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00:01:44
Own the dream. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder. Uh, the podcast. It's a true crime podcast.
00:02:08
That's right. And I'm Georgia Hardstark. And I'm Karen Kilgara. How do you do? Very well.
00:02:13
And you? Fine. Thank you. Good. Do you ever get mad at people? Trade the end. Do you ever get mad at people when they say to you, how are you?
00:02:20
And I said, good, thanks. And then I say, how are you? And they say, I'm well. because they're like pointing out that you just said good.
00:02:26
And so you immediately feel bad about yourself. Is that grammar, passive aggression?
00:02:31
It is. Oh, I never knew that. Well, I swear it drives me crazy. I'm well. I would assume that someone who is posing as a as some sort of therapist is what that sounds like to me.
00:02:45
Or some that sounds like someone who's like, I'm well. I was just at the farmer's market buying fresh broccoli to steam into my pores.
00:02:56
Do you eat organic yet? Do you eat organic? Well, no. Because I'm unwell. Well, I'm fine with not having organic.
00:03:09
Yeah. How about I'm just fine, barely getting by? Do you see these circles under my eye?
00:03:17
Do they look like a well person's under eye baggage? I'm well. Thank you. I'm well.
00:03:23
I'm well. I'm a Stepford wife. I'm well. I'm well. Well, that just makes me think of Banana Boy, Scotty Landis, which he and I were talking
00:03:35
about some people that were like very successful and also had kids and both of the husband
00:03:41
and wife are famous in some way and both rich or something like that. And I go, wow, they really have it all.
00:03:48
And Scotty goes, ew, who wants it all? It's this thing where it's like, that's what I always feel like,
00:03:57
especially in Los Angeles, is like, I always want to tell those people with the tall nubuck boots and the white sweater and the big weird hat
00:04:05
and the bleach blonde hair. I know them. I'm not competing with you. I'm not interested in your life.
00:04:13
I don't want what you have. I understand that you believe yourself to be the pinnacle of, you know, your yoga class.
00:04:22
And congrats. An avocado toast. Yes. You're doing all the things. You're checking all the boxes from the weird subscription box company that you signed up for.
00:04:32
God fucking bless. Get away from me. Have you seen the movie Ingrid Goes West? No.
00:04:39
There is a character in that. And it's what she is striving for. What's her name?
00:04:44
She's so great. Stephen, she plays Aubrey Plaza and she's trying to reach that character's lifestyle
00:04:52
goals, hashtag lifestyle goals but she's just like us so she can't and just screws it all up in all these
00:04:58
charming, not charming ways, like dark ways but that, like the character they had
00:05:04
play and all of it is so exactly lives in a bungalow in Venice Beach with her hot bearded husband
00:05:12
and their puppy and they have a lot of boho you know joshua tree style life and everything they eat is perfect and cute and it's and so she
00:05:22
steals her dog to become friends with her it's like it's very that so i highly recommend that
00:05:28
sounds really good and relatable i really love that movie yeah it's a this town is and and i
00:05:34
think maybe it's not even this town i think a lot of pop culture has become so drastically homogenized
00:05:41
in a way that is like and I know this is because I'm never on Instagram and so when I see little bits of Instagram
00:05:49
pop through it's shocking to me how strange everyone is starting to look exactly the same and a little bit like sex dolls where it like sex dolls so everyone has equal size top and bottom lips and they they both giant and
00:06:08
they're the exact same size yeah everyone has not a line a wrinkle or a mark on their face yeah
00:06:14
every single person has like half inch long eyelashes and gigantic eyebrows eyebrows not
00:06:21
Not even like a wrinkle, not even an expression. And everyone's kind of to the side and has a lot of contour.
00:06:31
And there's a window on every wall in every room letting in the most dappled, lovely sunshine.
00:06:38
God bless it all. God bless it all. Yeah, it's a fucking rat race to get somewhere that we don't even know what the point of it is.
00:06:46
Yeah, because it's not real, ultimately. I mean, I don't look, I I'm not saying beauty is bad.
00:06:51
Obviously, everybody wants to feel good and look good. And that's good. Yeah, good.
00:06:56
Make yourself happy. Sure. Good, good, good. But it's don't assume it's interesting just because it's what what you think people want.
00:07:05
Here, let me brag real quick about how real I am. It's cat food in this room I'm in right now.
00:07:11
That's how real. And you can't you can't put that. There's no Instagram filter for that, baby.
00:07:16
that's all just like it's all for me you know what I mean like is it hearty seafood platter
00:07:22
or is it more of a chicken dinner supreme like fisherman's wharf on a hot day trash
00:07:28
yes yes it is that's what it is hashtag what hashtag fisherman's wharf like you see a seagull
00:07:40
picking out an empty bread bowl that's got like the clam chowder residue on it. And then a tourist
00:07:46
right behind it taking a picture of it. Exactly. Then making the seagull's waist
00:07:50
smaller and the seagull's boobs bigger. And then there's no lines around the seagull's eyes.
00:07:56
Oh, where did he get those boots? Oh my God. Did he have a rib removed? That seagull is so
00:08:02
skinny. No, he's on a paleo diet. I was going to say, you lived in San Francisco
00:08:08
in the 90s. No. Correct me if I'm wrong. 2000s. Oh, 2000s. Yeah. Shit. then there's no way you'll remember this.
00:08:15
What is it? Because there was a thing on Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39. I used to go with my dad, so maybe I remember it.
00:08:23
To Pier 39? To Fisherman's Wharf. Okay, same, same diff. Yeah. Same area. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:08:29
But basically Pier 39 was like the weird marionette doll store that my parents would be like,
00:08:35
we're never buying you anything from that store, so don't look at it. Those are precious art pieces.
00:08:39
There's no fucking way. Where they're like, you can pick one thing. And I'm like, I absolutely want the $400 marionette.
00:08:45
My mother's like, what is wrong? How do you do it every time? But they used to have on Pier 39.
00:08:51
I guess I'm thinking of this because of the seagull. Yeah, sure. A bag of bones seagull.
00:08:58
I was just thinking they had a thing there in the 80s. Then you could go in and sing along to your favorite like Whitney Houston hit and make a cassette tape of yourself singing a hit.
00:09:10
So it was like individualized karaoke, one person karaoke to no one. But then you had a tape.
00:09:17
You could like. Was it a video car? No. OK. Because it was that long ago. That's that would have cost five thousand dollars at the time.
00:09:25
Yes, exactly. That is awesome. But I feel like they had those around in malls all over the country and then eventually became like because because these videos pop up of kids.
00:09:36
Yeah. doing that, that like that must have become the video you could get. And then like, remember how
00:09:41
they would have like teen magazine and you and your sister had to sit in and they take a photo
00:09:46
of it and show you on the cover of teen magazine. Yes. It was like the young girls version of the
00:09:51
time person of the year thing. Instead, it's like I made it on cover. I feel like you getting that
00:09:58
and those things are the rich girl equivalent, not to say we're rich, no offense, the rich girl
00:10:02
equivalent of having to get a caricature drawn of you on Fisherman's Wharf, which was just like
00:10:07
the bottom of the barrel. Are you ready for your low self-esteem beginnings? Yes. Here's how big
00:10:12
your teeth are, Georgia. Yes. Here's how like your head is like for mine, you know, they give you a
00:10:20
tiny body. Yes. Like if you're like, I like to ride horses, it's a tiny body, a tiny body on a
00:10:24
tiny horse. But then you're accentuated whatever you hate about yourself. Yeah. So I already had
00:10:30
a big face. So it's like they couldn't figure out what to do with me because it was like there was
00:10:36
the caricature itself is a gigantic head. That's the joke. I don't know what to do
00:10:40
with this girl. We're going to make her eyes bluer? That's not going to hurt her feelings.
00:10:46
How do we make this child hate herself for the rest of her life? That just made you feel better about yourself? Because you're like, wow,
00:10:54
my eyes are like pools. And then just like, so you're saying that's my real-sized face?
00:11:00
yep yep that's that's not a caricature that was for a long time like what you wanted is that big
00:11:06
head lollipop head skinny body you know and it was you're above lollipop head skinny body tiny horse
00:11:14
golden gate bridge in the back little cowboy hat like what hashtag this is that was the original
00:11:23
Instagram. More characters from Pier 39. Can everyone please post their caricature
00:11:29
drawings or their cover of Teen Magazine photos from when they were kids. From the tourist trap. Oh my god.
00:11:39
I was a cowgirl. I have one as me as a fucking cowgirl. I swear to God. It's from Knott's Berry Farm.
00:11:45
Do you have one? Yes. I have one. The group of friends who all decided one day we were going to go to Pier 39
00:11:52
and you know who's in it? Legendary Holly Gardner tampon suitcase story who I have to say suffered greatly in in retelling of the tampon suitcase story was my best friend from sixth grade through high school So like
00:12:06
yeah, you really told it if you and said her full name if you had really hated her.
00:12:10
Yes, exactly. No, no, no. That was just a bad moment in our relationship. But um, but
00:12:14
she's in that, you know, the all stars of like seventh grade, essentially. And what it is,
00:12:21
is one of those old fashioned cowboy pictures that's supposed to be like a tin type,
00:12:24
and we're all dressed up in costumes. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. Stephen, there's no way you don't have a caricature
00:12:30
of yourself as your kid. A dinosaur. You at Jurassic Park. You're writing a tiny dinosaur.
00:12:35
Yes, I do. So here's what we're going to do. The three of us are going to post it on our Instagram.
00:12:40
Can I just retell? Hold on. Stephen, as George is saying, we know you have one. Stephen's looking,
00:12:46
it's almost like he was in a pantomime of a confused guy. And the second I said Jurassic Park,
00:12:52
He snapped right into it And was just like oh yeah I have a post Well because my sister and I have
00:12:58
One of us doing it and then we Recreated it as adults like a few Years ago Is it a character or is it
00:13:06
Like a post A green screen being like chased by a dinosaur So we recreated that moment
00:13:12
Because he's younger than us We have the middle beginning And hopefully end of what
00:13:18
We were able to do as children Yes complete yes we we span three generations this is our family i think i was too scared to get a
00:13:27
real caricature though you were too scared to find out what your uh one major feature is
00:13:34
yeah i think i was too scared so like at knott's berry farm georgia i never i never did that yeah he was he was easy on me because i think i was like four
00:13:44
and then please tag let's do mfm caricature hashtag because we have the whole thing point
00:13:52
of this is to get our own hashtag right that's what you wanted karen now you're speaking a
00:13:57
language like on twitter hashtags are straight up for nerds that never use twitter not instagram
00:14:03
i know instagram is a completely different language so you have to call this just tag us
00:14:08
just tag us mfm caricature is good okay i mean those are the ones we want big head little but i
00:14:13
want big head little body okay you're looking for a potentially fake magazine cover no i don't
00:14:19
just so funny i'd love to see that whatever the like the play area art we've spent too much time
00:14:26
on this just post it and tag us disagree i think we could dig deeper on this okay also it makes me
00:14:32
think of this too because it's like just to not to argue with you first we were definitely middle
00:14:39
middle class. But my mother would always do this thing where like, if we walk by the caricature
00:14:44
person, she'd go, you don't want that. It's not worth it. Pick something. That's a good trick.
00:14:50
She would always like out of sight of her mouth, basically be like, you know, you don't want that.
00:14:54
You're going to like it. You like it now. You won't like it by the time you get home.
00:14:58
She's a smart lady. And she knows how to work with people, I feel like, to like make them think
00:15:02
that they're making their own decision. Yeah. You mean manipulate children? Yes.
00:15:08
parenting 101 give them two options make one of them shitty make the other one the one you want
00:15:13
them to do yeah and then you get whatever you want do you want a nap or do you want to help
00:15:18
mommy with laundry that's also head writing if anybody wants to take my class that's that's
00:15:25
wow that's good stuff uh how did we get on what did we were talking about how things are superficial
00:15:34
Jill and social media. Oh, yeah. Speaking of social media, I have a correction because social media told us.
00:15:41
Perfect. It's a, you know, another clarification, because last week I talked about the book I'm reading,
00:15:46
the Icelandic. We guessed Norwegian. It's called I Remember You by Irsa Sirgedordotter. Remember?
00:15:55
Yes. And we guessed all sorts of places where this book must be from. None of them were right,
00:15:59
Because Deborah Taylor, 1654 on Instagram said, Yersa is from Iceland. You can tell if someone is Scandinavian slash Nordic if their last name has something at the end that resembles son or daughter, like Duter.
00:16:15
Oh, my God. Good to know. Scandinavia is. Then she goes on to give us a report. Scandinavia is geographically considered Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
00:16:25
Culturally, Finland and Iceland are included. Generally, all five and their territories like Greenland and the Faroe Islands are considered Nordic countries.
