241 - A Deep Pause | My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.

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Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into Frontier Town

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selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room

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and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.

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Hello! Hello! And welcome! To My Favorite Murder. Say what you just did. I just, okay, we're about to start.

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We always kind of have a moment where we stare at each other through Zoom before, like, a pause, a deep pause,

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And right in the middle of it, I sniffed my armpit, my hands over my head and just took a big old whiff.

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Just out of curiosity. What do you think? Do you think you're sick or anything? Can you tell by your armpit smell if you're sick?

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No. I think certain dogs can. I'm sick in that I love bad smells. But no, I smell.

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I'm an eight. Yeah, I feel like the body odor portion of my quarantine has definitely faded.

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Oh, that's good. The nervous sweat stopped in like July. Yeah. Then the despair sweat has started back up for me.

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Which smells like maple syrup for some reason. My despair is delicious. I've always been a fan, but now more than ever, my own despair.

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I love the smell of my own despair. What a great narrative that is. That's so great.

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Hey, this is, did we already say this is my favorite? Nope, we didn't. This is my, I think we did. Didn't we? No, this is my favorite murder.

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Maybe you did. That's Georgia Hardstark. Thank you. That's Karen Kilgareff. Thank you. Got that out of the way. Get it out.

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Do you want to hear what my therapist said to me today that made me cry? Abso-fucking-lutely. You've always been brave, but you were just too scared for a while.

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To know it. To know. And I was just like, what? What? And I kind of was like, put my hand on Jess. I was like, what?

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she's like say it with me I've always been brave everyone right now listening I'll say it together

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I've always been brave I was just too scared to do it amazing it was basically her saying

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the part of you that's scared is smaller now than the part of you that's brave so now the brave part of you can take over

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that's beautiful and then I was like peace out I don't need you anymore that's how brave you're still a little scared you're still you got this tiny bit of fear

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tiny tiny bit well i've been doing that tiny bit of fear i've been doing the twice a week therapy

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now for two weeks oh report back well i always was like oh i'm i i'm not that bad that i need it

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more than once a week but then i realized it's not about that it's like you're able to get into

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shit deeper that's all that's right so we've been getting into some stuff deeper and like

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constant focusing on it instead of just like what happened last week stories. I mean, it's helping so much.

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Yeah, you can kind of get a consistent consensus or like discussion going. Right. Totally. And also, I think that commentary that you said you felt inside, which is I'm not that bad or any kind of that, like that might be a little bit perfectionistic or a little bit self abusive.

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or self-denying maybe. Yes, for sure. It's just like no one can see you. No one's watching you.

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No one can hear you. You get to go to therapy just like you're going to the dentist.

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That's how much shame you should have about it because it's like taking care of those emotional cavities

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and you're the only one that suffers when you don't do it. I mean, maybe you make other people suffer,

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but it's not a contest. Yeah. And anyone you have in your head that's like, they don't have to go to therapy.

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It's not true. They do need to go to therapy. It's so funny that people are always like, you know, oh, you need to, you know, when people, they tell people in their lives are going to therapy and people that don't understand it say like, oh, what's wrong with you?

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But I just did the same thing to going twice. It's like, what's wrong with me that I have to go?

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It's not. It's not. Actually, I'm fucking better than you. People person not going who's talking shit to me.

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I'm double fucking better than you. And now here's the big reveal. You're the person talking shit to you.

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That's you. you'll hear these things it sounds like my mom speaking of perfectionism i want to recommend

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and therapy and all this shit i want to recommend a podcast that late in the early hours of the morning whatever that means a murderina um tagged me in it to listen to in on Instagram and now obsessed And she like my friend now too Okay so the podcast is called

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the cure for chronic pain, which immediately you're like, well, I don't have chronic pain or

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whatever. But you know, it's the thing that you always talk about, which is that like the body

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holds the score. Yeah. And then also she says, the issues are the issues are in your tissues,

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you know like when you've got shit going on it sticks in your body so it's really just like a

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therapy podcast and her name is nicole sacks s-a-c-h-s and so there's a toxic perfectionism

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episode and i always was like i'm not a perfectionist because i don't do anything right

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so i'm not a perfectionist yeah what was i thinking that's so insane no but i think that's

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also part of that that's part of the perfectionism scam yeah which is i'm less than therefore you

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know it's like always turning away from right that work or that kind of like i it's almost like i don't

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deserve to get better or to get this behind or to call myself a perfectionist that means i think i'm

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great no and i think in today's society women are kind of i feel like so many women are raised

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to be a perfectionist or you're like worthless you know yes so fuck yes with the shit that we

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keep getting shown where it's like oh are you do you not weigh 97 pounds then you better buy a b c

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d and e it's like that's all we never get there they'll never never get your goal weight whatever

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your stupid goal weight is your goal weight your goal face your goal lack of fucking wrinkles your

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goal, whatever. Meanwhile, all those voices are kind of parallel going. Therefore, no one will

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ever love you. Therefore, you can't have A, B, C or D. It's such a fucking setup and it's such a

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scam. Yeah. So I really love this episode and also was an episode about anger, which was really fun

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to put into use and then just get like angry. It was a good episode about anger as well. It's just

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it's good stuff. It's like good shit that you need to hear from this woman who's like your best

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friend, you know, and then it turns out her wife is a total murdery now. So now we're like friends

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on Instagram. And say the name of the podcast again. The name is called The Cure for Chronic

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Pain and her name is Nicole Sachs. S-A-C-H-S. That's what I would assume. Yeah. Really good

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stuff. Love it. That's very cool. Yeah. Because if I saw the name of that podcast, I wouldn't,

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I would say, right, I don't have sciatica. So I guess I don't need to listen to that.

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Exactly. It's like, but it's more of a like self-help podcast. So we should maybe pitch to Nicole, can we make it the cure for chronic P, capital P-A-I-N, perfectionism, insecurity, assholeism.

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Narcissism. Narcissism. There you go. The pain that you cause yourself. Done. Let's change everything.

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I like that. That's great. Yeah. What do you got? What's going on with you? Let's see.

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Well, I started the new Netflix series from Ryan Murphy Ratched. Oh, starring the great Sarah Paulson, starring the fucking unbelievable Judy Davis, the great Cynthia Nixon.

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The cast is unbelievable. I know the wardrobe, the girl who's like the head of wardrobe.

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Jesus, the fucking production design on this thing. Give her a high five. She's incredible.

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So Sarah is like the wardrobe person on that. Her name is only cats and food on Instagram and she posts these gorgeous photos.

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It's like a dream job. Yeah. Well, and she does an unbelievable job on this. It's we watched the problem is that we binged like four in a row.

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So this happens to me. This is just my personal experience with most Ryan Murphy projects.

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He does a thing where he catches you with the design and you're all like my eyes.

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and then someone, you know, someone's skin falls off for some reason. And you're caught in the design and suddenly you're like, I want to look away.

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Oh, you're like, why are spiders covering the room now? Yeah, there's so there's all this.

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It's very macabre, but it start it eases you into it with this kind of like, I love the 40s.

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This is great. You know, it's great, though. It's cool. It's campy. Is it campy a little?

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no it's almost more of an homage there's a real hitchcocky feeling the music is very hitchcock

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it's um it's really interesting but i can't i turned to my friend who i was watching with and

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said uh who's quarantining with me and said that is the same woman who played marcia clark it's

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crazy like what can't she do she is so talented so that woman yeah she's so good um have you

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heard of or watched the show Love Fraud? Yes! Have you watched it? All the way through. It's the fucking best.

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Oh, fuck. Okay. I didn't know. You watched it. Sorry. Stephen, we might... Okay, this is amazing. This is amazing

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because I was trying to think of what I've been watching lately. My friend Allison Fields,

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who is a hilarious genius, she goes, are you by chance watching Love Fraud? And I knew

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just the way she was asking me, I had to go and watch it immediately. It has everything. Everything.

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female bounty hunter who smokes and fucking wants revenge you want her to be your grandma

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she's the best all these scorned women who are like well let's fucking go after him like all of them

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figuring out what a piece of shit this guy is trying to save future women from his fucking

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grasp because what he the way he comes in he always picks these women who are divorced who maybe think

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it's like they're on the sunset of their possibility of ever finding love Totally The manipulation is so disgusting and so painful and he comes in and like within three weeks is like I have to marry you You the one What your dream to open a

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crab restaurant? Then we'll do that right here. Let's take out a loan right now for your crab

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restaurant. And we're going to do it together. And I'm going to take care of you. It's again,

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it goes back to I feel like all of our society is starting to slowly slot into like, you're one of

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four things. You're a straight up fucking psychopath who's just here to do damage and

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get as many boats as you can. And then there's the victims of those people. And then there's

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the people who learn from that and then become like the Avengers of those people. What he

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does to woman after woman after woman from state to state is so crazy, evil, creepy.

