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Data accurate as of 2020-26. My favorite world. Hello. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder.
00:01:59
That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Kilgareth. We're here to do podcasting at you.
00:02:04
You know the drill. Want to? Want to? Want to? Too bad. Too bad. It's too late. You can't press stop now.
00:02:10
It's too late. You got to commit. Your earbuds are locked into position. Listen.
00:02:17
Guess what? We put super glue on them. So now you can't even take them out. Look.
00:02:21
Look and listen. Just listen. Or just listen. I guess it's a podcast. How are you?
00:02:26
What's going on? I'm good. Nothing. I have nothing. You don't have to always have something.
00:02:35
I don't think I do. That's my concern. This isn't a let's talk about our thing podcast.
00:02:41
That's not it. That's not this. That's very true. How about yourself? What do you have?
00:02:44
I have that I went to Vegas over the weekend and saw RuPaul's Drag Race live at the Flamingo.
00:02:52
Who was in it? I was with Kara Clank of Let's Messed Up in SVU podcast. And I just text her to like tell me because she knows everything about Drag Race.
00:03:03
Yes. And she hasn't texted me back yet. So as soon as she does. How was it? Magical.
00:03:08
And I'm saying this because I want everyone who's in Vegas to go. It was like such a beautiful, fun show.
00:03:15
And these performers are unbelievable. They give it their everything. and it looked magical. It was just really special. So I'm just highly recommending it.
00:03:27
Love it. Here's a very odd, like I'm a huge fan of World of Wonder, which is the production company
00:03:33
that produces RuPaul's Drag Race. And as kind of since I would say the like mid 2000s has been
00:03:39
like their website was just where I would go if I wanted to know what was going on,
00:03:44
because they just were always talking about the latest thing. I mean, yeah, you know,
00:03:49
So I'm a big fan, but I can barely handle reality TV. I get very embarrassed for people.
00:03:56
I get very like confronted when people are fighting. It stresses me out like I'm fighting.
00:04:01
I don't like a lot of that. And especially I think because drag queens are really, really mean.
00:04:09
And so their kind of fighting is like next level. So I've never watched it. It's not real fighting.
00:04:14
It's like this, like this is the cattiness of it all. And it stresses me out too, because I'm like, I can't handle that.
00:04:20
I can't handle someone even jokingly talking to me that way or I'll cry. No, no.
00:04:24
Constantly being confronted with the hard truth about yourself in a slightly joking manner.
00:04:30
I mean, how do they do it? It's like, it's almost like they're like, they're Navy SEALs and they're just going
00:04:37
through the training they need to be in a world that doesn't accept them. So it's basically like their compatriots and the people with them being like,
00:04:46
oh, well, you better get ready and I'll get you ready by ripping the shit out of your makeup.
00:04:52
Yeah. And if you can't handle this level, yeah, then you're not for this world. This world isn't
00:04:58
for you. I will say this though, because of TikTok, I've become obsessed with Trixie Mattel
00:05:03
and Katya who have their own kind of separate sideshow, but they were both, I believe Trixie
00:05:09
Mattel won. I'm not sure if Katya won and I do apologize for not knowing, but I could watch clips
00:05:15
of those two talking for the rest of my life. What's their show called? It's just, it's called.
00:05:24
I don't know if that's how it's pronounced, but that's how I pronounce it when I see it.
00:05:28
It's like U N G H H H H H H or whatever. And they just are like, you know, sometimes they're
00:05:34
watching TV shows. Sometimes they're just having conversations, but what's on Tik TOK are just
00:05:38
like a ton of like outtakes or like clips. There's the first clip I ever saw was the two of them on
00:05:44
the set. And then Trixie Mattel goes, someone's snoring. And then everyone goes really quiet and
00:05:52
you hear snoring And it was their COVID person was asleep Oh my God Asleep and snoring loud enough that they could hear it And then they got really quiet and they were just whispering and they were like Oh my God that so humiliating I can imagine They were like I totally relate Like I get it
00:06:10
I'm tired too. And then Trixie Mattel was like, what if I got COVID? What if they got COVID right
00:06:16
now? They're sleeping. It's so funny. So anyway, I think I'm like, hey, I don't want to go through
00:06:23
what it takes to win RuPaul's Dragways. Because I can't be in there emotionally for that.
00:06:28
I don't have the bandwidth. I'll meet you on the other side when you have a show.
00:06:32
I'll watch you. And the other side is also live in fucking Las Vegas, turns out.
00:06:37
Yeah. And it was so fun. There was like a slap fight segment too, of like fake slapping across the face.
00:06:44
And they brought like an audience member up. And like, there was like, there were fucking pyrotechnics.
00:06:49
And then like, you know, up in the air parts where they get, I mean, it was magical. It was magical. Jesus. And how many people are in that show? It was five of the
00:07:01
the drag participants, the host. And then there were these like six boys who were all dancing
00:07:08
for their lives, you know, like sure. They were in every scene. They were like bringing it and
00:07:14
being like the background dancers of the whole thing, the pit crew. So it's a full fucking stage
00:07:19
show. It's a full stage show, but it's not, yeah, it's, it's like a good size. It's not overwhelming.
00:07:23
It's like, perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Like don't go to, you don't need to go to like fucking
00:07:28
the Beatles, Cirque du Soleil or anything like that, you know, just go to Drag Race live.
00:07:33
Go to something funny and awesome. Yeah, it was really funny. I wonder though, if people would take issue with you calling them drag participants. I know. I was like,
00:07:41
what do I say? Drag queens. Drag queens. Yeah, they're drag queens. Don't do whatever you call
00:07:48
that. Don't take them down a notch by not calling them queens. I don't know why I did that. It was
00:07:55
like one of those like, is that still, can I say this word still? Are you allowed to say queens?
00:08:01
Yeah. Am I allowed to call anyone a queen if they're not like royalty? But am I allowed to
00:08:06
call people the thing that they call themselves? Because that's also an assumption. Who am I?
00:08:11
Who am I to say queens? Right. Look at me. I'm basically a soccer mom without any kids.
00:08:18
that's the saddest fucking thing that's not a queen okay i just took a huge sip of diet ginger
00:08:28
oil as you said that i almost did a solo spit take into my microphone i have an update up from
00:08:34
cara clank it was coco montrese alexis mateo bosco pagina heels and kennedy davenport
00:08:44
and each one of them like brought everything they had. You know why? Because they're queens.
00:08:53
Because they're queens. Because they're queens. That's why. Because they're queens.
00:08:56
Yeah. That's awesome. I want to see that show. That's a fun thing to do in Las Vegas.
00:09:01
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's an argument for Las Vegas. Right. I do have a, it's like a mailbag update off of my Spring Heel Jack story that I did a couple
00:09:12
weeks ago. Okay. The subject line of this is, I live beside Springheel Jack's cursed family.
00:09:19
Oh, dear. And then it just starts dot, dot, dot. Well, technically the curse is broken now, but that's a less interesting title.
00:09:27
And then it says, I was just listening to Karen Springheel Jack's story and was shocked to hear Lord Waterford being mentioned as a possible suspect.
00:09:35
I'm from the little village that borders the grounds of the Waterford estate in Southeast Ireland.
00:09:39
Most people outside the village are always shocked to hear that there is a Lord Waterford.
00:09:44
I think the standard assumption is that we got rid of all those hereditary titles when Ireland became a republic.
00:09:49
The village has an odd relationship with the big house. And then it says Curra more.
00:09:56
And then in parentheses, it says, don't pronounce the G and you'll be grand. Or you'll be ran.
00:10:02
Maybe they might. It was a big employer for the village over the years, but most people never stepped foot inside the house.
00:10:09
Kind of how it works, right? My grandmother said that sometimes the Lord's sons would try and integrate with the village and join the soccer team.
00:10:17
The locals just took it as an opportunity to play really rough, but the sons thought they were having a great time.
00:10:23
I grew up spending my summers in the woods on the estate, swimming in the river and trying not to be seen by the caretakers.
00:10:30
And in parentheses, it says, and this was in the 90s. It was only when the eighth Lord died a few years ago and his son took over where the grounds made a bit more public.
00:10:39
And I got to go on a tour of the house, which is where I heard of the curse on the family.
00:10:45
Back in the time of the first Lord Waterford, late 1700s, there was a widow with an unruly son living beside the Curramur estate.
00:10:54
She apparently brought him to the Lord one day to try to put some manners on him.
00:10:57
So the Lord hanged him from a tree. The widow went on to curse the family so that the next seven generations would not die in their beds.
00:11:08
That's classic Irish revenge right there. I can't remember how all the lords died, but all seven generations died either abroad or in horrible accidents.
00:11:19
The few I can find online are third, our man Spring-Heeled Jack broke his neck in a fall while hunting.
00:11:26
sixth escaped being killed by a lion but then went on to drown when he was 36 and seventh died
00:11:33
at 33 in a shooting accident the eighth lord was apparently the first to die of old age at home
00:11:40
thus proving the curse has finally ended wow right stay sexy and don't get on the wrong side
00:11:46
of irish widows ruth damn don't die in your bed is so specific and it like almost sounds quaint
00:11:53
where it's like, I'll just die on the couch. But no that not what that means everyone No that not the vibe of that curse And then it like and now let take this to oh that right What she saying is you will not have a pleasant day
00:12:07
Right. It's not her cursing you to die in a lazy boy. It's not on your orthopedic.
00:12:13
The living room is not a part of it at all. You're going to be out and about. Shall we go to exactly right corner?
00:12:22
Is it time to go to? I believe we make that choice and I choose yes. Hey, we have a podcast network called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights from it.
00:12:32
Rave reviews are rolling in for infamous international The Pink Panther story. Thank you guys so much for all the support hitting those charts. We're on the charts. You guys are saying nice stuff. Thank you so much. And this week, the Panthers develop a new talent, which is prison breaks. This is a great episode coming up.
