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May 14, 2020 /

This episode of My Favorite Murder covers the story of Madeline Murray O'Hare, the most hated woman in America, and her mysterious disappearance. Hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark discuss her life as an outspoken atheist and activist, her legal battles for the separation of church and state, and the events leading to her kidnapping and murder. They also touch on the impact of her activism on her family and society.

Madeline Murray O'Hare, born in 1919, became a prominent figure after successfully challenging school prayer in the Supreme Court. Her radical views and public persona made her a target for hate, leading to numerous death threats and harassment. Despite this, she continued her fight for atheism and civil rights.

In 1995, O'Hare and her family disappeared under suspicious circumstances. The episode details the investigation into her disappearance, which ultimately revealed a tragic end. The hosts reflect on the complexities of her life and the consequences of her activism.

Listeners are reminded of the importance of understanding the nuances of activism and the personal sacrifices made by those who stand up for their beliefs. The episode serves as a reminder of the impact one individual can have on society, both positively and negatively.

TLDR

Madeline Murray O'Hare's life as an activist and her tragic disappearance are discussed, highlighting the complexities of her fight for atheism and civil rights.

Episode

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My favorite murder Hello! Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder, Longform. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:16
That's Georgia Hardstar. And we're good at this. Steve, and on the ones and twos.
00:02:22
We're all here. Everybody. Everyone is here, meaning their own houses, and they're away from each other.
00:02:31
As far away as possible. We've all moved to the four corners of Los Angeles County.
00:02:36
I live in Pacoima. Georgia went down to Downey. Wow. Stephen went back to his old apartment in, what was it?
00:02:45
Alhambra. Shout out. Stephen used to commute in from Alhambra. I would just be like, dude, is that necessary?
00:02:55
They had a nice target. And a soup plantation. R.I.P. Oh, R.I.P. R.I.P. Stephen sent us an article this week, and I was seriously heartbroken that soup plantation is shutting down.
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It's a problematic name. And so, best case, the name is never going to be resuscitated.
00:03:14
And that's great. You got to hope. what made we laugh so hard because we talk about soup plantation a lot,
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and there used to be one near George's old apartment. And then Stephen let us know on the text thread that that's where he brought his girlfriend,
00:03:32
who's a professional chef, on their first date. He brought her to soup plantation.
00:03:38
That was one of our... I love it. Classy, Stephen. And then he sent me back the best gift of Manny from Modern Family drinking out of a little espresso.
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You can't be out. You cannot be in the exactly right network family if your gift game isn't a fucking A plus.
00:03:57
It's very competitive. And I would say, Georgia, you're amazing at it. And yes, but Steven is like, it's because he's so young.
00:04:05
Yeah, it's like you have them at the ready. Right. I pick like the first, but like when I put in a word, I'll pick like the top three, one of them.
00:04:14
But Steven's like deep cut gifts. Yeah. And then of course. You saved up my phone.
00:04:18
Yeah. You've got the savers. You've always got the Kim K peeking from around the edge that just fits everything.
00:04:25
It's perfect. It's like the best beige color in the world where it just fits every scenario.
00:04:29
Kim Kardashian. If you don't know what we're talking about, she's peeking around the corner.
00:04:32
Maybe we'll put it on the Instagram. Yeah. Her peeking. It's just, it's perfect.
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I feel like we've definitely posted it before. We've talked about this GIF a lot.
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But she's got a look on her face that might be playful and she's full of beans, except for that there is actually no expression on her face except for teeth.
00:04:54
So then you can interpret anything. You can project anything onto Kim K's face. And I do.
00:04:59
And it works. And we have. but then Georgia there was the time where you had the cartoon guy that looked like it was from like
00:05:07
a total 80s cartoon and it was like someone told us we did something good I think this might have
00:05:12
been an agent thread and you just had this cartoon guy that looked like I was going like noodling like
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like a guy with an electric guitar and I was so jealous like an air jealous like a air jealous
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like an air guitar going yeah like a nice riff a riff yes perfect like a prideful riff where i
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had done the very like i'd done one of those beyonce queen gifts yeah and it was just expected
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it's like you can do it that's fine but everyone does those ones but did you know
00:05:43
according to tell me your secret according to vince i'm actually really good at air guitar
00:05:48
like you're really playing chords and stuff like it's kind of one of our things where like if I want to make Vince laugh I hate telling all our secrets but like do it no I do it someday on stage Someday when we have a live show and all this is over our first life OK how about I promise our first live show back
00:06:08
Oh, do the fucking air guitar. Yes, please. What a celebration that's going to be.
00:06:13
You know, I almost tweeted this today because first of all, thank you, everybody, for all your lovely birthday wishes.
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Well, to me, it was horrifying. it was horrifying and it was monday but i stayed off because like it's i think it's very cheesy when
00:06:31
people are like thanks so much every single person or whatever but it was really just so lovely and
00:06:36
people said really nice things and it was just cool yeah and then i was going to tweet this
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morning i was going to be like thank you so much and thank everybody and then say um it's just so
00:06:47
sad that i can't on tour i can't go out and do my molly shannon impression impression and do the
00:06:53
Sally O'Malley kick. I'm 50 kick. It's tragedy. But then I, so it's so sad. Then I realized that would make it look like I was trying to make the people
00:07:05
who hadn't sent me a birthday wish, like there could be a guilt implication. I was like,
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just leave it all alone. But I did get sad thinking about how I used to do that on stage and that we
00:07:17
don't get to like, I know in public anytime soon. On the actual day of you being 50 and you've done this on stage, you don't get to kick your legs out and yell I'm 50 while Vince brings out of a fucking tray of whatever some really nice person brought us backstage like donuts.
00:07:32
It's true. With a candle in it. And then the fire marshal has to follow with it.
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I've had, I think, either two or three birthdays in a row on the road. Yeah. I mean.
00:07:44
At least two. Guys. I'm so sick. Guys, we miss you. Well, we have another month until I turn 40.
00:07:52
And then we're just going to go rogue. Then we don't have birthdays. It's our liberty.
00:07:57
I told Georgia I want to restart the concept of the book club. The last time, which was very early in the first year, and we tried to get everyone to read V.C. Andrews, My Sweet Andrina, which was we respect the legacy.
00:08:16
Yes. V.C. Andrews is a legend. She ruled the 80s. It was an unreadably bad book.
00:08:21
Absolutely. It was just strangely dirty, strange. Yeah. A lot of incest themes. Not even the incest.
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The whole thing was incest. Yeah. It wasn't a suggestion. It was happening on the page.
00:08:35
That's right. Very odd. I felt embarrassed that that was my pick. But lots of people wanted to do it.
00:08:41
And so since we're consuming so much more, everything these days, I say to Georgia, let's resuscitate this thing.
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Let's get it back up on its legs and read a book. So we're each going to tell you the book we're currently reading.
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And if you feel like joining us, then we can bring it up occasionally and talk about it.
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But it's, again, podcasting is a one-way street. So we'll tell you what we think about the book, and that's about it.
00:09:10
And you'll comment on our Twitter and Instagram how you feel about it. Yes, exactly.
00:09:15
Which was great. And then tell us what book we should read next, which is cool. Completely.
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And if you get your comments in and we collect them up in time, we can pretend. Read some funny ones.
00:09:25
Yeah, we can have a whole. You know what? Stephen might be able to bring some book club music up under and maybe sound effects.
00:09:31
Like we're all drinking wine in someone's weird living room and talking and actually having a book club.
00:09:36
Let's just work. We'll work it through. Let's workshop it. But here's the book that I'm reading.
00:09:41
What are you reading? Currently, the reason I got excited about this is and also I tell my dad because my dad reads books in like two days on his Kindle.
00:09:49
So I just told him to read this one. So he's going to do it, too. Oh, cool. Jim.
00:09:55
Right. Home Jim. Home Jim involved in the podcast. I sent him this the listener art.
00:10:02
Whoever made the art for Home Jim. Let me find it. It looks like your dad. And there's one photo of him on the entire internet.
00:10:12
And somehow this person, Make Moody. It's not too hard. It's Make Moody drew this incredible fan art.
00:10:20
And it fucking looks like your dad. It looks like him laughing, too, which is my favorite part.
00:10:27
But when I texted that art to him and he was like, what the hell is this? It took me 10 minutes to explain.
00:10:36
I was like, Dad, I told the story of me asking you what you thought about Brittany.
00:10:41
It was a whole thing that he couldn't get through his head because he doesn't understand how they did it that fast.
00:10:48
He doesn't understand why they would care to do it. He doesn't remember what he said.
00:10:52
He doesn't remember the conversation. But he was really impressed. He was really excited.
00:10:58
And then, sorry, sidebar, before I tell you the book, he told me this story. he's getting all the carpet which is so exciting me and my sister oh god childhood carpet yes he's
00:11:09
pulling up all that old mauve i mean like deeply mauve holy late 80s carpet that has wine stains
00:11:17
and sandwiches molly all over it sandwich remains maybe like a little mold by the sliding glass door
00:11:25
where the rain came in one time you know it's all pulled up and he put in hardwood floors
00:11:30
that's like next level right sprucing up your place i know and and it's like he's you know it's
00:11:37
like it was like his project but so it's a father-son team that are putting in these horrible
00:11:43
floors and so they're him my dad's talking to this son the younger guy i mean the son's like
00:11:49
i think my sister's age but they're standing there talking and he's looking at you know the
00:11:53
pictures or whatever and my dad has we when we played louisville listeners who worked at louisville slugger bat you know Louisville Slugger the factory And they made me Georgia and Vince all our own personalized bats
00:12:08
And Steven, right? No. Sorry, Louisville. Sorry, everybody. Steven, we're going to get you a bat.
00:12:16
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting you a live bat. so it's my dad has it in a glass box mounted on the wall like I like your babe Ruth or something
00:12:30
and you hit the fucking home run with it oh my god for real and this was that you remember when
00:12:35
we got those I called him because I thought he'd be so excited yeah and he kept going where'd you
00:12:41
find it and I'd be like god the people from the place made it and I was like so infuriated but
00:12:46
once he had it in his hand and understood. Yeah, it's like it says my favorite murder.
00:12:51
It's got our logo and then it has like a quote in the back. I think it's beautiful.
00:12:57
The coolest gift. So neat. So when he finally saw it, he was thrilled. And then he mounted it in the in the foyer.
00:13:04
Like it's a sword on the wall. It's it's our sword. But so this they're standing there talking about the other pictures.
00:13:14
And then the guy goes, oh, what's this? Did you get like, did you buy this bad or whatever?
00:13:18
He goes, no, that's my daughter's podcast. They gave it to her as a present. And he looks over and goes, no, my favorite.
00:13:23
I listen to that show. And they shut your mouth. Yes. We got the guy putting in the floors as a fan.
00:13:31
Oh, my God. And he thought that I grew up in Sacramento. So he didn't. He's from Petaluma, too.
00:13:37
He's known our family. But I think he assumed I was a cousin or maybe just like, I don't know, or just not related at all.
00:13:44
So he he was his mind was blown. And so when I sent my dad the home gym art, he goes, oh, I got to I got to show the floor guy.
00:13:53
He's going to freak out. Now he's my dad's getting into the whole the whole culture of it.
00:13:59
Anyway, love it. All of that is to say the book I'm reading right now. It's called Furious Hours, Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.