00:16:35
Maybe you can hit Reykjavik on your next tour and invite her to the show. Love you both.
00:16:40
So your author lives in Reykjavik? Yes, in Iceland. Reykjavik, by the way, is the capital of Iceland.
00:16:46
Well, I should have known that then. Now we all know. Here's why I know. In sixth grade, we had to do reports on countries of the world.
00:16:54
I'll tell this story again, even though it's not really a story. I love it. And I got picked second to last. And the only so if your name got picked out of a jar and you got to go up and there goes Matt Bracco. He picks Italy. Italy's gone. Everyone. All the people with Italian grandparents. Oh, in two more swipes, Ireland's gone. What? Come on. Then it goes all the way down through the 40 or 60 kids in my class. I can't remember however many. Then it's me. I pick Iceland. Last guess who was last?
00:17:26
holly gardner no and she got malta literally this was pre-internet pre-everything this is
00:17:35
encyclopedia there's two lines about malta i fucking literally it the librarian couldn't help
00:17:41
us she was like nobody knows these countries nobody wants to hear about them who's your teacher
00:17:46
what the fuck what's mr gilardi doing over there so i end up digging up as much as i can find out
00:17:53
and become quite interested in Iceland because I was like wait a second Greenland the one that covered in ice I did a full report I became a true fan of Iceland
00:18:06
And then 25 years later, Iceland is all the rage. And I'm just like, I will tell you about
00:18:11
Reykjavik and not vice versa. OK, well, so I remember you is a good Icelandic book. It's part of it
00:18:17
takes place in Reykjavik. It's fucking creepy as shit. I highly recommend it. I'm going to look up because that sounds familiar.
00:18:23
I feel like there might be. I bet there's a movie. Yes. Because it's very like, as I'm reading it, I'm like, I can picture the movie.
00:18:31
Yeah. In my head. Doctor. There's a little boy, ghost boy. Gustafson. Gustafsson.
00:18:38
Gustafsson. Gustafsson. Your daughter. Your daughter. Let's go there one day for tour.
00:18:42
Hell yes. What do you have? What are you doing? I have the following. Oh, shit. And I repeat.
00:18:50
And I declare. I have started the podcast which now this is weird and maybe you can
00:18:56
explain this to me Georgia Ann okay the podcast is called West Cork oh right it's a
00:19:04
true crime legendary true crime podcast that I've heard about for so long only recently
00:19:08
became available on iTunes podcast because it was audible original that I recommended
00:19:13
three years ago easily easily that it is so I can't believe you haven't it's one of those ones that everyone's like but Karen you'll really like it
00:19:23
and you're like but no then no and then Karen I think you're like no no and then three years later
00:19:29
you go do you know what I found I found you know what I well you know what you need to hear about
00:19:33
um I knew it it's excellent uh it's one of those angering ones because it's a cold case still I
00:19:42
don't know if anything's come out of it since it came out but it takes place in Ireland West Cork
00:19:46
Ireland. Yep. Beautifully done podcast. It's a classic, wonderful true crime podcast. I didn't
00:19:52
know you couldn't listen unless you had Audible. So that's awesome. Yeah, it just came. It just
00:19:56
became it. We just went wide. And then I was like, God, I know this, though. How do I know
00:20:01
that I'm listening to it? And obviously, what what's the one place I would go to if I'm like,
00:20:09
how would who would have told me who would have told me about this podcast? And truly, I was just
00:20:13
like for some reason. Well, it's because it was three years ago, which means it was 100 years ago in my brain.
00:20:19
But we also get tagged in a lot of them. Like, you have to listen to this. And you're like, OK, I know.
00:20:24
And friends tell us at this point, it's like it's going to be from one or either us to
00:20:28
each other or a bunch of other people. So or literally thousands of other people who know our taste very well.
00:20:36
But I will say this. What a listen, even separate from if you're interested, not interested in true crime or
00:20:41
just a basic story. This almost goes beyond a lot of that. There's like a kind of like small
00:20:47
town psychology element to it. And it is a true, like just a quilt of all the different Irish
00:20:56
accents. There's a guy in there. There's an Irish detective who I kept thinking was from France
00:21:02
because his accent would go into this. But she's French. She's French. This detective is from,
00:21:11
I believe they said he was from Galway or something. I can't remember, but his accent was unlike anything I've ever heard.
00:21:21
Irish style, but it like would go into these other places and come back around. You're just like, this is how this brogue turns into all these things.
00:21:28
And this is in all different areas. This isn't narrative. This is like real people because it's true crime.
00:21:33
So, yeah, that's good. I'm excited for you. That's a great one. It's I'm just almost done.
00:21:39
I'm on the last like last half of the last episode, but I do that thing where I can't I can't stop.
00:21:45
Tell you what if there's been any updates since it came out, because I haven't. OK, I will.
00:21:51
Nice. I did want to read you one quote, which you may or may not remember. OK, but there's a witness who was old, who testified to seeing something or, you know, whatever, some some story.
00:22:04
And but he was old. So they were trying to act like he shouldn't have testified.
00:22:09
Because telling me I need to be in a home for the bewildered, you know. That's his way of saying that they didn't trust his testimony.
00:22:21
And he was like mad about it. Telling me I need to be in a home for the bewildered.
00:22:26
Oh, my God. Do they have those? Just if you're generally bewildered, you get to go stay in a hospital for a while.
00:22:32
You see someone stupid doing a dumb thing and you're like, I don't even understand why you would try that.
00:22:37
And he's like, let's go home. let's go to your bewilder you're too bewildered to be out in the world
00:22:42
right now can we call this episode a home for the bewildered Steven so that's my most
00:22:51
prominent I just love when there's a good podcast that I get up and like do the dishes
00:22:58
with and get my stuff done it's like you finally have someone supporting you and the things you want to do
00:23:04
and the bullshit shit you want to do not the work. It's like, yes, finally, someone wants me to do the dishes and fold my laundry and
00:23:11
like, go for a walk. Yeah, just go kind of sit and stare. Well, that's what you want for me,
00:23:17
West Cork, you know, best because you love me the most. And I trust you. Can I plug? Can I plug
00:23:24
something about me? Oh, wish you would. Okay, great. I was on a podcast. And I'm really I was
00:23:30
really nervous about it. And I'm really happy with the way it turned out and proud of myself
00:23:34
for it because it was like kind of hard topics that I hadn't really shared before. So it's this
00:23:42
podcast called Turned Out a Punk that I'm a big fan of. And it's a Sky Damien who was in this band
00:23:47
Fucked Up and he interviews people who are in were in and are in and have been in the punk scene and
00:23:54
how they got into it. And there's been all kinds of great you know Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, a lot of
00:24:00
comedians and then a lot of like, you know, musicians like the Go-Go's and old punks.
00:24:04
And it's just really cool. And I wanted to be on it because I love punk. And so I was on it and I'm I'm really happy with it.
00:24:12
So check out my episode of Turned Out a Punk. It's episode 321. Turned out punk?
00:24:18
Turned out a punk. Turned out a punk. Yeah. Awesome. Congratulations. Thank you.
00:24:25
Oh, Nora went back to school. Nora's back. She's back in class. What grade is she in now?
00:24:30
eighth nieces growing up but also like just in time it just makes me happy because it was really
00:24:41
for someone who loves school so much and also I just can't imagine that in eighth grade like right when things are
00:24:49
starting to get interesting and kind of fun or whatever you're getting your footing
00:24:53
yeah you just have to go sit home sit on the computer for a year gone crazy I wonder if it's
00:24:59
Like if it's kind of got them out of some trouble they would have been in or means that now they're going to get in more trouble to make up for the past trouble they would have gotten into.
00:25:08
I say probably more trouble. Yeah. Although did I tell you when Laura told me she was going back, I texted Nora and said, I hope you're still popular.
00:25:17
Do you think you're going to be popular? What if you're not popular anymore? Did I tell you that?
00:25:21
No, you didn't tell me that. That's so funny. She sent all the laughing, like crying emojis going, I hope so.
00:25:29
Do you think it's like, it's like, you know how you measure how much you've grown on the wall?
00:25:33
Do you think when they all left school before, right when COVID hit, they all measured their
00:25:37
popularity on the wall and they have to go back and stand up against the wall again and be like,
00:25:41
oh shit, Nora, you're still at the same popularity level, but Lisa with two L's over here is
00:25:47
popular. She skyrocketed. So over the past year, Nora, give her your crown. You have to give her
00:25:52
your crown. It's so confusing at this age, but yeah, I guess people just don't like you in real
00:25:58
life like you're great on zoom it's your worst nightmare is you're only good on zoom imagine if
00:26:05
you adjusted so well to the pandemic that then you really uh as opposed to all the people that are
00:26:10
just hate being on zoom and the timing so off and shitty you're just like i've come alive on zoom
00:26:16
people finally care about me don't make me go back to standing on two legs and having to wear
00:26:22
pants in front of people and not being surrounded by the stench of cat food. I can't.
00:26:27
I am at my best when I'm surrounded by the stench of cat food and no one knows it.
00:26:31
That's when I'm at my best. I just need two snoring dogs near me to really podcast.
00:26:37
What if I started? I know I love your dogs. They're out. What if I started wearing like a cardboard piece of cardboard behind me that has this
00:26:48
wallpaper on it just so I always have because I need this background now. This pink floral. Like a backpack
00:26:54
with a big pink floral wallpaper cardboard background. Just so everyone knows how good I look
00:27:01
with this. I'm going to start carrying around books like I'm in the 8th grade. And I'm just like, oh, these are my books from my bookshelf
00:27:08
from my Zoom. Remember how in like they have like a belt, a leather belt around the books.
00:27:14
Lollipop, lollipop. You know when they walk to school like that. What was that all about?
00:27:20
Oh, did you hear the great author Beverly Cleary died? Man, what a legend. She really, she wrote amazing books.
00:27:31
She wrote a ton of great books. Boys like those books. Girls like those books. Young, old, everybody.
00:27:38
Read them to your kids. Get them into it. God, it's so good. Ramona Quimby. There's one that starts out.
00:27:45
Ramona is so upset because her and Beezus went to the playground and some kid kept saying Jesus Beezus to Beezus.
00:27:51
And Ramona was out of her mind, angry. And I was like, I just remember reading it and being like, let's get into this, Ramona.
00:28:00
What happened to you? Tell me your story. Yes. I mean, like. It's such good writing for kids.
00:28:08
It's saying what happens to you matters and like is a story worthy. Yeah. Yeah. so good. You don't have to like waltz in through a wardrobe to get your story written, everyone.
00:28:20
You don't need a big, weird Christian lion telling your story. You don't need a giant peach. You don't need insects to be your friend, although it's very
00:28:28
helpful. I also I loved the idea of being on a giant peach that you could like lay on and then
00:28:33
just take a bite of if you want. Oh, my God. That was my favorite. I read that book so many times
00:28:38
when I was a kid. We read that book. Also, did you have the copy of James and the Giant Peach
00:28:44
that had the original illustrations. And when they first show James, he is so scary looking,
00:28:50
like his little eyes are so dark. And he's all like, you know, because his parents were,
00:28:55
his parents were killed by escaped animals from the zoo. Yeah, a hippopotamus. And so he had to go live
00:29:00
with Ant Spiker and Ant Fun. It was the saddest book ever. It's so tragic. It's so tragic and horrible.
00:29:06
They're so mean to him. I know. Jesus. We were, no wonder we're the way we are. I know.
00:29:14
For real. It's all real doll's fault. Should we do exactly right news? Yeah, I don't think there's much exactly right news this week, right?
00:29:22
Just some highlights of good stuff that's happening on shows. That's right. Well, really exciting.
00:29:28
I'm sure you heard the trailer that Tenfold More Wicked season three kicks off this week.
00:29:33
It's called Murder in the Court, and it covers a historical true crime story about a fractured family in Texas.
00:29:39
So check that out. It's so good. It's so great. Such a good series. It's such a good podcast.
00:29:45
We love it. We're so proud of Kate Winkler Dawson and all her amazing writing talent and her amazing podcasting talent.
00:29:50
She really is making just a hit. Yeah. I mean people really love this show Such good feedback on it She just she amazing We thrilled to work with her There more COVID information on this podcast will kill you this week So go check out what
00:30:05
Erin and Erin have to tell you. There's just it's a bonus episode. So much good stuff. And I saw what
00:30:11
you did. Millie and Danielle watch and discuss the amazing films with the incredible Pam Greer,
00:30:19
including Jackie Brown and Coffee. I mean, those are freaking classics. This woman is a legend.
00:30:25
And Millie and Danielle are the people to tell you about it. They break it down.
00:30:31
All right. Should we get into this? Oh, yeah. Also, PopSockets in the merch store.
00:30:36
MyFavoriteMurder.com store. PopSockets. We have lots of them. Goodbye. PopSockets.