00:12:52
So follow the show wherever you like to listen and do all the things that you know to do to support podcasts.
00:12:58
We really appreciate it. And then on Wicked Words, Kate Winkler Dawson is joined by Titty Smith, the author of Death by Talons.
00:13:05
And then the side thing is, did an owl murder Kathleen Peterson? Smith explores neighbor Larry Pillard's theory of her cause of death.
00:13:15
Did an owl do it? That is the question. And Kate Winkler Dawson, in her expertise, is going to help us get to the bottom of that.
00:13:21
And I do need to get to the bottom of that because I have held forth on my quote unquote opinion about that theory, but it's based purely in just my gut feeling. And there's no better person than Kate Winkler Dawson. And just FYI, Tiddy Smith spells their first name T-I-D-D-Y, just so you know.
00:13:43
Just to make that clear. Just to make that clear. I think it's important, but I can't wait to listen to this episode because now I'll be able to have an informed opinion.
00:13:51
Oh, also this week, Babs, Tess, and Brandy's guest on Lady to Lady is actress and TikToker
00:13:57
Becca Bastos. And also, okay, guess what? The warm weather is waning. So this is your last chance to get some cute tank tops and muscle tees.
00:14:05
The Never Submit shirt featuring Pearl Hart's quote has been restocked also. So you can get them at myfavoritemurder.com.
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Get those workout tank tops in and those, you know, your like running tank tops and
00:14:18
your jujitsu tank tops. Check those out. And I guess that's that. I guess it's time to start.
00:14:26
Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:14:33
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary.
00:14:41
Massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:14:49
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:14:57
And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:15:00
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:15:09
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:15:16
That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end.
00:15:20
It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club
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00:17:02
All right. So I'm first this week. All right. Well, today I'm going to tell you a quick little story about the 1996 unsolved missing
00:17:10
persons case. Yes, it's unsolved. of Sandra Jacobson and her five-year-old son and the botched investigation into their disappearance.
00:17:19
So hold your pants up for a cold case, please. The main source for this story is reporting by Trisha Terenskis,
00:17:28
who discussed this case on her podcast, The Vault, and wrote about it for the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead,
00:17:34
which is the main newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota. And we used Trisha's reporting in episode 363 for the Brandon Swanson disappearance episode
00:17:43
that I did. And she actually reached out and suggested this story to us as well as one to cover because
00:17:48
she wants more attention on it. So how cool is that? That's incredible. So crime journalist reached out to you basically to say hey if you like that story you should also cover this Yeah Incredible Love it Thank you Trisha Terenskis bringing attention and awareness to these cold cases
00:18:06
On Sunday of November 17th, 1996, a Bismarck, North Dakota police officer named William
00:18:11
Connor is among the officers called to Centennial Park on the shores of the Missouri River.
00:18:17
There, a car has been found. It's a gray 1990 Honda Civic. It's parked real close to the river.
00:18:24
It's a really freezing cold, frigid day. So think of a North Dakota winter. It's very cold, gray.
00:18:31
The average temperature is around 13 degrees. And you're by a river. So I'm sure there's like wind chill or whatever.
00:18:38
So police know something's wrong when they see that the car's driver's side door is open.
00:18:43
Inside the car, police officers find the keys in the ignition and a woman's purse on the passenger seat.
00:18:49
And inside the purse is a state ID card belonging to a woman named Sandra Jacobson.
00:18:54
It's from her job at the DMV. Sandra's driver's license isn't there. And of course, neither is Sandra.
00:19:01
A few hours later, Sandra's mother calls the police and reports her daughter and grandson
00:19:06
as missing. So these things all kind of happen concurrently. Sandra Jacobson was born December 8th, 1959.
00:19:13
So she's 36 years old when she goes missing. She has two sons. One is 16 from a previous marriage, and the other one who's missing with her is John, who's five years old.
00:19:24
So just a baby. Sandra comes from a large family with deep roots in North Dakota.
00:19:29
And by Sunday night, once they learn that the car has been found, they all head to the river to try to find her together.
00:19:36
They urge the officer, William Connor, and the other officers to keep searching for Sandra and John.
00:19:41
And Connor says, quote, I had a canine at the time. And so I was down along that river for, oh my gosh, I don't know, several hours that night.
00:19:50
He says it was below zero at that point. The wind is howling and the river's already freezing up.
00:19:56
So there's like these big chunks of ice floating down the river is what he says.
00:19:59
So it's not an ideal place to search for someone. Right. Police don't find anything.
00:20:05
And before the car had been discovered, a little bit of snow had fallen. so there aren't any footprints that they could follow that would give them any clues.
00:20:12
So on Monday, November 18th, a detective named Tim Turnbull starts looking into the missing
00:20:17
person's case. So it's his case. Sandra's mother, Bernice Greensteiner, says that Sandra and her
00:20:24
son, John, came to her house for dinner on the night of Saturday, November 16th at about 7.30
00:20:30
p.m. Sandra had sounded fine on the phone earlier that day, but by dinnertime, when she went to
00:20:36
dinner with her mom. She was in distress and seemed to be having a mental health crisis.
00:20:41
So Sandra had struggled in the past with obsessive thoughts around religion. Bernice offered to take
00:20:47
Sandra to the emergency room and Sandra agreed to go, but said she first had to fill up her car with
00:20:52
gas. So Sandra and John, five-year-old John, left to get gas around 8 p.m. And then when the two
00:21:00
didn't return, Sandra's family drove to her home, which was a trailer in center North Dakota, about
00:21:05
40 minutes away. Sandra and John weren't there. And Bernice reported her daughter and grandson
00:21:11
missing the next morning, right around when they found the car. In Sandra's car, a receipt is found
00:21:17
showing that she really did buy the gas that night. But after that, no one knows what happened to them.
00:21:22
So the report includes another detail. Hours before she was last seen by her mother,
00:21:28
Sandra Jacobson had called the Bismarck police several times and told them that a loved one of
00:21:33
hers was being targeted by a satanic cult. So she was definitely having, you know, maybe a mental
00:21:39
health breakdown. She said that the cult was active near her home and centered North Dakota.
00:21:44
And then when the Bismarck police asked why she didn't contact center's police department and said
00:21:49
the Bismarck police department, she said she doesn't trust them either. So she's something's
00:21:55
going on. Detective Turnbull has an immediate hunch that Sandra and her son wound up in the
00:22:00
icy Missouri River, and they asked the Berlay County Sheriff's Department to search the river.
00:22:06
Like, that's where they're focusing on. But despite an overhead search by the National Guard
00:22:10
and divers going into that frigid water, there's no sign, I know, of Sandra or John.
00:22:16
The divers aren't able to search as thoroughly as they'd like because of those chunks of ice
00:22:21
that are already forming in the river. Sandra's family and close friends immediately doubt
00:22:27
Detective Turnbull's theory. So they don't think that Sandra would have ended up in the river.
00:22:33
One of her close friends says Sandra never liked going near the river. She always avoided it.
00:22:37
The entire family maintains that no matter what kind of mental health crisis Sandra was experiencing,
00:22:42
she would never do anything to her son and that she also wouldn't leave her older son behind. So
00:22:48
like the theory that maybe she purposely went in is not making sense on money levels to her
00:22:53
friends and family. Right. The second thing that happens on Monday, November 18th, is that Sandra's
00:22:58
husband, a man named Alan Jacobson, flies in from St. Louis where he'd been on a business trip. So
00:23:03
he had been gone the whole weekend. So Alan had learned the day before on Sunday the 17th that
00:23:08
Sandra and John were missing. The couple had been separated and Sandra had been telling friends and
00:23:13
family that they would be getting a divorce for sure. Sandra believed that Alan was handling all
00:23:18
of the paperwork for the divorce, but investigators would later be unable to find any evidence that
00:23:23
Alan had initiated the divorce at all. So maybe he just didn't want it. Maybe he was, you know,
00:23:30
hadn't started it yet for whatever reason. It doesn't seem that weird to me. Alan doesn't bring
00:23:36
up the divorce when he meets with the detective. Detective Turnbull's notes from the meeting do
00:23:40
note that Alan was also concerned about Sandra's mental health. He said she had religious obsessions.
00:23:46
He also said she had, quote, off the wall theories that he was having an affair or affairs.
00:23:53
Alan says that Sandra called him at 615 on the morning of November 16th, the day she and John later went missing.
00:24:00
and asked him to recite the Lord's Prayer for John. And then Alan says that he left for a business trip in Missouri that same day,
00:24:07
November 16th, and he had just returned when he got to the police station on November 18th.
00:24:12
And so Detective Turnbull doesn't immediately attempt to verify this timeline, which is like basic detective work, right?
00:24:19
A month later, in December, in late December, Detective Turnbull's bosses tell him to properly vet Alan's alibi.
00:24:26
And so that's when he goes back over the timeline again and tries to like, I think he was so focused on this.
00:24:33
She went into the river on her own accord theory that he didn't even try to verify any of the facts that her husband, who she's trying to divorce, you know, is making.
00:24:43
Right. And tell his superiors are like, maybe you should confirm that. If you don't think you did it, like, confirm that.
00:24:49
Confirm it. Yeah. Either way. And also the idea that just in the way that you just repeated that story where it's like, well, he's out of town.
00:24:56
So he's like flying in to like learn this information. So he doesn't have like a presence at the beginning of the story.
00:25:04
So if he that detective is so like fixated on like she was having a mental breakdown.
00:25:10
So she just went into the river. The end. Then this guy is a sympathetic character.
00:25:16
Totally. You didn't realize like he's he's writing. I mean, that's what I'm doing right now is writing the story in my head of what all this might mean, as opposed to keeping it all open and figuring out what it means based on fact.