00:14:13
Oh, I have that in my to read list. Yes, it's really good. I think there might be a copy at the office for you.
00:14:22
I'm not going. Where COVID-19 lives? Where COVID-19 moved into when we got out. I'll Clorox it.
00:14:31
Yeah, you get it. Do some Lysol wipes first for Georgia. But the author is Casey Sepp, C-E-P.
00:14:38
And it's so, you know, Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. And then she helped Trima Capote write in cold blood and research it and stuff.
00:14:47
And then this was basically it's about how she came back to her home estate and maybe even a hometown because I'm on Chapter Two to cover this trial.
00:14:59
That's unbelievable. This this criminal trial. And it's so well written. There's it's so fascinating.
00:15:06
I love reading this book. Obviously, nonfiction. Right. Which is fun. That's correct.
00:15:10
Historical nonfiction. Okay. But also historical. I mean, the 70s. So long ago. Okay, that's perfect.
00:15:18
Because I'm reading like a fiction mystery thriller book. So, yeah, you get a choice.
00:15:24
Yeah. But mine's also like murdery and like a whodunit-y thing. And it's by this woman who's written like 20 mystery thriller, like those books that like we love to read on the beach on vacation.
00:15:40
Hell yeah. By Karen Slaughter, but it's I-N, Karen Slaughter. And it's called Pretty Girls.
00:15:46
And I can't, I'm listening to it on an audiobook. I can't stop fucking listening to it.
00:15:51
And it's got like, you know, sister themes. And it's got like strong female lead.
00:15:56
And it's about them solving maybe a murder. And like, what do we do? And our sister got lost.
00:16:01
And like, it's really good. I can't stop listening. So I don't know how it ends.
00:16:06
But I'm into it. But we're in it. Yeah. All right. So if you want to do this with us, we're going to put we're going to put together some kind of followable book club process.
00:16:15
Good idea. Meet us back here in a week. Let's see if we had any progress on that.
00:16:21
Let's see if we remember to ever talk about this again. Come on. It'll be fun. Oh, I'd like to thank everyone.
00:16:28
Thank you. I want to do a thank you corner. everyone who said when I was talking about the bird that wouldn't stop
00:16:33
tweeting by my window all night to put owl noises and hawk noises and it would get scared and run away
00:16:42
or whatever it didn't work but thank you but it has gone away and I think maybe that it was mating and so now
00:16:48
we're going to have probably a bird's nest by our window instead and are you going to take your
00:16:54
Louisville slugger and knock it out of the tree what Oh, my God. Can you imagine?
00:17:01
You take it down off the wall where you mounted it yourself. Oh, the Internet. The ire of the Internet.
00:17:08
Oh. Cancel. That's canceled. It is, actually. You know, it's funny. I went to get the mail today, which I keep forgetting.
00:17:14
That's a thing I can do. Sure. One more thing, a little task. It's fun. I walked out to get the mail.
00:17:21
There was a bird's nest on the ground next to the mailbox. Oh, no. It fell out of the tree, I think.
00:17:26
What did you do? It was empty. There was nothing sad. in it or whatever. It was just like a lot of hard work. Okay. That's beautiful. Don't touch it.
00:17:34
Don't touch it. No, I did not. Okay, good. Yeah, I went down, I snipped it. And I got real close to
00:17:40
it to the mites in it did a little rail of it to see if it was rub some on my teeth to see if it's
00:17:45
coke just to get a little jolt. Oh, I wanted to say this isn't really a correction. But it's more
00:17:50
of a I mentioned my friend because we you were telling said Nancy story we don know the stories that we going to tell each other So I was talking about my friend Luke and I did a weird brain fart on his last name which is awful because
00:18:05
we worked together for five years. He's one of my favorite people on the planet. And I just was like,
00:18:09
couldn't do it. And then the next day, he texted me of like, Oh, my God, I'm so honored because he
00:18:15
listens. Yeah. And so I just want to give the full credit to Luke Womack, who is the most hilarious
00:18:22
man. One of the most fun people I've ever worked with in my life. Such a comic genius. Whoops.
00:18:29
In the past. In my past. A comic genius. He actually sent me a text that said, after we liked it,
00:18:36
I was like, I miss you and I haven't seen you in so long. And then he wrote, oh, and by the way, COVID-19, sashay
00:18:42
away. That was the last text. He's a genius. I love you, Luke. Thank you for listening and being
00:18:49
you and for loving, passionately loving Vivian Westwood so much. Yeah. He really is her number one fan. You know what I've
00:18:57
been watching to stave away the depression? You just watch depressing shit which you do every day in normal life
00:19:05
but now it's like you're hunkered down so like you need to get away. I've just been watching Parks and Rec
00:19:11
over again and it's so joyous. You know who loves that show is Nora. Really? Oh yes. Big time.
00:19:19
How old is she? 12 now? She's 13 now. Oh, my God. I know. That's adorable. It's so good.
00:19:26
It's just so good. Lighthearted and fun. And it's been it's been Vince and I have just been like putting it on instead of whatever.
00:19:34
Yes, that's a perfect. Also, I have to say, this will be Nora's recommendation list because she knows every word to every episode.
00:19:43
But if you're looking for that kind of like laugh out loud, get you through it. Modern family, you know, they just wrapped like their 13th season.
00:19:52
You have a vast world to dive into. If you've never gotten into modern family, I swear to God, the joke writing is superb.
00:20:01
It's so tight. It's hilarious. It's just so good. Yeah, I love that. Should we do a quick exactly right corner?
00:20:08
Exactly right. Let's do it. So I'm going to do I'm going to feature this week. This podcast will kill you, which is a great podcast.
00:20:14
They're celebrating their 50th episode. this week by covering the history of antibiotics, which is fucking fascinating.
00:20:23
I can't wait to listen to it. It's just it's going to be rad. So good. Congratulations on your 50th episode.
00:20:30
Yeah. Ladies. Ladies. Ladies. And also this week on I Said No Gifts, which I believe comes out today also.
00:20:38
Bridger has our game night friend from the Sex Unique podcast, Carrie O'Donnell.
00:20:44
Hilarious writer. Hilarious man. Um, Stephen said he enjoyed recording it, that it all went great.
00:20:50
So definitely check in if you're a sexy, unique podcast fan, or if you've just heard those
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Carrie O'Donnell stories and you need to get more Bridger and Carrie together are supremely
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Terms and conditions apply. See Pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Is that it all?
00:23:10
I think that's all I have. Is that it? I think it is. Looks like it. I guess who's first this week?
00:23:16
Me. Right? That's right. Oh, okay, good. If I just did it, I just didn't answer.
00:23:24
All right. Okay. Woo. Woo. You know when you get one that like you're excited to tell, so you're nervous about it
00:23:31
because you want to get everything fucking right. This is one of those. And this one might be as strange as that Galapagos affair one I did a while back.
00:23:40
It's got twists and turns. It's a fucking story. And you might know a little bit about it.
00:23:46
So this is the disappearance of Madeline Murray O'Hare, the most hated woman in America.
00:23:53
That's right. This story is amazing. And she's amazing. So I got info from. The Austin Chronicle, an article by Robert Bryce, New York Times.
00:24:04
There's an article on Medium by Delani R. Bartlett, Washington Post by Paul Duggan.
00:24:09
There's so many good articles about this out there. There's a Texas Monthly article.
00:24:13
And there's an episode of this really great show, Vanity Fair Confidential, that I watch.
00:24:17
That's about her. I started watching that show because it's on Netflix, maybe? No, I think you can get the ID channel app and watch all of them.
00:24:28
it's I mean I think we've talked about this before Vanity Fair Confidential if you are into
00:24:34
true crime even if it's a story you've heard a thousand times their version of it is unbelievably
00:24:40
and you don't like corny reenactments you want to hear from multiple sources it's it's like
00:24:45
journalism yeah because these are Vanity Fair writers this is like this is the honor society
00:24:51
of journalism right and then they interview like the local journalists it's it's a good show it's
00:24:57
so good. So I watched that. There's also a show, Netflix show, made for Netflix in 2017, called
00:25:03
The Most Hated Woman in America. That's like, based on it, but there's some things, but I have
00:25:08
the Who Plays Who, just in case you need it. Okay, great. So, can I do a guess? No. Starring Kathy
00:25:14
Bates? It would have been great, but like, no. Okay, sorry. Well, let's get, because she should.
00:25:20
Okay. So, Madeline, her name is Madeline Murray O'Hare. Madeline was born on April 13th, 1919,
00:25:26
in Pittsburgh. She's baptized and raised as a Presbyterian in an upper middle class family
00:25:31
until the 1929 stock market crash and her family like fucking lost everything. In her 20s, she
00:25:38
enlists in for World War Two and serves as a cryptographer in the woman's army corps. And when
00:25:44
she's stationed in Italy, she meets this dude and has an affair with him. His name is William Murray
00:25:49
Jr. And he's a married officer. Yeah, and she gets pregnant with his baby, but he's a staunch
00:25:56
catholic so he refuses to leave his wife because divorce isn't allowed so maybe that's cheating is
00:26:02
also not allowed right it's weird because you're okay breaking some rules i don't know how it works
00:26:07
that way so he refuses to marry her she takes his last name anyways so she becomes that's where she
00:26:13
becomes madeline murray and uh when she comes back to the u.s she gets birth to a son and names him
00:26:19
uh william and so his his name his nickname is bill so it's his name is bill murray
00:26:23
Oh, essentially went on to be a hilarious. So back home. So maybe that's OK. Maybe maybe the Catholic part is what made her become an atheist.
00:26:35
Maybe it just she already was. Very good chance. Yeah. She's like, fuck this shit.
00:26:40
So back home, Madeline gets a law degree from the South Texas College of Law. And she moves with her son, Bill Murray, to Baltimore.
00:26:48
And then on November 16th, 1954, she has a second son named John Garth Murray, fathered by an ex-boyfriend.
00:26:55
So she has two kids. So one morning in 1960, as the tale goes, she's taking Bill to junior high, Bill Murray to junior high, to enroll in classes in Baltimore.
00:27:05
And she hears the students reciting the Lord's Prayer at the start of the class.
00:27:11
And she's like, I don't want my son doing that. He's not religious. and they but they refuse to excuse him from saying the Lord's Prayer.
00:27:20
So in a radical move, she takes Baltimore school board to the Supreme Court. Yeah.
00:27:25
To fucking talk about the church and state separation. Yeah. So you mean what our country was founded on?
00:27:33
Right. Separation of church and state. So important. And this is a time, though, it's the 1960s when most I think most Americans considered
00:27:41
themselves religious in some way. there was a lot there was this moral majority there was just you know how you do things and
00:27:49
religion especially catholic seems like christian religions obviously christian religions yeah
00:27:54
christian religions were huge and so um because i that's i mean that's a thing that they my my mom
00:28:01
used to bring that she's like these people that fight for prayer in school right they're never
00:28:06
talking about anything from the torah no no they're never talking about anything muslim
00:28:10
When they think of prayer, it's only the Christian point of view. That's right. It's so myopic.
00:28:17
And so, anyway, sorry. That's exactly. No, I need this in here. I want it. And atheism itself is looked down upon almost like in the same way Satanism was, where it's just like atheism who believes in not any of that.
00:28:32
Of course, people who are religious take it as you believe in the opposite of what I believe in, which isn't that.