00:30:40
Get into it. Get into it. Pop it. Pop it and lock it. This is Radhi Dvluka from A Really Good Cry.
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That's K-N-I-X dot com. Code FLOW15. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:32:54
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Lily Chu, the author of the Audible original romantic comedy Just Kiss Already.
00:33:02
It's a story about a forensic anthropologist who secretly writes mystery novels, an actress who adapts his book into a film,
00:33:09
and what happens when a meme and a media tour collide with a slow burn romance. It's performed by Simu Liu and Philippa Su, and it is an absolute blast.
00:33:21
When you actually hear the performance, you realize that other people are taking your words and what you thought was kind of a straightforward sentence like, the cat in the corner is black.
00:33:32
In my head, it's the cat in the corner is black, not the dog, not the gerbil. But someone else might say it.
00:33:38
The cat in the corner is black. That's always fascinating to me. how they just bring in all these different nuances and really make it fun and interesting
00:33:47
and distinctive. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
00:33:54
get your podcasts. So the story I'm doing this week was recommended by a listener whose Twitter handle is or her
00:34:07
Twitter name is Sweetly Sarcastic. She's at Sweetly Sarcast. she sent me a tweet that said uh it said read this on medium.com immediately thought of you
00:34:16
twists turn psychological drama highly recommend and a damn good my favorite murder story to
00:34:22
xo and she put the link and then she put no offense hashtag true crime uh which made me laugh
00:34:29
see there it's used i think it's being sweetly sarcastic got it um so that attached was a link
00:34:38
to this article on medium.com written by a Corey Mead called The Poet. And it tells a tale
00:34:47
of this story out of Wichita in the late 70s that I have never heard even an inkling of.
00:34:56
So the majority of what I'm about to tell you is a retelling of Corey Mead's article from medium.com
00:35:03
Okay. Called The Poet. So I highly recommend. Is Wichita spooky or is it just me?
00:35:10
Well, you know what you're thinking? You're about to find out why you think that's true.
00:35:13
Or do you want me to just say it right now? No, go. Okay. No spoilers. Well, it's about to happen.
00:35:20
There's other information we got was from Medium.com article by a writer named K.M. Brown called Trauma Stole These Women's Lives.
00:35:32
As well as a 1988 People Magazine article by a writer named Gene Stone. Also an article from the Wichita Eagle by Jason Tidd.
00:35:42
And legacy.com, information from legacy.com. And also facts from a book called Nightmare in Wichita, The Hunt for the BTK Killer.
00:35:54
That what you thinking of Of course Yes So we go I take you now to Wichita Kansas November 21st 1978
00:36:06
So 48 year old Ruth Finley, who's a secretary for the head of security at Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.
00:36:13
She's out running errands on her lunch break in downtown Wichita. and she's leaving a greeting card shop on North Market Street when a blue-green 1964
00:36:25
Chevy Bel Air pulls up, cuts off her path, and a man jumps out. He's wearing black frame glasses and a jean jacket over his sweater.
00:36:34
No, he's not a hipster. It's 1978. He isn't about to ask her about seeing Animal Collective live.
00:36:42
Or if she has an extra cigarette. Yeah. um ruth immediately panics because she's seen this man before this is actually the third time
00:36:52
this stranger has approached her each encounter being a little bit scarier than the last so
00:36:58
at at this moment he jumps out of the car ruth looks around all she can see is an old lady
00:37:04
like way up the street so she knows she's alone um so before she can do anything she's kind of in
00:37:10
shock. He kicks her in the shin really hard, then yells, have you got my money? She doubles over in
00:37:17
pain. And as she does, the man shoves her into the backseat of the car, slides in next to her.
00:37:22
And then a man who her attacker calls Buddy, who's sitting behind the wheel drinking from a paper bag
00:37:30
wrapped bottle. He basically takes off when the attacker shuts the door. So Ruth immediately slides
00:37:38
over and tries to get out the other back backseat door, but it's the handles gone. She looks around.
00:37:44
She notices the upholstery in this car is torn up. The floorboards littered with junk. There's
00:37:50
chains, there's rags, there's an old gas can, there's pieces of concrete. And she also sees
00:37:57
the dashboard is held together with masking tape. So the man, her attacker starts going through her
00:38:04
purse. He pulls out a $350 paycheck, $100 savings bond, and her safety deposit key. He says,
00:38:12
we've struck it rich. But then he finds the business card of a police officer and he starts
00:38:19
screaming, you damn stupid bitch at her. And he picks up one of the pieces of concrete on the
00:38:24
floor, hits her in the head with it and knocks her out. So she's fading in and out of consciousness,
00:38:28
but she later remembers snippets of the men's conversation. At one point, they're at the Twin
00:38:33
like shopping center. She hears the driver complain about the shoddy job that Sears did on
00:38:39
fixing his car. At another point, she hears them say, we'll get rid of her, but not here.
00:38:46
It's then that she remembers she's got a can of mace in her purse because the other two times she
00:38:51
ran into this guy, it scared her so badly that she has mace in her purse, but she's too afraid
00:38:56
to move or do anything at the moment. They end up driving around for hours. And so finally,
00:39:03
Ruth says, you have to let me out. I have to go to the bathroom. They both laugh at her.
00:39:07
And then she basically says, I'm going to throw up if I don't go to the restroom.
00:39:12
And she starts gagging. So they say, OK, hold on a second. And they pull into a park.
00:39:18
So at this point now, it's cold and dark out because it's November. So they make Ruth take off her sweater and her shoes so that she won't run anywhere or try to get away.
00:39:29
and um her abductor you know the guy that who jumped out at her on the street he walks her
00:39:36
into the park and he's saying stuff like oh this is going to be fun i'll watch you and you watch me
00:39:40
um and then he's unzips his pants to start peeing he says i'll go first and she grabs her can of mace
00:39:49
and sprays him with it because they let her take her purse for some reason yes um so then she runs
00:39:55
She she runs up. She sees a bush. She kind of runs away, hides in the bush. The guy's walking around going, you can't get away. You'll freeze out here. Just come out. We'll be nice to you. You know, whatever. But she stays hidden. Her feet start going numb from how cold it is. She waits. She waits until it all goes quiet. And then she runs up to a higher vantage point.
00:40:20
And when she doesn't see the car, the Bel Air, she sees that basically they've left.
00:40:26
So she goes she runs out of the park and she runs across the street to a liquor store and has the store owner call the police and then call her husband.
00:40:35
Amazing. So now her husband, Ed, hasn't heard from her all evening. So he's already filed a missing persons report with the police.
00:40:44
so um the liquor store store owner calls ed says who he is says ruth is safe ed rushes to rushes to
00:40:53
the store but by the time he gets there um uh his wife's already been taken to the police station
00:40:59
so ed when he finally sees ruth she's shaken but she's grateful to be alive um unfortunately this
00:41:08
isn't the first time she's experienced a brutal attack and it wouldn't be the last what so ruth
00:41:13
finley her maiden name is ruth smock she's born a february 1st 1930 in rural missouri she's one of
00:41:21
three children her father's a farmer her mother's a homemaker she has a normal upbringing by
00:41:26
depression era standards so they had enough money to live but they didn't have any extra like most
00:41:32
families her parents were pretty strict um and they were very stoic um you know none of the kids
00:41:40
were really, they were all encouraged to keep their emotions to themselves. So when Ruth is 15,
00:41:47
she moves out on her own to a boarding house in nearby Fort Scott, Missouri, to take sewing and typing classes And a year later she gets a job working for the local phone company And then on the night of October 14th 1946 when Ruth is 16 years old she comes home from the grocery store and is startled by the sound of the screen door opening behind her
00:42:12
And she turns to look and sees a roughly 50 year old white male intruder who grabs her, starts pulling at her clothes.
00:42:20
She fights back against him. She presses her thumbs into his eyes. But the man overpowers her.
00:42:27
He has a chloroform on a rag that he holds over her mouth. And as she's passing out, she sees him heating a flat iron over the stove.
00:42:35
She wakes up later with scratches on her face, arms and legs, and both of her thighs branded with first and second degree burns.
00:42:43
Oh, my God. But her clothes are intact and investigators find no evidence of sexual assault.
00:42:51
And it's unclear if that assailant was ever caught. But so she goes on to marry when she's 20 years old, June 1st, 1950.
00:43:02
And she marries her husband, Ed Finley, who's an accountant for a construction firm.
00:43:09
They settle into a one story house in a quiet neighborhood in Wichita, Kansas. Ruth gets a job as the secretary for the head of security at the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.
00:43:21
and in their free time, Ed likes to paint landscapes and Ruth makes ceramics. They have two sons and they basically live a quiet, fairly normal life.
00:43:31
She's described as soft-spoken, sober, and they're just an average middle-class couple.
00:43:38
So basically all of this starts on a day in June in 1977. So basically at this point, Ed is 50 years old.
00:43:47
He's working in the backyard when he suddenly collapses. so he's rushed to the hospital everybody thinks it's a heart attack but they have he has to spend
00:43:58
the night in the hospital to get his diagnosis of what's actually going on so with both of their
00:44:03
sons grown and out of the house Ruth now 48 years old is left to spend the night alone in her house
00:44:11
for the first time in 30 years and this is after the attack right no no now we're this is before so
00:44:17
This is this. This is how everything started. Oh, OK. Got it. Got it. Is this night, June in 1977.
00:44:23
OK. So she turns on the radio to distract herself. But all of the news on the radio is about Wichita's first serial killer, the BTK killer and the seven victims he had so far murdered.
00:44:38
Oh, no. So, yeah, he had been he had been, you know, obviously going undetected.
00:44:46
there's basically had a serial killer loose in wichita and no one knew who he was and it was just
00:44:52
it just he had killed seven people at that point so that's her first night home alone dude um so
00:45:01
she has to turn it to a different station to distract herself um and then a little later that
00:45:06
night the phone rings so ruth is afraid it might be the hospital saying something bad about ed
00:45:11
when she answers instead she hears the voice of a strange man who says is this ruth smock from
00:45:16
fort scott kansas and she is surprised to hear her maiden name and to hear her old hometown
00:45:23
she says yes and he says i know all about that night and he then reads the article from an october
00:45:31
1946 issue of the kansas newspaper the fort scott tribune all about ruth's horrifying attack oh my
00:45:38
God. So the man on the other end, he reads the whole article to her. Then he asks if Ruth still
00:45:46
got her brand. She says, I don't know what you're talking about. But he says that he was a
00:45:54
construction worker who found this article about Ruth in the wall of a house he was demolishing.
00:45:59
He says he's going to blackmail her and threaten to revive the story and tell everyone she knows
00:46:04
unless she pays him. She hangs up the phone. She gets a terrible headache. She goes to sleep
00:46:10
and then she sleeps for 10 hours. What the fuck? So she wakes up the next morning.
00:46:16
She gets the call from the hospital to say Ed didn't have a heart attack. The collapse was from a car accident injury
00:46:23
that had happened a year before. He has to stay in the hospital another week for observation,
00:46:30
which means that Ruth is alone in the house for another week. No. Um, and she's fearing another ominous phone call from this man, but none come, uh, when
00:46:40
Ed's released and back at home, Ruth decides not to bother him with the story of that call
00:46:45
and just decides to put the whole thing behind her. But then later that summer, she's at work when an envelope appears on her desk with
00:46:53
her name on it. She opens it up to find that same newspaper article that the man had read on the phone
00:46:58
to her. So she rips it up and throws it in the trash. And then the calls start again.
00:47:03
um ruth keeps him a secret from ed um so when she answers the phone and hears the man's voice
00:47:10
she immediately hangs up and sometimes ed will answer but he basically the caller just hangs up
00:47:16
on ed so then in 19 august of 1977 um she's window shopping in downtown wichita and she notices a man
00:47:24
that's they're on a crowded sidewalk and but suddenly there's a man walking alongside her
00:47:29
And then he says, you've done such a good job working this week. You can take the weekend off.
00:47:34
And she's kind of freaked out, but she stays calm. She looks at him, estimates he's in his late 40s.
00:47:40
He's 5'9", he's skinny. He's wearing a plaid sports shirt and jeans, white canvas shoes, and he has black hair graying at the temples.
00:47:49
So she kind of takes a picture of him with her mind, but she ignores him basically.
00:47:53
And she just keeps walking, but he keeps talking to her. And he says, you work for the phone company, don't you?
00:48:00
What do you do there? Are you an operator? Then he tells her that he wanted big, big,
00:48:04
one big at gambling and asked, do you want to go to Vegas sometimes? So she's just keep,
00:48:08
she's still ignoring him. And finally, she says, I'm waiting for my husband and his tone changes.
