00:00:00
This is exactly right. It's here. The participating U.S. Taco Bell locations for a limited time only.
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While supplies last, contact Store for availability. Your husband is not who you think he is.
00:00:38
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
00:00:44
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
00:00:52
He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.
00:00:57
And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:07
10-10 shots fired in City Hall building. How could this have happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that.
00:01:13
A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
00:01:21
I screamed, get down, get down, those are shots. a tragedy that's now forgotten and a mystery
00:01:28
that may or may not have been political that may have been about sex listen to Rorschach Murder at City Hall
00:01:34
on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hello. And welcome. To my favorite murder. The celebrity hometown edition. That's right.
00:02:04
Celebrities, hometowns, it's all in the name right there. Right? Yeah. There's no mystery to this.
00:02:09
It's easy. It goes down easy. That's right. There's no heavy lifting on the listener's end.
00:02:16
The way we do with all those other podcasts. Not this one. We said no more of the lifting.
00:02:21
Our backs can't take it. Our souls can't take it. That's right. Guys, you're going to be very excited about our celebrity today.
00:02:28
Mm-hmm. Kind of, I'd say, a five-star celebrity. Absolutely. Wouldn't you? You know him from Parks and Rec.
00:02:36
You know him from the Great North. You may have seen him on his recent limited Netflix series,
00:02:42
Colin in Black and White. You love him. He plays clubs and colleges all over this country.
00:02:48
It's Mr. Nick Offerman. Hello. Hello. Hello. Nick, hi. Thank you for being here.
00:02:55
I'm so grateful to be here. I love your podcast. I feel weird because I was thinking about it this morning.
00:03:02
Can a grizzled, middle-aged guy be called a murderino? Hell yeah. Yeah. That spans genres and ages.
00:03:12
I aspire to love Margarina. It's a comfort. And for that reason, it's really a comfort to hear your voices.
00:03:21
Like you are podcast hosts that I know and love. Oh, that means the world to us.
00:03:28
Thank you. Right back at you. Nick, can I just bring up really quick your book, which I've been reading almost like,
00:03:43
just to kind of really relax me, like a couple pages right before I go to sleep.
00:03:48
And if you haven't heard of it, Nick's written a book called Where the Deer and the Antelope Play,
00:03:53
The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside. Just kind of a nice, clean, crisp title.
00:04:03
Will you tell the people about that book a little bit? Because it's really good.
00:04:06
I totally will. Thank you so much. And I just want to say it's my fifth book and my publisher. I always want, I always pitch my titles to stand alone. Paddle Your Own Canoe, Gumption, Be Fun. And they're a corporation. And so they're like, we need to spoon feed the people.
00:04:27
like who's going to buy a book called gumption or where the deer and the antelope play so it's
00:04:33
become this game that i try to enjoy where i try to make myself laugh with the subtitle i've been
00:04:41
yeah the pastoral observations of one ignorant american who loves um and that's that's basically
00:04:50
what it is. It is my sort of musings on our relationship with nature or lack thereof. And by
00:04:58
our, I mean us humans. And the awareness I have through being inspired by agrarian writers like
00:05:06
Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan and Aldo Leopold and their ilk, Robin Wall Kimmerer,
00:05:14
reading their stuff and coming to understand how dumb we are. When it comes to knowing who makes our food, for example, and I'm somebody who's interested in it, and I can barely discern this information.
00:05:31
Where did this beef come from? Where did these turnips come from? And how are we as a species treating our planet vis-a-vis creating our food and basically using the resources?
00:05:44
So with a sense of humor the book chronicles in three parts travels that I taken to national parks with my friends Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders I go visit my Shepard family friends in England James Rebanks and his family And then the last third of the book my wife Megan Mullally and myself travel a bunch of
00:06:11
the United States in an Airstream that we bought. It's amazing. Yeah, there's a lot of hijinks,
00:06:18
but also it's like asking myself and my readers questions like, do we still want to be eating corn in 40 years?
00:06:27
And how can we make that happen? Yeah. I mean, starting that book, I was like, I wrote down the phrase agrarian writers because you were talking about,
00:06:37
I was like, now I have to do research on reading this book. But it is that kind of thing.
00:06:41
I didn't realize there was actually this kind of history of people who have been recording these kind of states of the state and what nature means to man
00:06:52
type of things. I guess I just never thought about it before. But like from like page three,
00:06:58
I was like, ooh, that's very true. I need to look further into that. That's yeah, that's the hook. That's what got me in the first place is realizing, oh, that's right.