00:28:38
But, you know, they're mad and they think they're right. So but still, even though it's like that in America, in a historic ruling, the Supreme Court sides with her.
00:28:47
And there was a couple other lawsuits at the same time and banned school prayer in 1963.
00:28:53
How fucking literally, literally radical. She's a fucking radical. She's a true radical.
00:28:59
Not really thinking of her junior high age son, though, and how difficult it would be to have a mom that's doing stuff like that.
00:29:07
And she's doing it for him. But in the photos from back then, he just looks so unhappy and miserable.
00:29:13
And so so she's not the only plaintiff in the ruling, but she is the loudest voice and becomes like the face of it and kind of a celebrity of it.
00:29:22
And so Madeline, who's played by Melissa Leo. Do you know who that is? Oh, yes. So she like they age her.
00:29:29
And when she becomes the older version of her, it looks exactly like her. It's just this white hair.
00:29:34
like she looks like a grandma librarian and cute and everything. But then you talk to her and you know,
00:29:41
those people that you talk to and you say something normal to them and they immediately, you don't know who they are.
00:29:46
They're checking you out of the library and then they're mad at you immediately.
00:29:49
And you're just like, why? I don't, I didn't, I don't, you know what I mean? Yes.
00:29:54
I was raised by those people Yes Nuns Nuns Those are my people It also that thing It it just ironic because it that thing of like you know the whole thing of like you don want prayer in school
00:30:07
You don't want people shoving stuff down, you know, your kid's throat or dictating anything.
00:30:11
But a lot of times those personalities and the people that fight for stuff like that are the people who shove stuff down other people's throats.
00:30:18
Exactly. So she was loud and brash right back at the people who were loud and brash at her about religion.
00:30:24
and she's combative. She's outspoken. She's fucking angry. She drinks beer. She curses like a sailor.
00:30:29
Love it all. She says, I'm a militant feminist. She fights for abortion rights. She's just like out there and loud about it.
00:30:36
There's a reporter named Valerie Williams who said, quote, I have never encountered a
00:30:40
more bitter, more distasteful person than Madeline Murray O'Hare. She was extremely foul mouth to the point that even though we were doing an interview
00:30:47
about something that she wanted us to do a story on, we had to stop the interview in
00:30:52
the middle because she was cursing so much. which in my whole fucking cunty heart,
00:30:59
appreciate as someone who said the word cunt on, at the grand, on the grand old Opry stage.
00:31:05
I appreciate that. I mean, and also, you know, to, to claim that you're a militant feminist in the late sixties,
00:31:14
early seventies was, it was insane. I mean, like that's, you know, this has only been cool in the last five years.
00:31:23
Yeah, totally. It's very edgy. I mean, all of it. It's also, in my opinion, a lot of times this boils down to being a very intelligent woman in modern society. It's a difficult thing to be the kind of person that's smart enough to be a car. Did you say she was a cartographer in the women's army? Yes. So this is a very cryptographer.
00:31:44
woman cryptographer oh she's doing code breaking yeah and she goes to law school she's a smart
00:31:49
cookie you know she's a smart cookie that's tired of of dumb people ruining shit and the thing about
00:31:55
her being smart is she knows that the loudest voice gets heard because the fucking loudest
00:32:00
voice in the evangelical christians whatever is fucking yelling at the pulpit too and they're
00:32:05
getting a ton of what's what's his face jerry follow jerry falwell right so yeah yeah she got
00:32:10
you got to fight fire with fire but right it's the whole thing of women aren't supposed to be
00:32:15
that way women aren't supposed to do stuff like that when they're not supposed to swear drink
00:32:18
beer right and you're on the other side so they're pissed and so so she appears on the debut episode
00:32:25
of phil donahue he was like that's our first episode we need her he's a genius yes also i
00:32:31
there's no way his wife marlo thomas didn't have something to do with that because she was also
00:32:36
a militant feminist nice but she was that girl so she was like the prettiest version of that she
00:32:42
was like a Gloria Steinem type like let me make this palatable for you fucking patriarchy assholes
00:32:47
so she appears on Phil Donahue's first show to publicly discuss her atheist views
00:32:52
the audience turns against her as does the public yep and in a 1964 article in Life magazine she's
00:33:00
dubbed the most hated woman in America. Excuse me. Leave that in. Which she's proud of. She's
00:33:08
like, hell yeah, and proud of that fucking title. So Madeline goes on the news circuit,
00:33:13
and she criticizes and ridicules religion and religious people. I mean, she's fucking laughing
00:33:18
in their faces. And she laughed at the entire concept of God. She riles them up, and of course,
00:33:23
then gets more press for it. And because of that, she's harassed, she receives tons of death threats
00:33:29
against her and her family. She says like their cat got killed and she got male with feces in it
00:33:38
and her home was stoned. Like, you know, she becomes literally the most hated woman in America.
00:33:44
So in the late 60s, Madeline takes all her infamy and attention and founds the American
00:33:49
Atheists Organization. The aim of the organization is to, quote, defend the civil rights of non-believers,
00:33:56
work for the separation of church and state and address issues of First Amendment public policy.
00:34:01
So after setting up the headquarters in Austin, where she lives now, she marries again and becomes that's why she's Madeline Murray O'Hare.
00:34:08
Her husband's our footnotes in this in her story, which I appreciate. But she found a man.
00:34:13
Yeah, that's true. Despite everything. Just kidding. Just kidding. There's some people out there going, how would you say that?
00:34:21
There's someone for everyone. Madeline becomes famous. She has an atheist radio program, television show called American Atheist Forum, and it's on more than 140 cable channels.
00:34:30
So she's fucking famous. And so for the next few decades, Madeline devotes her life to campaigning against the church's power.
00:34:36
She continues to file suits, challenging religious displays and rituals, including.
00:34:41
So one of the things she does is trying to get In God We Trust removed from dollar bills, which is like, yeah, it's government.
00:34:51
I mean. She tries to get the phrase under God out of the Pledge of Allegiance. She fights tax exempt status for the Catholic and Mormon churches.
00:35:02
That was right. Yeah. And then there's some shit about the moon landing and how one of the astronauts was going to take communion on the moon.
00:35:14
And missionaries wanted to go to the moon in case there were other life forms so they can convert them.
00:35:20
it's just now they're fucking with her yeah crazy it's absurd and there's a clip of her just laughing
00:35:26
about it it's it's absurd so and she's placed on jay agar hoover's list of dangerous citizens
00:35:31
however and maybe because of this atheists all around the world start to fucking send her and
00:35:37
her organization money to fight against you know to fight her fights so at the peak of the american
00:35:43
atheists uh you know height of their power it's estimated that madeline controls up to 15 million
00:35:49
in donated assets. Oh, my God. And one of those fans is none other than Larry Flint who is the owner of Hustler Hell yeah He tries to sign over his million empire to her in case he dies But his brother like this is not fucking happening
00:36:05
But he's like a fan. And she writes for Hustler and Playboy and, you know, throughout the years.
00:36:09
Wow. And throughout the 70s and into what becomes a super religious Reagan era of the 80s,
00:36:14
she goes to court many times. She battles religious symbolism in the official domain.
00:36:20
She fights for legalization of abortion. but in the 80s more and more people are going to church and becoming right wing you know the
00:36:29
satanic panic didn't happen in a bubble it's because yeah everyone it's the same kind of
00:36:35
fucking gasoline that lit this fire well and it's that cultural pendulum that always swings right
00:36:41
it's like this you know the the whatever they call the social revolution or whatever it's
00:36:46
correctly called yeah of the late 60s and into the 70s then there was that malaise and that member
00:36:52
like you know they you know what what i forgot to mention this when i was doing the kent state
00:36:57
story but those were like so many of those hippies and people and call and college students who
00:37:03
thought they finally had a voice and were finally going to change the world it didn't work and they
00:37:08
became and my dad talked about this too they become disillusioned and stop giving a shit and
00:37:12
they're like, I might as well become a fucking capitalist. Yep. And that's what happened in the
00:37:18
late 70s and 80s. Yeah, a lot of those people in the Woodstock documentary is amazing, because
00:37:23
there's a guy that like was at Woodstock doing the whole thing. And I think this is how they got the
00:37:28
Mad Men final episode. In the in the Woodstock documentary, he talks about this insane weekend
00:37:34
that he has. And then he went back to his job, his advertising job and wrote plop, plop, fizz,
00:37:40
fizz oh what a relief it is totally mad men final one right and and he was like basically one of the
00:37:45
biggest ad people after that but he was like he had the whole realization at woodstock of like
00:37:50
this great idea and then it was like yeah it's the pendulum swings and it's like yeah we tried that
00:37:56
it's scary it didn't we i didn't get what i needed out of it no so now we now we go this way and
00:38:01
ronald wiggins says you know let's all pray and trickle down economics right and yeah so the
00:38:07
American Atheist Organization, they still have a membership in the high five figures. But by 1990,
00:38:13
they're kind of dwindling. All the chapters around the country are gone. And the organization is kind
00:38:19
of on the like, low end of the pendulum. And they have tax problems. It seems like maybe they're
00:38:25
laundering some money. That's a that's me always Yeah. And legal fights and you know that they're
00:38:31
doing drain the organization because they have to hire lawyers to fight these fights. And Madeline
00:38:35
starts considering leaving for New Zealand. She's like, fuck this shit. I can't she can't
00:38:40
fucking leave the house. She's been like harassed and, you know, attacked. So on August 27 1995,
00:38:46
when a typewritten note is attached to the locked office doors at the headquarters of the American
00:38:52
Atheists in Austin, saying that Madeline who is 76, her son, her younger son Garth, who's 40,
00:39:00
and Madeline's granddaughter, who's 30, who's actually Bill Murray's daughter. But she is, you know, they're all like a really close little family, the three of them.
00:39:11
It says they'd been called out of town on an emergency. Don't know how long will they'll be gone.
00:39:15
Don't worry about it. And so it seemed it didn't seem like totally out of the ordinary that they had like skipped town.
00:39:21
But members of the atheist organization, they search the family home. There's no evidence of violence or a struggle.
00:39:27
But it does seem like they left in a hurry because it's like the thing of half eaten food on the table.
00:39:32
Like they were in the middle of a meal kind of a story. She throws down her meatloaf and goes, we got to go to New Zealand right now.
00:39:39
All right. Come on. You know how it is. Madeline's diabetes medication are still there.
00:39:43
Their passports are still there. And they left their dogs behind, like, untaken care of, which isn't like them at all.
00:39:50
And atheists take care of their dogs. Everyone knows that. It's all they have. That's right.
00:39:55
dog is their co-pilot god good one um bumper sticker comedy yeah but a few days later so
00:40:05
they're like this is weird we don't know what's going on they try to get in touch with all of
00:40:10
them but finally garth the son does answer his cell phone when they call and he's like don't
00:40:14
worry about it everything's fine but he's really vague about their whereabouts and garth and the
00:40:20
granddaughter robin answer the cell phone occasionally in the next couple weeks give
00:40:24
strange vague answers and the last time anyone talks to them on September 28th Robin the
00:40:29
granddaughter is described as being distraught and after that no one ever hears from them again
00:40:34
so of course a bunch of people are like they fucking skipped town and are living in New Zealand
00:40:38
living it up on all the money they laundered and some people are like well maybe the fucking
00:40:42
people they angered finally you know killed them it's like who the fuck knows and it takes a year
00:40:48
for Madeline's estranged son, Bill Murray, who's now he fucking cut ties with the family
00:40:54
to finally report her missing to the Austin police. But since there's no evidence of foul play, the police don't follow up on the report.