00:48:16
And he says, are you still married? I like your face. I'm going to see you again. You can count
00:48:20
on that. Some people's fantasies are other people's nightmares. So he disappears and then
00:48:27
like into the crowd and then ed finally arrives and so she tells him everything that's going on
00:48:34
or that's just gone on he says oh he's just trying to flirt with you it's fine ed ed so a year goes
00:48:42
by um she still gets the occasional phone call but but she just hangs up and she doesn't see the man
00:48:48
in person again until a year later in june of 1978 when she's walking by an alleyway in downtown
00:48:56
Wichita when a hand reaches out and grabs her wrist. And she hears a man yell, Ruth, get back
00:49:01
here, you stupid bitch and talk to me. But she manages to get away from him and she runs into
00:49:06
the Macy's across the street. She finally gets to the fifth floor of the Macy's. She realizes
00:49:10
where she is and that she's basically like blacked out from fear. So she calls Ed. He comes and meets
00:49:18
her at the Macy's and she tells him about that incident and about the man that talked to her the
00:49:24
year before and finally tells him about all the threatening phone calls and all the stuff that
00:49:29
happened. So they thought Ed actually files a police report, but nothing comes of it.
00:49:34
So then four months later, in October of 1978, Ruth gets another mysterious letter,
00:49:41
and this one is sent to her home. And it's written in the same messy scrawl that the other
00:49:45
ones are written in. And this one reads, fuck you, fuck the police, fuck the telephone company.
00:49:51
Oh, shit. Right. Which is I mean, that's how we all feel. So a month later, the telephone company. Remember the telephone company?
00:50:02
Yeah, Ma Bell. I remember Ma Bell. Ma Bell. Oh, it used to be these rates. Oh, these rates.
00:50:11
OK, basically a month later, Ed and Ruth go to the police and they talk to a lieutenant, Bernie Drowatsky, who's a 34 year veteran criminal investigator.
00:50:23
And he is all his time is being taken up by this BTK case. I'm sure. Right. Yeah. So he's listening to this nice couple.
00:50:32
And in his mind, he's like, yeah, I just don't have time for this bullshit, basically.
00:50:36
um and but now the loose ruth's got another letter where the man is now demanding a hundred dollars
00:50:44
um and he ends the letter like this very threatening letter with a poem and it says
00:50:51
wherever you go on water or land you still got to pay or i tell about your brand i am smart and
00:50:58
no things to do you talk to people i despise like police lieutenant and telespies
00:51:05
like filled with misspellings and weird spellings and stuff like that. And this is the beginning of this onslaught of letters.
00:51:14
She just keeps getting them. Each one stranger than the next. They're all they all have spelling errors.
00:51:19
Sometimes he uses really big on like uncommon or like, you know, fancy vocabulary words.
00:51:28
and then sometimes he makes up words like Sanchez or psychosthenia. He always refers to Ruth's branding scars.
00:51:41
So the lieutenant takes these letters to the lab for fingerprint testing. They don't find anything.
00:51:48
We're still getting the phone calls at home. So it doesn't really seem like the calls stop. Ruth and Ed hope that the stalker is finally letting
00:51:58
up. But then later that month is when Ruth is abducted by the two men in the Bel Air. So that
00:52:04
brings us up to November of that first thing that happened. So, okay. So now that Ruth has been
00:52:10
abducted, suddenly Lieutenant Drowatsky is taking this case seriously because it's starting to match
00:52:17
up with the BTK MO, the weird letters, and then the actual physical violence. Like they're very
00:52:23
worried that this is some, that it could be, it could be BTK in some other weird form.
00:52:30
Right. They don't know. Or a copycat or they don't know what it is. Yeah. So the day after her abduction, Drowatsky's colleague, Detective Richard Zortman, goes
00:52:40
back to the park where Ruth escaped and finds her sweater, shoes and footprints leading
00:52:46
from the parking lot to that hiding spot in the bushes, but he doesn't find anything else.
00:52:50
So they also run a check on all 1964 Chevy Bel Air owners in the area. None of them turn out to be suitable suspects for this abduction.
00:53:01
So for five weeks, several officers are assigned to keep watch over Ruth as she takes her lunch breaks downtown.
00:53:07
But nothing happens in that time. Another detective named Detective George Anderson takes Ruth and Ed to Fort Scott to dive back in to her attack from when she was 16 to see if he can find any leads connecting that to her, this current stalker.
00:53:23
Yeah. They end up spending two days reexamining the old case, and she actually reviews a number of mugshots the Fort Scott police have on file, but nothing comes of it.
00:53:34
um detective anderson even goes back for a second two-day trip on his own to look into it more but
00:53:41
he doesn't find anything meanwhile ruth can't sleep she has bad headaches she's getting stomach
00:53:46
cramps on a daily basis um and ed is spending his nights hidden in the bushes of their backyard
00:53:52
armed with a 12 shotgun hoping to catch this stalker approaching the house which i sure makes her feel extra safe that her husband like that terrifying i know i know they but they
00:54:05
freaking out and that this is their own mini personal family freak out on top of the wider
00:54:10
city freak out sure uh then on december 13th 1978 lieutenant drowatsky receives a letter of his own
00:54:21
Ruth's stalker is accusing him of, quote, protecting a whore from death. The lieutenant's furious.
00:54:26
He now knows Ruth and Ed from this case. He believes Ruth to be a kind, good woman.
00:54:32
And now he wants to catch the stalker even now more than ever. So the letters keep coming, each one with its own dark, threatening, error-riddled poem.
00:54:46
Ed starts referring to the stalker as the poet, and the name actually ends up sticking.
00:54:50
that on January 25th, 1979, the poet calls Ruth at work. He tells her that he has a quote unquote surprise for her in the lobby down in a telephone company building.
00:55:03
So she's, you know, cautiously walks downstairs and there in the lobby phone booth,
00:55:08
she finds a knife wrapped in a red bandana. She calls the police. They start questioning everyone that's been in the lobby and in the building.
00:55:16
A few witnesses come forward and say that they saw a man resembling Ruth's description of the poet.
00:55:23
They saw him near the phone booth, but no one really has any information of who he is or where he went.
00:55:28
So no leads are taken from it. A month later, the poet starts sending letters to local businesses.
00:55:35
He sends a local florist a letter with five dollars enclosed and their request to send Ruth one black rose.
00:55:42
the note reads quote if this is not enough enuf for a delivered one then call and then it has
00:55:50
ed and ruth's phone number and tell her to come and get it yikes so as things get warmer the letters
00:55:59
and the calls start to slow down so ed and ruth decide to take advantage and plan a vacation to
00:56:04
colorado in july of 1979 um so to get ready for that ruth tells ed she's going to go to the mall
00:56:11
by herself to get a pair of jeans. Now, it doesn't like that she's going alone, but she says, it's just going to be fine.
00:56:17
I'm just running in really quickly. So on August 13th, Ruth leaves work. She goes to Dillard's department store
00:56:24
at the Town East Mall in downtown Wichita, gets some jeans. By the time she's done,
00:56:29
she goes outside to find herself walking through a practically empty parking lot
00:56:34
alone at dusk. No, has anything good ever happened in a mall parking lot? Not at all.
00:56:39
Especially toward the end of the day. No. And it's worse and worse just as the sun goes down.
00:56:46
That's right. But this was, you know, is 79. So malls were new for people. True.
00:56:53
So before she gets to her car, she hears a familiar voice yell, hey, Ruth, I didn't think you're going to make it this easy.
00:57:00
She spins around, sees the poet lunging toward her. She tries unlocking her car door, but she can't get it in time.
00:57:06
He grabs her. He shoves her against the car. He tells her to get in as he tosses a bag filled with rope, white tape, a red bandana and half a drunken bottle of wine into the backseat.
00:57:19
He tells her he's going to take her to a remote bridge near August Airport Road.
00:57:24
But right when that happens, she breaks away from his grasp. She manages to get into the car through the passenger side door and close up behind her.
00:57:33
The window is slightly cracked. The poet tries to reach in after her, but she rolls it up.
00:57:38
She forces him to pull his hand away and pinches a brown glove into the window as she peels out of the parking lot.
00:57:45
This woman is a freaking hero. She gets away again. At the next red light, she looks down and realizes she feels a little lightheaded.
00:57:56
She looks down. She's been stabbed. An eight inch boning knife is sticking out of her left side of the left side of her torso.
00:58:06
Holy shit. Right. And so she'll later learn at the hospital this is actually the third stab wound that she got.
00:58:14
There's two more in her back that she didn't even feel. Oh, my God. So she drives herself to a gas station phone booth.
00:58:22
And there she dials the number that she's memorized, 268-4181, which is Lieutenant Drowatsky's boss, Captain Al Fimich.
00:58:33
This is his direct line. and before ruth can finish introducing herself he picks up she's like hi my name is whatever he's
00:58:42
like i know who you are what's going on and then she explains it to him so he sends an officer to
00:58:47
where she is but she's so worried that the poet's going to find her there that she drives home
00:58:52
which is only five minutes away captain thimich has already called ed and basically said what's
00:58:58
going on so by the time she gets home ed's waiting for her on the porch as soon as she gets there he
00:59:03
gets in, drives her to the hospital. The police meet the couple at the hospital. So Ruth, all of
00:59:10
her wounds are treated. The doctors say that the third stab wound in her left side was so deep,
00:59:15
had it gone in any further, she would have died. She stays in the hospital for nine days.
00:59:21
Her story makes the news once again. And the reporter covering the story for the Wichita
00:59:27
Eagle Beacon newspaper is named Fred Mann. He reports the incident. And then in a follow-up
00:59:33
article, he includes the police sketch of the poet. And for that, he begins to get threatening
00:59:39
letters from the poet. So the day after Ruth gets out of the hospital, one of the nurses tells the
00:59:44
police that a man who resembles the police sketch of the poet visited the nurse's station several
00:59:49
times while Ruth was in their care So as a precaution Lieutenant Droatsky stays at Ruth and Ed house for two days just to make sure they OK Nothing happens while he there So by September of 1979 the police have no leads and Ed is growing desperate to protect his wife
01:00:10
His employer puts up a three thousand dollar reward on the Finley's behalf for information leading to the poet's capture.
01:00:16
But Ed also tries contacting the poet himself. He actually puts an ad out in the Wichita Eagle Beacon that says, poet, tell me what I owe you, RSF.
01:00:28
And the poet responds to RSF, the price of my service to stay alive can now be settled at five.
01:00:36
But this isn't enough information for Ed to know how much that is or what it's supposed to mean.
01:00:42
They go back and forth several times, but none of it leads anywhere. And it doesn't it doesn't nothing happens.
01:00:50
So in October of 1979, the newspaper puts out a statement saying that they've been receiving letters from the poet directly to them.
01:00:59
In one, he writes, quote, make sure that you don't confuse the executioners again, referencing the rumors that the poet and BTK are the same person.
01:01:08
So the public, of course, is following the story like word for word. And there's rumors all around town.
01:01:18
Calls to the police constantly roll in with alleged poet sightings. None of them bring any leads or evidence.
01:01:25
So Lieutenant Drowatsky assigns eight officers to go undercover around downtown.
01:01:31
And they have Ruth wear a wire whenever she goes out, just in case he approaches her downtown again.
01:01:38
There's no sign of him. but more letters with poems in them turn up on the Finley's porch and in their mailbox
01:01:45
and at night they can hear strange noises from their garage but when they go out there they
01:01:49
they don't catch anybody on Christmas Eve 1979 the Finley's phone lines are cut and that's the second time that's happened so they're running out of options Ruth agrees to
01:02:02
undergo hypnosis to see if she can recall any other details from her attacks a psychologist
01:02:08
named Dr. Donald Schrag works with Ruth for two sessions until they reach the matter of her
01:02:13
kidnapping and her demeanor shifts from calm to distraught as she cries out, I want out of the car,
01:02:19
I want out of the car. Dr. Schrag, after these sessions, he concludes that whoever the poet is,
01:02:26
quote, it's likely he's had psychological treatment and possibly has been in a state
01:02:30
institution, end quote. But he also believes that the man's highly intelligent. So in January of
01:02:37
1980, Lieutenant Drowatsky is promoted to vice and organized crime. So a man named Captain Mike
01:02:45
Hill takes over Ruth's case. Soon after, Captain Hill receives a letter of his own from the poet,
01:02:51
a line of which reads, there was once a captain who had an asshole for a heart. He is a poet. Wow. I mean, it's really, it's so visual.