00:07:08
We have been coddled into the great luxury of not having to think about where all of our shit comes from as consumers.
00:07:18
And the corporations love that. They love to keep us completely in our dark bubbles where they're like, just press this button and we'll send you the new version of the thing.
00:07:27
And now it comes in seven colors. And now we want you to buy silverware for every season of the year.
00:07:34
Oh, my God. I have a question about nature. Do you have any advice for someone who say, like myself,
00:07:43
was traumatized as a kid because her dad took her camping constantly and now nature makes her nervous and seems like a lot of work?
00:07:55
Is there something bigger than me that you can, or for people who don't really love camping, outdoorsy stuff?
00:08:03
Oh, totally. I mean, the cool thing is nature is actually everything. Everything is actually nature.
00:08:09
Like this Zoom meeting that we're having right now is a molecular version of nature.
00:08:16
And so that's insane. It's like in the genre of like getting out into nature, as it were, you know, like.
00:08:25
Yeah. And achieving, to your degree of comfort or not, a sort of wilderness excursion, whether that means walking through your neighborhood park or going backpacking and like pooping in the woods and stuff.
00:08:42
That's just one genre. There's all these other genres of like communing with animals that could be at your local shelter, could be at a local farm.
00:08:51
The farmer's market is lousy with nature. It could be like, who makes the best strawberries?
00:08:57
Or maybe I should start cultivating the best strawberries in my neighborhood or whatever that means.
00:09:03
I mean, that's the thing is reminding ourselves or like who makes cloth or clothing or leather goods in your area.
00:09:14
Reminding ourselves, and for me, it comes hand in hand with my woodworking shop quite a bit.
00:09:20
Understanding just our materials and where they come from. And, you know, looking at like the way our species rapaciously cuts down forests day in and day out and how terrible that is for the whole ecosystem.
00:09:36
So that's the, you know, that's the hilarious hijinks that the book is full of. I love it.
00:09:44
But I think that's really good advice because that's the feeling I had, like reading this book is, oh, I am not this way enough.
00:09:52
and I have to like now drive myself like five miles into the forest to blah, blah, whatever,
00:09:59
where it's like, oh no, I can actually just do half steps or beginner steps. You don't have to
00:10:05
make that crazy adjustment to still appreciate and get connected to locally sourced, you know,
00:10:12
family grown or like farm grown things or just a little being a little bit more maybe choosy and
00:10:18
active in that like supporting nature idea. It's like when I buy the, do you ever buy those eggs
00:10:26
that are like so free range that they come with a little slip where it tells you what the names
00:10:31
of the chickens were that laid the eggs? Totally. Like, I love that. It's like, it's not, you know,
00:10:38
I mean, hope to God that it's not, you know, as opposed to the horrible things you've seen
00:10:42
with factory farming, it's like, oh, there's just a couple of nice chickens. It is a good product.
00:10:47
There's actually a bit in my book about that very thing because the USDA has the list of words that you can legally put on your eggs.
00:10:57
It's all part of the bullshit industrial complex where it's like among the adjectives you can put on your eggs are organic and also 100% organic.
00:11:11
Those are two different categories. Oh, man. But I mean, yeah, that's the idea. And you make a great point, Karen, is that I urge us all to enter into these conversations with a sense of nuance.
00:11:24
Because when I myself think of these things, I'm like, oh, conservation is so hard.
00:11:29
Like, do I have to join Greenpeace and go, like, attack whale boats or something?
00:11:35
And I even make fun of myself at the end of the book where Megan and I are driving around in a Ford expedition,
00:11:42
pulling a 30-foot airstream, just guzzling gas like there's more tomorrow, while I'm having these
00:11:50
pastoral musings about our relationship with our natural resources And the point is we all are complicit We all exist in this incredible matrix of electricity and fossil fuels and so forth
00:12:05
That doesn't prohibit us from saying, OK, but let's wrap our heads around what we need to fix, what mistakes we're making.
00:12:13
And yes, absolutely. When we are able to travel the country without burning tons of gas, I will happily sign up for that.
00:12:23
But I think the answers lie less in our individual consumption and more in having our heads in the right place so that we can vote for the right legislation so that we can, as a country, make decisions that are good for the planet rather than allow our corporations to make those decisions.
00:12:45
Yeah. Love it. Although corporations are people. That's true. That's where it gets confused.
00:12:50
Yeah. Yeah, they blurred the line there a couple of years ago, and now it's just so baffling.