00:41:01
And also remember, this is Texas, which is probably one of the religious places ever.
00:41:05
And so they don't give a shit about this woman as well in the 90s, you know? Yeah.
00:41:10
So a year after the Murray O'Hare disappearance, a reporter from San Antonio Express News,
00:41:16
John McCormick. Now, this guy's our fucking hero of the story. Don't you love it when the journalists are the fucking people who solve the problems?
00:41:24
John McCormick happens a lot. It does. John McCormick is assigned to write an anniversary story on the disappearance of the three of them.
00:41:31
And he just assumes that they fled the country and didn't want to be found. So he starts to dig into the story.
00:41:37
He speaks with ex-members of the atheist organization. And one of those members is a man named David Waters, who's played by Josh Lucas.
00:41:46
Oh, yeah. Okay. Is he a bad guy? Josh Lucas always turns out to be a douchebag. Yes.
00:41:51
Okay. Okay. Just saying. What is he even in Oh tons of stuff Well he was in like Ford versus Ferrari as the douchebag from Ford you know he always is that guy where you like or he like the boyfriend that at first
00:42:05
you think is great and then he's like not great he's being typecast and pigeonholed
00:42:10
when he is because he's good at it so this guy David Waters insists feverently that the family
00:42:19
left town he's like I think that they fucking stole a bunch of money and here I have like letters and shit
00:42:24
to prove it. And he gives it to any reporter that'll listen to him. He's on several news shows.
00:42:29
He's on America's Most Wanted talking about the disappearance, talks to any fucking reporter
00:42:34
about it. So let's leave him over there. After publishing his story, John McCormick gets it. So
00:42:40
he puts the story in the paper being like, I don't really know what happened to them. This is odd. He
00:42:44
can't figure anything out. He puts the story up. Then he gets a call from a private investigator
00:42:48
who specializes in finding missing persons, which sounds like the best fucking job ever.
00:42:53
Yeah, for real. His name's Tim Young. And he had read the article and was like, I don't care what happens.
00:42:58
I need to be part of this. Like, this is fascinating. So the two of them, McCormick and fucking Young, for about 19 months, they chase leads.
00:43:07
They examine phone records and credit card bills. And they're able to place Madeline and her son and granddaughter in the San Antonio area during the month after they disappeared.
00:43:18
And yeah, so in San Antonio, the three of them had maxed out their credit cards with cash advances.
00:43:24
And they find that $600,000 had been withdrawn from the organization's account by Garth.
00:43:32
So after September 28, there's no more activity on the cell phones or any other credit cards or accounts, which just supports the authority, the authority's theory that the family was flinging the country, right?
00:43:42
They're like getting cash in later dang. But it's just not adding up for McCormick and Young.
00:43:48
They just like aren't, they're not, it's not coming together. Yeah. So McCormick's leads dry up until mid 1998, when he gets a call from a man who had read
00:43:58
his article as well. And this dude is like, okay, so my brother is a small time con man.
00:44:04
His name is Danny Fry. He had gone missing around the same time that the Murray O'Hares disappeared.
00:44:10
The three of them disappeared. and he all he knew is that his brother was last known to be in san antonio in september of 1995
00:44:16
which was the time period doing some kind of job with a dude who kept getting mentioned in these
00:44:22
news articles i'm sorry who kept getting mentioned in these news articles named david waters aka yeah
00:44:29
who and he was like my brother who went to see him had actually served prison time with him
00:44:35
So then McCormick's like, uh-huh. So remember David Waters, who we just talked about, who worked for Madeline?
00:44:42
What's his deal? Let's find out. Let's dig. Let's dig. So he had been hired by Madeline in 1993 as a typesetter for the atheist organization.
00:44:52
I don't know if she knew that he had been in prison when she hired him, but she was
00:44:55
very vocal about giving people serving their time and giving them second chances.
00:45:00
So she actually didn't give a shit. What wasn't she vocal about? Sorry, I'm going to keep this opinion to myself.
00:45:08
It's about how darkly I like to toast my toast. I don't like to talk about that.
00:45:13
I'm just going to be quiet. I like burnt toast. So David Waters, he also was this charming, hardworking, smart dude.
00:45:22
So he was good at his job and eventually got promoted to office manager until the family discovers that he had stolen $54,000 from the Atheists Organization Fund.
00:45:33
Wow. No, I almost put this paper to the side. Don't do that. Tape it to the wall behind you.
00:45:39
So the family, they press charges on David Waters. He's only given probation in order to pay back the money.
00:45:46
And so Madeline is fucking furious that he didn't get like, you know, he only got a slap on the wrist.
00:45:51
So in the organization's July 1995 newsletter, she exposes David Waters' criminal background and says everything that he had been in prison for and had ever done, which is that he was in there at 17 years old.
00:46:08
He had beat a man to death with a fence post. Oh, my God. So that's why he was in prison.
00:46:13
And when he was released, he brutally assaulted his mother and urinated in her face afterwards.
00:46:19
Oh, my God. So he was a monster and she put it in the fucking newsletter. Okay. Sorry.
00:46:26
We've been doing this podcast for four years. I don't think we've ever heard that a detail like that.
00:46:32
I mean, we've heard. I know. And I wasn't sure if I was going to put it in there, but I want to just stress.
00:46:38
No, it like gives a very clear picture of it's his mother, his mother. Shit. So this guy is not on the fucking level.
00:46:49
and he worked in the news and I must have been you know with all the money she had 15 million
00:46:55
dollars it must have been thousands and hundreds of thousands of fucking people who got this newsletter
00:46:59
in their mailbox every week it was over by the horoscopes but still it was in there
00:47:04
the atheist horoscope you're fine be nice don't be a dick you're the same as everybody else we all have many
00:47:11
we all contain multitude yeah there's no heaven be nice now the end and he had stolen $54,000 from them. So he's like, you know, he's a bad guy. And shortly after,
00:47:25
so that was printed in July 1995. And remember, they went missing in August 1995. September is
00:47:32
when the last people last heard from them. Right? Do you think the line about him paying in his own mother's face was in the newsletter?
00:47:40
I think it was. And I tried to find the newsletter, I couldn't find it. But I think
00:47:44
that was specifically in the newsletter. It's making me nervous. I know. This happened
00:47:49
30 years ago. Yeah. Jesus Christ. That's fucking Madeline for you. It's called I Don't Give
00:47:55
a Fuck the Madeline Mario Hair Story. Yeah, it's called Come At Me. bro. Yeah, the Madeline
00:48:01
Maria O'Hare story. Come at me, bro, because I put it in the newsletter. Yo, it's too late.
00:48:07
It's in the newsletter. Too late. So McCormick and Young, remember John McCormick, our
00:48:13
newspaper writer and our I'm going to picture him really beautiful. Let's he looks like Paul Holes
00:48:21
in my mind. Private detective. They're like, oh, shit. And they're like, let's do some fucking digging. Like now we
00:48:29
know what's we knew something was going on so they find the phone records for this guy's brother
00:48:35
fry and david waters and they are able to tie them together on the same time and uh you know
00:48:41
that they're all in san antonio around that time and there's also another third fucking accomplice
00:48:46
his name is uh gary carr and he was also an excel mate of david waters and he was a serial
00:48:54
rapist and kidnapper. So it's the three of them at the same time and one of them had worked for Madeline.
00:49:01
And they all had copies of that newsletter in the back pocket of their lead jean. They had put it in a baseball
00:49:08
bat case and put it on their wall for some time in the future when they might need it.
00:49:18
So they'd all been in San Antonio during this time in question and so So McCormick and Young are like, let's bring this to the Austin PD.
00:49:27
Right. Like we have like it. Hell yeah. Like those little red threads with the push buttons that go all the way over to the, you know.
00:49:34
The Carrie put up in a homeland. Yeah. The homeland map. Or the true detective style.
00:49:39
You know, it's like the fucking classic. They all added up and they were like, what's up, Austin PD?
00:49:44
Here you go. And Austin PD was like, we don't give a fuck. She bugged us. There's nobody.
00:49:51
so there's nothing we can do about it goodbye so they're like she was not hot and she swore
00:49:57
so fuck her right so whatever they move on and finally by sheer fucking godly maybe coincidence
00:50:06
it was the lord working okay so by sheer coincidence mccormack sees a story in a
00:50:11
dallas newspaper about how three years earlier in 1995 a headless handless corpse had been found
00:50:18
nearby in the Trinity River. And he contacts the Dallas police with information. And he's like,
00:50:24
I think I know who this is. And with DNA testing in early 1999, it's confirmed that the corpse is
00:50:29
Danny Fry, the brother that the guy had called about his brother who was one of David Waters
00:50:35
accomplices. Whoa. Yeah. Not a good sign for everybody else. No. No. So McCormick writes an
00:50:43
article about the whole thing finally gets the attention of not just the police, but the FBI.
00:50:50
And then they find out that the IRS special and an IRS special agent, Edmund Martin,
00:50:55
had been looking into this case since 1997, because he was like, this is fucking money laundering,
00:51:00
if nothing else. Yeah, because they had already evaded taxes and shit, and they owed a bunch of
00:51:04
money to the IRS. So he'd been looking into it. So you've now you get to fold in. So there's the
00:51:09
intrepid, beautiful reporter. There's the intrepid, beautiful detective. Uh-huh. Private
00:51:14
investigator. Yeah. Private investigator, Paul Holstile. Uh-huh. And now there's a nerd from
00:51:19
the IRS coming in just to fill out that ragtag team. So finally, on March 24th, 1999, seven weeks
00:51:27
after McCormick's story is published, the agents from the IRS, the FBI, and the Dallas County
00:51:32
Sheriff's Office raid the apartments of the two surviving, you know, accomplices. Yeah. Car and
00:51:39
Waters. And then David Waters run down shitty ass apartment. And they're like, why does he have a
00:51:44
shitty apartment if he stole $600,000 from these people? They find 119 rounds of ammunition. And
00:51:50
it's a parole violation because he's on parole for stealing the money from before. Great. That's
00:51:55
good news. That's good news. So he David Waters is arrested. Gary Carr is also arrested for similar
00:52:01
parole violations. And Waters is sentenced to eight years on the weapons charge, but 60 years
00:52:07
for violating the terms of his parole. You would have hoped. Six zero? Yes. 16. Six D.
00:52:13
Six zero. Wow. And he was like in his 50s by then. So you would have hoped that he got 60 years for murdering a person with a fence post.
00:52:20
But no, it's for violating parole. It was a different time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then I wrote, okay, but what does this have to do with murder, Georgia?
00:52:27
I was like, you're off track at this point. There's lots of murder so far. That's true.