00:25:28
Yes, exactly. I mean, yeah, you have to dot your I's and cross your T's as a detective, I think.
00:25:35
And he's not doing those things because he has a preconceived notion of what happened.
00:25:39
So there's not any evidence that Alan caused any harm to Sandra and John. But this is just the first of many examples where basic police work wasn't done or wasn't done in a timely manner.
00:25:51
Alan says that about eight in the morning on Saturday, November 16th, the day his wife and son would later go missing,
00:25:56
Alan got in a van with some co-workers and they drove to Missouri for work. He says he stayed in a hotel in St. Louis on the night of November 17th.
00:26:07
The hotel manager confirms this. And so it's kind of like it's confirmed he's at the hotel.
00:26:13
It's never confirmed that he like actually spent the night there. You know, it's kind of a harder thing to prove, but there's no evidence either that he didn't
00:26:21
spend the night there. That happens. And then Bismarck police never, they never searched Sandra's home, which is a trailer
00:26:28
in center in North Dakota. They never search her home for clues. Even though Sandra's family says that she had kept a detailed diary and the diary is
00:26:37
never recovered because they didn't go in there immediately to see what was going on.
00:26:41
Like it's almost like they didn't suspect foul play. So they were going to take no steps to look into the possibility of foul play.
00:26:50
It just feels like, and I would imagine that this is a pretty, a town that's on the smaller side and a place that doesn't deal with stuff like this very much.
00:27:00
Because I always think about when we talk about stories like this, like my hometown, when I was growing up in Petaluma in the 70s, there was 11, I think, I think my dad told me there was like 11,000 people that lived there.
00:27:12
So it's pretty small. Yeah. You know, comparatively. Right. And to try to think of that where it's like suddenly someone's just gone.
00:27:20
What do you do? And what are people doing and how are they doing it? And it just over and over makes me think they have to standardize federal standardization of investigation, whether it's missing person, murder, whatever it is.
00:27:35
It's just that these are the things you have to do that are required by law for you to do as an investigator.
00:27:42
Because it can't be about some person's opinion. I think this and I think that. Yeah. Yes, exactly. It can't. That's a really good point where it's
00:27:51
like, it doesn't matter what your opinion is. It's like when you get in a car accident and
00:27:56
your insurance card says, get this, get this, say this, don't say, you know, it's like there's
00:27:59
rules for it. Yeah. It should be the same when you're investigating a fucking missing person.
00:28:05
And it's almost like if there had been any blood at the scene, things would have gone differently.
00:28:08
But because there wasn't, it was an immediate snap judgment. Right. And that snap judgment,
00:28:14
although like it's just one of literally 50,000 possibilities and you're literally not going to
00:28:21
look into any other did I just say literally twice in a row like I'm fucking 25 it's just
00:28:28
that kind of thing where the first thing I thought of is I could see someone followed her from the
00:28:33
gas station right to whatever weird point that was and took them and put them in the white van
00:28:38
that I can imagine. So it's like, now I'm the investigator, and I'm only investigating white
00:28:44
vans. Like that doesn't make sense either. Right, right. No singular thing makes sense
00:28:50
in the very beginning of an investigation like that. Investigate is the operative word here. Everything.
00:28:56
I mean, neither of us are professionals. I think we've proven that time and again,
00:29:00
these are just observations over literally seven years and hundreds and hundreds of the same
00:29:06
of these kinds of stories that drive you insane after a while. Abso-fucking-little.
00:29:12
So they don't search Sandra's trailer. Diary is never found. Because Alan is her husband and the house has never searched
00:29:18
or declared any kind of crime scene, he's allowed to come and go as he pleases. Which I will repeat that he is not a suspect
00:29:25
and it has never been proven that he had anything to do with it. But because he hasn't been definitively ruled out
00:29:31
because the investigation was lacking, it is weird that he could go in and out and just like do whatever he wanted at the at her house.
00:29:40
Right. The police also don't process Sandra's car for fingerprints or other evidence, which is like
00:29:46
that's the potential crime scene. Yeah, that's basic stuff. Sandra's purse is released to Alan
00:29:52
in late November and the car is released to him in December And then he sells the trailer a few which is his prerogative if he had nothing to do with what happened you know And it not that Detective Turnbull isn doing anything in the
00:30:06
case. It's more that all of his attention is focused on the river. Over the winter, divers
00:30:11
try to search the frozen waters until they can't anymore. Once the water opens up in the spring,
00:30:17
he asks the media to tell boaters to keep a lookout and they do get tips, but nothing ever
00:30:22
pans out. His instinct isn't entirely unreasonable. Whoever parked Sandra's car by the river,
00:30:29
whether it was Sandra or someone else, wouldn't have been able to leave that area on foot and get
00:30:34
very far because it was so cold that night. But like, that's not what we're insinuating.
00:30:39
And it's 1996. So he hears that she's experiencing a mental health crisis and he
00:30:44
thinks suicide immediately. You know what I mean? Like that's where his brain goes. And to this day,
00:30:49
I'm sure it's that's not all that uncommon for people to think that. And then Detective Turnbull interviews Sandra's first husband, a man named Vernon, and he learns that Sandra had once been very preoccupied with the end of the world.
00:31:03
She and Vernon had made a pact that if the end of the world happened, they would jump off the Memorial Bridge together, which spans the Missouri River right near the Centennial Park where her car was found.
00:31:14
Vernon, the ex-husband, adds, however, that Sandra had abandoned this plan later in their
00:31:18
relationship because taking her own life would stop her from being able to go to heaven.
00:31:23
So she wouldn't have done it. Right. So on May 20th, 1997, six months after the disappearance, a child's shoe is found near
00:31:30
the river in Centennial Park. Authorities think that maybe the shoe could be five-year-old John's.
00:31:36
And Alan Jacobson, the dad, tells investigators that it might be his son's shoe, but the older
00:31:42
brother and the grandma insists that the shoe is too large for him. Also, the day of John's
00:31:49
disappearance, it's 33 degrees out during the day, and the shoe is a Keds slip-on. So that's not
00:31:56
appropriate shoe for the weather, right? So it's probably just some shoe, and they're never able
00:32:02
to prove that it was his. And then so on February 3rd, 1999, a few years later, Turnbull declares
00:32:09
the case inactive. In June of 2004, and this happened in 1996, the police officer who was at
00:32:17
the scene with his dog, who was doing all the searching, William Connor, he's now a sergeant,
00:32:23
and he gets a phone call from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
00:32:27
So the representatives say they found a woman named Sandra Jacobson living in a nearby town
00:32:33
in North Dakota. It turns out to be a false alarm, but it does inspire Sergeant Connor to
00:32:38
take another look at the case, which has basically been untouched since 1999. So like for five years.
00:32:45
On that same call, the representative from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
00:32:49
tells Sergeant Connor that they haven't been able to get in touch with Alan, the husband and father,
00:32:54
to get a DNA sample to keep on file in case someone matching John's description ever turns up.
00:33:00
They also can't get pictures of John for the poster they wanted to make. Connor gets samples
00:33:04
and photos from Sandra's other family members, but doesn't get to speak with Alan until April
00:33:08
of 2005. Like, can you imagine the fucking National Center for Missing and Exploited
00:33:13
Children is trying to get a hold of you about your son's disappearance and you're not calling
00:33:17
them back? That's a bad look. For how long? Well, it's 2005. I don't know how long they
00:33:22
were looking, but. No, that's very odd because also wouldn't he want to be finding out? Yeah.
00:33:30
Even if you want to tell some story about that they were estranged or they were going to get divorced or whatever, that doesn't have anything to do with how he feels about finding his child.
00:33:40
It had been five years since anything had happened with the case. Like, is he not calling, you know, once a year to be like, what's the update?
00:33:47
What's the status? That kind of thing. Or is he just in so much grief and it's just such a horror show that he's like completely checked out?
00:33:56
I mean, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. When the people do finally speak to Alan in April of 2005, Alan tells Sergeant Connor that he sent photos for an age enhanced photo of John. But it turns out Sergeant Connor had been the one to send those photos. And in that same conversation, Alan says he didn't want to give them a DNA sample for whatever reason. That's not an indication of guilt. However, you'd think you're looking for your son like that. You'd want to do anything you could to help. Right.
00:34:25
Right. It doesn't sound good to an outsider. It doesn't. Right. So Alan tells Sergeant Connor that he and Sandra were working on their marriage when she disappeared, which is at odds with what Sandra had been saying to her friends and family at the time.
00:34:38
But she could have been telling him one thing and telling them a different thing.
00:34:41
You know, he also admits to having had an affair. It's not around the time of the disappearance.
00:34:46
It had been earlier, but this is at odds with his previous account when he said that she had off the wall theories about an affair.
00:34:55
kind of like using that as fuel to say that she had a mental health issue, but he actually had
00:35:01
been having an affair. So, yeah. But you know, that's something that should have been looked into
00:35:05
originally. Just to get a sense of who the detective was talking to. I'm just like,
00:35:10
am I getting information from this person? Is it reliable information? Do we know what is going on
00:35:16
or should we even be listening to this person? Exactly. We should be detectives. I mean,
00:35:22
here's the thing. There's a bunch of people. This is like a thing I see on TikTok a lot where it's
00:35:26
like women should be the only people who investigate crimes because of all these things,
00:35:32
their ability to multitask, their ability to kind of see through this stuff by the fact that most
00:35:38
women, the way they grow up and are in the world, they have to have a sixth sense about the people
00:35:44
around them and have to get that sense of if a guy is creepy or not, or if a person seems risky
00:35:50
or not That a thing that you develop when you like a preteen if not younger And there are some men who never develop it at all And yet they go in there and just like well we see No this guy fine I know this guy he cool I can tell
00:36:05
And we're like, actually, that guy's creeping me out. I saw a thing recently that like a meme that
00:36:10
was really cool. That was like, you know, men have been saying for years that women shouldn't
00:36:15
be in positions of power because they're too emotional as if anger isn't an emotion. Right.