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Even to his own family, he does it. And these poor women who are just like, they feel broken

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because they were scammed by this fucking dude. But it's like everyone was. And I feel like when they start to meet each other

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and be like, well, I think you're really cool. And you did too. So maybe I'm not a total,

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like maybe I'm not a ding dong for getting scammed by him because all these women are badass.

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So it's him, it's his fault. It's the manipulation of the one thing everybody wants, man or woman,

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which is I belong, I am seen, and I'm appreciated for who I actually am. And he snakes right into people who are giving up hope on that, perhaps, and going, no, girl, I see it and I'm into it.

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And they go, oh, wow, it's really because he's no prize. So it's not like they're going, this could never happen to me because it's John Stamos.

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I just saw that commercial that he's in. John Stamos is the one you go to. He seems charming.

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Yeah. He's knitting the start. It's so funny. that girl that's in it is so funny

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but yeah it's just that idea where they're like well he's on my level like I could

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get this guy it's not like yeah but then it's so evil did you watch the last episode no so don't

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I won't do it I'm like I'm just gonna tell you I think I'm two away can I tell you

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that he allows them the answer's no you can't okay I'm not telling you I was gonna wreck it is it a spoiler

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admit it it is I didn't think it was but it is so I'm not saying but it just the last half hour we watched of the last episode we watched

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three fucking times oh shit okay please don't tell me anything it's a study on fucking sociopathy

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in being a weasel and weaseling out it is like you gotta watch it so you know what to look for

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great I will and great job for the people who put this together because it's unlike any documentary

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along these lines that I've seen, it combines the best of all kind of... I feel like this is what's happening now

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is everyone's fine-tuning true crime documentaries. It's not the same thing over and over.

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They're starting to go, what would people actually like to see and then mark this story?

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I hope there's another season with a brand new dude. I hope. Yeah, because it's common.

00:15:06

It's heartbreaking. It's a pretty genius idea for a show. Yeah, because they deserve to go to jail.

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Okay, no spoilers. Just also wait, here's a spoiler, but this part. A woman's dream was to open a crab restaurant in Wichita, Kansas.

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That alone is dreaming the impossible dream. She finds a man who says, I want to make that dream come true for you because it's important to me just like it is for you.

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They do it. The restaurant is actually successful, which is hard to fucking do anyway, anywhere, much less a seafood restaurant in the literal center of the country.

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tree but her husband dude her fucking husband oh that comes after it's like i felt so bad for him

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and then ultimately turns yes sorry guys i'm i'm doing to you what i just yelled at georgia did not

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do to me but i'm just it's so karen opening the crab restaurant was this was the the last scene

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of the second episode that we was a cliffhanger and you just ruined it when it was like crab kings

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opening in downtown Wichita. I was just like, these people are out of their minds.

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That's what it were. Crab, that far inland? Are you crazy? Crabs can travel anywhere nowadays.

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And people want it to. That's what's important. They deserve crabs in Wichita. She launched a fucking restaurant,

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succeeded, and he ripped her off. What a fucking asshole. But you gotta feel good for her, and she'll find

00:16:34

another way. True. Watch that show. Watch it. What else? So good. Should we? Yeah, let's talk about merch for a hot minute.

00:16:44

Coming up soon, we have a new spooky Elvis design. That's basically Elvis looking like a zombie cat. Right.

00:16:52

Yep. And the logo itself or the design itself glows in the dark. It's a black sweatshirt. Yeah. The glowing cat face.

00:17:00

It's very death metal of us. Yeah. Which is so us because we're I mean, me. I'm so funky. I love death.

00:17:07

You are hip and down with the funky kids who love Norwegian death metal. Have you seen the Twitter black metal cats?

00:17:17

Oh, my God. It's just like photos of mostly Maine Coon cats who look all serious and like death metal quotes underneath them.

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It's fucking beautiful. I'm going to make sure it's called that. That's good. What else?

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I mean, I'm just mostly in this house, you know, wiping down surfaces and trying to get things done.

00:17:38

But like, I'll be like, oh, it's Saturday. I better put my story together for the episode on Tuesday.

00:17:45

And then it's Thursday. And I don't know. Right. What what how time passed at all?

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No, I chose mine. I had it done. And then this morning I was like this is I doing something else goodbye and like did a whole different fucking thing Full bail So for the past like you know 18 hours I been immersed in this like crazy story

00:18:07

That's all I can think about. And also the world is burning. It is quite a time.

00:18:12

It's not letting up. We all know this. Figure out a way to join hands with your brothers and sisters and the people that you care about.

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because fuck we're gonna have to re-figure out how to like be as human beings yeah aside from just

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like the weird feeling when you go to the store like we went to the store to get some supplies

00:18:31

for our quarantine and of course there was a guy there that was like acting weird and making

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conversation about getting in line and his mask was pretty much below his nose your noses people

00:18:42

nose and mouth it's nose and mouth yeah and then the second i was like you can go ahead of me he's

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I got the sense that he I was like, you can go ahead of me for you. You can get away from me.

00:18:53

Oh, that's so nice of you. And then the girl. I don't know why this woman did this, because I don't think she was using her full sensory thing to go.

00:19:03

Don't start a fight with this guy. He's questionable. OK, so he got in line behind her and did the thing where he moved up right behind her instead of staying back.

00:19:11

Which is annoying when there isn't a fucking global pandemic in the air. yes you don't want people that close to you anyway

00:19:17

no right so she turned around and was like you need to stand back and did a bit of a thing which he was waiting

00:19:23

for and immediately his voice goes up to octave or to volume notches and he's like talking about

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how everybody these days is so angry and attack and I was just like I mean it's I'm

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not saying she was wrong she's not start your space yeah and she needed to do that except

00:19:43

we see the videos we see these people they're not okay yeah or they're mentally unbalanced in a way

00:19:50

where they are looking for a fight right because they that's there's something going on yeah it's

00:19:56

like you you can't treat everybody like they're just a standard citizen like you and they're

00:20:00

deciding right to be all rationally deciding our next step and our next step and our next some

00:20:05

people are fucking not doing that they're not but yeah anyway we just we we got in the car and we're

00:20:11

like, why did we go to the store at all? Yeah, yeah. Everything feels hopeless. There's one

00:20:15

thing we can do, which is vote. Fucking vote. That's right. That's really if you are feeling

00:20:20

like you are flailing in the wind and you have no control over your life and the world,

00:20:26

voting is definitely something that can make you feel a little more in control. And also getting involved in local politics. I've been very inspired by my younger comedy friends

00:20:37

who have gotten since the Black Lives Matter movement really started this summer,

00:20:42

have gotten super into local politics and and sending messages about like how to affect change on a local level,

00:20:49

which really does affect, you know, those policies like around you. I think it's that part, too, is like it's very inspiring.

00:20:57

There's so much you can do. Yeah. There's call banks and are there leaflets? I don't know. Probably. Find out. Find out what you can do.

00:21:06

Just give money, too, which is a great way to feel like you're being effective. That's right.

00:21:12

That's right. Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. It's difficult and it's easy to kind of get unplugged.

00:21:19

I'm saying unplugged. It really helps. Less than one month off of Twitter really, really helped my sense of what the world is actually made up of.

00:21:29

Yeah, for sure. even my two week Instagram almost two week Instagram break really did reset my brain a

00:21:37

little bit it's necessary but also don't you know we're not we're not saying ignore what's going on

00:21:43

in the world whatever you get it you guys know you're murderinos right we can't tell you to

00:21:48

ignore what's going on in the world you won't and we won't either um but don't lose faith and don't

00:21:55

lose hope. And, you know, and if you feel hopeless, then figure out who else, you know,

00:22:01

feels hopeless and help them. That's right. Yeah. That's the way to combat that when you

00:22:06

kind of are bottom of the barrel, because you then call your grandma, call your dad, call

00:22:10

someone that would love to hear from you that you can just by just a simple communication,

00:22:15

make their day a little bit better. It doesn't always have to be the grandest action. Sometimes

00:22:20

it's truly person-to-person connection to say, I'm so happy that you're still around

00:22:27

and you make me happy and you make this all easier. I need to do that. I need to call my cousins.

00:22:33

Shit. Okay. Your hot San Francisco cousins? What? You think my cousins in San Francisco are hot?

00:22:42

Remember, I just remember being backstage at the San Francisco show and you were like,

00:22:46

these are my cousins and it was just the hottest group of people. I was just like, what's up, everybody? They got the good Schatzky jeans over there.

00:22:55

Danny and Mitchie. Yeah, they look good. Gorgeous children. They just all look great.

00:23:01

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00:26:04

Goodbye. Who's first this week? It is me. It is you, Karen Kilgariff. It is I. Are you ready for me to begin?