00:52:32
There's a headless, handless corpse in a river. Right. That's murder. most likely people want it's a worse murder so here's what happens knowing that he's going to
00:52:43
prison for the rest of his life that's on his parole violations and not he doesn't want to be
00:52:48
in a texas state prison anymore he wants that sweet sweet fucking federal cushy prison oh yeah
00:52:53
where there's all the tennis lessons and stuff exactly easy in 2001 he's like all right i'll
00:52:59
confess to everything if you put me in a federal prison and he does it and he fucking begins telling
00:53:04
the story of the kidnapping and murder of Madeline, her son Garth, and her granddaughter
00:53:09
Robin. So on August 27, 1995, he says, the three convicts, Waters, Carr, and Fry, all armed with handguns,
00:53:18
they use a delivery man ruse. They surprise Madeline, Garth, and Robin at the Atheid's headquarters, kidnap them, take
00:53:24
them to a motel in San Antonio, demand the contents of their bank account, which is the
00:53:29
$600,000, which is in New Zealand. so maybe that money money laundering is true uh-huh but because and they're like we'll let
00:53:37
you go unharmed once we have the money but because it's in fucking new zealand it turns out that it's
00:53:42
going to take a long time to get to the u.s 30 fucking days so in this like it's an it's like
00:53:48
an apartment motel what are those long-term living apartments called yeah i think it's
00:53:52
long term extended stay extended stay it an extended stay place they all they end up staying there for 30 days together They play cards they watch TV they get fucking takeout and they kind of like become friends and begin to trust each other So the money is on its way gets it gets stuck in
00:54:10
a bank in New Jersey. And the son Garth and David Waters actually get on a plane and fly there
00:54:16
together. So Garth can get it out. And he trusts that he's not going to get killed so much that he
00:54:21
doesn't alert anyone to what's going on. Whoa. Yeah. Like he believes them that they're not
00:54:26
going to kill him and his family, his mom and niece. So not even. Oh, I know. Wow. And you
00:54:33
know what? Maybe they weren't going to because according to the story, and who knows if it's
00:54:37
true, when they get back from New Jersey, David Waters goes in and learns that Carr, who was a
00:54:44
rapist, remember? Yeah. Had raped and murdered young Robin, the granddaughter. No, that's
00:54:51
according to the story. And so Garth and Madeline don't know about that. And they finally get the
00:54:56
$600,000. And they trade it all for gold coins at the local jewelry store. And once they have the
00:55:02
money, the three convicts attack Garth in his sleep, they put a leather belt around his neck,
00:55:07
and he's fucking six, four and over 200 pounds. And so he puts up this huge fight against these
00:55:12
three men. But eventually they put a bag over his head and he suffocates to death. It's awful.
00:55:19
It's so it's these people. I mean, it's just so fucking sad and heartbreaking and and greedy and mean and terrible.
00:55:27
And dumb. And dumb. And Madeline's killed in the same fucking way. Oh, God. It's really awful.
00:55:35
The three of them take the bodies back to Austin and the storage unit. They dismember the bodies with a bow saw.
00:55:41
They put them each into 55 gallon barrels and then they drive to a remote area and bury the barrels.
00:55:47
And at some point, maybe when they were burying the family, David Waters shoots Fry in the back of the head, killing him.
00:55:55
Maybe he was a double crosser or something. Yeah. And remember the headless body that's found.
00:56:00
It's his. And they throw his head and hands into the pit with the rest of them. Good God.
00:56:07
Yeah. So afterwards, Waters and Carr go on a fucking spending spree. They spend nearly $80,000 of that $600,000.
00:56:15
but the rest of it, the almost $500,000 they put in a suitcase in a different storage unit.
00:56:22
And now, fucking ironically, and this does make me believe in a higher power three local teenage hoodlums are on a fucking spree.
00:56:32
How God works through teenage hoodlums? 100%? God works in mysterious teenage hoodlums.
00:56:39
They fucking start breaking into storage units. they steal the fucking suitcase yes all the money that they this fucking three people were killed for
00:56:51
they steal it they go on a crazy spending spree eventually they get caught as well but it's like
00:56:57
you know can you imagine like david waters walking up to his fucking storage unit and that shit got
00:57:03
stolen it was it's like fargo it's just this fucking it is it's a total fargo and it also
00:57:09
is that thing of like all the work i mean it's very similar to fargo all the work to put in to
00:57:15
stay with that family for a month yeah you have to live with the people you're eventually going
00:57:21
to murder like what how could you do it it's it's horrifying it just shows how there's just so many
00:57:28
people who don't have a conscience that like yeah we'll do such things to people that they get to
00:57:32
know and like, you know, play cards with and shit. It's just for money. Just for Fargo.
00:57:39
All of that for just a little bit of money. That's right. After his confession, David Waters leads the police to the remote ranch in Camp Wood, Texas.
00:57:46
They find the shallow grave with three dismembered skeletons and the hands and skull with a bullet
00:57:52
hole in them. Madeline is identified by the serial number on her artificial hip and later the others
00:57:57
are all identified through DNA. Gary Carr is given two life sentences without the possibility of parole for all of the crimes,
00:58:05
but they don't ever try them for the murder. No one ever gets tried for murder and kidnapping.
00:58:11
David Waters dies of lung cancer on January 27th, 2003 in federal prison. And yeah, no one's ever tried for the murders.
00:58:18
But in an ironic twist, when they do go to court for these life sentences, the swearing on a Bible, the in God part is taken out partly because of Madeline's fight
00:58:28
to get God out of government. Wow. Isn't that amazing? Yes. So finally, the Murray O'Hara's are reburied in an unmarked grave to protect them from vandals
00:58:39
by their son, Bill Murray, William Murray. He, even though he's estranged and clearly doesn't like his mom, he respects her wishes
00:58:48
and allows no prayers or religious services at their funeral, despite the fact that he
00:58:53
is now an evangelical Christian. Of course he is. Right. Because you can't make your children do what you want them to do.
00:58:59
No, no. In fact, he founded the Religious Freedom Coalition, which is the largest and most powerful Christian right lobbying group in the nation.
00:59:08
It's like, yeah, people. Yeah, it's just how it works. Here's a quote from Madeline Marie O'Hare.
00:59:15
She says, I told my kids I just want three words on my tombstone. If I have one woman, atheist, anarchist, that's me.
00:59:23
And that is the mysterious disappearance and murder of Madeline Murray O'Hare. Unbelievable.
00:59:30
Unbelievable story. How bananas is that? It's really, I mean, it's that's amazing that you said that because it really is very parallel to Fargo.
00:59:40
Totally. Just a lot less funny, but still just that insane. And I mean, look, I love a loud, obnoxious woman.
00:59:50
Clearly, I am one. Clearly, I love to swear. Clearly, I don't give a fuck. But there is that thing that I think I learned more recently in my older age which is that it is a much more peaceful life when you not so obsessed with these ideas in your head of how you need it to be
01:00:11
Because it isn't true. Even if it's like, yeah, I honestly personally believe that there needs to be a separation of church and state, because when you don't separate church from the government, then the church is used to sway people and to hold power over people where it doesn't belong.
01:00:29
It should not be allowed. And it's also not considering everybody because everyone only thinks church as in Catholic or Christian church, which doesn't represent America.
01:00:39
This is a country filled with all kinds of religions and backgrounds and atheists.
01:00:45
And you have to represent this country when you're talking about the government, the official representative of the country.
01:00:52
Right. But if you take your if you get so attached to your crusade that you start going in basically the same direction that you're accusing the people of being the oppressors, then you the oppressed become the oppressors.
01:01:08
it's absolute power that corrupts absolutely it's the same thing every time yeah totally i didn't
01:01:14
realize i had such a speechy i mean i love to make a speech but i love it and it's great like
01:01:19
i love the i love the concept of her yes but i wish she had aimed more for the middle because
01:01:24
you can't you can't just mimic the people you hate you can't be exactly the same as them and
01:01:30
then go they're the ones that are wrong well no one now you're doing it too you know your side
01:01:33
cheers for you and the other side yells their their version of that right back at you and their
01:01:39
side cheers for them and no no one ever learns anything no one ever comes to an understanding
01:01:43
no one says i get what you're saying but i don't agree with it it's i need to destroy you and yes
01:01:50
and you can't move welcome to 2020 america exactly you can't move forward if that's what's happening
01:01:57
Right. And I mean, maybe not to be overly philosophical now, but maybe that's the huge benefit of such an insane thing like this pandemic. And something as awful as what this country is going through right now and the death that people are seeing that it's waking them up to this idea that this big concept of whatever side they're on is merely a concept.
01:02:19
Right. And what they need to do is whoever lives next door to them, no matter where that person lands in the political spectrum or the religious spectrum or the whatever, make sure that person's OK because it's your neighbor and you should give a shit about the people around you and you shouldn't be picking teams.
01:02:37
You should be trying to help like because, you know, sorry. No, no, I'm just saying that's like, you know, kindergarten.
01:02:44
kindergarten they they fucking benefit when we're fighting the fucking big government the fucking
01:02:51
people who make the laws the people overlords the overlords benefit when we're fighting against each
01:02:56
other this angrily and this loudly because then we're not paying attention to what they're doing
01:03:02
to us which is fucking making the poor poor and fucking taking you know money from all kinds of
01:03:08
evil fucking people so they can benefit meanwhile you know we can't fucking pay rent because
01:03:16
the entire government is shut down yeah and or they're just still considering whether or not
01:03:21
they want to help people right yeah that was an amazing story you're right that had it all
01:03:26
yeah unbelievable also it's it sucks too because just that what she was fighting for was important
01:03:33
and what she wanted was basically just another version of equality. She wanted everyone to be represented instead of just the, you know,
01:03:45
just the Christians or just the Roman Catholics or whoever. She wanted everyone to be represented and she wanted it to be fair.
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01:05:48
Goodbye. Great job. That was really good. Thank you. Yeah it was exciting And as you were introducing it and saying you know those ones where you get really excited I was like yeah because that mine this week Really Speaking of which but this is like kind of an update So it doesn really belong in corrections corner
01:06:07
And it's a huge bummer. So and thank you to Hannah on Twitter at Sincerely Hannah for pointing this out.
01:06:16
It's so rough. But she basically sent me, all of us, a tweet saying you didn't mention this part of the story that happened in 2003.
01:06:27
And when I opened the article that she sent, I was flabbergasted. I mean, I was like my jaw dropped.
01:06:33
So basically, she sent me an article that one of the policemen who was right there, like the original team of rescuers for baby Jessica, Sergeant Andy Glasscock, in 2003, drugged and raped a 51 year old woman.
01:06:50
And they found child porn in his possession. So he's now in federal prison himself for 20 years.
01:06:59
He's he's serving a concurrent sentence. It's a complete disaster story. Wow. And I basically, Jay and I both, because Jay, you know, does like research for me.
01:07:11
And he's like, I'm so sorry. I didn't see anything like this. And I was like, dude, I read every article.
01:07:15
I mean, I love this story. I read every single article. I saw nothing about this.
01:07:20
And we were talking about probably because it's he was used to be a hero. He's a cop.
01:07:27
It's and it's that kind of thing where no one wants to hear these stories after the fact.
01:07:31
Totally. So thank you, Hannah, for sending that in. It's a true bummer, but I mean, it is a part of the story that should be told.
01:07:38
But now we go on to, this is another survival story. And I'm very excited that Jay found it and suggested it because I was like, oh, that's one of my favorite ones of all time.
01:07:52
This is the survival story of Julianne Kopke. All right. So searching my memory banks.