00:36:21
Like that hit me so hard or it's like that is an emotion. And how is that one acceptable?
00:36:26
But when we have empathy or when we have, you know, whatever, it's too emotional.
00:36:32
It's all bullshit. Sad. It is all bullshit. It's all been bullshit. It's always been bullshit.
00:36:39
The children are realizing now it's wonderful. Thank God. OK, so Sergeant Connor now finally has to try to get Sandra's phone records.
00:36:49
Hey, that would have been a great thing to fucking look at back then. In 1996, the police did get her landline records for the month of October, but for some reason never got them for November, the month she went fucking missing.
00:37:02
And that would have included two weeks leading up to her and John's disappearance, which seems like it would have been crucial information.
00:37:08
So by 2004, when Sergeant Connor starts to look into the case, the phone company no longer has those records, of course.
00:37:15
Alan Jacobson had a cell phone in 1996, but no one ever attempted to get those records, fucking estranged husband's phone records.
00:37:24
And when Sergeant Connor contacts Verizon, he's told they only have records going back to 2001.
00:37:31
Police also never looked at Alan's landline records, and those are gone as well.
00:37:36
One set of records Sergeant Connor does have is Sandra's car phone records. So Alan actually got those at Detective Turnbull's request during the initial 1996 investigation.
00:37:48
One thing you notice is that in the hours leading to her disappearance, Sandra made multiple calls to a life insurance company.
00:37:54
In each call, she hangs up 10 seconds after the call is answered. In the original investigation, these calls were dismissed because the number was similar to the Bismarck Police Department, who she had been calling about the satanic cult worries.
00:38:08
But when Sergeant Connor looks into Sandra's life insurance policies, it turns out that she did at one point have a policy with the company she had been calling.
00:38:18
And by the time she disappears, that policy had lapsed. So, I mean, on her way to disappear, she's calling a life insurance company that had lapsed.
00:38:28
That's suspish. Right. And that's a whole other possibility that then looms large of like, are you trying to disappear?
00:38:37
Totally. Sergeant Connor looks for other life insurance policies. He finds one worth $30,000 that Alan had collected five years after Sandra and John's disappearance, which doesn't seem unreasonable.
00:38:52
Not in the least. So Sergeant Connor tries to reexamine Sandra's phone calls to the police about the satanic cult on the night of her disappearance, but finds out that the recording had been deleted.
00:39:03
It's just gone, which it seems to infuriate him. It doesn't seem like it was destroyed on purpose, but it wasn't saved.
00:39:11
And those calls should be saved indefinitely. Sandra made other calls from her car phone that evening.
00:39:16
She called her first husband, Vernon, who she had that end of the world pact with.
00:39:21
He missed the call. She also called another family member and was distraught and not herself, according to them.
00:39:29
In the months following Sandra and John's disappearance, their close-knit families had
00:39:33
tried to navigate the holidays without them. Sandra's sister-in-law says, quote,
00:39:38
Holidays were her thing. Everyone had to be together. Everyone had to have fun. She was all about family.
00:39:45
Family members remember five-year-old John as a little ball of energy who loved to run around the house.
00:39:50
He would tie a towel around his neck like a cape. So he looked like a superhero.
00:39:56
I know. Sandra's first husband, Vernon, died in 2005. He was run over by his own car on a rural road in Tuttle, North Dakota, and his death
00:40:06
is also still unsolved. That's horrible. Which makes me think it wasn't an accident that, you know, if it's unsolved.
00:40:13
This means his son, who was 16 at the time of his mother and brother's disappearance,
00:40:18
has lost both of his parents. Sandra's parents have both died without knowing what happened to their daughter and grandson.
00:40:25
Sergeant Connor has discussed the case in the years since the disappearance and remains
00:40:29
skeptical that Sandra died by suicide and took her son with her. So thank God for that. A lot of
00:40:35
the unanswered questions in the story have to do with Alan, but rather than identifying him as any
00:40:40
kind of suspect, they really just shed the light on how many stones went unturned in this case.
00:40:46
We don't know what evidence might have been found in Sandra's car or in her trailer or in her
00:40:51
November phone records, even though all of that evidence was accessible at the time.
00:40:57
Maybe we would have learned about somebody else in Sandra's life. There also is a possibility that Sandra and John did go into the river on November 16th,
00:41:05
1996. But all we know is that is the only possibility that's been thoroughly investigated and zero
00:41:12
evidence proving it has ever been found. So that's, you know, speaks volumes. And that is the story of the disappearance of Sandra and John Jacobson.
00:41:22
Wow. There's so many stories like that and they're so heartbreaking. Right. And oftentimes when this happens, when you tell me like an unsolved cold case, it's like the more information you learn, the more confusing it gets.
00:41:36
And it's almost like it makes sense to me when an investigator would grab onto one theory and just be like, this is what we're doing.
00:41:45
Because there's a simplicity to it and a kind of like, why would she be calling a life insurance company?
00:41:52
Is that connected to what she was going through Or was that if she was having obsessive thoughts was that connected to that somehow Because life insurance doesn sync up with any sort of end of the world scenario
00:42:06
There wouldn't be any insurance. So don't worry about that. Like you can't just keep writing it
00:42:10
off as like a mental illness because there's different things actually happening within that
00:42:14
framework. And clearly she was okay enough to be driving, getting gas, making phone calls,
00:42:21
you know, doing all these things. And saying that she'd go to the hospital to get help for
00:42:26
her mental illness is like, that's something a person who is just in a completely different
00:42:31
mind state, you know, like if you agree to it, there's some part of you that's open to
00:42:35
taking care of. Although, can I just say this? There's also the piece where if she in her,
00:42:41
and I don't know what the extent of like religious obsessive thoughts would mean,
00:42:45
if it spills over into some sort of paranoia. But if somebody says you have to go to the hospital
00:42:52
because this might be getting bad again, and you actually don't believe that's true
00:42:56
because whatever thoughts you're having are guiding you to a certain thing. Like that's kind of an interesting,
00:43:04
like maybe telling somebody yes was just the way of getting away. Totally. And then there was kind of a,
00:43:10
we have to get away from this town. Absolutely. But that doesn't sync up with how involved she was with her family.
00:43:17
If she was really religious, suicide doesn't flow with that in my thoughts. But who the fuck knows?
00:43:23
Well, I think it doesn't go with if you are having like, okay, say whatever those thoughts
00:43:30
might be. And these are obviously completely made up, but it's like God is talking to you, right?
00:43:35
God is trying to tell you something. Then God wouldn't tell you that. He wouldn't say that, right?
00:43:40
And hurt your son. Yeah. No, no, no. That would be, then you'd be able to maybe recognize that that isn't what's happening.
00:43:48
But what were those thoughts? Was it a theory? Was it like something's going to happen?
00:43:52
Because I think there is something to that, like the end of the world kind of packed with
00:43:59
the first husband. Right. Put you into the mindset of the concerns of what, you know, and a lot of people believe
00:44:06
this is like, God's going to come back. We're all going to get judged. Right. We're all going to get separated out.
00:44:12
Only the good people will make it to heaven. So what's the plan? Or maybe that's not even the theory of the end of the world.
00:44:19
Maybe she just means like the end of the world, like a horrible nuclear attack or something
00:44:25
bad like that. I mean, and the point isn't even like defending her that she didn't do something and, you
00:44:31
know, she had bad thoughts and went through with these horrible thoughts. But the fact that there's no evidence either way and there wasn't a good enough reason to believe that wholeheartedly, like, you know, that doesn't give you answers.
00:44:48
There's no answers. Right. It isn't her history. And just because you have any sort of mental issue does not mean that you're suddenly going to act erratically and go do any number of things.
00:45:00
like it all has to be pulled apart, analyzed, looked at, and the facts have to be put on the
00:45:06
table. I mean, we said that a bunch of times, but it's like, standardize it. Standardize what facts
00:45:13
need to be found when and why and by what time. 48. 48 hours. First 48. Well, I hate to say great
00:45:22
job to an unsolved cold case as I will be thinking about this now for the next several weeks.
00:45:28
Sorry. But I guess that's kind of the idea is getting people to listen, pay attention and and perhaps come forward if they can.
00:45:37
Yeah, definitely. Hey, everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:45:48
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary,
00:45:56
massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:46:04
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:46:12
And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:46:15
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:46:24
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:46:30
That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end.
00:46:35
It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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00:48:00
All right. Well, this story I'm about to tell you is also confusing, weird, and kind of takes a lot of turns.
00:48:25
Okay. But it's very different. the person who it's about is also one of the authors of like the source material. It's
00:48:35
simultaneously tragically sad, incredibly bizarre. And then also kind of like, whoa,
00:48:42
you can do that? Like it's quite a story. Who could it be? Well, I don't know if you would've
00:48:47
heard of it, but you would have learned about this person if you read the 2019 GQ article by writer
00:48:53
Nathaniel Penn. And it was called The Curious Cons of the Man Who Wouldn't Die. So that's,
00:49:02
I'm going to tell you the story today of a man named Mark Olmstead. The other source,
00:49:07
main source that was used is a 2017 post on Medium by Mark Olmstead himself. And it was called
00:49:14
Breaking Broke Bad, a true gay crime story I wouldn't believe if I hadn't lived it.
00:49:20
Okay, that sounds fun, right? It starts bad and then it gets crazy. I don't know if the word fun would be used ever.
00:49:30
And as I was reading it, because when I first heard it, I was like, oh, that's interesting.
00:49:35
And then when I read Maren's research and I was like reading it as it laid out, I was like, oh my God, this is like, this is really something.