00:26:13

I am ready. Oh, sorry. I'm just going to really quick before I start say the one reason I'm so excited

00:26:20

to be back on Twitter and it's just for a skim and a laugh and a holy shit my friend Carrie O'Donnell the funniest

00:26:30

from co-host of Sex Unique Podcast he retweeted the like what did it end up being 20 foot giant

00:26:40

skeleton that they were selling at Home Depot over the weekend Yeah, you sent that.

00:26:44

It's amazing. Georgia and Danielle and Katrina. And I was just like, hey, who likes Halloween?

00:26:50

And it's a giant skeleton that looks like it could go above your house. It does.

00:26:57

In a one-story house. It's huge. I mean, that thing. That major day. I love how pleased you are with that thing.

00:27:03

Something about that, and I'm sorry. I don't know what it is, if it's like because my cousin's listening to so much Iron Maiden growing up,

00:27:10

Or if it's just like there's something about like an avenging giant skeleton. I'm like, fuck, yes, here we go.

00:27:16

Well, just the fact that like your neighbors are going to fucking hate you. And it's like, good.

00:27:20

I want suburbia. I want a suburbia fucking giant skeleton. Yeah. Just like to piss people off.

00:27:27

Guys, seek out if you like stuff like this, seek out giant. Decorative. Giant Home Depot skeleton, which now aren't available there anymore.

00:27:35

But they're being sold on eBay for four times the price. Oh, my God. What if we all band together and surprise you, all of us murdering us, buy one for you, put it in your backyard.

00:27:47

You wake up in the morning. It's coming over the hill, that hill in your backyard.

00:27:51

Yes. You could do that like year round. I mean, I do have a birthday coming up. In a year.

00:27:58

Yes. Oh, you do have a Christmas coming up, though. I do have a Christmas coming up.

00:28:04

And I like Jack Skellington. Enjoy a nightmare before Christmas. So speaking of nightmares, my story this week is suggested by a listener named Chelsea Dickinson.

00:28:17

She was listening to the episode where I talked about Synanon, that cult. And so she recommended the story of the Elan School.

00:28:27

Have you heard of this? No. I'd never heard of it. I knew nothing about it. It's unbelievable.

00:28:33

And it's linked to the murder of Martha Moxley. Shut up. Yeah. it's you'll see okay it's so crazy so thank you chelsea because that was such a good suggestion

00:28:45

and she had watched i believe what i interpreted from her tweet to me was that she had watched

00:28:50

there's a 2017 documentary on amazon prime right now called the last stop and it's a documentary

00:28:56

about this school and its history and um i have i have not seen it um i didn't look i took a picture

00:29:04

of her recommendation. And only right before when I went to write, make sure I got her name right,

00:29:10

did I actually look at the full tweet. And at the end, I was like, oh, this whole time,

00:29:14

I could have watched that documentary. I could have just been copying this down.

00:29:19

My usual trick of like, as the documentary rolls, I'm just writing down the facts the

00:29:24

documentary tells me. But I'm definitely going to watch it tonight because this story is nuts,

00:29:29

unbelievable. So if you don't know, was Martha Moxley's murders your first story on this podcast?

00:29:36

I don't think it was my first. I think Jean Benet was my first, but I think it was definitely like

00:29:41

first 10. First month. Five or 10. Yeah, for sure. Five or 10. Okay. So go re-listen to that. If you would like, also, you could listen to me right

00:29:53

now Sorry I don know what I saying It was so long ago We were so new I mean I actually really cringe when I think of people listening to the first year of this show You know in the first oh the first episode was

00:30:05

around Halloween. In the very first 10 minutes, we talk about a dude getting decapitated on the

00:30:11

fucking five freeway by our houses. That's right. But it happened. Okay. So just to give you a

00:30:17

background, and this is really one of the, this is a classic true crime story. It is a young,

00:30:23

blonde rich girls from the sub some intensely rich suburbs privilege and fucking you know

00:30:32

narcissism and fucking kennedys are involved like it's definitely like it has all of the kind of

00:30:39

over-the-top tabloid elements it also is intensely sad but it also is a great example of all of the

00:30:47

true crime stories we were presented with uh first and foremost which is you know a blonde girl being

00:30:53

murdered. So this happened. It was the evening of October 30th, 1975. It was in Belhaven, Connecticut,

00:31:01

which is a suburb of Greenwich. An incredibly wealthy 15-year-old Martha Moxley is out with

00:31:08

her friends on Mischief Night, which is how they celebrate the night before Halloween,

00:31:13

where teenagers go around. We didn't have that in California. I didn't know about that until

00:31:17

I met Vince. In Michigan, they do it. Do they really? Actually, I'd never heard of that.

00:31:22

He lived right outside of Detroit and the fucking police officers or the fire department basically said, say to everyone on mischief night, you're on your own.

00:31:32

Really? That's like the purge. Yeah. It's fucked up. Shit. Yeah. It's really fucked up.

00:31:37

We don't have it in California here. Yeah, no. Well, and also growing up in way out in the country, our version of Halloween was very different than the city kids version.

00:31:48

Totally. we were like literally in the back of a truck with straw all freezing pillowcase didn't we were just

00:31:56

wearing jackets with our costumes underneath no one really knew what we were ever but sometimes

00:32:01

we get full-size candy bars because we were the only kids in the neighborhood that's right so

00:32:05

essentially this is teenagers running around their city ding dong ditching you know kicking jack-o-lanterns

00:32:12

tee peeing houses and trees and throwing eggs at people and cars and whatever. So Martha is out with her friends doing that.

00:32:23

And the next morning, Martha's body is found under a tree in her family's backyard.

00:32:28

She has been bludgeoned to death with a six iron golf club and then stabbed with that broken club.

00:32:36

And there is also evidence that she's been sexually assaulted. So that golf club is traced back to the Skakel family. And there's two brothers in that family that still live at home. Thomas, the older brother, who was essentially like the good looking one, and his younger brother, Michael Skakel.

00:32:53

Thomas was the last person seen with Martha that night. Other kids report that they saw the two of them, quote unquote, falling together behind a fence near the Skakel family pool around 930 p.m.

00:33:07

But Thomas maintains he was watching TV at the time of the murder. His alibi is corroborated and there's no hard evidence linking him in any other way.

00:33:17

No charges are filed and the case goes cold. So just to give you a bit of a background, the Skakel family are related to the Kennedys. It's the father, Rushton Walter Skakel. His sister is Ethel Kennedy, who was married to Robert F. Kennedy. But the mother, Ann Reynolds Skakel, dies from brain cancer when the boys are young. And the younger brother, Michael, takes this death the hardest.

00:33:43

he starts drinking when he's like abusing alcohol when he's 13 years old he starts flunking out of

00:33:50

schools he's always acting out and then three years after the murder of martha moxley in 1978

00:33:57

michael skakel gets a duy in new york so to avoid jail time his family sends him to a juvenile

00:34:05

rehabilitation school in Poland, Maine called Elan School. So Elan is a French word meaning

00:34:15

energy or enthusiasm. And if you looked at a pamphlet for the Elan School, it's very 70s

00:34:22

minimal and with beautiful kind of like lowercase printing. It's between Elan and school,

00:34:30

There's a picture of a tree and it's basically the pamphlets talking about how we take your troubled children and make them into responsible adults.

00:34:39

And they kind of give this idea that it's this because it's, you know, up in the remote, this remote, very woodsy part of Maine.

00:34:49

Yeah. That they're skiing and horseback riding and it's basically like a boarding school, but for troubled children.

00:34:56

Right. But sounds amazing. Send me there immediately. Yeah. Yeah. And it's $44,000 a year in the 70s.

00:35:03

Which today? $205,000? I would guess. Sorry, I didn't. Maybe, Stephen, would you do it for me? I didn't do the...

00:35:11

I'm going to go $206,000 today. It is $257,576. Right in the middle. $250,000. We did that. We nailed that.

00:35:23

That's so me and you, or it's like, you're over here and I'm over here and like, together.

00:35:28

Together we make it happen. Okay, so think about this. These people are sending their troubled teens to a boarding school that costs them $250,000 per year.

00:35:40

For one year. Jesus. For one. Per kid. Okay, so here's a little background on Elan School.

00:35:49

So it starts as a drug rehab center in 1970 and it the brainchild of a child psychiatrist named Dr Gerald Davidson and a millionaire entrepreneur named Joe Ricci And basically it sits on 33 acres of land that used to be hunting ground in a very small and

00:36:10

remote town of Poland, Maine. In 1974, it's converted from a drug rehab center to an accredited

00:36:16

private alternative school for troubled youth ages 12 to 18. It's built as a correctional school

00:36:23

where misguided kids can be rehabilitated using some of Dr. Davidson's, quote, behavior modification programs, along with Joe Ricci's personal spin.