00:12:57
I haven't found a corporation that was brought up well, is the problem. Never found a corporation that picks up the check.
00:13:06
No. Yeah, that's right. No manners. So what you're saying is that climate change is real.
00:13:11
Yes or no? This is the bad news. That is what I'm positing. Got it. Breaking news.
00:13:19
Yeah, call Wolf Blitzer. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm definitely getting a beehive now based on this conversation alone.
00:13:26
It is. I mean, it's funny because I'm very passionate about the subject matter, but I think it is
00:13:32
a very enjoyable book. People have described it as like sitting on the porch with me while I describe running
00:13:41
into people on the trail. I love it. Well, also, I think your voice is so distinctive and your manner of speaking is so distinctive
00:13:49
that the second you begin to read your writing, you can hear your speaking voice
00:13:54
and your word choice and your, it all is very, it's borderline audio book, even though I'm reading the hard copy book.
00:14:03
I appreciate that. Thank you. Comforting. Distinct style. Comforting. Very much so.
00:14:08
Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. What, anything else? Let's go, I mean, I saw some of the pictures of you guys on the road.
00:14:15
I mean, did anything crazy happen to you guys when you were driving around the country?
00:14:19
Uh, not, not super crazy. I mean, it was very pandemic style and, and we're also, uh, private
00:14:29
to begin with. And so we were actually sort of helped by our penchant to wear masks whenever
00:14:38
we were around people. Cause that's one thing that's a little weird about, uh, hiking with
00:14:43
Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders, who's less recognizable because he's an author. It's
00:14:49
funny. Because I'm an actor, people would recognize me the most. And then sometimes
00:14:55
they'd recognize Jeff and we would always be like, but... But this guy. And this is the full wizard that you wish you knew.
00:15:07
Like afterwards they Google him and then like, oh my God, I met him. Totally. That's why you got to look at the picture on the book flap.
00:15:15
Every time it's your job as the reader. It's true. And so, I mean, it was, you know, for us, it was our first time. We're new to the Airstream life or streaming, as they say. And so it was an exciting adventure, but pretty banal.
00:15:34
you know, like I had some real struggles hitching the trailer to my expedition the first time
00:15:42
that I do relay with a lot of self-deprecation in part three. Was there a city, because all I care about when I travel is food,
00:15:53
that's my husband's thing. Was there a city that you, or like a town, state, that you think has the best, best food?
00:16:03
Well, the things that spring to mind are, there's a couple things. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we stumbled onto this coffee shop and I wasn't super familiar. These are especially around New Mexico. It's sort of a Mexican and even South American, Central and South American related coffee chocolate tradition.
00:16:26
these elixirs that are consumed like a coffee shop, but they're different recipes of chocolate.
00:16:36
And it was called Cacaua Chocolate House with spelled with a K. And it blew our minds so hard that we went hours out of our way on this road trip.
00:16:47
We went back like three times. Oh, my God. We would be cold in the mountains and say, what if you don't go down pretty good right now?
00:16:54
Santa Fe chocolate drink. Was it spicy a little bit? Yeah, that's the best version.
00:17:02
Combo of chocolate and like different chili peppers. That's good for you. It's healthy.
00:17:08
It's really great. And I loved it, especially when I then had to drive for some hours because, oh, are you wired after a big mug of hot pepper and chili?
00:17:20
Yes, that sounds amazing. That's actually perfect road fuel. That's just like, every part of you is awake.
00:17:28
And religiously so. Yeah, definitely. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.
00:17:37
In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,
00:17:43
one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS
00:17:50
and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I Nancy Glass host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast
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This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime.
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The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything.
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I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:18:34
Every story has a point where it's balanced on a knife's edge. That's where we begin.
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For some, it's a confrontation no parent ever expects. They finally admit, we're here to take your children.
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The department has taken custody and we're here to take your kids. It was just shock and horror and desperation.
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For others, it's surviving the unthinkable. As they're having this gun battle, thousands of feet up in the air,
00:19:00
many of the bullets start to puncture the aircraft. I thought we were going to die then.
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We talk to the people who lived it, unpacking what happened, how they got through it, and what came next.
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Listen to The Knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:34
Well, Nick, do you want to tell us about your hometown? I will. You know, I grew up in a small town called Manuka, Illinois, that is very conservative.
00:19:44
Just a couple few thousand people when I was growing up. It's grown, I feel like it's up to maybe 12,000, which we recently found out because my dad is actually the mayor.
00:19:55
He was just elected the mayor of Manuka. That's amazing. It is. It's unsurprising.