01:03:02
so Juratsky had forged this strong friendship with the Finleys in fact they went to the same church
01:03:12
they had basically the same political views and so Juratsky and his wife went out with Ed and Ruth on like double
01:03:20
dates sometimes like they socialized together but Captain Hill has no personal relationship
01:03:26
with them at all so it gives him the advantage of an objective point of view his first move after taking
01:03:32
over the cases to install a surveillance camera in the Finley's backyard. He has officers posted
01:03:38
in the Finley's dining room on a round-the-clock watch, checking the camera's monitors for any
01:03:42
suspicious activity. Ruth feels guilty that all of these officers have to endure such a boring job,
01:03:49
so she's constantly making them baked goods, and sometimes she even reads some of the poet's
01:03:54
letters aloud to them for entertainment. So a month later on Valentine's Day, Ruth gets a
01:04:01
menacing Valentine themed message and a second letter containing a strip of red bandana.
01:04:07
And there are also letters being sent to local businesses. The utility companies get letters instructing them to shut off Finley's gas and power.
01:04:16
The health department gets a letter claiming that Ruth Finley is spreading STDs around town.
01:04:21
The local mortuary gets a letter threatening that Ruth, quote, would be requiring them soon.
01:04:27
End quote. Yikes. So now Ed is driving Ruth to and from work. So she's never by herself.
01:04:33
And at this point, it's been three years. Holy shit. So the police have looked into more than 300 people of interest.
01:04:40
All of them are dead ends. They install another security camera at the Finley's home, this time hidden in a birdhouse in the backyard.
01:04:47
Nothing happens. So in the spring of 1980, they decide to use Ruth as bait. They have her wear a bulletproof vest and walk around in downtown Wichita while several undercover cops are patrolling the area.
01:05:02
But nothing comes of it. Then on June 3rd, 1980, Ruth gets a letter from the poet that's postmarked from Oklahoma City.
01:05:10
So the Wichita police contact Oklahoma City police. They discover that an anonymous woman called in to report a recent poet sighting.
01:05:18
So the police close in on a man who's recently been fired from his job in Wichita.
01:05:23
And they're certain that this must be the poet. But when they bring him in for a lineup, Ruth says that although he does look similar, it's just not him.
01:05:31
So by July 4th, 1980, this story is national news. The rumors that the poet is BTK continue to spread.
01:05:39
And police actually have a psycholinguistic expert named Dr. Murray S. Myron examine the handwriting in the letters.
01:05:47
I think I know. So he determines that while it the handwriting is actually similar to BTKs it highly unlikely that they the same person But the public can let go of that idea So the next few months stranger and stranger items start showing up
01:06:05
on the Finley's front porch. An ice pick, broken glass, Molotov cocktails, firecrackers, cigarettes, even hair.
01:06:13
And at Christmas time, the Finleys are watching TV when they're jolted by the sound of their window breaking.
01:06:18
Ed runs out onto the porch to find a burning wreath has been hung from their front window
01:06:23
And the heat from that caused the window to explode. In a rage, Ed runs out into the street with a pair of garden shears screaming that he's going to kill the poet.
01:06:34
So things continue like this into 1981. The Wichita police are widely criticized by the public who can't believe they haven't been able to catch the poet.
01:06:45
And they also simultaneously aren't catching BTK either. So now Chief of Police Richard LaMunion, or LaMunion, but I'm going to say LaMunion, is he's left fending off questions from the press about his department's ineptitude.
01:07:03
But LaMunion's annoyance turns personal on Friday, September 4th, 1981, when the poet sends a letter to his wife.
01:07:12
Oh, shit. Now, fed up, Lamonion, who has had no personal involvement in the case as of yet, takes it over himself.
01:07:22
So he, on September 5th, he takes all the poet case files home and pours over them.
01:07:31
It takes him several days, but at the end of his research, he believes he knows who the poet is.
01:07:37
He calls a private meeting for select officers on September 11th, 1981. and he begins to explain his very secret theory.
01:07:45
He says he finds it strange that all of Ruth's attacks have been in public places,
01:07:51
yet there are zero witnesses to any of these attacks. It's also strange that despite all the hours of round-the-clock surveillance,
01:08:00
no officers and no neighbors have ever seen a trace of a trespasser, not even footprints on the Finley's property, and they live on a dead-end street.
01:08:10
When the surveillance camera is installed in the Finley's backyard, all the action moves to the front porch.
01:08:17
And then after Ruth's abduction, the only footprints the investigating officer find at the park are Ruth's.
01:08:23
And when Ruth is stabbed, instead of calling 911 at the phone booth like a regular person would.
01:08:29
Yeah. She calls the direct line for central investigations. The officers in the room.
01:08:35
Basically what he's saying is he thinks that the poet is Ruth Finley. As soon as you said he's able to look at it with the new chief is able to look at it without any personal, you know, because he's not friends with her.
01:08:50
I was like, no, he doesn't have bias. He knows it's her. Yes. And then it hit me and I was like, don't say anything.
01:08:57
Shut up. Shut up. Oh, my God. This is exactly the way writer Corey Mead laid this article out.
01:09:04
So the entire time you think you're just reading this case that you've never heard of before.
01:09:10
And then by the time it gets to that exactly thing. Yeah. Where you're just like this woman is being hideously victimized.
01:09:17
Why have I never heard this story before? So but here's the thing. All of these police officers, the Wichita PD, think think this guy is nuts.
01:09:27
They think the chief is totally lost it. Well, there's no Munchausen syndrome back then.
01:09:32
Right. Like, why would anyone do that to themselves? Right, exactly. It's the kind of thing that, yes, no one had ever talked about anything like that detailed before.
01:09:43
But also they know Ruth. They've come to know her over the past four years. They cannot believe she'd be the kind of person who would put her husband through that, who would do that to the police or do it to herself.
01:09:56
That's not what she's like. She's a kind, quiet, you know, very upstanding lady.
01:10:02
And what would her motive be? It didn't make sense to them. It didn't add up. Yeah. But since La Munion is the boss, they have to follow his theory.
01:10:13
So beginning Monday, September 14th, 1981. La Munion sets up a 24 hour surveillance on the Finleys with officers trading off 12 hour shifts in a van two blocks away from the Finleys house at the Eastgate Mall.
01:10:31
this time without the Finleys knowing. So three days later at 830 in the morning on September 17th,
01:10:40
the surveilling police capture photos of Ed driving Ruth up to the mailbox at the Eastgate Mall and depositing several pieces of mail.
01:10:49
So they run over and basically it takes them until 130 to get a postal officer. sorry the postal inspector to open that mailbox and inside they find two letters from the poet
01:11:05
but too much time has passed between when ruth dropped the mail off and when they were finally
01:11:11
able to get it open so technically someone else could have mailed those letters like they don't
01:11:16
know for a fact those are the letters she put in yeah so basically nine days later they get another
01:11:23
opportunity once more ed drives their car up to the same mailbox ruth leans out the passenger side
01:11:29
to drop the mail in but this time an undercover cop pulls up right after them blocks the mailbox
01:11:35
pretending to have car trouble so no one else can use this mailbox until they get the postal
01:11:41
inspector down there to open it up right so this time they're mixed in with the finley's regular
01:11:48
mail is another letter from the poet. Once this is confirmed, they reseal the envelope
01:11:55
and they let the mail carrier deliver that letter to the Finley's home. Oh, sneaky, sneaky.
01:12:02
So the next day, which is Sunday, September 27th, Ed brings the poet letter to the police, as he does with all of the poet letters they receive.
01:12:10
But then the police launch a search for more of the Finley's mail everywhere. Businesses they sent payments to, you know, like mail at her work.
01:12:21
And they basically inspect all the envelopes and they're able to match the edges of the stamps because stamps used to get pulled out of books.
01:12:29
of stamps and you would tear there'd be perforated little holes where you pull the stamps apart
01:12:35
they match the tear the tearaways and they see that all of these stamps are from the same book
01:12:42
they can they can put them all back in so um police gain permission to search ruth's office
01:12:50
at work and there they find the book of a book of poetry paper with the poet's handwriting on it
01:12:56
and a red bandana concealed in a tissue in Ruth's desk. All of this is enough to warrant a search of the Finley's house.
01:13:04
So on September 28th, while the Finley's are away, they search the house, but they actually find no hard evidence inside the house.
01:13:12
Come on. But then two days later, on Wednesday, September 30th, Chief LaMunion and his wife Sharon get another letter from the poet.
01:13:21
And at the bottom of the page, the page is torn off. So through microscopic fracture analysis, they are able to determine that the torn off piece from Ruth's trash can at work matches the piece at the bottom of the letter that LaMoneyon received.
01:13:38
Yeah, I got it. Yeah, I got it. This solidifies the case. So the next day on October 1st, 1981, the police ask Ed to come into the station to pick up the latest batch of poet letters, which is what usually happens.
01:13:53
But when he gets there, Captain Hill and Detective Jack Leon take Ed into an interrogation room and they start asking him questions.
01:14:03
Now, Ed's confused, but he cooperates. Basically, the officer spent two hours asking Ed about his life, his upbringing, all the way up until the beginning of the harassment in 1977.
01:14:15
And to get the idea of basically, is Ed complicit in his wife's plan? Is he? Oh, my God.
01:14:24
Finally, Captain Hill tells Ed that he knows who the poet is. And Ed says, well, I hope the hell you do.
01:14:31
Let's go get him. But then Hill shows Ed pictures of his wife dropping letters in the mailbox at the mall
01:14:36
and explains that they can confirm that Ruth is, in fact, the letter writer. Ed is in utter shock.
01:14:43
Hill asks if he'll agree to a polygraph test so he can be eliminated as a suspect.
01:14:47
Ed agrees. He passes the test. He was never involved. It was all Ruth by herself.
01:14:53
Eddie, I got bad news for you. I know. So at five o'clock that same afternoon, Hill calls Ruth and has her come down to the station to look at mug shots to see if she can identify the poet, which is a common practice for her at this point.
01:15:08
She agrees. Hill walks her through the same interrogation procedure that he walked Ed through.
01:15:13
And he finally asks Ruth if she wrote any of the poet's letters. She says no. but when he shows her the surveillance
01:15:19
photos of herself mailing the letters and says that he can prove she did, she finally
01:15:26
admits. She says she has a vague memory of sitting in her basement writing letters
01:15:31
but when she thinks back, she can't tell what's a dream and what's reality. Oh dear. I was hoping
01:15:37
you were going to say they'd show her a mugshot lineup and hers was in it and that's how
01:15:41
she knows. And she's like, there he is right there. Oh no. Yep. Basically, he asked he then asked he switches his tone and gets mean and asks her if the attack went from when she was 16 years old, if that even really happened.
01:16:00
She swears it did. But she gets starts to get really upset. He switches back to a gentle tone and basically says, quote, Ruthie, why it's time.
01:16:10
It's time to tell me why I'm not mad at you, Ruth. I want to know why you're doing this.
01:16:15
So after some prodding, Ruth eventually admits to everything, the letters, the calls, the odd objects left at her house, even her own stabbing.
01:16:25
But she says it wasn't a deliberate plan as much as it was kind of this fuzzy memory that she can barely recall.
01:16:33
Basically, it's like she's really ashamed and she's almost she's confused, but she's really ashamed.
01:16:40
And when when Hill says to her, there's no hard feelings between you and me, Ruth says, quote, there should be.
01:16:47
I wish I was dead. Oh, my God. So she confirms that Ed was not involved at all, but she makes it clear she needs medical help.
01:16:56
She says she thinks she's crazy. And then she says, quote, I tried to figure out what was wrong, but I couldn't stop it.
01:17:03
So that night she's taken to the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph's Hospital for treatment. After much debate, the Wichita police make the controversial
01:17:12
decision not to press charges against Ruth, citing that she was suffering from severe mental distress
01:17:18
and had no malicious intent. She did, however, cost the department almost $400,000 for all their
01:17:25
investigative efforts over the past four years. And Chief LeMagnon does not agree with this decision
01:17:32
not to press charges, he considers her a dangerous criminal. Wow. Basically, Ruth goes into therapy with a Dr. Andrew Pickens.
01:17:43
And this goes on for the next seven years. And she's finally able to uncover the source of her issues, which takes her a while to
01:17:53
get to and then takes her years to process afterwards But in a sense what interesting and kind of fascinating about it is she does it using the same technique that the poet does She begins writing poetry about it
01:18:07
And she finally unwinds like all of those things that she was writing in the poet's poems.
01:18:14
They all kind of pulled into her reality and what she she basically had faced a long buried
01:18:22
childhood trauma of sexual abuse by a neighbor when she was only four years old.
01:18:27
And it was a man who had used red bandanas to tie her up. So, Oh my God. So like there was actual symbolism in her.
01:18:41
Wow. So she basically says that when that happened to her and it went on for a couple of months
01:18:48
that she would remember quote unquote floating off to heaven. which is a common dissociative tactic that the brain uses in times of severe trauma.
01:18:59
So it's a defense tactic, her doctors theorize, that allowed her to develop this kind of separate identity as the poet.
01:19:08
And then in 1977, when Ed has his heart attack and she is alone for the first time in her life,
01:19:14
while the BTK is like gone, basically killing people around town and no one knows who he is.