00:36:33

Except NXIVM. Right. So they use tactics like hard menial labor and humiliation to break teenagers down and rebuild them into, quote,

00:36:44

upstanding citizens. Oh, my God. So they actually end up doing interviews on like 60 Minutes and they on different news programs talking about this radical therapy that's used at the school and how it yields amazing results.

00:36:58

Some of the imagery is extreme with the kids yelling at each other and screaming at each other, performing menial chores like scrubbing a toilet with a toothbrush.

00:37:07

But Joe asserts that while these tactics seem extreme, ultimately, they're all beneficial.

00:37:12

And for over four decades, people believe him. Four decades. But can't you see like these privileged kids who have never fucking wiped a sink off after brushing their teeth in their lives to go and experience what it's like to not have help?

00:37:28

Yes. Mommy and daddy and their fucking nannies and shit. Like, yeah, I could see that.

00:37:33

And there's definitely people who in later articles, like in the early 2000s, when this came back to the fore, people came forward and said, look, it was horrible.

00:37:45

it also saved my life because I was really fucking up. There's definitely a section of the alumni who say,

00:37:54

it put me on a better path. And even like, I don't want to have to go back there.

00:37:58

So I'm going to do the bare minimum of behaving. And then you don't, you become a better person probably,

00:38:05

hopefully. Right. The only problem is that these, these tactics, the it's built on essentially children's self-pulso,

00:38:15

Policing and group policing. So it's not the adults or the administration that are in there deciding who's getting in trouble and why.

00:38:23

It's children who are trying to get themselves out of bad positions and into power positions who are reporting each other.

00:38:30

So it essentially becomes a private for profit Lord of the Rings. Oh, my God. OK, so so let's do a little on Joe Ricci's background, because he's really that he's really the guy behind all this.

00:38:42

He's an Italian-American from Port Chester, New York. He comes from a broken home raised by his grandparents.

00:38:48

He's charismatic as a kid, but underneath his friendly appearance, he's narcissistic, manipulative and insatiably greedy.

00:38:56

He has a he gets caught stealing a lot. He also likes to shoot animals. He starts sleeping with his middle school science teacher when he's 12 years old.

00:39:07

What the fuck? In 1961, at age 15, he gets into a car wreck and is given painkillers while recovering from his injuries.

00:39:15

and develops an opioid addiction that soon turns to a heroin addiction. Can I just say he didn't start sleeping with his science teacher when he was 12?

00:39:23

His science teacher started molesting him when he was 12. Absolutely. Yeah. I think the narrative idea behind that, the story is pointing out either sociopathic or

00:39:35

psychopathic tendencies, which have to do with power in all forms, whether it's money,

00:39:42

sex, or whatever. So yes, you're right. He could have absolutely been a victim to his middle school science teacher.

00:39:48

Yeah, for sure. Good point. But then he goes on and at age 15 becomes a heroin addict because of this terrible car accident.

00:39:54

In 1967, so that's about six years later, he's arrested for robbing a mail truck.

00:40:00

So now he's in the full on like life of having to get drugs and, you know, get money for drugs.

00:40:05

He's able to talk himself out of jail time. And instead, he goes to rehab to kick his opioid addiction.

00:40:11

And while he's there, he notices something, and that's that rehab is a cash cow.

00:40:18

So in 1969, like two years after he gets out of rehab, he starts his own rehab facility called Survival Inc.

00:40:27

And he makes a small fortune off of it. What the fuck? Yeah. So his whole goal is to grow his own wealth.

00:40:35

so then he decides to buy scarborough downs which is a horse racetrack in scarborough maine and he

00:40:43

rules it with an iron fist his employees accuse him of being physically emotionally

00:40:47

and abusive and sexually harassing um he is really scary no one ever challenges him

00:40:55

they also all believe he has mafia ties which could be racist because he's italian and he's

00:41:02

running a horse track, but, you know, or maybe it's true. During the late 60s, early 70s,

00:41:08

the FBI publicly suggests that Joe Ricci has ties to the patriarchal crime family,

00:41:13

and Joe sues them for defamation and wins $15 million. Who is this guy? Oh, my God.

00:41:22

He's quite something. He really is. The FBI can't fully make the link between him and the mafia. But on more than one occasion,

00:41:31

people who have crossed Joe Ricci turn up dead under mysterious circumstances. In 1970, Joe meets child psychiatrist Dr. Gerald Davidson, who specializes in, quote,

00:41:42

behavior modification programs for kids who get caught abusing drugs or committing crime.

00:41:47

And being an astute businessman, Joe sees this as an opportunity to do two things,

00:41:52

to make a ton of money off of a school and to wield power over helpless individuals So later that year he opens the Elan School charging the yearly tuition of a student which is in today money

00:42:09

And within the first year, the enrollment grows from four students to over 100. Oh my God.

00:42:16

So now here's the details that a lot of people didn't know about for a really long time.

00:42:23

If you go a lot of times they the states had or, you know, different cities had it set up where if you were a kid that got arrested for doing something bad, the judge, instead of sending you to juvie, could send you to a law school.

00:42:39

Kickback. Yeah, I think so. I think, yes, it was like funding. It was all, you know, doing favors for each other.

00:42:45

Yeah. But if your parents decided that you were too much trouble and you needed to go to law school, what would happen is that in the middle of the night, a quote unquote teen escort company would show up, break down the door of your bedroom, grab you, subdue you, which sometimes included like throwing a bag over your head or putting you in handcuffs and throwing you into the back of a van.

00:43:09

they wouldn't talk to you they wouldn't explain what was going on and then you would just be driven

00:43:14

to poland maine from wherever you were taken from and these are wealthy families so they probably

00:43:20

were like i'm getting kidnapped for ransom for all they fucking knew yes the girls thought they

00:43:26

were being kidnapped to be raped and murdered i mean these kids were in absolute terror and and

00:43:31

part of the thing was that the the people that took them never spoke to them and didn't explain

00:43:36

anything. Then they finally get to this tiny remote school that's way out in the middle of

00:43:43

the woods in Maine. So the Poland, Maine is remote itself. And then the school is away from

00:43:49

everything and in the middle of the woods. It is absolutely, this is a horror movie,

00:43:55

like all the way around. So once the van arrives to the school, the new kid has walked inside.

00:44:02

and it's kind of like they call it an old hunting lodge or an old trapping lodge but it's really

00:44:09

run down it's basically the main building which isn't that big and then these kind of old trailers

00:44:14

all around it yeah and it's really like scary that kids a lot of the survivors talk about the

00:44:22

when they first pull up and they realize how bad it's about to be so the students are immediately

00:44:27

informed they can forget about trying to run away because in those 33 acres of forest surrounding

00:44:34

there are big guards waiting for kids to run through the forest so they can go grab them and

00:44:40

take them back and during a 1979 interview with NBC News Joe Ricci even says the quote

00:44:46

at Elan the first thing you learn is that you're not going to get out of here no matter how many times you run away we will go and get you so then the kid is forced to strip down

00:44:57

and shower in front of staffers. They're given a new set of nondescript clothing. So most of the

00:45:04

kids, you know, have like whatever shirt with their favorite band on the front of it or something

00:45:08

there. It's just they're just replaced with like super plain clothes because the whole idea

00:45:13

is to erase any personal expression or individual personality. The new students are told they are

00:45:20

non-strengths. So it's a strength and a non-strength. Non-strengths are the new kids.

00:45:25

they're the ones that have no, they have no power. They're not allowed to do anything. And if they

00:45:30

break any of the rules of the school, they get a demerit. So let's talk about the rules. And this

00:45:37

list of rules I got from a blog called Suzuki's thoughts.blogspot.com. Oh, shoot. I didn't give

00:45:44

the, I didn't give the source. Sorry. Cause this, this blog is the first like organized thing I read

00:45:53

about this school and it was exhaustively reported by this person. I believe their name is Suzuki Nathie, if I'm pronouncing it correctly.

00:46:03

And it just walks you through what it was like to be at this school. But also, I got information.

00:46:11

There's a Wikipedia and Murderpedia and the New York Times. There was a couple articles around the time of Michael Skakel's trial in the early 2000s.

00:46:23

There's also an article in Bustle.com. But mostly it's information that people have learned from a Reddit forum that got started called I am a survivor of Elon School.

00:46:38

Yeah. So all the people that went there began to find this Reddit forum and started telling firsthand stories.

00:46:45

and supporting each other and remembering. And, you know, it was like a whole thing, essentially.

00:46:52

Okay, so. And then, of course, the documentary, The Last Stop from 2017. I am going to watch the shit out of that.

00:47:00

Right. Okay, so here's the rules that are listed on Suzuki's thoughts.blogspot.com.

00:47:08

Go to that if you want to read more because there's so much detailed information.

00:47:13

Here's the rules. This is what's against the rules at this school. Talking too quietly, talking too loudly, talking to someone without authorization, talking to a non-strength while being a non-strength, talking too much, not talking enough.