00:49:44
And it's kind of that part of the thing I love about true crime podcasting, especially, is that you kind of, it's very clear, you know, who's good and who's bad, or you know what's going on in the story.
00:49:55
This is not one of those stories at all. Okay. Wow. Okay. So it is a story about the Olmstead brothers.
00:50:01
The oldest brother in the Olmstead family was Luke. He was the oldest of four children.
00:50:07
He was a good student. He was an Eagle Scout. You know, he did everything by the book.
00:50:11
and as all oldest children are forced to, he was a parental figure for the rest of the family.
00:50:18
His little brother, Mark, is the opposite of him. He's two years younger. He's the creative one.
00:50:24
He is the jokester. He's the improviser. He's the one that gets to live like that because he has a
00:50:30
responsible older brother, basically. And I guess they had an alcoholic dad. So that's even more
00:50:37
pressure on the oldest sibling to like handle shit. And that's what Luke did for the family.
00:50:44
So there were opposites in personality. And I think growing up in the 60s, but then the one
00:50:50
thing they did have in common is they were both gay men. So in the late 70s, Mark comes out when
00:50:57
he's 18. At that point, the gay rights movement in the US was in full swing. It had been about a
00:51:03
decade since the Stonewall riots. And if you don't know, that's when the members of the LGBTQ
00:51:08
plus community banded together and fought back against a police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar
00:51:15
in New York City. It was a pivotal moment. I think we covered it in the show. I'm pretty sure I
00:51:21
covered Stonewall, right? You did a great job. Yeah. Oh, thank you. So go listen to that one.
00:51:25
And it's a really amazing, cool story about the moment that galvanized the very oppressed and very harassed gay community in New York City.
00:51:36
And those riots also inspired people all around the country to come out and to stand up for their rights and for their humanity.
00:51:45
So it really was a flashpoint moment. And so it had been about a decade since that had happened.
00:51:52
So then that's when people started having gay pride parades and doing things to say, we aren't going to be hiding anymore.
00:52:00
And we aren't going to be, you know, in the back of bars trying to hide from the police.
00:52:04
Like, it's not like that anymore. We're not fucking doing that anymore. And so Mark felt free to assert his sexuality at a time like that.
00:52:14
But Luke struggled with it. He was away at college. and when Mark came out, Luke wrote him a letter that said, and it was kind of like a, it was a
00:52:22
coming out letter, but it was also had some tone in it because Luke said to his brother, quote,
00:52:27
I have the same feelings, but I don't act on them. So the little free spirited brother gets to come
00:52:33
out of the closet and everyone accepts him for who he is and gets to celebrate him. But the older
00:52:38
brother who feels like part of his responsibilities are to be the like head of the family and
00:52:44
everything is a little annoyed that like, yeah, that, that happened. Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:52:50
And I think also them growing up in the sixties, this kind of thing was just unimaginable,
00:52:57
unseen. There was no visibility. There was no nothing. Yeah. So around 1980, Mark is moving
00:53:05
to New York city to go to NYU. And basically with Mark's support and encouragement, Luke comes to
00:53:13
New York too. And Mark basically encourages him to like dip a toe in the dating scene and try to
00:53:20
get out there and just kind of live. He's, it's New York city. You can do what you want. You can
00:53:25
be who you want. And he does, but what these days everyone forgets this absolutely nightmare era was
00:53:33
about to start because in June of 1981 reports of previously perfectly healthy men who are now
00:53:42
being diagnosed with deadly illnesses that are typically seen in much older or severely
00:53:47
immunocompromised patients are starting to roll in and doctors and medical experts are baffled.
00:53:54
They don know why these patients are getting so sick They don know what infecting them They don know how it spreading What they do know is that it happening The numbers are growing and most of the
00:54:08
patients, if not all, identify as gay men. So these early reports usher in a sense of confusion and
00:54:15
deep fear for society as a whole. Of course, I have talked about this on this show before, but
00:54:21
I remember watching the seven o'clock news with my parents as they did every night.
00:54:26
And it was out of San Francisco. And I remember watching as Dave McElhatton was just like
00:54:32
a mystery illness. And it was just mystery illness because it was, you know, it was 1981.
00:54:39
So they didn't know what to say about it. They just were saying this is happening and it's
00:54:44
happening like in this city and in other cities. Epidemic. Oh my God. How terrifying. Yeah. So of
00:54:50
course, the whole nation's going, what the hell's going on? But it was especially horrifying for gay
00:54:56
men, of course, like Mark and Luke. In fact, Mark would later write that his whole life changed on
00:55:03
July 3rd, 1981, when, quote, the New York Times published the first article about a bizarre new
00:55:10
immune suppressive syndrome just being seen among gay men. That was the day, figuratively speaking,
00:55:16
that I got up from one chair and moved to the one next to it. And as events unfolded in increasingly
00:55:21
dark increments, kept moving to the chair next over ever closer to the edge of a cliff, I could
00:55:28
not see until I was teetering into it. Oh my God. End quote. So by the late 1980s, the medical
00:55:36
community had a sense of what was going on. People were getting infected with a virus now known as
00:55:43
human immunodeficiency virus or HIV. At that point, there was more of an understanding of how
00:55:49
it spread. According to the CDC, this most often happens through unprotected sex and the sharing
00:55:55
of needles and syringes with an infected person. It does not spread through the air, through sharing
00:56:03
toilets, through saliva, tears, sweat, hugging, or insect bites. That sounds obvious to people
00:56:10
now but like that's what we thought that's what they told us and that's the way that gay people
00:56:17
were treated yes as if they were fucking cesspools waiting to pass this disease to everyone it was
00:56:25
horrendous the way they were treated it was horrifying and the ignorance it was like i
00:56:30
remember watching an episode of oprah and this man and they were trying to do like a town hall
00:56:35
style episode about the AIDS crisis. And this man, she was somewhere else. She wasn't in Chicago,
00:56:42
I don't think from what I remember, but there was a man who stood up and said, I don't want to be
00:56:48
around him and I don't want to have to eat after him. And it was just like, what the fuck are you
00:56:52
talking about? Like, it wasn't just people being scared and unsure, but people were absolutely
00:56:59
kind of creating how, what was going to happen and how it was going to happen to them. So.
00:57:03
I think it gave a lot of bigots fuel for their bigotry. Entirely. And guess what didn't help?
00:57:12
The president of the United States, who did not say the word AIDS for the first five years.
00:57:20
I mean, the Reagan administration, it is one of the ugliest black marks on any leadership group, I think, ever to have something like this going on in the country.
00:57:33
And to simply ignore it, not speak of it or act like it's not their problem. And the fact that they thought not just, you know, Reagan is essentially just the figurehead.
00:57:45
The people who were doing the job for and around him made that decision. And that was very much a Christian-y undercurrent of they get what they deserve vibe.
00:57:59
I don't even think it was an undercurrent. It was a straight up Christian right.
00:58:03
Yeah, they get what they deserve. Yeah, it was horrifying. Well, what was great about that was that activists and advocates in the gay community and for the gay community, like ACT UP, which is the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.
00:58:19
They started fighting for better health care for HIV and AIDS patients. patients and they took a lot of measures to basically try to push the United States towards
00:58:30
finding a cure. And it was such a change too, where it was just, they were just starting to be like,
00:58:36
hey, could we have a parade? And suddenly they're literally fighting for their lives.
00:58:41
Reagan wouldn't address the HIV AIDS epidemic until 1987 after over 20,000 Americans were dead.
00:58:50
wild. So, but we're just trying to set this tone for people in their twenties, this as a person in
00:58:59
her fifties, who literally was 11 years old when this happened, it was one of the most horrifying,
00:59:06
scary, and also to live so close to San Francisco where a lot of activism was happening and a lot of
00:59:13
gay people in that gay community was really coming together and like fighting for themselves.
00:59:18
it's just it was such a strange strange thing and I feel very lucky to have been so close to so many
00:59:27
really smart loud brave people who got the word out there and were basically saying you do not
00:59:36
get to do this to us and you will be giving people their medical care and all the other things right
00:59:42
and the respect they deserve as human beings right yeah you don't politically get to just
00:59:47
make a choice to turn your head and pretend like this isn't an American problem.
00:59:53
Totally. Okay So let get back to the Almstead brothers So now it the late 1980s and Luke and Mark live on opposite coasts So Luke has become a doctor and he moved to San Diego to complete his medical residency Mark still in
01:00:07
Manhattan. He's trying to become a writer. So Luke decides he wants to come and visit his brother for
01:00:12
the weekend. And Mark's of course thrilled until he sees his brother walk through the door and he
01:00:18
is shocked by his brother's appearance. Luke is thin and frail and looks very sickly. Mark asks
01:00:24
him what's going on. And Luke tries to say it's because he's on a macrobiotic diet. He knows he
01:00:29
looks thin. It's what everyone's doing in California. And Mark sees that as an opportunity
01:00:34
in a moment. And he just says to his brother, I just got tested and I have HIV. And then his
01:00:42
brother breaks down and says, me too. Oh my God. So horrifying and not to like continually go off
01:00:52
the mark with this, but this is the kind of thing like this was happening a lot. And I didn't even
01:01:00
have the sense of it until I was in college. I was with my friend Alicia and she lived in this
01:01:05
apartment building and her good friend lived downstairs the way she got the apartment because
01:01:09
her friends basically recommended her and her friends were a gay couple. And we went down there
01:01:14
to pick something up. And I think they had just, one of their friends had just died. And my friend
01:01:19
Alicia was still really upset about it. And they started talking and I was just kind of there
01:01:25
drinking tea while they were having their conversation. And this man, I wish I could
01:01:29
remember his name. I just remember he was incredibly good looking, but he started talking
01:01:34
about living through the AIDS crisis and the AIDS epidemic. And he basically said that this friend
01:01:42
that had just died, had died from something else. It was, you know, cancer or something.