01:08:00
it's you know you wouldn't I don't think you'd recognize it from the name but you will from
01:08:05
this actual story so we used you know bbc.com all that's interesting.com vice wikipedia history.com
01:08:13
but I watched there's a Werner Herzog made for tv movie documentary about this woman's experience
01:08:23
and it's called wings of hope and I watched it today it's amazing you can watch it's on youtube
01:08:29
It's like an hour long and it literally has an adult Julianne Kopke walking through how she got through this experience and lived through it.
01:08:41
And it's unbelievable. And the reason Werner Herzog made this documentary is because so she she basically survived a plane crash in the Amazon.
01:08:53
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was supposed to be on the plane. No, I did not know that.
01:08:58
I didn't either. I didn't know any part of this. So so he was basically down there. He was I think I get into it actually later on. But I'll explain that. It's so nuts. And so it's amazing because this documentary basically, you know, I'll give I'll give you the information that I learned in the documentary and also in those other articles. But you can completely go watch it for yourself and watch her tell you firsthand what happened.
01:09:24
Okay, so it's Christmas Eve 1971, and 17-year-old Julianne Kopke and her mother Maria are waiting to board a Lanza flight, which is an airline that doesn't exist anymore for very good reason.
01:09:41
A Lanza flight 508 from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa, Peru. Okay, so Julianne has just passed her final exams for high school, graduated from high school the night before at, forgive me for this pronunciation, Dutch Schule Lima Alexander von Humboldt.
01:10:03
That's the name of the high school. Easy. And it's in Lima. so both of julianne's parents her mother maria and her father hans wilhelm are german biologists
01:10:14
and they live and work at their ecological research station in pucallpa how incredible
01:10:21
is their life right oh no literally she she got to grow up like they they lived in lima because
01:10:27
both of the parents at first worked um for a museum there but then they got to like live their
01:10:34
dream and basically go, we're going to go out into the jungle and study the animals and all the
01:10:39
living creatures that are out there. Incredible. And so basically, and here's the story. So her
01:10:43
father, Hans Wilhelm, he emigrated to Peru after World War Two, he didn't even have a passport,
01:10:49
he was broke, he had no money. So he's a young biologist. And all he wanted to do was study
01:10:54
like, you know, jungle life and animals in the jungle. So he stows away on a freighter,
01:11:01
He hides in a cargo area with that's filled with salt. And he basically gets to South America, gets off the ship and then walks across the continent and gets himself to Peru.
01:11:15
Holy shit. Yeah. Essentially. So and so her mother Maria is also a biologist. She had been in Lima.
01:11:23
She was there on business, but then also her daughter was graduating from high school.
01:11:26
and she actually wanted to fly back like on the 20th or the 21st. But then Julianne wanted to graduate with her with her classmates and she wanted to go to the prom, which was right after.
01:11:38
So they end up staying for all that and then getting to the airport on Christmas Eve 1971 to fly out.
01:11:47
The plane is seven hours late. And by the time Julianne and Maria board, everyone like is angry.
01:11:54
They're anxious to get home for Christmas. There's all these people waiting and they're
01:12:00
supposed to be two flights. There's 508. And then there was the flight that was supposed to leave
01:12:04
afterwards. So there was a bunch of people trying to get on 508. Yeah, because they didn't want to
01:12:09
have to because they were so late at this point, they didn't want to get home Christmas Day.
01:12:14
But and and so Werner Herzog tells a story in Wings of Hope where he says he tried to bribe
01:12:21
the counterperson, he gave them $20, thinking they would get him on 508. So he was supposed to be on the other flight. He's trying to get on 508 tries to get on 508.
01:12:30
And he doesn't get on. Yeah. And so when the people like when everyone gets to board, all the people that are on the flight like cheer and they're like, yeah, yeah, we did it.
01:12:39
And like basically like, hooray, we made it onto this flight. Even though weather conditions are turning bad, the crew is under so much pressure to stick to this flight schedule and get people home for the holidays that they decide to to continue on and not cancel the flight.
01:12:56
So, yeah, Werner Herzog was there. He was supposed to be he's filming a movie called The Wrath of God.
01:13:01
That's about Spanish conquistadors trying to find El Dorado, the lost city of gold in the jungle.
01:13:06
And they show a clip in in Wings of Hope. And that jungle is so dense and crazy.
01:13:13
It's like it looked like a complete nightmare. So while all the stuff's happening with Julianne in the story, you can just picture Werner Herzog is in the jungle like 30 miles away shooting his movie.
01:13:25
and she's like i just want to get on a plane i just okay so so they board the flight um julianne
01:13:33
and maria take their seats in the 19th row for what should only be about an hour-long flight
01:13:39
just to own like a little jumper to get to their hometown and in wings of hope they say julianne
01:13:45
says that her mom was sitting in the middle she was at the window and then there was a very large
01:13:50
man that has the aisle seat who immediately falls asleep. So everything's smooth sailing for the
01:13:56
first 25 minutes of the flight. And but Julianne can see that, you know, they can all see dark
01:14:02
clouds outside that they've been like, they've basically flown into a bunch of clouds. And soon
01:14:07
the plane is surrounded. And then the turbulence starts. And it's pretty bad. Then a thunderstorm
01:14:13
breaks out. And it gets worse and worse. And luggage starts to fall from the overhead bins.
01:14:20
very scary christmas gifts uh christmas cakes things things are just falling out yeah um the
01:14:27
mother and daughter begin to hold hands they try to remain calm as around them they can hear
01:14:32
fellow passengers panic some start crying um 10 minutes later julianne sees a very bright light
01:14:41
hit the engine outside the window and she realizes the plane's just been struck by lightning no
01:14:46
and in a calm voice Maria says this is the end it's all over oh my god her mom says that to her
01:14:53
her mom says it I mean okay so immediately the plane takes a nosedive cabin goes black
01:15:00
everyone starts screaming the luggage and all these packages that have fallen out
01:15:05
now are flying around the cabin and the sound of the failing engine is becoming this deafening roar
01:15:12
and Julianne talks about it where that was like kind of like all she could hear it like took over everything and then
01:15:20
suddenly it stops and she realizes she's outside of the plane oh my god pre-falling in in her seat
01:15:30
in their row of seats her like their phone her seat got sucked out of the plane in midair and
01:15:36
she's just the plane broke apart holy fuck so she in in wings of hope she says quote it wasn't that
01:15:45
I had left the plane, but that the plane had left me. So she's still strapped to her seat, and she
01:15:53
falls two miles down to the jungle floor. And all she can hear is the sound of the wind
01:16:01
as the canopy of the rainforest is spinning toward her, and she loses consciousness.
01:16:09
Alright, so now we're going to go into a little history. Julianne Koppke was born in
01:16:13
Lima, Peru to her German parents. So I told you a little bit about Maria and Hans Wilhelm on October 10th, 1954.
01:16:20
She's their only child. At the time, Maria and Hans Wilhelm both work for the Museum of Natural History in Lima.
01:16:27
But in 1968, when Julian's 14, they leave Lima for the Amazon rainforest city of Pucallpa in eastern Peru.
01:16:35
It sits on the banks of a tributary of the Amazon River. And there, you know, a little bit into the jungle, they set up this research station.
01:16:45
Basically, Julianne lives there and is homeschooled there. And the plan was that she was just going to finish high school, like being homeschooled at her parents' research station.
01:16:57
And she is homeschooled there for a year and a half. It's, of course, any child that's interested in animals and stuff like this, it's dream life.
01:17:05
She even has her own toucan. So, I mean, life is great. Fruit loops everywhere. but then in 1970 the local school authorities find out that she's just out there being homeschooled
01:17:18
and they say sorry she has to go to normal high school to graduate and because she wants to go
01:17:23
on to college so she can study zoology and become a biologist like her parents she does go back to Deutsch to Lima Alexander von Humboldt for her finals which she passes
01:17:36
So she wants to graduate, go to the prom, whatever. Her mom hangs out and is like, that's fine.
01:17:41
I'll change the tickets. But the only available flight after Julianne's graduation and prom is on Christmas Eve on the airline Lanza.
01:17:50
They, in this documentary, Wings of Hope, talks so much shit about this airline.
01:17:55
At one point it like do you remember Tower Air No Did you ever have to fly Tower Air No As a very broke comic in the 90s it was rough It was kind of like a cargo plane
01:18:07
I remember sitting in a middle seat in the middle section, and it was like 15 seats across.
01:18:15
Oh, yeah. Like crazy. Everybody was passing things. Most people had their own food.
01:18:20
Yeah. I was so hungover that I just tried to sleep. And the lady sitting next to me kept waking me up for every beverage and food offering where I was like, I don't want to leave me alone.
01:18:31
Please, I'm dying. She'd be like, do you want a drink? Do you want some chips? Anyway, basically, at one point in this documentary, Werner Herzog tells Julianne that he did research on Flight 508 and found out that the mechanics who worked on that plane had only ever worked on motorcycles before that.
01:18:47
Oh, no, that's a very different machine. It's a different machine. And also the pilot, speaking of which, the pilots were not licensed to fly commercial.
01:18:56
Oh, no, that's not how you run a business. It was bad news coming and going. And so, of course, Julianne's dad advises his wife against flying Lance.
01:19:06
Oh, they had recently had two crashes like in the previous months. But Maria wanted Julianne to have a normal high school experience.
01:19:15
And she's like, it's worth it. So she books the flight anyway. Oh, yeah. So that's how they got there.
01:19:21
Okay, so when Julian wakes up on the jungle floor, it's Christmas morning. It's early morning.
01:19:27
She is underneath the row of seats that she was sitting in. Her mother is nowhere to be seen.
01:19:34
The large man on the aisle seat, no, she's alone. There's some wreckage around her, but because the plane broke apart in the air,
01:19:41
she's separated from the bulk of the crash site. So she just kind of calls out to her mother.
01:19:47
No one answers. Now, she can barely see. Yeah. So she wears glasses. Her glasses are gone.
01:19:53
She's really nearsighted. Her left eye is swollen shut and her right eye is swollen so she can only open it like a sliver.
01:20:01
Oh, my God. Also, and now we're going to go through a list of injuries. So if you're squeamish, you're going to want to now listen to the podcast, Dr. Death.
01:20:12
Just kidding. So squeamish alert. Her collarbone is broken and it's sticking out of the right side of her clavicle area, which I think is a collarbone.
01:20:24
She can't feel it, though. Okay. She can't. She can't feel it. She just looks down and sees it and can't feel it.
01:20:30
She also has a ruptured ligament in her knee. Can't feel that. She's got she's in the documentary.
01:20:35
It says she looked down and there was a cut on her calf that was so deep. It wasn't bleeding.
01:20:40
Oh, my God. And that it reminded her of a canyon because of how it was like kind of broken, torn up at the top.
01:20:48
Horrifying. She also has a really bad cut on the upper back part of her right arm.
01:20:54
But she's alive miraculously. So one of the theories of how it would be possible for her to survive falling two miles out of the sky strapped to a row of seats is that because of the severity of the thunderstorm, there were really strong updrafts.