00:47:26

sex, which includes talking to or looking at someone of the opposite gender, avoiding looking

00:47:33

at someone of the opposite gender, being attracted to someone, looking outside, looking at the floor,

00:47:40

having negative body language, reacting to insults, slouching, yawning, reading, writing,

00:47:45

drawing, not falling asleep at bedtime, sleeping for too long in the morning, laughing at a joke

00:47:52

made by someone of a higher rank, because it's all ranking systems, doing bad in academics,

00:47:58

being tired, speaking, without permission, eating after designated mealtimes, not eating, going outside without

00:48:05

permission, rolling your eyes, attempting to run away, swearing without permission, smiling without

00:48:10

permission, not smiling enough, making any sort of physical contact, wearing clothes with image,

00:48:17

which just means any kind of self-expression, having bad thoughts, showing or voicing any

00:48:24

dissent. So these kids, yeah, they're completely set up to fail. Now, all the other kids that have

00:48:31

already been at the school, they know the rules and they're there to enforce the rules on the new

00:48:38

kids. But everyone is set up to fail. So no student ever got through a day at Elan without

00:48:45

getting in trouble for something. So the new non-strengths that come in are assigned to a big

00:48:52

brother, a higher ranking student who is serves a sort of a guide for this new student. And the

00:48:58

idea that the student then relaxes because there's someone they can talk to. But the big brother's

00:49:03

job is actually to keep watch over these non-strengths, make sure they don't ask too

00:49:07

many questions and make sure they don't try to run away. Right. Because if they do, they'll get

00:49:11

in trouble. Yeah. And there are stories of big brothers who trick their non-strength into planning

00:49:18

to run away together only to be rewarded when they rat out that kid who and get them caught.

00:49:24

Yeah, that's what I would think is there's so much treachery going on. Like if someone else

00:49:28

is in trouble, then you're not in trouble. So don't trust anyone. The entire setup is better you than me. So it's essentially like a children's version of the

00:49:39

Stanford prison experiment. But that never stops. It's really a nightmare. So we'll just go,

00:49:46

here's a typical day at this school. The students are woken up at 8 a.m. They have to bathe and get

00:49:51

dressed, clean their rooms, undergo an inspection, and then they spend the rest of the day doing

00:49:57

odd jobs, menial jobs, and forced labor around campus. Mealtimes average from five to eight

00:50:05

minutes long. Sometimes they're cut down to one to four minutes. Eating outside of mealtimes

00:50:11

will get you a punishment. So they basically eat as fast as they can and hope that no one gets in trouble while they're eating

00:50:20

because if there's bad enough trouble, they call general meeting. And that means everyone has to get up

00:50:27

and run into this other room. So let me explain this to you. It's so crazy. But before, I'll just say for the rest,

00:50:38

if that doesn't happen, then they do their manual labor all day then from 7 p.m to 11 p.m they have school

00:50:46

now school has no teachers there's no curriculum they're never tested on anything you basically

00:50:52

go into a room you take a book and you copy out of it for four hours after a full day of manual

00:50:59

labor hardcore manual labor and then you give yourself grades and basically this is a sleep

00:51:06

deprivation tactic. They're underfed and they're not sleeping, which makes it easier for them to

00:51:14

be broken mentally and then retrained, quote unquote, into better people. So after school,

00:51:21

it ends at 11 o'clock. The students are sent to bed in military style group barracks. And there

00:51:28

are guards in their rooms called night owls. They stand in the rooms and also out in the hallways,

00:51:34

making sure everyone's asleep, that no one's breaking rules, basically just that no one's

00:51:39

trying to escape. In the daytime, night owls are called expediters. And this is the thing I'm

00:51:47

talking about where the kids are used against each other. So expediters are students. They're

00:51:52

posted in every room and every hallway around the school, and they carry clipboards with notebooks

00:51:57

on them and they write down every quote unquote guilt that they see or suspect a student of doing.

00:52:04

So guilt is when you break the rules. If the expediter doesn't have enough infractions written

00:52:09

down about his classmates in his notebook at the end of the day, they are severely punished.

00:52:15

So the setup is they have to accuse and attack their students so that they don't get it,

00:52:22

just like we were saying. This is some fucking straight up Nazi youth shit right here.

00:52:26

It's horrifying. When someone's caught violating one of the rules, that's called a guilt. I said that a guilt is punished with an LE. That stands for learning experience. That can range from grunt work, like I'm saying, scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush or urinals with a toothbrush to any to something more severe like time in a straitjacket, or they get sent to what's called the corner.

00:52:51

that's the school's name for solitary confinement and some students sent to the corner are left

00:52:58

there for days weeks even months no children in solitary confinement in solitary confinement

00:53:05

and sometimes in straitjackets yeah oh that breaks my fucking heart it's like and also it's

00:53:11

like rebellious kids in the 70s which basically meant you smoked pot you know it's like not even

00:53:17

like you were dangerous or anything to other people. Correct. And it was a it was a kind of a whiplash thing from they say from the the cultural, you know,

00:53:30

rebellion of the 60s of the late 60s, where all of a sudden it was like, did your kid go

00:53:36

become a hippie and start smoking pot? We'll end that now. And this is the way we're going to solve that for you.

00:53:42

So a lot of those people, those parents that were watching the cultural revolution of this

00:53:46

a late 60s happen and freaking out or like I have to like nip this in the bud now and then just go

00:53:53

trust this school that they never go to themselves and never find out if it properly accredited or because they know that it a lot of times like you saying these kids are kind of the extreme

00:54:05

versions where they already got sent to fancy boarding schools. Now they need something that's

00:54:09

actually going to work. So having gone to rehab before myself, I'm recognizing a few things,

00:54:17

but man, that was a fucking cakewalk compared to this. And then my mom went through this.

00:54:21

There was this like movement in the 90s or 80s called tough love that everyone got.

00:54:27

That was 80s. Yeah. Remember that? So my mom joined that tough love or it was like it basically was like be like a fucking disciplinarian, you know, military person to your parent to your children and they'll behave.

00:54:40

I think that theory may work if you're starting young and that's you're consistently that way.

00:54:45

But I don't think you can go in the middle. I don't know. I mean, like maybe there's people who are like tough love saved my life, but it doesn't seem if you if you're suddenly pulling this out.

00:54:56

Yeah, it's worrisome to me. I mean, I get the idea of like having had relatives with drug problems and stuff, that idea that you have to stop enabling.

00:55:05

Yeah. The difference between not enabling and cutting off entirely. And, you know, it's tough.

00:55:12

I mean, I don't I don't know. I mean, if it was effective, people would still be talking about it and doing it.

00:55:17

Right. It would be like, oh, this was the really good, healthy way to solve these problems.

00:55:22

But I think that idea, and this was, you know, when my mom started working in psychiatric hospitals in the 60s, she worked at a place called Langley Porter in San Francisco.

00:55:32

And they had a psych ward that parents, and this is earlier, you know, 65 and on, I believe, parents would send their kids, if they caught them smoking pot, would send them to a mental hospital.

00:55:45

My mom saw it all the time. And there were kids mixed in there with people who really did have

00:55:50

serious mental illnesses. And some of them were just like, yeah, I'm just kind of the rebel that

00:55:55

like, this is my solution. She saw that a lot and said it was really horrifying.

00:56:01

So it was a time where like, there were desperate people trying to do the right thing sometimes,

00:56:07

right? Then there was some some people who were just like, here, fine, just right, this will work

00:56:12

or try this. Okay. So the most, a thing that happened a lot at this school that was actually

00:56:19

kind of featured, it was a thing called a general meeting. So this was when a kid needed to be

00:56:25

punished. A general meeting is called. All the kids in the school are required to run to one hall

00:56:31

and all be there together. A broomstick is laid down on the ground in front of the kid that's

00:56:37

being punished, separating him from the rest of the group. And then all the other kids are

00:56:43

expected to run up to the broomstick. You're not allowed to go past it and scream the worst things

00:56:50

you can think of screaming at this kid about what a fucking loser they are and they're fucking

00:56:55

asshole and you're whatever they can do. They can say and scream anything they want. But the kids

00:57:01

who are running up to the broomstick to yell at the kid being punished, if they don't do it with

00:57:07

enough enthusiasm, angrily enough, you know, whatever, they'll get punished. So it's your

00:57:14

chance to basically prove you're doing what everybody wants you to do by attacking the other

00:57:20

kids. This is hitting me really hard. How old can I ask you this? How old? What's the age range of

00:57:25

kids. 12 to 18 is the age ring. 12. That's Micah, my fucking nephew. It's Nora. It's junior high to

00:57:34

high school. Here's the problem is the general meetings sound terrible. There's a worse thing,

00:57:39

and that's called the ring. So if the administration sees that you get punished at a general meeting for breaking the rules and being bad, but they think that you didn't

00:57:49

suffer enough or that you didn't get it or that you need more punishment, the student is sent to the ring they're forced to put on boxing gloves and fight their fellow

00:57:59

students one after the other with no breaks so no no no they have to box yeah they box somebody

00:58:05

that you know and then that kid gets taken out and another one gets put in and the kid basically just

00:58:11

it's it's student on student violence and this kid just gets the shit beaten out of them basically

00:58:17

Yeah. Extreme public physical abuse. It's incredibly damaging physically, emotionally, mentally.