01:01:47
And he said, do you know that everyone I used to know died? They all died. This wasn't, oh, one friend over here or one friend over there. This man was telling us about how everyone he knew, everyone in his social circle, everyone he knew that he worked with, they all died of AIDS. It was a scourge.
01:02:09
And it was all young men who had futures and, you know, were activists and were suddenly able to enjoy their true selves and who they were on their lives. And because of fucking government inaction, just got mowed down in the prime of their lives.
01:02:28
It was also older men who were, who were, no, no, I'm just, I'm just saying just to fill that out. There was also older men who were in the prime of their lives, who were the best. They were the best designers. They were the best composers. They were the best lyricists. They were the best makeup artists. There was the arts just had the guts ripped out of the center of it because of the people.
01:02:53
think of Broadway, what Broadway lost. Think of what fashion lost. Like you could look around and
01:02:59
just go, oh yeah, where do gay men flourish? And then it's eviscerated because truly generation
01:03:07
upon generation of people are lost because of the inaction and because of the bullshit. And
01:03:14
it's more of a tragedy than anyone has processed or can know. I lost one of my closest friends
01:03:22
from sixth grade, Ken Mason, he died when he was 21 years old. And it was one of the worst things
01:03:31
that I went through that anyone in our class, we were dumbfounded. We didn't know what was going on.
01:03:37
And it was horrifying. He died in his mother's house in his old bedroom and he was starved and
01:03:45
he was in a hospital bed. And it was the kind of thing that that was one person that I knew.
01:03:53
Alicia's friend, it happened to everyone he knew. Everyone's different levels of sick. It was so
01:04:00
traumatic for the people who lived through it and the people who survived it. And that's kind of
01:04:06
what this story is really about, but it gets super crazy. But I kind of just wanted to like
01:04:11
paint that picture because I think young generations of people just have, they thank God,
01:04:18
they just don't know it like that. It's like in the same way we know polio or something where it's
01:04:23
like, yeah, you get a vaccine and you're fine. And that's not a concern. That's not what it was
01:04:28
like at all. Yeah, it was. Yeah. That's so interesting. Cause you do. I was a little,
01:04:32
I was, I'm, I'm younger than you. I was born in 1980, but I, you know, I definitely remember.
01:04:38
And then there was Ryan White, the kid who contracted HIV from a blood infusion. And so he was my age. And so that's what my introduction was to, you know, the way he was treated. And it's just, yeah, it's monstrous. It didn't have to be like that. I guess it's like, what's so upsetting about this whole story is it didn't, he didn't have to lose all his friends.
01:05:02
Right. Right. It was because they were gay. There's no other reason why they were ignored by the government. That's right. By the medical community. It was almost like to rid the country of something that was unacceptable to Christian, the Christian community. So, you know, government and religion are not supposed to be hand in hand, but this is a perfect example of why they shouldn't be.
01:05:27
Yes. We can't be making decisions based on stuff like that. And we can't devalue human life
01:05:36
in a way like that ever. I mean, I think those lessons and I think the like advocacy and the
01:05:43
strength of the advocacy that came out of that era, it basically, it was a necessity.
01:05:50
and the idea that young people now get to be who they are early on And I am in no way saying that it is easy I in no way saying I mean we still have this problem This the idea Oh my God
01:06:05
Huge problem. Yeah. Making it, obviously we're, we haven't progressed in many, many, many ways in this country.
01:06:13
No. Except that I do think there are a lot of people who may have, who could have been on the side of,
01:06:19
been in the middle or on the religious judgment side and instead lost people they loved,
01:06:26
experienced what this really was like, and learned their lesson. Because it's their lesson. It's the
01:06:31
fundamentalist lesson to learn of what this kind of action, how unholy, ungodly, and disgusting that
01:06:37
action or lack of action actually was. So essentially, now there are incredibly effective
01:06:44
antiretroviral medications that people with HIV can take to control the virus. Back in the 80s and
01:06:51
into the early 90s, medications were experimental at best. So testing positive for HIV was gravely
01:06:59
serious, obviously. So when the brothers share these diagnoses with each other, they then make
01:07:05
a vow that they promise that they're going to be there for each other as they get sicker,
01:07:10
because they're just assuming that's what's going to happen. Yeah, it's almost like a death sentence.
01:07:14
them. Or they're assuming it. Yeah. Right. Right. So Luke goes back to California. The brothers
01:07:21
continue to keep tabs on each other. And then in 1988, Luke calls Mark and he has a plan. He wants
01:07:28
to open an HIV and AIDS clinic and he wants Mark to come and help him get it off the ground.
01:07:34
Mark does not hesitate. He packs his things and moves to Southern California, but he knows that
01:07:38
Really, it's because his brother's illness is advancing and his brother needs him to be close by.
01:07:46
Yeah. So they moved in together in Los Angeles. And at this point, according to the CDC, by 1990, eight years into the epidemic, 100,000 Americans have died of AIDS-related illness.
01:08:00
And that's a higher death toll than the number of Americans killed in combat during the Vietnam War.
01:08:06
Jesus. So Luke's health is in rapid decline. By the fall of 1990, he's a doctor. He's got this clinic and his colleagues have to tell him, you can't come into work because you look sicker than the patient's look.
01:08:21
Oh my God. Journalist Nathaniel Penn reports for GQ that, quote, Luke would return just once more as a guest at an office Halloween party in 1990.
01:08:32
That night, he and Mark came dressed in matching flying nun habits and wimples. Mark had rigged his costume out of paper and scotch tape in a matter of minutes.
01:08:41
Luke had taken hours with his, patiently measuring, plotting, and cutting. Luke had always beaten Mark at everything, sports, chess.
01:08:49
And at the end of the night, he won the costume contest too. End quote. By early 1991, it's clear that Luke is dying.
01:08:58
So he and his younger sister, Sandra, have already decided Sandra is going to take care of him for his end of life.
01:09:08
So Mark drives his big brother to LAX, puts him in a wheelchair, gets him to his departure gate, and gets him on the flight to Seattle, where Sandra is waiting.
01:09:19
Sandra says, quote, it was Luke's decision to leave Los Angeles. He knew that Mark wasn't strong enough to help him die.
01:09:26
Oh my God. End quote. Who is strong? I mean, like the people that can do end of life, things like that are incredible.
01:09:34
And I mean, some of the hardest work there is probably to do. Yeah. Especially for a relative.
01:09:40
Totally. It's a mitzvah. Luke Olmsted, who's only in his mid thirties. We don't have his exact birth dates.
01:09:47
We don't know his exact age. Mid-30s. He's a baby. He's in his mid-30s when he dies of complications from AIDS on February 9th, 1991.
01:09:57
So for Mark, his brother's death is, of course, extremely painful. His brother was his closest friend and he's gone now.
01:10:06
So Mark is immediately saddled with all sorts of menial administrative tasks as the executor of his brother's estate while he is in full mourning and grief.
01:10:17
which happens to a lot of people at those times. It's horrible. I can't imagine.
01:10:23
So Mark settles most of his brother's affairs, but a few things do slip through the cracks.
01:10:28
He doesn't notify Luke's bank or his credit card company about his death. And it's hard to blame
01:10:35
him for this oversight because he's not just grieving his brother. He's sick too.
01:10:41
He's sick himself. So all of this is incredibly, I mean, would just be weighing constantly on him.
01:10:49
Yeah. But just like the story I told you of Alicia's friend, Mark will lose one close friend after another every few months for the next few years.
01:10:59
So the same thing is happening to Mark that is happening to all gay men. And they're just watching their friends and acquaintances and just the people that work down at the coffee shop just die, just disappear.
01:11:13
Mark will later say, quote, I don't know what that much grief does to a brain, not to mention the anticipation of being the next to die.
01:11:22
Mark does try to keep his head above water by pouring himself into his writing. And eventually he completes a screenplay that he's very proud of and he starts to shop it around L.A.
01:11:33
And at first things look optimistic. There's a director named Christian Blackwood who options it.
01:11:39
And at one point, Whoopi Goldberg is reportedly attached as talent. But before that can get off the ground, Blackwood tragically passes away from lung cancer.
01:11:49
Next, the script winds up in the hands of a director named Norman René. And for Mark, René seems like the perfect collaborator. He's an accomplished theater director.
01:12:00
and a filmmaker whose first feature film was an AIDS-centric drama called Longtime Companion.
01:12:08
Really quick, normally I wouldn't be naming a movie right now, except that I'm pretty sure by
01:12:14
the time this airs, the writer's strike will be over. Yeah, I think so too. And goddamn,
01:12:20
I hope that's true. Let's mark this area in case it's not. But it looks like it will be,
01:12:26
And then we can go back to promoting all of the things that we want to promote and talking about all the things we want to talk about.
01:12:33
That's right. So Mark has even flown out to Italy to complete rewrites on his script with Renee.
01:12:38
But then again, Norman Renee dies of AIDS. So the whole project ends. So at this point, Mark, who's only in his mid thirties as well, feels like he cannot escape death.
01:12:54
It's infiltrated both his personal and his professional life. His grief is all consuming and worse.
01:13:01
He's becoming increasingly convinced that he's next. He says, quote, all the loss, the grief and the professional loss, it created a bit of insanity, especially since I'd been diagnosed with AIDS in 1993.
01:13:14
That's where you were basically on the two year plan. If you were lucky. Horrifying.
01:13:21
So genuinely thinking that he has maybe two years to live, Mark decides to embrace nihilism and
01:13:27
hedonism. The epidemic has left him feeling powerless, depressed, and completely out of
01:13:33
control. He wants to take some of that power back and basically live his life on his own terms.