00:20:03
I mean, I think most people meeting my dad would be surprised that he wasn't the mayor for the preceding 20 years.
00:20:11
But he was like everybody's favorite school teacher. He taught junior high and he was a basketball coach and he drove the school bus.
00:20:18
He's just. He is Manuka. He is. He is Manuka. And his dad actually was the mayor for a while too.
00:20:26
My grandpa Ray when I was a kid. So it's, and my mom is like, she and dad do meals on wheels.
00:20:34
They just live these wonderful lives of service. We have a big family and everybody in the family is either a farmer, a nurse, paramedic,
00:20:43
three librarians, a school teacher, and then my brother works in craft beer. So he's kind of...
00:20:51
Wow. Nice. He's the king of the family. He's everyone's favorite. So he is. And so we got into this.
00:21:00
I have three siblings and I said, you guys, are there any murders or crimes? And everybody's like, wasn't there some guy?
00:21:08
And there was really nothing very local. There was like a couple stories in the nearby small city of Joliet, Illinois.
00:21:16
But I've never felt comfortable identifying with Joliet because we're a very rural family and Joliet's the big city.
00:21:25
They make steel in Joliet. Yeah. And they have a famous prison, right? Yeah. The Stateville Prison.
00:21:31
So I have a couple of true crime options. But then I also was talking to my best friend in Los Angeles, his daughter, Lola, who was a showgirl.
00:21:45
She is a huge, passionate murderino. And she flipped out to hear that I was doing this.
00:21:55
And there's a pretty crazy story that happened across the street from them. The interesting perspective of this Hollywood murder story is that it came through the perspective, it came through the eyes and ears of my godson.
00:22:13
So my best friend lives in this east side neighborhood. And across the street, this older woman named Kathy Davis, who was 81 at the time of this event.
00:22:25
She had, I think, worked. She had done a little acting maybe when she was younger.
00:22:30
I think she also perhaps was the widow of somebody in the entertainment industry.
00:22:36
And so she had this big, nice house and was alone. So she would rent rooms out to actors and musicians and people in the arts.
00:22:45
And so one of them was this actor named Johnny Lewis, who had been on Sons of Anarchy and
00:22:51
the OC and some other things and had been dating Katy Perry. And it's a sad story. I did some
00:22:58
homework on him and he had substance abuse problems. The year leading up to this event,
00:23:06
he had been in and out of jail. He had custody battles over a daughter, I think,
00:23:12
and domestic abuse charges. So nobody was terribly surprised that he got into the kind of trouble
00:23:19
that he did. But so my best friend is a wonderful Mr. Mom. His wife has a great job in the film
00:23:27
industry. And so he's an artist and just a wonderful dad of a son and daughter. And his son,
00:23:36
his older child, let's call him Willis. Willis was in fifth grade. And it was the first time
00:23:43
that dad was leaving him home alone to run downtown and take care of some art business.
00:23:50
And, you know, he was pretty nervous and was like, okay, just you're gonna, you're good.
00:23:57
You got everything you need. You know, call me if you have any trouble. And thankfully, Willis loved his video games.
00:24:05
They think he was playing a game probably called Spore. I don't know anything about video games, but Spore was the first guess.
00:24:14
Civilization was the second guess. And World of Warcraft was the third guess. So he's playing one of these games, and his room is closest to the street on the second story.
00:24:25
so he's he's playing a game and is super into it and starts hearing screaming and and thinks oh
00:24:36
hang on pause the game this is not in the game this is across the street and this screaming is
00:24:43
going on which turns out to be the actor got into some sort of altercation with his landlady
00:24:50
this 81 year old landlady and beat her to death then willis called his dad and was like hey
00:24:59
something really bad's going on he said okay of course like the first time i i leave you alone
00:25:04
just oh no stay inside don't answer the door you know i'll be there as soon as i can meanwhile
00:25:11
i'm speculating a little bit here the next thing that happened was the guy johnny got into it with
00:25:18
the neighbor, I'm speculating there was a painter up on a ladder at the neighbor's house. And so
00:25:24
I'm guessing maybe he saw the painter and was like, oh, shoot, that guy saw me. Or somehow
00:25:30
he then proceeded to get into it with this painter and was messing with the painter's ladder. The
00:25:36
painter's up on the ladder. The homeowners, which they're calling Alice and Mike to maintain privacy,
00:25:43
came out and were like, hey man, back off our painter. And he started getting violent with all three of them.