00:58:24

And in one case, it was fatal. When Phil Williams was just nine years old, his father beats his mother with a pipe and leaves her in a vegetative state.

00:58:32

So his father goes to prison and Phil and his sister are placed in foster care. Phil begins to experience fits of rage.

00:58:40

And by the time he's 15, he's deemed a problem child and he's sent to a law school.

00:58:46

Once he's at the school, he acts up even more, mouthing off to staff and being uncooperative in their system.

00:58:52

So on December 27th, 1982, Phil is forced to enter the ring. The kids take turns mercilessly beating Phil and his injuries are so severe that he ends up dead.

00:59:03

The Ilan administrators inform Phil's family that his cause of death was, quote, a brain aneurysm.

00:59:09

No charges are filed. Part of the reason these abuses went unreported for so long and these stories didn't get out for so long was that the kids were entirely cut off from their families or anyone that could help them.

00:59:22

They also many of them had been sent there by their families and they were told repeatedly, you know, your family is the one that wants you here.

00:59:30

Right. Give it up. They're not there. There's nowhere to go back to type of verbal abuse.

00:59:35

when they finally would move up in the pecking order and earn the privilege of getting to

00:59:42

communicate with their family they were forced to send an apology letter saying that they were bad

00:59:47

and to say uh and that this school was teaching them to be better people and if you moved up in the ranks again you might even get a phone call But again both types of those communications were heavily monitored by expediters and administration So any complaints crying criticism of the school the letter would be thrown away the phone call would be disconnected and that student of course would be punished

01:00:17

So there were a few kids who did actually escape this school, even though they were way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere.

01:00:27

So, for example, in 1979, a 16 year old boy slips past the guards in the middle of the night and he runs 15 miles through the woods.

01:00:37

He finally finds refuge in an apartment complex, but he is found by police officer Lieutenant Ashburn, who knows that he's required to return the student back to Ilan.

01:00:49

But when he sees the bruises on the boy's body and sees the fear in his eyes, he decides instead to take him to a truck stop so that he can hitchhike home.

01:01:00

Wow. So it was basically like, I'm going to help you get out of here, but don't like met each other, I would assume.

01:01:07

Um, there's another story that's, that's, um, that's in these blogs and these different things that I was reading that, that I'm just remembering from a person writing it out. And it's basically a kid, um, earns the privilege to call home. And while he's talking to his mother, his mother hears how robotic his voice is saying, I'm sorry, I'm bad. This school is good type of thing. And she knows something is wrong.

01:01:33

So she convinces her husband to drive up to the school. They make a surprise visit and say, I want to see my son right now.

01:01:40

They're shocked at the state of the school, that it's not some beautiful place that they're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on, that it's like this really kind of shitty, weird place in the middle of the woods.

01:01:51

And then when their son is brought in, of course, the boy knows and is told repeatedly, don't you fucking say a word because when they leave, you're done for and they don't want you anyway.

01:02:00

So just say the party line and you'll be okay. Well, he, they bring the boy in. And again, he's there saying to his mom, it's all great.

01:02:11

You know, he's just like basically trying not to get the shit beat out of him. And then he, he, they tell him, say, okay, that's it.

01:02:19

Say goodbye. And he goes back and basically goes back to his chores going. That was my one chance to fucking get out of here.

01:02:26

And I can't, can't get out of here. And he's so upset and he can't be upset. He can't cry.

01:02:30

He can't do anything. And all of a sudden, administrators come in and yank him out and pull him outside and fucking throw him into his parents car. His mom, after they had that meeting, his mom was like, I don't know what the fuck's going on here, but give me my son right now or I'll call the police.

01:02:47

And he fucking he got he got pulled out of there. But there were students that were not so lucky. And this is this was a turning point. In March of 1993, 17 year old Dawn Marie Birnbaum manages to run away from Elan School and she makes it all the way to Pennsylvania.

01:03:08

and there on March 21st she hitches a ride with a trucker named James Robert Cruz

01:03:14

who rapes and strangles her and leaves her body in a snowbank on the side of the highway. No!

01:03:21

He's caught five months later after the FBI traces his trucking route and links him

01:03:25

not just to Don Birnbaum's murder but the murder of eight other victims so she essentially escaped and

01:03:31

then got caught by a fucking serial killer but when Don Birnbaum's escape and murder, when that story hits the press, people start to seriously question what the

01:03:42

fuck is going on at this school. Because if these tactics are so effective, why are kids risking their lives to get away?

01:03:51

Holy shit. So the stories of horrific conditions all along prompt investigations of abuse allegations

01:03:59

to Maine authorities. In 1975, Illinois state officials pull 11 kids out of the school alleging abuse.

01:04:07

In 1979, a district in Massachusetts bans sending kids to this school because of the mistreatment that they keep hearing about.

01:04:16

But what they find out is none of the practices at this school are technically illegal.

01:04:22

So no criminal charges can ever be filed. And often the accusations are discredited because the people who are making them are, quote unquote, troubled teens.

01:04:32

They're known liars. They're cheaters. They're criminals. They're girls that got pregnant and ran away. And their parents are sending them to like turn turn their life around. So they're it's the ultimate trap for powerless, voiceless teenagers.

01:04:46

So also there's a lot of them that may have in modern times been diagnosed with mental disorders, autism even.

01:04:57

So they're actually not built to follow directions in this militaristic way. Right. And can't express what's happening to them either.

01:05:05

Right. And in that kind of every man for himself way, they're just constantly victims.

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01:08:02

So Joe Ricci runs to the press after Don Birnbaum's escape and murder. He runs to the press to try to balance back out their reputation at that school.

01:08:13

he convinces several newspapers to write up glowing reviews highlight the success rate and

01:08:20

feature positive statements from psychiatrists that works for a little while but in 1991

01:08:27

Joe can see the writing on the wall hold up it's still going on in 1991 last we left off it was like 79

01:08:36

yeah no it keeps on going on to 91 and passed Fuck. It's okay. So, okay. But here's how we bring the Martha Moxley case back in.

01:08:49

Okay. Because in 1991, private investigators reopen a seemingly unrelated cold case from Greenwich, Connecticut, which is the murder of Martha Moxley.

01:09:00

That had been basically untouched for 16 years until William Kennedy Smith is tried for a completely separate rape case.

01:09:10

Right. And then even though he's acquitted of that rape case, a rumor starts that he was at the Skakel house on the night of Martha Moxley's murder.

01:09:20

And that rumor and the fervor with which people want that tracked down, basically a private investigation firm called the Sutton Associates start digging back into the deep into the evidence of the case.

01:09:32

And they find that although William Kennedy Smith was in fact not at that house on the night of the murder, that both Thomas and Michael Skakel stories have changed several times over the years.

01:09:44

So this the Moxley case gets more and more attention and there's more and more pressure to have it solved until finally on January 9th, 2000, Michael Skakel is arrested for the murder of Martha Moxley.

01:09:57

He was 15 at the time of the murder. a judge decides he'll be tried as an adult. The backbone of the case against him comes from

01:10:06

testimonies of former classmates at Elon School. Oh, I fucking remember that. That's crazy.

01:10:13

Yes. Right. Okay. So one former, because I think when I remember this case and kind of seeing bits

01:10:19

and pieces here and there, you're just thinking it's people that went to school with him that

01:10:24

heard him talk about it. Yeah, at a boarding school, a random boarding school, of course.

01:10:28

Right. Everyone's talking shit, whatever. Yeah. Right. So what actually is happening is a former student testifies Michael bragged to the other kids that he assaulted and killed Martha Moxley, but that he was, quote, going to get away with murder because he's, quote, a Kennedy.

01:10:43

more students come forward about Michael's time at Elan. The public hears more and more details about just how horrible conditions at the school really were.

01:10:53

Because Michael's case is so high profile, the bad press for the Elan school is more than Joe Ricci can handle.

01:11:01

And all of this is coming up at right at the dawn of the Internet age, where information is being shared faster and more like, you know, in bulk, basically,

01:11:12

instead of just one story coming out of one person talking to one newspaper. Yeah.

01:11:17

And it's like a local newspaper. So only those people see it. It's now you can read it from all over the fucking country.