01:19:21
Yeah. Basically, her brain switches back into this dissociative mode and the stress. She basically it's like this cry for help.
01:19:31
Wait, so did the teenage attack happen? Yeah. OK, so that probably that's like, yeah, as far as we know, as far as we know.
01:19:41
And yeah, yeah. And basically, it seems like the the police in that town believe.
01:19:46
I feel like that attack alone as a teenager would have triggered that reaction from BTK, too, because that's a similar thing.
01:19:55
He was breaking into women's houses and murder, telling her murder. It's like either of those could have.
01:20:01
All of it. Yes. It's all it's all horrible parallels to her life. And if she was repressing it and then that attack, you know, she was kind of able to come back and then she has this marriage that's really solid for her.
01:20:18
And, you know, it's this really strong, great marriage relationship family she builds for 30 years.
01:20:24
Everything is like going great. Yeah. And then this thing happens that's like shock after shock.
01:20:30
Yeah. You know, so the only person who doesn't believe this theory is Chief LaMunion, who would later say, quote, I think she's lying.
01:20:42
She knew everything she was doing. Unquote. Wow. But no one in Ruth's family or friendship circle believes that at all.
01:20:51
In fact, Ed stands by her. Their marriage lasts through this horrible experience.
01:20:56
and she was quoted as saying it's been hard on Ed, but he's the kindest person I know.
01:21:02
And he's been very supportive, but also her friends and neighbors rallied by her side.
01:21:09
Her neighbor, Emma Dillinger, is quoted in that People magazine article saying, Ruth told me her story and gave me the option of cutting off our friendship.
01:21:18
But all I wanted to do was comfort her. Oh, my God. And all of Ruth's loved ones like basically had that same reaction.
01:21:27
And after five years in treatment, she feels strong enough to talk about her story on a local like news station.
01:21:34
And after she basically tells her side of the story, there's they start getting that stations starts getting calls.
01:21:43
And 98 percent of them were compassionate and loving and completely supportive of her.
01:21:49
like an overwhelming majority were just like, this is unbelievable. So it turns out that the poet of Wichita was not a violent madman,
01:22:00
but a woman who didn't even know herself how much she needed to be heard. On May 30th, 2019, Ruth Finley passed away at the age of 89.
01:22:11
And that is the fascinating story of Ruth Finley, also known as the poet of Wichita.
01:22:17
what the fuck what the fuck give the credit to the person who suggested it to you again because
01:22:23
brilliant sweetly sarcastic read that article by Corey Mead first on medium.com and sent it along to me
01:22:34
I mean I also think that part of me hesitated and I think I felt like I may have begun to read
01:22:42
this story one time when we were on the road but I hate the idea of talking about going this far into a story where a female victim is lying because it does
01:22:55
not. It doesn't happen that often. Yeah. And that kind of thing of like these false reports, it's it's it's I think it's one of
01:23:03
the reasons that it's not a very well-known story. That makes sense. It's because it's this is it's as crazy as a serial killer.
01:23:11
It's as unlikely. Yeah. It's as, you know, it's very common for women to be stalked.
01:23:18
It's very common for women to be raped. It's very common for women to be attacked and abused.
01:23:23
So this is a true anomaly that then kind of grew into a whole other crazy. I mean, Wichita, it almost it's.
01:23:38
I don't know. It's fascinating. There's so many layers. There's so many layers to it.
01:23:42
And that's a really good point, but that doesn't mean a story shouldn't be told.
01:23:46
And we tell a huge amount of different types of stories on this podcast. And this is one of those examples but it not a rule So I think it deserves a place in this this podcast And that was incredible job telling the story The medium writer did an incredible job So yeah it happened It happened
01:24:09
Here's the thing. It happened. And it didn't end in a in a pitchforks and torches mob. You know
01:24:16
what I mean it ended with people going uh what why would someone do this this is baffling yeah
01:24:25
because there weren't she was the only victim and ed yeah and then the wasted time but it's like what
01:24:32
what was she doing it doesn't make sense it doesn't add up and then it's like but everybody has their
01:24:38
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That's K-N-I-X dot com. Code FLOW15. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
01:26:30
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton, who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago,
01:26:37
and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all. We talk about what it's like to return to a story that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix in the recording booth,
01:26:49
and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.
01:26:54
I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordie Lachance when I didn't know it.
01:27:04
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01:27:11
All right. I had an epiphany this week that although it feels like this story is part of the folklore that is my favorite murder, it's a tale as old as time in our lives.
01:27:22
lives. We actually don't know the full story of the cocaine bear. Oh, we don't. We know a snippet
01:27:32
from the Minnesota, Minnesota 101. Thank you, Stephen. But who, why, what, where? Let's find
01:27:39
out today. I thought you did this story. I asked Stephen, did I do it when we were in Kentucky?
01:27:46
have we been have we been to Kentucky yeah we have but it wasn't I thought okay well great
01:27:55
I thought so too when I was halfway through and that's why I text Stephen and he said
01:27:59
no so not don't tell me I don't care doing it today yeah if you figure out otherwise
01:28:07
you can go ahead and let Stephen know at personal Stephen email at earthlink.gov
01:28:15
That's right. All right. So I got info from a Rolling Stone article by E.J. Dixon, a Slate article by Matthew Dessim, the Kentucky for Kentucky website by Coleman Larkin and the IFL Science article by James Felton.
01:28:34
So here we go, Karen. I'm going to tell you the tale. I want to know the truth about the cocaine bear before I before I see the movie.
01:28:42
It's truth. It's legend. It's truly a legend. Okay. On the morning of September 11th, 1985, Mr. Fred M. Myers of Knoxville, Tennessee, woke up, walked out of his home on Island Home Pike in South Knoxville and found a dead man in his backyard.
01:29:02
Yep. So Mr. Myers recalled hearing a crash around midnight night the night before, and it turned out the crash he had heard had been that of the dead man falling from the sky and landing in his backyard.
01:29:14
Oh, my God. Yeah. That's horrible. It is a horrible start. So the body of the man was dressed in khaki and it was sprawled out on his back over an unopened parachute.
01:29:28
There was no obvious injuries aside from a trickle of dried blood from each of his nostrils.
01:29:34
But other than that, he looked fine. Authorities arrived and found that the dead man was wearing a bulletproof vest and night vision goggles.
01:29:41
and was carrying two different pistols, ammunition, a stiletto knife, freeze dried food and six
01:29:50
Cougarands, which are gold coins. Yes, I love Cougarands. That my favorite reference cash IDs and multiple names a membership card to the Miami Jockey Club and several inspirational epigrams which I know you love
01:30:07
Epigrams? Epigrams. Yeah, like you mean like keep soar high like a mighty bird? That's right.
01:30:13
Keep on trucking. Those kinds? Are those epigrams? I don't know. I don't either.
01:30:19
Let me read you one. That's definitely an epigram because this is one of the ones he had on him.
01:30:23
Wait a second. And is an epigram the same thing forward and backwards? No. Mine wouldn't work.
01:30:29
No. Fly high like a mighty eagle won't work. Let me spell that backwards and try to.
01:30:33
No, you're right. Okay, this is one. This one read, there is only one tactical principle not subject to change.
01:30:40
It is to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.
01:30:47
It sounds like a Chuck Norris type of thing that they live by, you know? like a here's where I live by it sounds like the kind of shirt that you'd be right up against in
01:30:58
line at 7-eleven and then once you read that epigram or whatever the fuck you're claiming
01:31:02
it to be then you back way up and you're just like uh-oh I didn't realize you're here to do
01:31:08
the most damage in the shortest and you're like hey mister can I touch your nunchucks and hey
01:31:13
are those nunchucks in your pocket that's right so that he had that on him poetry and he had a
01:31:22
duffel bag with about 75 pounds of cocaine that was 95% pure. And I wanted to like, I wanted to
01:31:29
like in my head picture 75 pounds of cocaine, which is hard to do with powder, right? So then
01:31:35
I looked up like, how many pounds of chocolate bars would that be? But then I thought, okay,
01:31:39
well, how much? What kid weighs 75 pounds? And so I looked it up in an average 10 year old female
01:31:46
weighs 75 pounds. So that's how much cocaine. If you held an average 10-year-old female in one hand
01:31:53
and cocaine in the other that weighed the same. You could also do it basically if you're doing five pound bags of sugar.
01:32:02
Oh. But cocaine, there would be about 14 bags of sugar. Oh, that's a lot. No wonder his parachute didn't open.
01:32:11
And if it's 95% pure, you can get some baby laxative and cut it in there. And then you can have like then you have like thirty five pounds of cocaine.
01:32:20
And you just get all the kids at the junior college to buy it. And you're in Cabo, baby.
01:32:26
Nineties. Karen just snuck up on this podcast and was like, hey, I have an idea.
01:32:32
Hey, man. Look, man. Be cool. All right. So police came and were like, what is this scene?
01:32:39
It was like baffling to everyone, of course. narcotics agents came DEA customs were very baffled by this innocent looking backyard scene
01:32:49
I guess it wasn't innocent looking anyway not innocent with the Krugerrands I'm telling you
01:32:55
anytime Krugerrands are involved this is an international issue that we have or it's a spy
01:33:01
movie starring Brad Pitt either way either way you're fucked so police by afternoon are able to
01:33:09
identify the body. And even then, they still had few theories as to what the hell happened.
01:33:14
But they do identify him as Andrew Carter Thornton II of Kentucky. So let me tell you about
01:33:22
Andrew Carter Thornton II. As you can tell by his name, yes, he came from a wealthy family.
01:33:29
He's royalty. That's right. So he's born on October 30th, 1944 to Carter and Peggy Thornton
01:33:35
in southern Bourbon County, Kentucky. Carter and Peggy had a grand old time being wealthy
01:33:43
and breeding horses at their stud farm. Lucky. So Andrew grew up living a privileged life in Lexington, Kentucky.
01:33:51
He attended prestigious private schools, along with other Lexington Blue Bloods.
01:33:56
He went to the military academy, Sewanee Military Academy, and then joined the Army as a paratrooper.
01:34:05
Then he became an Air Force officer. He earns a Purple Heart. You know, he's on his way up. And next in his illustrious career, he becomes a police officer in the Lexington, Kentucky Police Force Narcotics Division. So here he is. But then in 1977, he resigns because he now wants to practice law.
01:34:26
So he goes to the University of Kentucky Law School. And apparently the law applied to everyone but himself, because as a 1980 federal indictment
01:34:35
alleges, he was part of a drug and weapons smuggling ring called The Company. Oh, yeah.
01:34:42
And it also reportedly involved other former Kentucky police officers as well. So maybe he went to law school to be like, I'm going to keep this business going and
01:34:51
like not for good reasons. Mm hmm. So in 1981, he's arrested along with 25 other men.
01:34:59
They were attempting to steal guns from a naval base in Fresno, California. Risky. And for attempting to traffic a thousand pounds of marijuana into the county.
01:35:10
Into San Diego? Fresno. Oh, yeah. I thought drugs lived in Fresno. Why do they have to smuggle them in?
01:35:18
Yeah, especially from like Kentucky. Yeah. No one. No one in Cali wants that KY weed. No, thanks.
01:35:26
Keep it for yourselves and your and your stud horses. We're good over here. So DEA agent Robert Brightwell, who says he worked with Thornton on narcotics investigations in the early 70s, described him as a, quote,
01:35:40
an 007 paramilitary type personality, an adventurer driven by adrenaline rushes who became bored with being a cop.
01:35:48
so we got this guy who thinks he's James Bond or Chuck Norris it seems like a cross between the two
01:35:56
and he's bored with evil And being a narcotics cop, which sounds pretty entertaining and fun, if you ask.
01:36:04
And stressful. And stressful. Yeah. Like, what more do you need? And legal. So not enough for some people.
01:36:11
Never enough. Never. Initially, Andrew was given two felony charges of conspiracy to import and distribute a controlled
01:36:18
substance to which he pled not guilty. But he fled the state and then it was found heavily armed in North Carolina and brought
01:36:26
back to California to face reduced misdemeanor drug charges. So he got his charges super duper reduced.
01:36:32
Let's go back and talk about how he was wealthy. That's how it probably happened.
01:36:36
And hoity, hoity, toy, tea. He pleaded no contest to the charges, was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $500.
01:36:46
And he also had his law license revoked. So, Karen, this last brush with the law was all it took for Andrew to see the error of his ways,
01:36:55
straighten up, find Jesus and not cause the death of a black bear. Right? No. Turns out, no.
01:37:06
Find Jesus is how I knew. So a woman named Betty Zaring was his former wife. And she said about him, quote, he was a he was a son of a bitch.
01:37:17
He was a son of a bitch. And then she shot two pistols in the air. This son of a bitch had shitty Kentucky weed.