01:21:09
updrafts like there's you know it's like all about warm air and cold air whatever so there
01:21:13
were really strong updrafts that were pushing against her fall oh so it slowed it down slowing
01:21:19
down like the force of gravity or whatever or the gravitational pull maybe if that was it's right
01:21:24
it was god it was the hand of the lord that kind of scooped her up but also she landed in a part
01:21:32
of the forest the jungle forest where the trees were really close together and intertwined with
01:21:39
these really thick vines yeah like all the way through so they almost created like a little bit
01:21:44
of a net as she fell so she basically i mean she was it's it softened quote unquote her landing as
01:21:52
they say it's like lost meets alice in wonderland yeah right now entirely so she lucks out insanely
01:22:00
like it's how could you not think i'm a miracle and my life is destiny after you survive something
01:22:07
like this she's under like the seats are kind of folded over so the back of the seat is like almost
01:22:12
created like a little tent like that she's under it again can't can't really see she has a really
01:22:18
bad concussion so when she tries to even begin to stand up she blacks out um so she spends actually
01:22:25
the first day just trying to get up and like and and like she's you know for a while she crawls
01:22:31
around on all fours because she's trying to find her mother and um it's you know everything is a
01:22:37
huge it really difficult for her yeah also she is wearing a sleeveless mini dress no it's 1970
01:22:46
yeah she's wearing a sleeveless mini dress she was wearing sandals she only has one on
01:22:52
so she lost one of her sandals so she has and then she doesn't have her glasses so she's having to
01:22:57
stick her one still shooed foot out ahead of her when she finally does is able to stand and walk
01:23:05
she has to stick her foot out to make sure she doesn't trip like over a rock or you know anything
01:23:10
like that as she moves along so her first in her mind the first thing she needs to do is find her
01:23:16
mom because she's convinced if she's alive her mom must be too her and her mom were super super
01:23:21
close and she kind of in the documentary she said she just kind of couldn't imagine being without her
01:23:26
So she called for her a bunch and tried to find her. She's finding little bits of wreckage here and there as she's moving around the jungle.
01:23:36
She actually ends up finding a bag of candy and takes it with her. And it's her only food for a long time.
01:23:44
She also, there was one of those Christmas cakes that fell out was also there too.
01:23:50
But then when she took a bite of it, she realized it had just been sitting in mud.
01:23:53
So it had like absorbed a bunch of dirt and mud so then she threw it away and of course later on deeply regretted having done that So basically she you know wanders for a while and then comes upon another row of
01:24:08
seats. There are three bodies still strapped into this row seats. But this row seats didn't the fall
01:24:16
was not broken in any way. And it was driven three feet into the ground. Holy shit from the from the
01:24:22
impact of the fall. So she with her concussion and her kind of weird thinking and trying to find her
01:24:29
mom, she decides this is the first time she's ever seen a dead body. Obviously, you know, this is
01:24:35
insanely traumatic, but she gets this idea in her head of maybe this is one of these people is her
01:24:40
mom and she can so she ends up like getting a stick and taking a shoe off of one of the feet.
01:24:46
And she sees that there's nail polish on the toenails and her mom never put nail polish on
01:24:52
her toes. So she knew it wasn't her mom. And that's when she realized she was totally alone
01:24:57
in the jungle, that her mom was gone, and that she had to get herself as she had to start thinking
01:25:03
clearly and get herself out of there. And she basically is like, I know now I have to press
01:25:09
on alone. Basically, she kind of wanders around for about four days, you know, trying to find
01:25:15
a direction. And the coolest thing was that the school authorities were very wrong about
01:25:22
the benefit of her homeschooling. Right. Because she had all this, like, survival skills just from having to live in the jungle naturally.
01:25:33
So she's not scared of, like, when I first read this story, which was long ago and with
01:25:38
the Terry Jo story of Terry Jo, who was on the yacht and then went out to sea as a little
01:25:45
child. Yes. I read a, what's it called? Compilation. Books aren't called compilation.
01:25:53
Yeah. Compilation. Sounds right. Short stories. Well, it's true stories of survival, basically.
01:26:02
Anthology. Thank you, Stephen. Oh, thank God. Thank God one of us went to college.
01:26:08
Stephen, do you want to be in our book club? Thank you. Okay, so this story was in that book with Terry Jo's story too.
01:26:17
And I remember just going, if I didn't have one shoe, and I was in the jungle with bugs and snakes and spiders, I would never stop screaming.
01:26:27
I would just lose my mind. But that's what she loved. And she knew what was poisonous, and she knew what wasn't.
01:26:34
She knew how to survive just naturally. So none of that scared her. And also she says, whether it was the trauma of the experience or that it was like she said she just had this kind of she never felt fear.
01:26:47
She also never felt hungry. She just had this kind of like she was cut off and she was like, I just got to get to civilization.
01:26:55
So so basically she knew that if you get lost in the jungle, what you have to do is listen for water.
01:27:01
Because if you can find a source of water, you can follow the water wherever, whatever direction the water is running.
01:27:08
it runs to other water. That's apparently that's how water works. So what, so she's, as she wanders and wanders,
01:27:18
she finally realizes one day that she's been listening to a sound that she didn't put together in her head.
01:27:23
That was the sound of running water. And when she realized it, she was like, Oh my God.
01:27:27
So she followed it. She finds a natural spring with a little rivulet of water running out of it.
01:27:34
And she just walks along the rivulet. and eventually that rivulet gets her to this little creek.
01:27:40
And you can literally watch her do it. Werner Herzog went to the middle of the jungle,
01:27:46
found the plane wreckage, found all these sites and you watch her re-walk her way out of the jungle.
01:27:54
The plane wreckage is still there. Still there 30 years later. Because how are they going to get it out?
01:27:59
And what for, right? Like they probably get the bodies out. And then it's all grown over.
01:28:03
And they bring her back to it? She agrees to go back and do it, like do it for the to show what she did.
01:28:11
So you watch her walk through, you know, like when you're I mean, the first, you know, creek, quote unquote, is probably a foot wide.
01:28:20
It's not, you know, but then you see it just gets bigger and bigger and deeper and and going downhill the whole thing.
01:28:27
And then that she basically gets the little creek and that joins her up to a bigger creek.
01:28:32
And she knows that once she gets to a larger body of water that actually is like moving and has a current, if she follows that downstream, that that will bring her to civilization.
01:28:43
That that's where you never go upstream. Just write all these things down on your hand.
01:28:49
Go downstream. Yeah. So she also knows. So as she's doing this, she knows that walking in the water is less dangerous than walking through dense forest.
01:28:58
Oh, yeah. so and they talk a little bit about she she talks about like people always talk about piranhas yeah
01:29:06
she says this she's she's standing in the middle of a river a runny river and she's like a lot of
01:29:13
people would be scared by this and i was like watching it like my heart is racing and she's
01:29:18
like but like people are always scared of piranhas piranhas are harmless in in water with a current
01:29:24
it's when it's still water that they like go crazy so she's like she knows but and she knows all the
01:29:31
she knows everything yeah she was the perfect 17 year old to be in a to survive a car crash i mean
01:29:37
a plane crash in the forest yeah she says more than snakes tarantulas even piranhas the one thing
01:29:43
to worry about in water like that are manta rays they have poisonous snow yeah poisonous sting rays
01:29:51
in the water. What? No. Yeah. So she basically when she finally gets to water that like big enough where that a concern she finds a big old stick and she walks and then just pokes the ground in front of her as she walking with one shoe again
01:30:07
Oh, my God. So she's like, get out of my way. She's like making sure she's not going to stand on any.
01:30:13
Yes, exactly. And just and pokes them all up, pokes the ground in front of her. So she wades downstream.
01:30:20
And as you know, so this a couple of days have gone by now. and she can hear the search planes.
01:30:26
Oh. But she's still in enough overgrowth that she can't signal to them in any way.
01:30:33
And also, the way this plane went down because it broke up in the air. Yeah. There's no main crash site.
01:30:40
Right. Literally, the jungle just swallowed the plane and all the different plane parts.
01:30:44
And even if there was, she's walked away from it at this point. So, like, they don't know where she is.
01:30:49
No, no. And they're assuming everyone's dead. They can't see anything. It's just like this plane has disappeared.
01:30:57
So they're kind of assuming. And it was one of the biggest search and rescue efforts in airborne search and rescue efforts in the history of Peru.
01:31:08
Wow. But, you know, after they search and search and search for like, I think it was five days, they give up because they can't even find where the plane went down.
01:31:18
Wow. So they just have no idea. So as she's waiting downstream, she can hear them and then she hears them go away.
01:31:25
So she gets really mad because she thinks either they found everybody else and saved them and just not her or just that they gave up on her.
01:31:33
She doesn't know. But she again reminds herself, you just have to keep pushing forward.
01:31:37
You just have to keep going. So meanwhile, everyone in Peru basically is waiting to hear any news of Flight 508 that basically just disappeared in a storm.
01:31:47
including, of course, Hans Wilhelm, who is facing the horrible reality that both his wife and daughter have died in this plane crash.
01:31:56
Meanwhile, back in the rainforest, Julianne is alternating between wading in the shallower waters and then swimming in deeper parts of the water.
01:32:06
And the days are really hot and humid. And then it'll start raining like it rains several times a day as she's trying to get out.
01:32:14
But the rain is cold. So she said when it hit her, it felt like needles and it happened a ton.
01:32:20
But the good part was then she had lots of drinking water. So she theorizes that that's why she wasn't so hungry is because she just constantly kept kind of kept herself full by just constantly drinking water.
01:32:31
Right. At night, of course, the air turns cold. Mosquitoes and bugs swarm her. And like, you know, she tries to her best to keep them away, but they're everywhere.
01:32:41
And she at night to sleep, she gets out of the of the creek or the river and she curls up on the riverbank, gets her back to the bank and basically just tries to keep warm, even though she's soaking wet.
01:32:55
And like anything can come get you any creature. Yeah. Yeah. And and there's creatures that you that are that have already gotten you.
01:33:05
Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's right. Wait, what? Get ready. I'll tell you. So just she has a watch on her wrist that was a gift from her grandmother.
01:33:14
So for the first four days, she's using it to track time and track days passing.
01:33:20
But on the fourth day, it stops. So after that, she just has to track it in her head.
01:33:25
But she knows that's important to just to know how many days have passed. And it's the rainy season. So there's not a lot of wild fruit that she can pick and eat.
01:33:34
She doesn't have any tools. She can't hunt or fish. she knows that there's lots of plants that are poisonous so she doesn't want to risk
01:33:42
trying to eat something and making herself sick um she she eats the candy until the candy's gone
01:33:49
yeah but again she never she never felt hungry she said but she knew she was getting weaker
01:33:54
um because she was just walking non-stop so on either the fifth or sixth day um she's not sure
01:34:01
because the watch was broken. This stream that she's been in now opens up to a bigger river.
01:34:09
And this is like now she knows that she's getting closer. But at this point, her wounds have started to fester.
01:34:16
And so it's harder for her to walk. So there's some days where she just floats down the river
01:34:21
and she does see crocodiles. And sometimes, yeah. And so she'll be floating down the river and look
01:34:28
and there'll be crocodiles. They'll see her and get in. and she said she was just apathetic
01:34:33
she was just like well whatever and just kept floating and they never attacked her they never bit her or did anything
01:34:39
oh yeah isn't that crazy she's like the stingrays are the only ones I have to worry about and
01:34:46
she made it happen by pure chance that's fucking crazy yeah it really is so here's the
01:34:54
super disgusting trigger warning by day 10 a wound in her upper right arm Oh, dear. Yeah, it's filled with maggots.
01:35:04
No! Yes. Sorry. Look, if you want to go on vacation in the jungle, you have to hear this shit, Georgia.
01:35:11
I don't. I've never wanted to do. Well, I'll do that. It's so horrible that they're big. She looks down and she sees it. She knows it's bad.