01:11:22

Yeah. In an attempt to steer attention away from these things happening at Elon School,

01:11:30

Joe actually comes to Michael Skakel's defense, telling them that he'd never confessed to murdering Martha while he was at Elon,

01:11:37

that that was an absurd rumor. But to the voices of Elon survivors drown out Joe Ricci's attempt to clear his school's name.

01:11:46

How creepy is it that he is going to defend a possible probable murderer to hide his own bad deeds?

01:11:55

That's how badly he needs to hide. Right. So. So. Okay, so Michael Skaggle's trial begins May 7th, 2002.

01:12:05

His defense attorneys use his time at Elon School to gain sympathy with the jury, stating that it was a hellhole.

01:12:12

Two of Skaggle's former classmates from Elon provide testimony describing some of the abuses that they all suffered every day.

01:12:19

one of those former classmates a man named michael wiggins testifies that michael was thrown into the

01:12:25

ring so that kids could beat a confession about of the murder out of him oh my god another former

01:12:31

classmate sarah peterson tells the court that michael was forced to wear a sign that said

01:12:36

quote confront me about the murder of martha moxley for six weeks and that he was subject

01:12:42

to a general meeting where 100 kids screamed at him about the murder. So he basically had every

01:12:49

single punishment possible at that school, according to his ex classmate, which is so

01:12:57

creepy that like, how did they know about that about Martha Moxley and him being tied to it?

01:13:02

Well, what they're saying in the beginning here, and I'm not sure, you know, what the actual

01:13:06

timeline is, but they're saying that when he got there, that he was bragging to people about it. So

01:13:12

And he may have not gotten the situation that he was in. He may have had a big brother that he kind of confessed to that then used it against him.

01:13:20

Because that was part of what they did was kind of got info out of you. You were also supposed to write down guilt.

01:13:26

Collateral. And confess your own. Collateral, dude. That was the thing that they asked for.

01:13:31

Yeah, collateral. Exactly. They asked for it all the time. Collateral, not sleeping and not eating.

01:13:36

It's all the same mind control shit that that we are seeing in the vow that's happening here.

01:13:42

It's standard cult shit. How they break you. OK, so on June 7th, 2002, Michael Skakel is found guilty of Martha Moxley's murder and he's sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

01:13:54

So two years before that, in June of 2000, Joe Ricci is diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

01:14:02

And although he did begin chemotherapy six months after his diagnosis, he dies at 54 years old.

01:14:14

So the Elan school is left to his second wife, Sharon Terry. And she attempts to repair all the damage that's been done to the school's reputation by eliminating the use of the ring.

01:14:27

but all the other corporal punishments are uh kept including the general meetings all of that

01:14:36

is like the nazis being like you know what we're gonna stop doing is imprisoning communists but

01:14:41

every but and that's gonna make our reputation we're gonna fix it yeah we're gonna fix the

01:14:45

public image in 2005 a reddit forum on the elon school yes reddit and this is where it comes

01:14:54

together. It's a forum that's called I am a survivor of Elon School. And they in it,

01:15:01

the survivors share their stories in gruesome detail, supporting each other as they inform

01:15:06

the public in even greater detail about the atrocities that they endured. In 2007, the New

01:15:12

York State Education Department, which used to send special education students to Elon regularly,

01:15:18

files a scathing report of the school. They stopped sending kids there and they withdraw

01:15:24

their funding to the school. My heart is just fucking broken over all of this. It's horrible.

01:15:31

Soon, enrollment numbers start to dwindle till there's barely any kids left. And finally, the state of Maine

01:15:37

that actually renewed their accreditation against the wishes of Maine's residents

01:15:42

who are all against it. Vote, vote, vote. Yeah. Finally, the bad press can no longer be ignored.

01:15:48

They can't get around it. On April 1st, 2011, And then the Elan school is finally closed for good.

01:15:55

It's gone, but the effect on its students caused irreparable damage. Since 1975, at least 39 of Elan students have taken their own lives.

01:16:06

For those who survived, the mental trauma made it hard for them to maintain relationships, keep jobs.

01:16:11

Some committed violent crimes. to this day no administrator no staff member or teachers ever faced any criminal charges or legal

01:16:20

reproduction or legal repercussions for the abuse they took part in at elon school where are all the

01:16:25

fucking grown-ups right it great question even and and there is also a ton of sexual assault

01:16:33

allegations against these staff members lots of them were not teachers they were like friends of

01:16:39

Joe Ricci's. Those are the personal stories and it's horrible. And of course, if there's the

01:16:45

abuses of power that are going on in every other way, it is not a surprise to hear that lots of

01:16:51

children were raped at this school. Of course, it's like a predator's playground.

01:16:57

It is. Oh my God. It's really horrifying. So even worse, the business of adolescent abuse

01:17:06

under the guise of rehabilitation still goes on to this day, schools for juvenile delinquents or

01:17:13

otherwise troubled kids are not often regulated leaving the kids who need love and understanding the most subjected to physical and mental abuse that skirts the line of legality For example in 2006 a 14 boy named Martin Lee Anderson died at a similar behavioral school in Florida

01:17:32

after sustaining beatings, being made to breathe ammonia, and forced to run in circles in 100-degree heat.

01:17:38

Six of the school's administrators were charged with negligent homicide, but they were all acquitted.

01:17:44

so it's it continues to this day because it is this line of what is legal and what is allowed

01:17:51

and what isn't and the pair and the parents the fucking the guardians of these children

01:17:57

are basically saying do what needs to be done so they're kind of complicit complicit well

01:18:03

complicit there well and they're trusting that like the pamphlet is the full story

01:18:10

Right. As opposed to I mean, I bet it happens less these days because you can go online.

01:18:16

Yeah. And actually look people's names up and see what comes up there. Yeah. And hopefully there are people that do that.

01:18:21

But I think the thing the real problem is the kids who don't have anybody on their side doing that for them.

01:18:29

There's tons of kids like the idea that kids in the foster care system are being sent places like this.

01:18:35

There's no one to call home to. I mean, that is so egregious. And it's like the ultimate manipulation of voiceless people.

01:18:46

And in March of 2016, Maine State Police launched an investigation into the 1982 death of 15 year old Phil Williams at Elan School.

01:18:55

But due to insufficient evidence, no criminal charges are ever filed. And that is the nightmare story of the Elan School.

01:19:04

that was one of the most intense fucking stories on this podcast ever yeah i and i've never heard

01:19:12

of it i feel like i've seen clips from a documentary about like tough love like you're

01:19:18

saying schools where it's like there's pictures too on um suzuki's blog spot uh thoughts blog spot

01:19:25

um they have pictures from a documentary and i don't know if it's the one that's on amazon prime

01:19:30

or if it's just out there, people walking around wearing big, long signs that say like,

01:19:35

my name is this and I am manipulative and I do this and I have done this. And it's like this big humiliating thing.

01:19:42

There's lots of dunce caps. There's lots of just like, there's tons of proof that this is the way they did it.

01:19:49

And there's definitely in that, I believe it's 2002 article from the New York Times.

01:19:56

there are people who definitely seem to feel very strongly to say, hey, look, you know,

01:20:02

some people can't deal with it or, you know, they have that kind of stance. But I think that's that stance of the Gen X and older where it's abuse is inevitable,

01:20:14

abuse is your fault. You just have to take it. You need to learn your lesson. Too bad.

01:20:20

And it's luckily it's a thing that's changing these days. But I also think that there's this idea that they're going to boot camp, which is OK.

01:20:28

Like some of these kids need discipline. My brother was a fucking wild kid, 18, joined the Marines and is now a fucking amazing father and husband and is a computer programmer.

01:20:41

And he's a great guy. He would never, never think that you'd never even suspect.

01:20:46

I mean, yeah, you would never know. And now he fucking makes his bed perfectly every morning because he was a Marine.

01:20:51

It's like, yeah, it totally changed his life. And that can absolutely happen. And tough love works.

01:20:58

You're right for some fucking people. But this depravity is not the same fucking thing.

01:21:04

Right. Because there have to be people on the inside of setups like that, that give a shit.

01:21:09

Exactly. And are trained that are there. Yes. That there has to be restrictions in place because that is the ultimate exploitation of people who are – I just think that that's the place where you can fuck around the least and that there should be people.

01:21:28

But it's just like the foster care system where tons of people are needed. There's not enough staff.

01:21:33

There's not enough oversight. And we don't put enough funding and enough money into helping children who need help the most.

01:21:41

Right. Totally. Yeah, 100%. Wow. I'm wondering if I have a heavy hitter, too. I'm wondering if maybe I should go next week.

01:21:52

And you take that shit. We're almost at two. I know. That was incredible. I'm totally fine doing that.

01:21:58

I'm fine with that. And that was amazing. I wanted at one point to stop you and be like, take your fucking time because I don't think I'm going to go this week.