01:13:38
Yeah. I love all of this plan. This is all about it. All for nihilism. All for hedonism. Let's
01:13:45
fucking do this. Yeah. So Mark says, quote, I was proceeding as if this was my last hurrah.
01:13:51
This was my bucket list. End quote. There's just one hitch in Mark's blossoming plan.
01:13:58
He needs money. So this is where this story takes a big turn because Luke left behind a bank account
01:14:06
with around $10,000 in it, which is $22,000 today. Okay. So Mark withdraws the money and signs
01:14:15
as his brother, Luke. He then realizes he's still been getting Luke's disability checks. Like he
01:14:22
didn't inform the right people about Luke's death. And so he starts cashing them too.
01:14:27
Oh shit. So he goes out, he's settling his bar tabs with Luke's credit card. He basically is like,
01:14:34
oh, well, if I'm done anyway, let's take this money that was just sitting here and let's basically go out in style. And something about it is actually kind of exciting
01:14:44
for Mark. He feels like he has like almost a new identity and identity that has excellent credit.
01:14:51
So when his brother Luke's driver's license expires shortly after his death, Mark goes to
01:14:57
the DMV and renews it as Luke and goes and basically takes his picture for the driver's
01:15:04
license. So now it's Mark's picture on Luke's driver's license. Got it. Now, this is the part
01:15:12
where like when I read that part, I'm like, ooh, this is the part where you have crossed the
01:15:16
Rubicon into fuck it world completely. Yeah. And who is he hurting but the government who's
01:15:22
fucking ignoring him to begin with? Sure. He's the executor of his brother's estate. So it's like,
01:15:27
it was probably his money anyway. I am fine with this morally. To me, getting your picture taken
01:15:33
for someone else's license, that's when you're like, now you're being proactive. It's fraud.
01:15:39
And Mark does not ever deny any of that. Yeah, I'm not mad at this fraud. I'm not mad at this fraud, you know.
01:15:46
Mark's being cautious about this. He knows he's blatantly committing fraud and he doesn't feel good about it.
01:15:52
He does pay off the debt that he accumulates on Luke's credit card. And then in 1993, he faints while he's home alone.
01:16:01
When he comes to, he can barely catch his breath. And when he gets to the hospital,
01:16:05
he learns that his CD4 cells have dropped to a dangerous low. and now he also has pneumonia. So this is worst news he could be getting. He's certain that this
01:16:16
is it for him. So sure, in fact, that he quits his job, he goes on disability, and he basically
01:16:22
just waits for the end. But incredibly, he gets on some drugs and his health improves.
01:16:29
So he goes home and he's kind of like the end that he was expecting came and it wasn't the end.
01:16:35
Oh, shit. So after this close call, Mark says, screw it, basically. So now he's like, I'm going to die young.
01:16:43
I'm going to go out guns blazing. And it's in that period that he, telling his own story, says, quote, that he traveled a lot.
01:16:52
He was very generous. He was the one to pick up the tab for dinner, cocktails, up the yin yang.
01:17:00
That's his quote. It's a direct quote. I love it. Can I tell you that maybe 20 years ago, I heard this as an anecdote that a lot of gay men who thought they were dying took credit out and just fucking lived their lives.
01:17:16
Then medication came around to help and they owed them. Like, I've literally heard this as an anecdote.
01:17:22
Yeah. And it's actually you're telling me it's true. It's real. And they probably heard it because of this story.
01:17:29
Yes, exactly. It sounds like the details are suddenly like sounding the same as what I've heard.
01:17:34
And also it's just that kind of thing. I think you and I've talked about this all through like we talked about this all through quarantine.
01:17:40
We talked about it when Trump was elected or whatever, where it's just kind of like at what point do you just go fuck it and start doing everything you want all the time?
01:17:49
Yeah. Because whatever because the extenuating circumstances of your life is such that you not seeing any way out Right When you paying your monthly fucking student loan debt and realizing that all of that money is going to the interest Yeah What do you fucking do There no way out
01:18:07
of it. What do you do? But say, fuck it and live the best possible life you can. That's right.
01:18:12
That's why our government has to get rid of student loan debt because it is predatory lending.
01:18:18
It's a scam. Like these companies are not the companies that people thought they were
01:18:22
when people used to love companies. And it's like companies have our best in mind.
01:18:27
It's not real anymore. Why are we paying tens of thousands of dollars to become capitalists?
01:18:34
Like, why are we paying so much money that we're in debt to work in your system?
01:18:39
That doesn't fucking make any sense. And to pay your taxes. Yeah. Like put people through school
01:18:46
to become the best possible doctor, lawyer, fucking carpenter, whatever they can be.
01:18:52
and the economy will fucking explode from there. Like, why do we have to be then in debt as well?
01:18:59
Okay. Take whatever you want out of this. As soon as Reagan got brought up, I got fucking angry and
01:19:05
like just pissed off. You know, the killer line that I had when I did my mother's eulogy at her
01:19:11
funeral was I said, no, I don't know this. The one thing I was talking about her life and how great
01:19:17
she was and all that. And then I was like, but the one thing I know that my mother would want you all
01:19:21
to know today is that she hated Ronald Reagan and the entire church, 500 people in that church.
01:19:31
Like it was like an explosion of laughter. Amazing. Because my mother ranted about Ronald Reagan every goddamn day and night to anyone that
01:19:39
would listen to her. Because she was a psychiatric nurse. Everyone should know that.
01:19:43
Yes. And they closed down all the mental hospitals. And that's why homelessness is the problem that it is now.
01:19:48
That's right. Not because those people individually are so guilty. It's because they have no services.
01:19:54
They need services. They want services. And our government went, you know what? We don't have to pay for that anymore.
01:20:02
Don't worry. Trickle down economics will end up fixing it all. And if you're in the middle class, why do you even care about those people?
01:20:09
They're not your problem. Why should you pay for them? Well, guess what? Guess what?
01:20:14
Because that's the way society works. That's the way healthy society works. That's also the way every other country on the planet.
01:20:21
You should not go into bankruptcy because you have cancer. Like that is not an okay fucking concept.
01:20:28
Or like your coworkers give the person who has cancer their fucking vacation days because
01:20:34
they don't have enough vacation days and everyone celebrates, you know, society helping each
01:20:38
other. They should have as many days off as they fucking need to combat cancer. You should be able to stay home and take care of your brand new child.
01:20:45
This is the story that touches on all of those things. It's just a different version of the same story.
01:20:52
Okay, so the issue here, which is many people's issue when you go hard partying because you're like, I'm living it up to the fullest in my last days, is my 20s.
01:21:03
Yeah, exactly. And similarly, Mark starts using math. Oh, hey, no, that was my teens.
01:21:09
That was your teens. That was your teens. He said, and this made me so sad when I read this line, he said that meth made him, like in the midst of all that fear and grief and horror, meth made him feel like his old self, social, flirty, energetic, and carefree.
01:21:26
Yep. That's so sad. It does that. So aside from his disability payments, Mark has no real money coming in.
01:21:33
So he continues cashing checks, draining bank accounts, swiping credit cards in both his own and his brother's name with reckless abandon.
01:21:43
And before long, he's racked up over 50 grand in debt. And about that, he says, Mark says, quote, there was just absolutely no reason to believe that I'd be around to deal with the consequences.
01:21:55
I knew what I was doing was dishonorable, not respecting my brother's memory and illegal, but I was doing crystal meth more and more and I was getting very addicted to getting away with things.
01:22:07
So it's just the whole thing was the lifestyle, basically. It's an adrenaline rush, probably.
01:22:13
Right. Mm hmm. Yeah. So then one day, Mark sees an escape hatch. It's not a permanent solution, but it's a way to alleviate some of his debt.
01:22:22
At the bottom of one of Luke's credit card bills, there's an option to ensure the card's balance should the account holder die.
01:22:30
So Mark hatches a plan. He's going to tick that box on Luke's credit card bill, mail it back, and then get to work on an updated death certificate that makes his brother Luke's death seem recent.
01:22:42
And then when that's done, he'll notify the credit card company of Luke's death by mailing in the doctor death certificate.
01:22:48
Okay. So Mark tracks down Luke's death certificate, which he has at home. Then he takes a separate piece of paper and he cuts out a tiny rectangle and he writes the date from the current year on it.
01:23:01
He puts that onto Luke's death certificate over the date of death. He makes a photocopy of it.
01:23:08
And to Mark's surprise, the copied death certificate looks legit. But to give it an official flourish, he needs to replicate a government seal somehow.
01:23:18
And Mark, being the creative, figures it out. As Nathaniel Penn reports in his GQ article, Mark had dutifully bought an embossed color seal that read CC and used it to validate certified copies of the death certificate.
01:23:37
If anyone had scrutinized the seal, they would notice the small print that reads Corona Cougars.
01:23:43
Mark had bought the seal at an office depot. The Corona Cougars were a local youth baseball team.
01:23:48
Oh my god Oh my god Yeah He just having fun at this point Yes And he really is when Luke next credit card bill shows up in the mail and the entire balance is zero Damn So the plan works So by the year 2001 we 20 years into the AIDS epidemic over 450 people have died from AIDS
01:24:12
But thanks to the tireless work of activists, huge progress has been made to combat the crisis.
01:24:19
And chief among them are the new drugs called protease inhibitors that are extremely effective treating HIV.
01:24:27
So now finally, a positive HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence. But many people still carry the trauma of living through the epidemic.
01:24:38
And of course, Mark is one of those people. The years that he spent mourning, not to mention convinced that he's been near death, are truly taking their toll on him.