00:25:50
And there was kind of a scuffle and they managed to shove him off. And the painter and the homeowners got into a door
00:25:57
and the Alice homeowner slammed the door on the guy's arm and he sort of fell off,
00:26:04
which gave them time to like batten the hatches and get inside. Now, I'm not sure if this may have even happened
00:26:11
up inside their home. Because then crazily, the next thing that happens is he gets to the roof,
00:26:19
and I'm unclear on whose roof he got to, but there's a few houses in this neighborhood that
00:26:25
using parkour, I'm sorry to laugh at my cool terminology, but he got to the roof, and at this
00:26:35
point, a few houses down, another friendly neighbor heard the screaming, opened her window
00:26:41
and said, hey, I'm calling 911. And that's when he began to try to escape via the roof and jumped
00:26:50
from house to house. And I'm not sure if it was two or three houses that he cleared. Houses in
00:26:57
the hills are often crazily close to each other. But near the house that he rented a room in,
00:27:06
he tried to leap to the next house and missed and fell three stories to his death in the driveway.
00:27:15
Now, fortunately, Willis, the fifth grader, didn't really take it. All he could do was hear. He was
00:27:22
frightened. And my friend got home. And of course, the street's full of police and ambulance.
00:27:28
And it was just absolutely bananas. Yeah. It's like worst case scenario for a parent leaving a child home for the first time.
00:27:37
It's like beyond. It was really crazy. And thankfully, nobody got hurt more than the couple of victims,
00:27:47
the old lady and her cat. Otherwise, people were generally in pretty good shape.
00:27:52
But that was a pretty insane thing to have happen and have reported by your 10 or 11-year-old.
00:27:59
Totally. And in a quiet neighborhood where I'm sure not much happens. I mean, it's any neighborhood that would be terrifying and awful.
00:28:08
But thinking you're leaving your kid home in a safe neighborhood, you know. It is.
00:28:13
Also, him being on the move is so freaky. It's like, because I was, I wanted to say like, wait, where, which house is Willis's?
00:28:20
Like if this guy's jumping roof to roof, which direction? Like the idea that suddenly he's like kind of pseudo on the lam.
00:28:28
Yeah. Oh God, it's awful. It's quite upsetting. And one final detail is that the police investigation intimated that he, or alleged that he was quote, high on bath salts.
00:28:43
Oh. Unquote. And definitely, you know, obviously just a tortured guy who had substance abuse problems.
00:28:51
But I did some digging and the autopsy revealed that he was not under the influence of any substances.
00:29:00
Oh, wow. This went down. And so, you know, it's such a charming neighborhood. and it just goes to show like,
00:29:09
and something that I've learned from listening to your podcast is, there's nothing wrong with keeping your eyes and ears open.
00:29:15
And if something or someone seems weird or sketchy in a neighborhood, it's good to just talk to each other about it
00:29:22
and maintain like, hey, did you see that guy doing that? Or does he seem okay? Et cetera.
00:29:29
Yeah. Keep an eye out. And also keep those doors and windows locked. That's right.
00:29:33
There's no reason. And like, that's, that's all I could think of too, is like, if this kid's on the second floor near the front, what if like there's a back kitchen door open, you know, like that kind of thing where, especially in LA too, it's like city living, city living, you, you don't know.
00:29:49
And it doesn't matter where you live kind of, you know. Yeah. And there a couple sort of sprees going on right now of people coming up generally people houses in the hills your lot is rarely level And so the side of your house that faces the street is either the uphill
00:30:12
side of your lot, which means it slopes away from the street, or it's the downhill side,
00:30:17
which means your house is on a hill going up from the street. And so there's kind of a rash
00:30:22
of crimes going on where people are figuring out how to sort of hike or scramble in, not
00:30:29
from the street side, but from the backyard side. And often places are protected by fences and stuff in a way that people do get really lax
00:30:41
and leave the doors facing their yard unlocked. You're literally describing my house right now.
00:30:47
It's really getting me out. But it's true. We never go in our backyard because it's just down at the bottom, but it's pretty fortified, thankfully.
00:30:57
It is. And it's a good reason. LA and, I don't know, modern life, I kind of even get into this in my book, like corporations, consumerism wants us to be isolated.
00:31:09
They want to keep us away from each other. So for all these reasons that we don't ask questions like, wait a second, who made these Nikes?
00:31:18
Where are they? What are they getting paid, et cetera. And so it's just another great reason to know your neighbors and understand that, you know, we can't exist on islands.
