tight chambers in what would be complete darkness
01:05:03
if she didn't have her dive light. Why? I don't know why people do things. Go to a bar.
01:05:09
What are you doing? I recently saw an interview with a guy who had a brain scan who's really into base jumping,
01:05:17
and they have less something than we do. What is it? I get excited, you know, whatever, riding a bicycle.
01:05:25
Yeah. And what is it called? I don't remember, but I think I saw the exact same thing where they were showing him.
01:05:31
I think it was the guy, Alex Honnold, who climbs without ropes. That's it. Yes. And they were basically just like, you're not scared of anything.
01:05:39
You need excitement really badly. So you have to do that together. Your neurons don't fire.
01:05:44
Some people are yelling at us. Your neurons won't fire in the way that most people would about exciting things.
01:05:51
Something like that. If you're Alex Honnold, go ahead and write it. Explain your brain How long is your rain So the cave system opens into a massive area people refer to as a cathedral or underwater a blue hole
01:06:05
Cave diving, you're going to be shocked at this, is dangerous. It's very dangerous.
01:06:09
Turns out. Past time. And this is not the kind of dive a person would usually do on their own, even a diver as experienced as Stephanie is.
01:06:17
She usually dives with her husband, a cave explorer named Rob Palmer. but Rob died six weeks earlier
01:06:25
failing to surface from a dive in the Red Sea. Six weeks and he had been a world
01:06:31
renowned diver. Stephanie is reeling from the loss of her husband in fact the whole diving community
01:06:37
is reeling. Rob was famous among divers and no one quite understands the circumstances around his death
01:06:43
but Stephanie also wants to continue the work she and her husband had been doing together.
01:06:49
Like wanting to honor him still. She had wanted to get back into the water to prove to herself that she could keep diving without him.
01:06:56
She says, quote, I knew for some reason it was a very powerful feeling that day that if I didn't do it then, I wasn't going to do it at all.
01:07:03
Yeah. So Stephanie's area of research revolves around tracking the changes in the Earth's sea levels.
01:07:10
And in this cave, she finds lots of evidence that it was once dry and not filled with water.
01:07:14
She's, you know, doing research as well. For example, in some parts of the cave, there are fossilized bat droppings.
01:07:21
Mm-hmm. Today, her goal is to find a room in the cave where the floor is filled with the fine red dust.
01:07:26
And this dust had blown all the way to the Bahamas from the Sahara Desert and settled in the cave back when the cave had been dry.
01:07:33
So she wants to collect samples to send the dust to a colleague and prove that it was once dry.
01:07:40
So holding a white rope that cave divers call a guideline, Stephanie swims further into the cave system through more narrow chambers to a room filled with a red, sandy floor.
01:07:50
She settles down on the floor with her light and begins collecting samples. When she finishes and the samples are all packed away, she looks up and realizes, you're shaking your head and you're correct.
01:08:00
It's going to be bad. Her guideline has drifted away. Unconsciously, Stephanie has settled back into the diving routine from when her husband was alive, where when they dove together, he was in charge of the guideline and she focused on what she was doing, getting samples.
01:08:16
So she kind of had forgotten she was alone almost. And at first, Stephanie stays calm.
01:08:21
She sees that she has about 20 more minutes worth of air in her tank. She points her light around the cave chamber looking for the line.
01:08:27
It's nowhere to be seen. And it could have drifted anywhere within the large twisting cave system that she'd just been swimming through.
01:08:34
So it was retracting down somewhere. Right. You know? It's just so fucking claustrophobic.
01:08:41
Awful. Chilling. Yep. When she checks her gauges again, she realizes she now only has enough air to sustain her for five minutes.
01:08:48
And that's when she panics, which of course is probably very bad to do when you're in this situation.
01:08:54
She's flooded with terror. She believes she's going to drown alone in a pitch black cave.
01:09:00
And then she's filled with anger at Rob for leaving her and at herself for making this mistake and losing her guideline.
01:09:07
Damn. Then suddenly everything changes. The cave is still only illuminated by her dive light, but everything suddenly looks lighter, sharper and more focused.
01:09:17
and Stephanie can feel that without a doubt there's another person there with her.
01:09:22
It's Rob. And he's telling her to calm down and that she can get herself out. He says one of his catchphrases to her,
01:09:31
quote, believe you can, believe you can't, either way you're right. Come on. I mean.
01:09:38
Come on. It's so true. Stephanie looks around the cave one more time and now in the distance
01:09:43
she thinks she sees a flash of white. Stephanie says, quote, I thought I'm just hallucinating.
01:09:49
And then I kind of got cheeky with myself and said, well, you know, what else have you got to do?
01:09:53
Go look at it. Like, you know, Stephanie swims towards that glimpse of white. It's the guideline.
01:10:00
Oh, fuck. Thank God. So Stephanie is a scientist, but she's also absolutely certain that her husband helped her find her way out of the mermaid's layer that day.