01:24:47
and of course it does not help that now he is addicted to crystal meth. So even though he has
01:24:54
a job that he loves, which is writing for a magazine, he's not earning nearly enough money
01:24:59
to chip away at his enormous debt and it all weighs on him. And Nathaniel Penn writes about
01:25:06
Mark, he was consumed with having enough money to survive with finding a way to get more whenever he
01:25:12
needed it. Money became inseparable from the terms of his illness and a kind of metaphor for it. So
01:25:18
like the more money he has, the better he feels, the healthier he is, the less, the closer he is
01:25:24
to death. And so Mark gets a new idea when he learns about something called a viatical settlement.
01:25:31
So a viatical settlement is when an insurance company sells a gravely ill's individual policy
01:25:37
to a third party. That third party then fronts the sick policyholder a percentage of their life
01:25:44
insurance payout and keeps the rest after their death. What? How is that okay? Because of the
01:25:52
fucking medical system that we have, because of the privatized fucking healthcare system that we
01:25:58
have. Doesn't make sense. The people who are dying of an illness can actually go, well, at least you
01:26:04
can take a little bit of this thing you've been paying off for 35 years and have a little more to
01:26:09
fight all of this this wall of debt it's nightmare so basically to mark being able to cash out his
01:26:16
life insurance policy is a great solution to him the problem is he's on medication that is keeping
01:26:23
the virus in check so he is not sick at the moment he's not symptomatic so in a move that signals
01:26:30
Mark's total sense of hopelessness, he stops taking his medication. This causes his CD4 cell
01:26:37
count to nosedive. His immune system takes such a hit that a group of doctors determine he will
01:26:43
likely die within the next two years, and they sign off on the viatical settlement.
01:26:49
The third-party company winds up giving Mark $58,000, which is over $100,000 today,
01:26:55
and he immediately uses this money to pay off his ballooning credit card debt. So he basically, he's left with about $10,000 to spare. It's not enough to get by on. And on top of that, of course, this scheme to basically pay off money and deal with money has left Mark's health completely wrecked.
01:27:18
Yeah. He's in an especially dark place. His meth addiction is raging. And if he contracts any sort of infection right now, he could die. With addiction and desperation at the wheel, he decides to quit his magazine job and start dealing meth out of his West Hollywood home.
01:27:36
As Nathaniel Penn puts it, quote, Mark believed he was finally living with dignity now.
01:27:43
Even if he was dealing meth, he was paying his bills with cash that he had actually earned.
01:27:49
Dealing meth was this opportunity to get out of the like scamming and the fraud.
01:27:55
In 2002, when Mark's CD4 cell count is still dangerously low, he gets sick with a virus and he has to be hospitalized.
01:28:03
Now Mark is in his early 40s, but his immune system can't fight back. He winds up in the hospital for three weeks.
01:28:10
The prognosis is not good. Mark and his doctors don't think he's going to be able to recover.
01:28:15
But then using one last combination of antiviral meds, Mark's doctors stabilize him.
01:28:24
When it dawns on Mark that he's going to survive, his feelings are more complicated than ever.
01:28:29
He basically has been completely fucking with his health, right, to get these payments.
01:28:36
He's on meth. He's lost his career. So basically when he gets out of the hospital, he has to go back to dealing meth.
01:28:44
But something in him has shifted because he has survived once again. So he starts taking his medication again regularly.
01:28:53
So there is a small sign of hope. He clearly, it isn't complete nihilism anymore.
01:28:58
He's like, there's something did turn in him where he's like, I might be able to get out from underneath this.
01:29:04
So then in August of 2003, Mark's apartment is raided and the police arrest him.
01:29:10
But he gets off with a slap on the wrist to get his record expunged. All Mark has to do is pay around $2,000 in restitution and do 300 hours of community service.
01:29:22
Writer Nathaniel Penn calls this the quote, white boy special. Right? So true. Mark says, quote, that was my opportunity to get sober, but I wasn't ready for that yet.
01:29:33
The addiction was too deep in me. End quote. So once again, Mark comes up with a plan and this time he's going to fake his own death.
01:29:41
Oh, my God. This plan is the height of him addicted to meth. Yeah. Right. So it's like desperation, desperation, and like end game, end game.
01:29:51
He forges a death certificate in his name. he writes his own New York Times obituary like you can pay to have your obituary in the New York Times He does that Sends it all off He does it in the voice of his brother Luke
01:30:07
So it's like his brother is notifying these different places, these different credit card companies and these whatever it is.
01:30:15
And just saying, unfortunately, now he's dead, you know, whatever. And for months, Mark's convinced that he's pulled off this latest con.
01:30:24
No one ever comes looking for him. No one questions his fake documents. He seems to be home free. Then he makes a huge mistake. He keeps on dealing meth out of the same house where he was arrested.
01:30:37
Oh, dear. Less than six months after faking his own death, the police come back around to that house. They get reports that drugs are being dealt out of that house again. So when they come to investigate, they then realize Mark is still alive. So the death certificate had gotten sent to the police department to say, don't worry about this guy anymore. Unfortunately, he died.
01:31:00
So like they show up all his stuff was scrubbed. They show up and they're like, you're not dead.
01:31:06
Mark says, quote, I always make this joke. If you fake your own death successfully, you have to move.
01:31:14
He says, but I had a rent stabilized apartment. Yeah, everyone. L.A. is a hard place to rent from.
01:31:25
Stabilization is a beautiful thing. So Mark is arrested and eventually convicted on drug charges and manufacturing false documents, including fake IDs and passports for himself and his deceased brother, Luke.
01:31:37
He's sentenced to 16 months in prison. Mark says that, quote, prison sucks, and I consider it a piss poor way to handle any and all nonviolent crime.
01:31:46
That said, it was far from the worst thing that's ever happened to me. End quote, which is really saying something.
01:31:55
It does. While incarcerated and noodley committed to getting sober, Mark falls back in love with writing.
01:32:00
He sends dispatches to his friends and family. And before long, his sister Sandra encourages him to start a blog from prison.
01:32:08
Yay. These posts will eventually be published as a book called Ink from the Pen.
01:32:13
Whoa. Right? I love it. That's such a good title. Mark says that, quote, by writing about everything going on around me as it happened,
01:32:21
I learned to live in the moment again, which was entirely different from what I'd been doing for so many years, which is live for the moment.
01:32:30
That's a good one. End quote. So Mark has remained committed to this idea ever since.
01:32:36
He still lives in L.A. where he has carved out a successful career in the film business for himself.
01:32:41
And he continues to share personal stories from what now must feel like a past life.
01:32:47
Yeah. Eventually, Mark tells his life story to Nathaniel Penn, whose GQ article, The Curious Cons of the Man Who Wouldn't Die, is clearly heavily cited in this research.
01:32:57
This is basically just a shortened version of that article. Clip notes. Basically, I'm giving you all the reasons you need to now go read this article.
01:33:05
Right, right. The article is widely read, shared, fawned over, and it actually winds up being optioned by a major film studio.
01:33:12
Yes. There have been incredible leaps and bounds made since the early days of the HIV AIDS epidemic.
01:33:18
And today's antiretroviral medications allow people who are HIV positive to live long, healthy lives.
01:33:25
Getting tested remains incredibly important, though, so that patients can be connected to life-saving treatment and to know how to mitigate spreading the virus.
01:33:34
It's also important to point out that the epidemic is not over. HIV AIDS continues to be a serious health issue throughout the world.
01:33:43
Tragically, over 700,000 Americans have died of HIV AIDS since the earliest days of the epidemic, and millions have passed away worldwide.
01:33:54
Mark himself has acknowledged the unlikeliness of his own survival. For whatever reason, he somehow escaped death when it seemed all but certain.
01:34:03
Meanwhile, he's lost so many people he loves dearly, mostly his brother Luke. Mark is quoted as saying, I would go to prison for another 10 years if I could have Luke back.
01:34:13
Well, maybe not 10, but five. End quote, which is the most perfect sibling quotation of all time.
01:34:23
Mark is passed the statute of limitations for most of his financial crimes. And as of 2019, he was still making monthly payments towards his outstanding credit card debt.
01:34:32
And when questioned about whether he has any guilt connected to his schemes, Mark says, quote, I give my income to charitable causes because I have this idea that I need to do some sort of Robin Hood payback, but I'm not making excuses.
01:34:47
It was illegal. End quote. And then he adds this. Quote, there's no proof that what happens in your life could have ever happened any differently.
01:34:56
but there's a lot of proof that it could have only happened this way because that's exactly
01:35:03
what happened. That helps me not spend too much time in regret. There are things I would have
01:35:09
done differently if I had to do it all over again, but I don't necessarily regret anything.
01:35:15
End quote. And that's the story of Mark Almstead and his brother, Luke, two men whose lives were
01:35:20
upended and forever changed by the HIV AIDS epidemic. Wow. Karen, that was great. That was
01:35:28
a suggestion by the great Hannah Crichton. It has everything. That story truly had everything.
01:35:36
I want to watch the documentary now, like so bad. Yeah. That was amazing. They got to option that
01:35:41
story. And like you're saying, Mark Olmstead was not the only person that went through that. There
01:35:47
were people who were facing the brink of the end. They're facing the end. Yeah, that's wild.
01:35:54
That was, I mean, I'm like speechless for once in my fucking life. That was- It was crazy.
01:35:59
Also, this is- Another two hour episode. Good. Fine. Good. Good and fine. Good and fine.
01:36:06
All right. Well, thank you guys for listening. We hope you learned something about the Reagan administration or our own personal anger.
01:36:16
Or credit card fraud. Or credit card fraud. It's more of a do's and don'ts thing.
01:36:21
Yeah. Getting around the system. Fixing the system. The laws are made by the lawmakers who are run by billionaires.
01:36:30
So it has to change. The system has to change. It has to be smashed. You guys can do it and you will do it because you must do it.
01:36:40
That's right. Also stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:36:55
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
01:37:00
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
01:37:05
This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:37:10
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.
01:37:18
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