00:31:32
We have to maintain a community. Obviously, it's important to have some alone time, but it's also important to know who's on the other side of the fence, especially if some shit's going to go down.
00:31:45
Definitely. For real. Once we started having garage beers with our garage open, we know all our neighbors now and their dogs.
00:31:53
So it's, and they know us, which is nice. It is. It's a nice thing. We one time had a neighbor, we were out of town for Thanksgiving in the Hollywood Hills.
00:32:06
And a neighbor went into the yard downhill from our yard and like trimmed the shit out of a bunch of their trees.
00:32:16
without permission because they were also out of town. It was like Thanksgiving week
00:32:21
and everybody came home and was like, what the hell are you thinking? Like, and it turns out I thankfully hadn't had to learn this previously, but the laws in Los Angeles are
00:32:37
very stringent when it comes to like a couple of the trees they basically cut down were old,
00:32:43
old growth, like centerpiece trees. And this thing ended up costing this person big,
00:32:51
you know, six figures, like in the hundreds of dollars to replace these trees. Wow.
00:32:58
And I mean, I just was so baffled to say, is your sense of neighborliness so eroded? You just
00:33:05
thought that would be okay? Because, and I mean, the reason was they have a small deck,
00:33:10
And if they trimmed the tops off of the neighbor's trees, they could see a corner of the mountain view.
00:33:17
Yeah, yeah. When people behave like that, I just don't understand how you can take a decision like that without just being aware of how it's going to affect the other person in the geographical marriage you've entered in.
00:33:35
Well, we got in a fight with our next door neighbor because our gardener had a gas blower.
00:33:43
And our neighbor got really upset about that. I guess you're not supposed to have them in LA, which I didn't know.
00:33:50
But he took his hose and sprayed our gardener in our backyard with it. Wow. I know.
00:33:57
So we went out there and my husband and I almost got, or my husband almost got in a fight.
00:34:01
I mean, it was the closest I've ever seen him get into a fistfight before. And then the wife and I made amends, but it was the most pretentious, like, what's the word?
00:34:15
Disgusting. Disgusting move. I mean, who the fuck do you think you are? Like, come knock on our door.
00:34:19
Like, I should have gotten punched. Yeah. Seriously. Isn't that awful? It's really crazy.
00:34:25
Yeah. But I think too, I mean, like this is that kind of thing where who knows what's going on with people in the privacy of their own homes.
00:34:34
And that idea that if you're maybe whatever, you could be a drinker, you could have a certain kind of mental state that you're in,
00:34:44
where if you're kind of spinning and you're like, those trees and I told them to train, you can feel that justification build.
00:34:50
Yeah. And then it's just suddenly everyone's out of town. So I'm going to cut these trees down.
00:34:55
I mean, it's so aggressive and so invasive and kind of like as if they're saying people aren't here now so I can get it done.
00:35:03
And then I get to go home safe and just everything's fine. It's so crazy. I really don't get it.
00:35:10
It's the weird, I believe it was a very rich person's like second home. Oh, yeah.
00:35:18
And so I think that also leans into the disposability of like, they don't have to worry about the neighbors because they don't really live there.
00:35:28
Yeah. Which is all shameful. I mean, fences and gardening and dogs, these are all things that can quickly escalate into like bloodthirsty.
00:35:41
Totally. Yeah, totally. You know, they say good fences make good neighbors. And that's because they're agreed upon by both sides.
00:35:51
Okay, let's be friendly. And here a boundary And let you know respect that boundary Totally I mean that why I was filled with fear when I moved into the house that I live in now And I think about eight days after moving in
00:36:06
my dog, Frank, who is kind of like Jack Russell size, I went down at our name. My neighbor has a
00:36:15
big kind of downhill field behind their house. And I was standing outside like, where's Frank?
00:36:21
And I look and I can see him in the distance, just taking huge circle laps in the neighbor's
00:36:28
backyard. And I was like, Frank, I'm trying to whisper scream. Frank, get over here.
00:36:33
What are you doing? And he was like, he was barking and he was running in circles and then he was barking.
00:36:38
And then I was like, okay, well, this is already like all I can hope for. And luckily it's, it turned out to be true.
00:36:45
My neighbor, Gail, is a dream neighbor. She is like the loveliest person. She is so kind and considerate and whatever.
00:36:52
And she thought it was really funny. Thank God. Because it was like, I just kicked off.
00:36:57
Like I moved it like, yeah, we're here now. My dogs are taking over. Like, what am I doing?