01:22:04

You were like on a roll. So I didn't want to say that. That was incredible. I was like, let's get this done.

01:22:08

It was so good. That was so good. That was so powerful. Mine is a standalone episode because it's a big deal.

01:22:19

Hell yes. I'm going to party till between now and then. I didn't want to mention this because it's so ridiculous. But did you see Paris Hilton just put out an interview?

01:22:29

Yes. And actually, you know what? Let's talk about this for one second. I didn't want to make it about Paris Hilton first and foremost.

01:22:37

Yes But I do think it really impressive because recently there was a story that came out if you don mind me commandeering this point you just made Paris Hilton just started talking about she went to a boarding school in Utah that was very abusive

01:22:56

And there were already a couple people talking about it. And then they were being accused of being liars or whatever.

01:23:03

And Paris Hilton came right in. It was like, oh, no, no, this is real. and they're all like together supporting it and talking about how they were totally abused at this

01:23:12

boarding school. I mean, I believe it. And it's so sad because there's this like want in you to be

01:23:16

like, oh, poor little rich girl, you know, had to clean toilets or whatever. But you know,

01:23:21

there was actual abuse and actual sexual abuse and sexual abuse. There was nobody who would

01:23:26

believe you because they told your parents that you were a liar and are trying to try to get out

01:23:31

of this. And you complain on the phone and they'd say you need to, you know, we need to have tough

01:23:36

love and not let her come back, you know? So there's no, there was, it's just that you have

01:23:41

no authority, you have no, um, not authority, you have no autonomy. You have no rights as a,

01:23:47

as a young person. And you, it's the thing of, oh, you broke a trust. Therefore you're just

01:23:53

thrown to the wind. It's that idea. And I think there are definitely, definitely people like my

01:23:59

sister who are in, that are teachers who work long and hard at being teachers who care about kids who

01:24:05

are quote unquote problem teams or that work really hard and like say an outward bound style

01:24:12

program like fine we'll take you out of your environment we're going to get you to like

01:24:16

wash dishes and get involved and we were not going to take your shit and we're not going to spoil

01:24:21

you and we're not going to ignore you we're going to care about you into whatever that definitely is

01:24:26

a real thing that's what i had yeah that's what i got which is great yeah yeah which is meaningful

01:24:32

But then there are these cases where when it goes the other way and it's put into the hands of people who don't care about kids or their futures, it's the ugliest thing.

01:24:45

Oh, my God. And why isn't it regulated? Why isn't it regulated? Because there's enough money to be thrown around.

01:24:52

That's fucking why. It's always the money. It's bad, bad, bad. It is. Jesus. Okay, but you know what's good?

01:24:59

What? I don't know. We're going to have to read some fucking arrays and find out, don't you think?

01:25:03

We probably should. Let the people tell us. This is from Chlo Flo, C-H-L-O, underline, underscore, F-L-O-W-W.

01:25:15

First chair trumpet at my university. Oh. I play trumpet, which is typically a male-dominated instrument.

01:25:21

So I'm used to having a bunch of guys in my section and have had mostly male principal

01:25:27

players in all of the ensembles I've been in. We do auditions for seating each semester at my university.

01:25:33

And this semester, I won first chair principal in the top ensemble at my university.

01:25:39

This is a big deal because the last time there was a female first chair trumpet player, it was 2015 and I was still in high school.

01:25:47

I've wanted to be the top chair for so long now, but I always was afraid to say it out loud for fear that I would get made fun of or laughed at.

01:25:54

I worked my ass off during quarantine and took that time to shed, which means practicing hardcore, and it definitely played off.

01:26:02

Sorry, it definitely paid off. I still feel imposter syndrome during rehearsals, but I'm working through it and gradually becoming more confident.

01:26:10

The best part is that I get to play one of the best known trumpet solos with that ensemble this semester, which is Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition by Musgorsky.

01:26:21

Yeah, my favorite song. Oh, that's my favorite. To all my fellow female brass musicians, keep at it.

01:26:30

Yes. I'm sorry. I love it. Keep at it. Your hard work pays off even if it doesn't feel like it.

01:26:37

That's so left field and beautiful. And hell yes. And there are other younger girls looking at you, watching you.

01:26:46

And so if you have imposter syndrome, just fucking you're doing it for them. Also know that every other person in your section, in your school, in the world has imposter syndrome.

01:26:56

People start. There's a weird thing right now that it's like it's very female imposter syndrome.

01:27:02

Sorry, everybody has it. It's just dudes don't talk about their feelings and they don't talk about stuff.

01:27:07

And it's a natural reaction. When your fear gets triggered, it makes you try to go.

01:27:13

It tries to make you go home. So imposter syndrome is just one of the many ways that it tries to convince you that you shouldn't be there.

01:27:19

and shouldn't risk. And all you have to do, like my therapist said, is be braver than you are scared

01:27:25

and just work toward that and you're already doing it. Chlo flow. That's beautiful.

01:27:34

As an ex cello player, I fucking high five you. As a flute player who wanted to be a trumpet player,

01:27:41

my heart is deeply touched. So awesome. Fucking join a ska band. Okay. This is from Blue State Girl

01:27:48

on Instagram. I've been thinking about my fucking hurry now for a few months. In 2016,

01:27:53

I had a miscarriage with my first pregnancy and felt like I would never get over it. I was so

01:27:59

broken from it I didn even try to get pregnant again Last year my friend and I at work began praying for me to get pregnant but my anxiety was still in the way You talk about mental health so often And thanks to that and my friend encouraging me

01:28:13

I finally decided to not only get medicine, but to try therapy again, having had bad experiences in the past.

01:28:20

My new therapist turned out to be amazing. A month after starting therapy, I got pregnant.

01:28:26

And in June at the age of 41, my miracle baby was born perfect and healthy. He's been the biggest joy of my life and is the one good thing 2020 has given me.

01:28:40

Yeah. Congratulations. That's quite a journey. Blue state girl. That's incredible.

01:28:47

I love hearing these fucking stories. And it's so important to talk about your miscarriage.

01:28:54

It's so normal, but it feels so personal and private. it. But yeah, there's so many women out there. Yeah, there's so many women and they're now,

01:29:09

you know, now Blue State Girl knows and a lot of other people going through experiences that are on

01:29:14

par emotionally with that know that you can take a hit, you can get knocked all the way down,

01:29:20

you cannot want to stand back up. And then eventually you can want to stand back up,

01:29:25

you can stand back up and you can try again. And that is life. That's life. Resilience.

01:29:31

But if you get knocked down and you don't want to get back up for four years, that's fine.

01:29:36

Yeah. It's totally fine. I love that. And you can come back and then you can have a little tiny baby in June.

01:29:42

I love June baby. A little baby that has, you have to cover their fingernails because they'll cut their own teeth.

01:29:47

Oh, you should put little mittens on their little paws. Sometimes they have weird little scabby stuff on their forehead.

01:29:55

That's because they're new to the air. They're used to being in the fluid. And their nails get so long.

01:30:01

So new parents are scared to trim them. Sure. Do it while they're sleeping. Those both of those,

01:30:08

I think encompass the full range of female experience. Totally brass instruments,

01:30:16

imposter syndrome, miscarriages, baby, having a baby at 41, you know, appreciating that,

01:30:23

but not forgetting the others and encompassing your life and the quarantine. Amen.

01:30:30

Amen. Love it. Thank you all so much for participating with us. Thank you, guys. This is what a great outlet that we all have in this podcast.

01:30:41

And I am so fucking grateful for it. I've been thinking a lot lately about the people we've met at meet and greets in the past because I just every once in a while,

01:30:49

just give myself a little dolt of like, oh, we'll get to do it again. But remember the what? Remember the two girls that brought their grandma who was mad she was missing bingo?

01:30:58

I mean, like just small details like that of like true joy or just remember like the group of friends that all came around the corner wearing shirts that said a thing, but they were all standing in the wrong order and they're screaming loud.

01:31:12

And I mean, like the girl who made us meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potatoes instead of frosting.

01:31:19

How many times we stood backstage eating cupcakes before going on stage? like, fuck it! Let's get high on

01:31:26

sugar and go out there and scream at each other. I mean, what a joke. I feel like the luckiest

01:31:35

lady in my whole brass section of life. You and I are first chair in life. We're first chair

01:31:43

of podcasting and you guys voted for us. Thank you. Thank you. We really appreciate it.

01:31:49

Thank you. So, you know, till next week, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Good boy. Vacation planning should feel like a

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01:32:26

Goodbye. Summer is all about saying yes, going out and bringing the mess home in your car.

01:32:32

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01:32:43

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01:32:58

Goodbye. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.

01:33:05

The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation.

01:33:10

And Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.

01:33:17

And by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day because the future isn't some far-off concept.

01:33:25

It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgi

241 - A Deep Pause

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