01:10:10
It wasn't just that she thought of Rob and what he would say. She says in her mind he was physically there with her and her entire perception of her surroundings changed.
01:10:19
She says, quote, whether it was spiritual or whether it was biochemical, what happened caused me to calm down enough to focus again and be able to have that opportunity to find my way out.
01:10:30
Yeah. End quote. Stephanie follows the line out of the cave, surfaces and breathes in a mouthful of Bahamian air and says, quote, I just got out, sat there for a moment in the open air and thought, well, today was not.
01:10:43
the day to die. Oh my God. End quote. Jesus. I know. She's a tough bastard. Yeah.
01:10:51
One of the scientists studying the bicameral mind theory believes that a sudden burst of
01:10:56
activity from the right brain could have both created the sense of Rob being with Stephanie
01:11:00
and given her increased spatial awareness. He believes that this was what allowed Stephanie to find the guideline.
01:11:07
Stephanie later participates in a study to try to prove this theory. The scientist tried to recreate the third man effect in her brain with a magnified helmet while measuring brain activity.
01:11:17
But it doesn't work. She says maybe it's best to quote, let sleeping dogs lie. Just let it be.
01:11:23
Yeah. It could be whatever the fuck you want it to be. Also, that's what scientists have to say when they're confronted with the spiritual.
01:11:29
Because it's like, oh, it happened to you. So sure, it would be cool to be like, oh, this is what the brain does.
01:11:36
But it's like, but also, we don't know. Jesus. And that is a story of Stephanie Schwab, Ron DeFrancesco, and the third man who enabled both of them to find their way out of impossibly dangerous circumstances.
01:11:50
Incredible. I loved that story. Those stories. Yeah. Okay, I just have to mention this.
01:11:57
I think I've actually already told you this on this podcast. podcast. There's an episode of the podcast Spooked, which I've recommended multiple times.
01:12:05
It's so good. It's first person people telling creepy stories of things that happen in them.
01:12:09
Yeah, so good. And this woman tells the story of being a little girl and basically being out somewhere. I can't
01:12:16
remember the details, but this exact thing happens to her where a man is chasing her in a car and
01:12:22
And she runs like through a field and he's trying to find her. And a voice is like going, get down.
01:12:30
And then she gets down when the voice says get down. And then when the voice says run, she runs.
01:12:35
And the voice gets her home. Oh, my God. If you have a third man story or something like this, please write it in for our hometown episode, our mini episode, My Favorite Murder at Gmail.
01:12:46
We've got to fucking hear these. I mean, they're incredible. And also it's like the people it happens to, it's up to them.
01:12:53
Oh, sure. You know, what they think it is and like, what do we know? Because it's all the same thing, you know?
01:12:58
Right. It's all the same. But man. I know. So wild. Let's do, let's end this with a couple.
01:13:09
What are you even doing right now? Where you guys tell us what you're even doing right now?
01:13:12
Yeah. While you listen to this podcast. Okay. This is from Katzen Berlin What are you even doing right now Just sitting at a drop zone in the middle of the Czech Republic waiting for the wind to reduce so I can go back to skydiving
01:13:28
What are the chances? And then it says, yes, I know your worst nightmare, but this is what I do for fun during my free time and good weather.
01:13:37
Wow. Insane. That's wild. Isn't that amazing? We're so happy for you. Congratulations. Do you
01:13:42
it an extra time for us. Yeah. You could take our turn. Yeah. No shit, but fuck no. Oh my God,
01:13:49
no. I'm an indoor kid. Okay. Mine is from our Gmail inbox. It's what am I even doing right now?
01:13:56
Plucking chin hairs, always plucking chin hairs. Oh, the joys of PCOS and perimenopause. Yeah.
01:14:04
Emily. Emily. Emily, you're so not alone. I feel you. Again, I want to reference that woman who
01:14:11
came to our show in, I think, Seattle or Vancouver, she made a sign that said, I shaved my face for
01:14:17
this. Love you. The funniest. The best. You got one more? The first one was also from Instagram.
01:14:22
Okay. This one is too. It's from Kelly Layton, and it says, at the Jersey Shore, listening to you talk about
01:14:29
shark attacks on the Jersey Shore. Yeah. Don't go in the water. That's all. They're not going to come get you on land.
01:14:37
That would be very upsetting to be in the place where we telling a story from Absolutely Always Well thanks for listening Send us stuff or comment on things and Get involved Get involved somehow
01:14:49
This is your community. You got to get involved. We're just the loud people at the top.
01:14:54
Yep. We have nothing else to do with it. We just have the karaoke machine. You need to get in here and start picking some tracks.
01:15:01
Oh, my God. That's so true. That's exactly right. Oh, and one more thing. Stay sexy.
01:15:06
And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! murder and Twitter at myfaithmurder.
01:15:40
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