00:37:04
Meet Frank. He's now in your living room. It was so embarrassing. Thank goodness, though, because in anywhere in this country, you know, again and again,
00:37:14
you could just as easily live next to somebody who would get their shotgun out. Yeah.
00:37:19
Oh, yeah. And not think twice about it because Frank was on their property. Horror.
00:37:24
Horror. Yeah, exactly. But here's the thing about Frank. He's so meaty and muscly that I think any bullet would repel off of his body.
00:37:34
And then he would start to chew it because he eats anything. He's a very strong individual.
00:37:40
Will you cap this off with one Nick Offerman, teen Nick Offerman crime story for us?
00:37:48
um yeah gosh which one it has uh there's a wonderful community theater in urbana illinois
00:37:57
where the university of illinois is in champaign urbana and my friends and i in the theater
00:38:04
department were very involved in working at this community theater it's called the station theater
00:38:09
the celebration company at the station theater is what it's called and uh and we loved it it was
00:38:16
It was like a really high quality little theater company in an old little train station into which they had built like a black box theater.
00:38:25
So, you know, I'm guessing there couldn't have been more than 100 seats in this place.
00:38:31
And we would do like assassins or, you know, there was just like cats. Oh, my God.
00:38:41
Tiny little plays. And it was really fun and really groovy, you know, central Illinois, like hippies doing theater.
00:38:49
And so one night I usually built the sets for the plays I was in. And so I would always have the keys.
00:38:57
I would, you know, be sort of like the janitorial guy where like late at night, everybody would be gone and I'd be in charge of sweeping or whatever, locking up.
00:39:07
So me and a couple friends out behind the train station is a creek called the Boneyard Creek.
00:39:13
And we're sitting out by the creek smoking one hitters of marijuana and cigarettes and like just hanging out.
00:39:21
And we hear some noises kind of down the creek a little bit, some power tools. And it's maybe, I don't know, I think it was only midnight-ish.
00:39:31
It didn't occur to us like, why are we hearing a circular saw at midnight? but we're just kind of hanging out and a little bit later i don't know 15 minutes later some
00:39:41
flashlights were coming along the other side of the creek and what what we're sitting on is a is a
00:39:47
big drainage pipe maybe three feet in diameter that crosses the creek like a bridge so it was
00:39:55
just a cool little footbridge thing to sit on so that's where we would sit and smoke and the
00:40:02
Flashlights are coming, and my buddy says, oh, it's police. It's cops. And we are, you know, paranoid 19-year-olds, and we're like, oh, shit.
00:40:15
And this is 1989, so it's a little more serious to get caught, at least in our heads, smoking wine headers.
00:40:22
So we kind of get up and begin to tiptoe away back towards the theater, at which point, of course, the police notice us and say,
00:40:32
hey stop and we of course run yeah brilliantly take off running and we got across past the train
00:40:45
station across the empty lot into the parking lot at which point I got tackled by a tiny
00:40:54
incredibly tough woman that might as well have been Holly Hunter and she she tackled me sprang to
00:41:01
her feet, put her boot on my head and put her gun on my face. What? And my buddy also had the same thing happen to him, basically.
00:41:15
And there was two of them. Everybody got like tackled and cuffed and thrown into the cars, taken to the station,
00:41:23
which was like half a block. And at that point, like basically when that shit went down, I was like, hey, hang on a
00:41:31
second. We definitely didn't do like whatever you think we did. This is not adding up. And they're
00:41:39
like, okay, buddy, tell it to the judge. And so they take us to jail. They keep us separate and
00:41:45
they interview us each. And by now it's, you know, one, two in the morning and we're pretty freaked
00:41:50
out And we all you know basically said um no we just hanging out like smoking cigarettes None of us even admitted that we were smoking pot We just were just cool theater kids Like I don know whatever happened And so I think eventually we all gave the same story separately And so they they decided we were okay And they told us that a restaurant down the creek had been broken into
00:42:18
And for some reason, they kept an inordinate amount of cash on hand. So someone had like the power tools, somebody had broken into this restaurant and stolen like $20,000 in cash.
00:42:32
So a major felony had been committed. And suddenly here's these three young guys running from the police.
00:42:40
Yeah. And so thankfully, you know, nobody got shot. Yeah. You know, we all kind of like were put back together and the sun was coming up as we were released into the early Urbana morning.
00:42:54
And as we walked out down the front walk of the sheriff's station, my friend who goes by Gregor Mortis pulled his one-hitter box out of his crotch that he had crotched, kept all the way through the police station.