01:37:24
always trying to give me that weed no she said he was a philosophical incredibly disciplined extremely
01:37:32
spiritual and loyal warrior with his own code of ethics who thrived on excitement
01:37:38
and then she lit a candle on her under his headshot okay she was into that guy yeah I think she still
01:37:48
liked him she likes that guy did your dog just bilch no she growled at me because uh i just realized i didn't feed her dinner but i did give her two
01:37:58
cheese sticks does she you want to go feed her dinner no no no okay she can make it
01:38:03
it sounded like that song bow bow boo yeah she went wow wow okay you have to just give me half an hour you got it okay on september 9th 1985 andrew is now 40
01:38:18
He enlists the help of his don't don't be too surprised by this karate instructor turned bodyguard, a man named Bill Leonard.
01:38:29
So the pair, along with a third man who is a Colombian man that Bill had apparently never met, they get on a Cessna 404 airplane.
01:38:38
So Bill alleges that he just got on the plane. He didn't know what they were doing.
01:38:43
And while in route, according to Bill in a 1990 interview with former Knoxville News Sentinel managing editor Tom Chester, Leonard said that while he knew of Andrew's shady drug fueled, you know, past and reputation, he had not known that this flight was to involve drugs.
01:39:01
He didn't know. Wasn't me, officer. And insisted that Andrew had sprung the plot on him mid flight as the plane flew over the Bahamas.
01:39:10
It was raining and dark. And I guess he hadn't asked, hey, who's this Colombian stranger on board with us, too?
01:39:17
He hadn't asked that when they were getting on the plane. No, it was like, whatever.
01:39:21
Yeah, just a bunch of strangers on a Cessna. It'll be fine. I'm sure nothing will happen.
01:39:26
Andrew, no. Andrew told Leonard the plan that they would pick up 400 kilograms of cocaine in Colombia and smuggle it into the U.S.
01:39:37
Although I can see the logic of being like, don't fucking tell Andrew on the tarmac.
01:39:42
we have to be in the air. He's going to have one of his classic freakouts. He'll just do it. He always
01:39:48
goes along with any plan. Andrew is the main guy. Bill is the foil. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Who's got the cougar
01:40:02
ants? Andrew. Andrew's got the cougar ants. Bill is karate. Bill is the karate guy.
01:40:10
This whole thing sounds like Danny McBride and James Franco got stoned together and wrote this up. This doesn't seem real.
01:40:17
Does it now not surprise you that Elizabeth Banks is part of it? Everyone's like,
01:40:23
how are you going to make this music? I think you just cast it. Yeah, there it is.
01:40:27
OK, Bill said if he had told me, hey, Bill, we're going to Columbia to smuggle 400 kilos of cocaine
01:40:33
to America, I would have gone. Yeah, right. That would have been the end of it right there.
01:40:38
He tricked me. There is no way in hell. I mean, anybody that knows me in Lexington knows there's no way I would do anything like this. I was a nobody. And then he winked at the reporter, nudge, nudge, nudge, gave him a bag of cocaine and walked away.
01:40:53
Tightened up his brown belt. That's right. And karate chops him to the face. And then stole the bag of cocaine and ran in the opposite direction to his dojo.
01:41:05
And in fact, all was well. Then he said about Andrew, when he told him about this plan, he said the look on his face was hard to explain.
01:41:12
He was smiling, but he had a very intense look in his eyes. And he was watching me very closely.
01:41:18
In my heart. Cocaine. in my heart i would love if bill actually was just this foil who had no clue about it at all
01:41:26
it was just like this local lexington dude that he really liked he just thought andrew was the
01:41:30
coolest and i was like come along even though he knew bill would fuck it up somehow and he did
01:41:36
yeah okay but bill hating to be someone who cancels plans apparently uh they move on with
01:41:42
their mission and picked up the freight that was in columbia and were somewhere over florida
01:41:46
when Bill claimed that they heard federal agents talking over the radio about following their plane.
01:41:53
Breaker, breaker. So Bill who picture this Bill had been vomiting over an open door out because that how inexperienced he was on planes poor bill he had like a hawaiian shirt on because he thought
01:42:06
they were going to the hot bahamas and now it's just flatter with barf no but you still can't tell
01:42:11
that's the tommy bahama promise you can puke on yourself and no one will know oh my god um so he
01:42:20
He hears this. He freaks out. He stops vomiting. And he opened a door and kicked three bags of cocaine out.
01:42:27
No, let's get rid of this cocaine. And we're being followed. Andrew, of course, being a businessman, freaks out and is like he hates a party foul.
01:42:35
So he's like, what the fuck are you doing? And the two of them start to argue. OK, Bill says, quote, right at that time when it looks like we're going to rip each other's throats out, he just starts laughing.
01:42:46
I don't know what happened I started laughing The next thing I know we're both rolling
01:42:51
Around in the plane laughing That's probably the safety hazard right Tears coming out of our eyes
01:42:57
He turned around and said I'm really Sorry for getting you involved in this I can see this is not your thing
01:43:02
You're a family man Just do what I tell you and I'll get you Out that's a quote I didn't
01:43:09
Just fucking make that up This is I'm sorry but this is also if You've ever seen the
01:43:14
fucking Peter Falk movie and Ellen Markin movie, The In-Laws. This is a very similar plot to The In-Laws.
01:43:22
This is like, we thought the cocaine bear aspect of this story was the best part of the story.
01:43:27
So we never bothered looking it up. I completely, in my mind, connected it to a totally different story you did the full version of.
01:43:35
And just in my mind was like, oh, yeah, that must be connected to that thing. I know. How did we not know
01:43:41
a story that ended with a bear dying on cocaine was going to be even better? I think it got, it was like
01:43:47
surmised perfectly in that email, the original email, where they were just like, this thing happened, but what's
01:43:53
important is this. Yeah. You know, we're gonna boil it down. I meant to give credit
01:43:57
to the first person, the person who was hometown we read, because they like really brought it into our lives
01:44:03
and deserve full credit, but I forgot to do that, and I'm sure it's impossible to find at this point. It's impossible.
01:44:09
it's impossible all right um i have it it's even impossible that's your name it's perfect setup it's from sam so there's no other details
01:44:20
but it's just sam sam in lexington i know you were screaming your name out there and we heard it
01:44:25
so thank you sam well because it was about my mother's ex-boyfriend the cocaine cowboy
01:44:30
so i think she dated one of the people wow okay she dated andrew probably yeah i'll look up the
01:44:37
Original emo, yeah. Okay. What if she dated Bill? Bill's not the cocaine cowboy.
01:44:41
He threw three huge bags out. He's cowboy adjacent. Here's the thing. He is a cowboy entrapment, A.
01:44:49
And B, if there's a plane following you, don't throw anything out of your plane.
01:44:53
They can see you. They're going to go after it. Essentially, is he, yes or no, a cowboy caricature?
01:45:00
Yes. Andrew's the real thing. He's got a little tiny horse. He's got a tiny hat.
01:45:05
Tiny horse. and a tiny horse. Big head, tiny hat, tiny horse. Cougar. Yes, so Sam's mother
01:45:13
dated Andrew Carter Thornton. Holy shit, Sam. Shit, Sam. Is he your dad's secret?
01:45:20
If only we knew. That's it? Sam, how big is your head? How small is your hat? Sam.
01:45:28
All right. So, Andrew tells Bill to cut loose three duffel bags of cocaine from their parachute and dump them
01:45:38
from the plane. So then Thornton's like, I'm going to help you out, man. I'm going to get you out of this. I'm sorry
01:45:43
I even got you into it. You're not really good at this anyways. So he gives Bill a four-minute
01:45:49
lesson in skydiving. He's like, here's how you do this. Here's how you do this. Put this on.
01:45:53
Quit that. Can I just really quickly with great rage say that's not fucking cool. As someone
01:46:03
as someone who is taught to snorkel yeah by being in in a bay in hawaii with my stuff on
01:46:13
and my ex being like no no you have to like suction it to your face and just being like
01:46:18
you you don't mention any of this yeah at any time before like you don't you're now waiting
01:46:23
until we're i'm treading in 30 foot water before you start to tell me the things i need to know
01:46:29
like you're already scared because you're in the shark tank essentially i hate here's the thing i
01:46:35
really resent people who are bad teachers because they if they already know it then you in their
01:46:40
mind you know it exactly or you should understand take it like they don't even understand that you
01:46:45
won't understand the words that are connected to it that are like you know part of it i get what
01:46:50
you mean fuck everyone yeah it's like it bill who didn't want to be involved in a drug trafficking
01:46:55
situation in the first place now has to learn how to fucking skydive under pressure.
01:47:01
He's like, first of all, what is a cougar ant? First of all, what is an epigram?
01:47:06
Let's start at the very beginning. Is it a poster? Is it just is it on a hat? Oh, we got to get an old school, like inspirational photo of a skydiver and get that quote.
01:47:20
A murdering is already making it as we're talking. Get that terrible epictet and put it over a gram, whatever you want.
01:47:31
All right. Is it like a hologram, but just two sided? Get a hologram. Get a hologram.
01:47:36
Let Bill tell the story himself. A hologram of Bill. The next My Favorite Murder Live show.
01:47:41
We got Bill on stage. Okay. Stop it. And then Robert Kardashian to close. Okay. Okay.
01:47:48
So basically Andrew ties the remaining duffel bag of cocaine to his body with a nylon bag containing his whole kit that he later found dead with Spoiler alert So they so they prepare to jump as the plane on autopilot now flies over Knoxville
01:48:07
So poor Bill jumps first. He landed and the word hard is always in there. He lands hard near Knoxville, downtown Island Home Airport, about three miles from downtown.
01:48:18
he thornton had told him to walk to a grocery store call a cab and then gave him the address
01:48:25
where he was going to meet thornton's girlfriend at the hyatt hotel i wonder if it's sam's fucking
01:48:30
mom yeah perhaps so they go to the hyatt hotel with his girlfriend to wait for andrew to show up but he never shows up so uh let's go back to the morning where the guy finds
01:48:46
the dead body in his backyard that is identified as Andrew. In Andrew's pocket is a key and they
01:48:54
were able to match the key, the tail number on the key to the wreckage of a plane, which had
01:48:58
crashed into a mountain in Clay County, Carolina. They had found it on autopilot and it had landed
01:49:06
about 60 miles away from where they jumped. That's dangerous. So dangerous. Just to let the plane go
01:49:12
off by itself. Totally irresponsible, especially if they're over Knoxville. That's like human,
01:49:17
humans live there. So when the cops or the investigators had found Andrew's body,
01:49:22
of course, they found all that cocaine on him. And they were like, there's got to be more
01:49:25
cocaine than like in the plane. And they searched the surrounding areas and found 220 pounds
01:49:32
of marijuana, of cocaine hanging from a parachute in a tree in Fannin County, Georgia. They found
01:49:40
maps, clothes, food, and all that stuff. A couple days later, more duffel bags of cocaine were found
01:49:47
months later in northern Georgia. So cocaine everywhere. It's a fucking everywhere. It's like
01:49:52
a confetti cocaine cocaine Easter egg hunt through the mountains. So they were they were found months
01:50:00
later but before that a black bear stumbled upon the cocaine enter our friend cocaine bear
01:50:10
spotlight hat cane okay now it's the solo hello my baby lights go down spotlight on
01:50:17
cocaine bear i'm just a little cocaine bear wandering around the forest not high or wired what will my day bring
01:50:32
oh what's this what's this a pile of powdered sugar no well a local hunter who sadly has never been identified because
01:50:46
hero uh had found the dead bear and told his friends about it but none of them reported it
01:50:52
to authorities because they're hunters in Georgia and they don't, I think, mingle with
01:50:57
authorities. They're like, mind your business. Exactly. So it took three weeks for the story to
01:51:02
finally trickle down to a game and fish agent who then told the agents at the Georgia Bureau of
01:51:08
Investigation and they discovered the bear's body on December 20th. So that bear, you know,
01:51:16
as much as it's lived in our hearts and minds, it essentially snorted up a bunch of coke and died
01:51:21
kind of on the spot, sounds like. Just immediately OD'd. No, listen, let's keep it
01:51:27
in our hearts and minds and in Nick Terry's incredible animation that he did of this that's fucking classic.
01:51:34
One of everyone's favorites that they had a grand old time. It was so much fun. All the woodland creatures
01:51:42
came together and got wired. That's right. A medical examiner conducted an autopsy on
01:51:47
the bear and found every telltale sign of a massive overdose. Let's all sing it together.
01:51:54
Cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hypothermia, renal failure, stroke and heart failure.
01:52:01
Oh, no. Yeah, like it died, died. And then I wrote, it's unclear if the detailed plans
01:52:07
to open a restaurant card called Bear Essentials were ever located. Because of course I did.