00:43:15
And we were like, are you insane? Because us like soft, like white teenagers, you know, like that was like, it might as well have been, you know, a grenade or something.
00:43:28
Yeah. And he was like, man, I just bought this like four days ago. I'm not going to throw it into the creek.
00:43:33
And so we stood and got high in front of the police station to celebrate our victories as young, privileged assholes.
00:43:49
I mean, easy for me to say 2020 vision, but I would say that that would have to have been an inside job.
00:43:57
Someone at that restaurant knew that they didn't do like cash drops or whatever.
00:44:02
Right. I mean, like, you know, just in terms of it's that's not random as someone's like driving around with the circular saw.
00:44:09
Yeah. Going, which restaurant will I roll the dice with? Yeah, exactly. I mean, even knowing what tools to bring and, you know, how to work in.
00:44:19
This could have been some My Cousin Vinny shit. You could have been. Oh. I mean, and I still think that, okay, like, yes, a felony was committed, but the gun thing is still a little much.
00:44:30
It wasn't a violent crime that this person committed. Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, thankfully, I mean, we literally were three theater students.
00:44:41
But in hindsight, I'm very grateful that we weren't, you know, I was pretty scary looking at that age.
00:44:49
Like, you know, I aspired to like a wearing a black leather jacket from the alley in Chicago and like shave my head and stuff.
00:44:56
so maybe that's why the gun was drawn on me because i would i looked scary and i was like no i love
00:45:02
i love oscar wilde please wow i'm currently starring in danny and the deep blue sea please don't do this to me
00:45:14
not now you start doing a monologue just to prove what is this kid doing oh that's so good
00:45:23
Wow. I mean, what an amazing performance delivery you gave us. Yes. You gave and gave and then gave even more.
00:45:34
Hit after hit. Five stars. Five stars. Yeah. That and the other sort of longer saga of spending a night in jail, actually, for shoplifting eight Ronnie Millsap cassettes.
00:45:48
those taught me my lesson. And that pretty much, you know, any consideration I had been giving to a life of crime
00:45:58
pretty much ended in Urbana, thankfully. Good for you. Learned your lesson. Yeah.
00:46:04
Those cops taught you well, didn't they? They did. Yeah. Well, if anything ever happens again
00:46:10
and you need bail, the murdering knows we've got your back. Yeah, because you are one, Nick.
00:46:15
You really are. Especially after that performance. truly just wonderful it was on that night i might as well have said to that female officer that i
00:46:24
would love if she would allow me to both stay sexy and not get murdered oh that was smooth
00:46:32
you want to plug anything i mean you're nick offerman you know like i i mean i i'm thrilled
00:46:41
that my book is going over very well. And I would also just plug, because it's a big show,
00:46:50
I feel, I'm like, oh, it's out there. But I'm so grateful to be on The Great North.
00:46:56
Yeah, The Great North truly is a great show. It's so fun and such good characters.
00:47:02
Yeah, it's beautiful. Well, I'm so grateful to be part, like the people on it are so funny.
00:47:07
But they are just the coolest, most benevolent hearts, the sort of amount of human rights that they package into a flagrantly like shitting, farting, like laugh party.
00:47:25
But meanwhile, it's actually really progressive. I just I really admire them. And I'm so grateful that because I sound a certain way, they're like, no, you're of great value to us.
00:47:37
Imagine that. I had to think of everything. And I just sound like a fucking lumberjack.
00:47:44
You sound like Beef Tobin, the lumberjack. Absolutely. You're that guy. I'll make this thing every time.
00:47:51
So there's my plugs. Love it. Oh, that's very good. Anything you want. Nick Offerman, thank you so much for being a guest.
00:48:00
Our freaking double story, awesome guests. Yes, we appreciate you taking the time out of your intensely packed schedule.
00:48:09
We really, it was a big favor and I really, really appreciate that you actually did it.
00:48:15
I remain an ardent fan. Thank you for having me. Ditto. Thank you. Yay. Yay. Nick Offerman, ladies and gentlemen.
00:48:24
That's right. Bye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
00:48:37
Our producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our associate producer is Alejandra Keck. Engineered and mixed by Andrew Eapin.
00:48:44
Send us your hometowns at myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
00:48:53
For more information about the podcast, live shows, merch, or to join the fan cult, go to myfavoritemurder.com.
00:49:00
And please rate, review, and subscribe. Goodbye. Goodbye. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
00:49:21
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
00:49:29
He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.
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Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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New episodes every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Do You Need a Ride on the iHeartRadio app,
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