01:52:14
Because you had to. Because I had to get it in there. George, quiet. George is tonight. The part of the bear is being played by George Kilgariff.
01:52:22
By George, who hasn't eaten yet. Say it. I get that. All right. So but that medical examiner was so impressed with the bear and its state.
01:52:35
And that despite everything, the bear's body was actually in good shape. So he was like, you know, it'd be a pity just to throw this in the cremator and calls up a buddy, a hunting buddy.
01:52:47
who was a taxidermist, taxidermist. And so the bears taxidermy taxidermized. That's a word.
01:52:56
And put on display at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in Georgia.
01:53:02
But it doesn't have like a plaque saying what it is. It's just like a fucking taxidermy bear.
01:53:07
So it doesn't get its full glory just yet. But so there is an approaching wildfire that forces the employees of that place
01:53:17
to load up some of their artifacts into a storage unit. Someone breaks into the storage unit,
01:53:23
steals a bunch of artifacts and cocaine bear. Twisted fucking turns, man. So, sorry, a forest fire is coming.
01:53:33
Yeah. And they're like, grab the important stuff. Dan, you, Jerry, Rick and TJ, grab that fucking gigantic taxidermy bear
01:53:43
that died five ways. Uh-huh. And Chris is like, oh, I'll go get the arrowheads. I'll get the precious, precious arrowheads.
01:53:54
I get the precious feathers and the arrowheads while you guys lug the fucking cocaine bear The fully taxidermied and stuffed with sawdust
01:54:05
Yeah. Hurry up, guys. Okay. Then some creeper creeps into... So some college students
01:54:11
find out that the cocaine bear is at the storage unit. Uh-huh. At the Georgia storage unit on I-5
01:54:20
where I-5 meets the 210. The 210. That's Glendale. Okay. Nearly three Decker. Okay, so it's stolen. Goodbye. Gone forever. So we think. No. Almost 30 years later, after the bear's death, the eccentric, they're described as an eccentric retailer, Kentucky for Kentucky, which you can go online and find their website.
01:54:47
They seem like a lot of real fun people because they do some digging and investigating.
01:54:54
They contact local pawn shops where the storage unit had been and are like, hey, do you remember 30 some odd years ago getting a bear, a taxidermy bear?
01:55:06
And the shop owner is like, yeah, that came in at the same time that some like feathers and arrowheads had come in.
01:55:16
And we found out they were stolen. So we returned those, but the bear was never claimed.
01:55:20
So we sold it. Kentucky for Kentucky. We're like, well, where did that bear go? And they're like, let us look up our records.
01:55:26
They find the records. And it turns out that the bear had somehow, through some changes, fallen into the hands of country legend Waylon Jennings.
01:55:35
What the fuck? No. No. Waylon Jennings. Here on this fucking line, we have Waylon fucking Jennings.
01:55:43
Looking back to Texas. Waylon and Willie and the boy. There you go. So it turns out that Waylon Jennings
01:55:51
has a huge private collection of preserved animals. He's like a big animal head head.
01:55:57
He's a big dead animal head head. Exactly. So he actually, Waylon Jennings, Kentucky for
01:56:02
Kentucky Found Out, has relationships with pawn shop owners throughout the South to let him know whenever
01:56:09
they get like a really good taxidermy or preserved bear. Me too. So they had contacted him and had gone with Waylon Jennings to Nevada to live with Waylon Jennings in Las Vegas.
01:56:24
Yeah, this bear is living now more than ever. This bear has had a more exciting life than any of us.
01:56:31
Oh, shit. Except for Karen in the 90s. Okay. That's true. 90s Karen can't compete with cocaine bear.
01:56:39
Absolutely. So they trace it further in its illustrious journey. And they find that its current owner and its current resting place was a traditional Chinese medicine shop in Reno.
01:56:51
And it's owned by the now deceased man named Zhu Tang. And it had been used there as decoration.
01:56:58
So Kentucky for Kentucky contacts this man's widow, Mr. Tang's widow. And she tells them that her husband, quote, was always bringing home junk from auctions and estate sales and things like that.
01:57:10
The bear was one of his favorite things. He just loved it for some reason. At first, he had great fucking taste.
01:57:17
At first, he wanted to keep it in our living room, but I wouldn't have it. It scared me.
01:57:22
I made him take it to the store. You knew there was going to be an irritated wife somewhere along the line, whether it was Mrs. Jennings or Mrs. Tang here, where it's somebody going, are you fucking kidding?
01:57:38
You're not keeping that near the children. No, full size bears. in the TV room. I come home from an estate sale
01:57:46
with a pair of matching vintage lamps. Mr. Tang comes home with a fucking full size with cocaine.
01:57:52
The full on cocaine there. White powder underneath its nose. So Kentucky for Kentucky in their fucking
01:57:58
infinite glory tells her the whole story. And she's like they said she almost didn't believe
01:58:04
us. But she said that if you've gone to that much trouble, we could just have quote the damn thing
01:58:09
just to get it out of her sight. Do you know what she charged them? Shipping? Yes.
01:58:17
Shipping handling? Yes. For real? She didn't charge them a penny. She said, get it out of my fucking sight.
01:58:22
It was $200 to ship it home to Kentucky, and they fucking did it. No, sorry. Can I just ask a clarifying question?
01:58:29
Yeah. Kentucky for Kentucky is basically a cool store. Is that correct? They have a mall now.
01:58:35
Let me see. Hold on. Let me look up, Stephen. Hold on. It's like an artist collective type of thing.
01:58:40
That's a great question. Let's find out. Okay. I just want details on these obviously cool, fun people.
01:58:47
Because they're clearly our new best friends. Like Preservation Society or something.
01:58:50
Oh, yeah. Oh, that makes sense. So we're talking, there's a lot of, like, calf tattoos. We're talking
01:58:58
about a lot of interesting glasses. I'm seeing. Their website is KY4KY. Oh, and they have the Fun Mall.
01:59:09
Okay, you know, there's a commercial online. It looks like just like a like a cool shop of
01:59:17
like Kentucky gear. It says a kick-ass Commonwealth since 19. Oh, a kick-ass Commonwealth since 1792.
01:59:25
That's about the actual state of Kentucky they're talking about. Got it. Got it. Okay. They look like a wacky bunch.
01:59:32
I'm looking at their about site. There's a lot of there's a Kentucky fried chicken
01:59:35
bucket hat. Let's see. Did you see the shirt? It looks like a Yale sweatshirt, but
01:59:42
it says y'all. Oh, that's amazing. Okay. I want one of those real bad. Here's their mission.
01:59:49
Our mission is to engage and inform the world by promoting Kentucky people, places, and products, and
01:59:54
to kick ass for the Commonwealth. All right. Nice. I love them. Okay. They'll be invited to our next
02:00:00
and invited to give me a Kentucky Fried Chicken hat, please. KY for KY presents the never-ending pandemic warehouse sale.
02:00:08
They also have a commercial for their fun mall that is super kitschy and funny, so look them up online.
02:00:15
Yeah, these shirts, oh my God, you know how the cicadas, however you pronounce it,
02:00:20
there's a thing where they're coming back this year after 28 years, and they're all going to, they have a picture on the KY for KY whip.
02:00:28
It's KY4KY.com. And it's a cicadas t-shirt. And it says, let me hear y'all make some noise.
02:00:37
So they're a fun bunch. They're funny. They're funny and fun. And love to have fun and buy bears.
02:00:45
So they bought it. That makes it even better. They tracked down single-handedly and bought the cocaine bear because they thought it was...
02:00:52
I bet they were drinking one night and were like, you know, it'd be so funny. And what we need here, the cocaine bear.
02:00:57
And they're like, what happened to it? And then they found it really quick. They have a T-shirt that says, I'm not a cat.
02:01:03
I'm I'm here live. I'm not a cat from when that guy was in court. And the cat face, they have a T-shirt.
02:01:11
I'm not a cat. These guys are on the ball on Kentucky style on trend. OK. And there's a cocaine beard.
02:01:20
They have their own cocaine beard. Don't say it. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Part of it.
02:01:24
And what I mean, looking at their website while you're trying to tell your story, I don't know what the problem is.
02:01:29
Let me read this. So the bear is now on display at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington.
02:01:36
They sell a line of merchandise based on the bear, including T-shirts, which you've seen me wearing before.
02:01:42
Someone at our Kentucky show gave me one. Hats, hoodies, mugs, stickers and snow globes that they call blow globes.
02:01:50
Sense of humor. Yeah. Okay, as we all read in Variety recently, Elizabeth Banks has signed on to direct the Cocaine Bear film produced by the dudes who made the Lego movies.
02:02:00
And they haven released a lot of details but the movie has been described as a quote character driven thriller inspired by truth events that took place in Kentucky in 1985 So I hope Oh period piece Period piece It could be great Thriller It could be great It going to be great
02:02:18
And then I wrote, hopefully they'll include the quote that was included in Thornton's obituary.
02:02:23
So Andrew Thornton's obituary, one line read, quote, I'm glad his parachute didn't open.
02:02:31
What? Someone hated him. You make them enemies when you're. Jesus. It reminds me of I curse you with my dying breath.
02:02:40
That's yeah. I'm glad his parachute didn't open. Someone. Wait, that can't have been in his obituary.
02:02:46
I swear to God. Steven, will you look it up and put it on Instagram? They usually don't let shit like that through.
02:02:55
Was it in the guest book? No, it says obituary. I swear. Wow, that's intense. The last line I'll tell you is that according to his friends,
02:03:06
Andrew Carter Thornton II died a millionaire. And according to us, the cocaine bear died happy.
02:03:14
And that's the real story of cocaine bear. There's also a book which has the entire story of Thornton's smuggling operation, as far as anyone's aware of it.
02:03:23
It's called The Bluegrass Conspiracy by Sally Denton from 1990. So check that out if you're into fucking crazy ass stories.
02:03:32
I mean, it's so much cocaine. that's a crazy fucking story that is nuts also it like it's yeah the idea that someone
02:03:45
drops from the sky and dies in your backyard i bet he was dead before he hit the ground low if he
02:03:52
absolutely he had a heart attack first of all because you know he was probably on some cocaine
02:03:56
and then he jumps out in a parachute and that parachute doesn't open at least unconscious you gotta hope
02:04:04
please well also because that just means he's falling straight down so yeah that's gonna
02:04:09
just this whole it's so extreme it's like it's the most like fucking red bull story of all time it's just
02:04:20
nutso 1980s red bull story I bet the movie is going to be sponsored by Red Bull And you can get like You should be required to like chug three Red Bulls before you watch that
02:04:32
Or what about a Jolt Cola? Can we bring those back for this movie? The OG? Or just cocaine.
02:04:39
Or just some plain old cocaine in a nice popcorn bucket. I mean, that was great.
02:04:44
Should we let that story be our fucking hooray? Maybe? Yes, I think that was a fucking hooray.
02:04:50
Right. Hold on. Epigram, a pithy saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way.
02:04:56
OK, what what that guy read? That's not an epigram. You're thinking of an epigram is like, no, I'm saying the epigram was the word.
02:05:07
And then it's like the point of battle is to inflict as much pain in the shortest amount of time.
02:05:14
That's not an epigram is like, don't let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out, I believe.
02:05:20
You mean don't let the screen door hit you where the good Lord split you like that?
02:05:24
Or any number of epigrams. Steven, did you find the obituary? Yes. So in the Rolling Stone article, it says the district attorney who prosecuted Andrew said,
02:05:34
I'm glad his parachute didn't open. I hope he got a hell of a high out of it. Out of that.
02:05:39
What a dick. I mean, unless what he was saying is I love him so much. He's such my good friend that he got the big final high.
02:05:47
He didn't even want the parachute to open is what he was saying. It just sounds different when you say I'm glad his parachute.
02:05:53
It does. It didn't. It does. Very bad. Yeah. Maybe he was like he got the ultimate high.
02:05:59
I'm glad. Oh, I loved him. I'm glad his parachute didn't open. It's what he would have wanted.
02:06:03
That makes that sounds way better. No one wants their parachute not to open. Sorry.
02:06:09
Here's the here's the first example of an epigram. And OK, it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
02:06:16
Eleanor Roosevelt. And then she says, kill all your enemies. Kill them all and let God sort them out.
02:06:24
Eleanor Roosevelt. Love Eleanor Roosevelt. Loving kids. Sincerely. Wow. All right.
02:06:30
Well, this story is full of misinformation. Let us know if you know any other stories that we should cover full of misinformation I think that our specialty Yeah Thanks for listening You guys are a treat and a treasure
02:06:44
And we appreciate all of your hard work and not so hard work. Yeah. We appreciate it when you relax.
02:06:52
We appreciate you at all times. Resting in motion. Whatever. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
02:07:00
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