01:35:21
Because she knows because like it's kind of out of sight. And then when she looks back, can you imagine?
01:35:25
You're just like, wow, wow. Yeah, that and the collarbone, I think, are the hardest parts for me so far.
01:35:31
So rough. Yeah. I mean, for her, too. It's really hard for me sitting at home. The hardest is for you, and we know that.
01:35:39
But she went through some stuff, too. I guess. So she's also smart enough to know that that's terrible because she could get blood poisoning,
01:35:46
and she could get her arm amputated if she does survive. Right. So she knows, like, she has to find help, and she has to, like, she has to keep up the pace.
01:35:54
On the 10th day, she can barely stand. 10th fucking day. On the 10th day. 10 days.
01:36:03
Which is, so she's, the search and rescue has been called off for almost a week for five days.
01:36:11
Oh my God. So she can barely stand. So she's, and she's still trying to make her way down the river.
01:36:17
So she goes and she has to rest. So she goes and looks, there's a riverbank. She walks over to it.
01:36:22
She sits down. She doesn't even know how long she was there. And she realizes, she looks in front of her and realizes she's looking at a boat.
01:36:30
there's a boat in front of her she must have been delirious by then and she had a major concussion
01:36:37
oh right a major concussion the entire time and yeah she's delirious from from starvation delirious from
01:36:45
yeah yeah everything the plane crash she was in the whole fucking thing so she kind of like comes to realizing
01:36:55
there's a chance she's made it because she's looking at a boat And she said she had to make sure she wasn't hallucinating.
01:37:01
So she had to go up and touch it to make sure it was real because it was so unbelievable.
01:37:06
It's really there. She looks on the boat. She looks around. She doesn't see any people.
01:37:12
She considers stealing the boat, but she doesn't want to be a thief. So instead, she spots a path that's coming up from the riverbank and through the jungle.
01:37:23
And so she says it takes her hours to climb up this riverbank. Because she said the riverbank was about nine feet high.
01:37:31
Oh, my God. And she was so weak that it took her. She just had to try and try. And finally, she crawled up this bank.
01:37:39
And she followed the path. And it led her to a little hut with a palm leaf roof.
01:37:45
And she just gets inside and goes to sleep. And so she says when she's in there, she realizes you're starving to death.
01:37:52
You have to eat something. And these frogs start coming around. But she recognizes that they're called, they're called, I think they're called poison arrow frogs.
01:38:03
And they're those frogs, they're poisonous. And they're the ones that the native people use to put their juices from the frog's belly onto the arrow's tips.
01:38:16
So that when they shoot people, they like hallucinate and go crazy and they're poisonous.
01:38:20
They die. Yes. So she knows that they're that poisonous and she still tries to eat one anyway.
01:38:27
Because she's like, she's on the verge. But they keep hopping away from her. They would come and hop near her and then she'd be like, I'll just eat this.
01:38:36
And then they would hop away and she couldn't catch any. Dicks. So the morning of January 4th, this is 11 days since the crash.
01:38:46
She wakes up to the sound of voices outside this hut. and in the documentary she says it sounded like the voices of angels.
01:38:55
So she comes out of the hut and she sees three men standing there. She said they're all taken aback.
01:39:04
She describes the moment like this, quote, When they saw me, they were alarmed and stopped talking.
01:39:11
Yeah. Yeah. Was it the maggots? Maggots just pouring out. So she said they thought I was a kind of water goddess, a figure from a local legend who's a hybrid of a water dolphin, which I would imagine is just a dolphin.
01:39:29
Because land dolphins. Land dolphins. Oh, it's a hippo. Skinless cats. Skinless cats?
01:39:37
Did you mean hairless cats? I did mean hairless cats. Oh, no. It's late. Okay. The cats have hair, no skin.
01:39:49
The organs are right under the hair. Oh, God. Guys, stop it. I'm trying to talk about maggots.
01:39:56
Okay. Let's say that dolphins. It's a local legend. It's a hybrid of a dolphin. I think he meant a river dolphin.
01:40:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a blonde, white-skinned woman. So this was actually a real...
01:40:08
And she's blonde. She's like a little German descent girl. But she has, of course, lived in Peru all her life.
01:40:15
She introduces herself to the men in Spanish. She finds out their local lumberman and she says what happened.
01:40:22
So they bring her, they gather her up and they bring her to the, put her on the boat.
01:40:27
They've, they go, um, 11 hours in the boat to get her back to their village, just to any kind of, yeah, they get her there.
01:40:38
But in the meantime, they put gasoline in her wounds to kill the maggots and to basically get a little triage going.
01:40:48
Yes, exactly. But with gasoline. And I'm sure she's like, who cares? It's fine. I can't feel anything.
01:40:55
So when the locals in their village and when the men bring her to the village, the locals see her.
01:41:00
Her eyes are so red and bloodshot that all the locals recoil in fear and they accuse the men of bringing a forest demon back to their village.
01:41:09
She's like, haven't I been through enough? Yeah, it's like, sorry, you really look like a demon.
01:41:14
Here's the visine. These men convince a local pilot to fly Julianne to the hospital in Pucallpa.
01:41:23
So in this, again, in this documentary, I'm just talking you through this documentary.
01:41:27
It's so good. she goes back and she meets one the other two men have since died because it's been like 30 years
01:41:34
she goes and gets to meet one of her rescuers and say thank you to him it's lovely and also
01:41:41
it's the cutest thing Werner Herzog's such a good filmmaker yeah because when he first like comes
01:41:45
upon like the group of people where she's like you know coming to say hello there's all these
01:41:50
little kids around of course right it just like village life and the camera swings over to like these little kids and then like two of them just walk away immediately and there this little girl who probably like eight and she so cute And she just stands there kind of smiling and the camera just is on her
01:42:06
And then she then she just starts giggling and she can't stop giggling. And it is so it's so cute.
01:42:12
It's just beautiful moments like that. He's so good. A day after her rescue on January 5th, 1972,
01:42:19
Julianne's father gets a call telling him his daughter has been found alive and he goes to the hospital
01:42:27
they're finally reunited and Julianne says that neither of them were able to speak
01:42:33
they just held each other can you imagine? he thought they were gone yeah and everything she had been through
01:42:39
and it's like it's over and that collarbone still sticking out during the hug for the next few days
01:42:46
Hans Willem Oh, sorry. So for the next few days, Hans Wilhelm watches the news just in case his wife is found alive.
01:42:56
And listen to this. When Julian recovers, she joins in the search effort by leading the emergency responders back to the crash site to look for her mom.
01:43:06
What? Yeah, she goes back in. But on January 12th, 1972, Maria's body is found. And there is evidence that suggests that she also may have survived the initial crash, but she was too injured to move or speak.
01:43:22
And she died out there. Oh, my God. Yeah. Ninety one people died in the crash of Lonza Flight 508, including all six crew members and 85 passengers.
01:43:36
Julian, who is the 86th passenger, was the lone survivor. and there's they start this documentary with this amazing kind of monument that they've built
01:43:48
in in i believe it's in lima peru for all the people who died in flight 508 and some of the
01:43:54
bodies are buried in this monument like when you go to see it and it shows a map of where it crashed
01:44:01
and it shows a map of her trail out of the jungle wow and that monument is called wings of hope and
01:44:08
And that's why Werner Herzog titled his documentary that. Flight 508 was Lonza's last flight before the entire company was shut down.
01:44:16
Good. Just 11 days after the incident. So pretty much immediately, their operating permit was revoked due to their, quote, intentional flight into hazardous weather conditions.
01:44:27
Also, that they, oh, these aren't motorcycles. Oh, shit. Also, 100 other things.
01:44:34
Yes. Come on. Yes. After the media blitz settles down, Julianne returns to normal life.
01:44:40
She moves to Germany and goes to the University of Kiel in 1980. And she studies biology and zoology.
01:44:47
And she actually earns a doctorate. Wow. Yeah. And she ends up marrying another biologist.
01:44:54
And they move back to Peru. She's researching bats. He's researching wasps. That's a match made in heaven.
01:45:02
He's in the documentary with her. That's so cute. It's so cute. In 1998, she participates in a documentary about the crash called Wings of Hope, directed by Werner Herzog.
01:45:12
And in 2011, Julianne writes a book about her experiences with the crash and her survival entitled When I Fell from the Sky.
01:45:21
Just such a good title. Wouldn't you want to read that book immediately? Straight up.
01:45:27
Straight up. You full on fell from the sky. And that is the unbelievable survival story of 17-year-old Julianne Kopke, the sole survivor of Lanza Flight 508.
01:45:38
Oh, my God. Dude, that's intense. Dude, I love it. The will to survive that she had to have to go that long is incredible.
01:45:52
I think everyone has it in them. I think everyone has it in them. Yeah? I really do.
01:45:55
I do. That's beautiful. I do. Yeah, you're right. Your faith in humanity is beautiful.
01:46:02
Well, but I think that's like it's lizard brain stuff where you just keep fighting.
01:46:06
Like, yeah, at that point, you'd have to. That's true. It's like, wait until you can't walk anymore.
01:46:11
You might as well keep taking some steps. Go. And that is our philosophy about life, too.
01:46:18
It's like if you just have one sandal, then walk with that foot first and make sure you don't step on a snake with your bare foot.
01:46:24
Watch out for stingrays. Careful. Those stingrays will kill you. That's right. Good job.
01:46:31
Thank you. Should we do some fucking hurrays? Let's do it. Okay, you want to go first?
01:46:36
Oh, sure. I'd love to. Do it. I'd love to. This is from Casa D. Cote on Instagram.
01:46:45
My fucking hurray is, well, on our daily walk with masks on because it's the right thing to do and so people won't silently judge us like Georgia.
01:46:53
It says that. And Karen. And we saw one of those heartwarming dog videos you see on social media, but in real life.
01:47:02
An elderly woman's dog, I believe it was a border collie, walked down her front path to pick up her mail from the mailman.
01:47:09
The dog took the mail, walked back up the steps and delivered the mail to her. It was amazing.
01:47:16
We usually come home from these walks disappointed in humanity in general. And then it says all caps.
01:47:21
Why are there so many packs of teenagers on skateboards with no masks? Do they not have parents?
01:47:27
That it was nice to see something so simple and kind. Love one another and be safe.
01:47:32
Stephanie in Redondo Beach. Nice, Stephanie. I won't judge you. Thank you. Okay.
01:47:39
This one is from Lauren Michelle. It's Lauren Michelle. My fucking hooray is that today on my brother's 36th birthday, we found out that his brain tumor shrunk.
01:47:51
The past nine months have been life changing for my family. Watching my brother go through brain surgery then chemo and radiation has been heart and incredibly emotional for all of us But if anything it has made our close family even closer
01:48:09
About a month ago, my brother donned his Michael Jordan jersey while ringing the bell after completing his treatment.
01:48:16
And today, while wearing his Chicago Bulls starter jersey from 1998, we received the news that his tumor had shrunk.
01:48:23
He's not completely out of the woods yet, but things are looking up. So fucking hooray for the best birthday gift.
01:48:30
My brother, his twin. Oh, it was one brother's birthday and they got the good news about the other brother.
01:48:36
I got it. So fucking hooray for the best birthday gift. My brother, his twin received this year.
01:48:42
Fucking hooray for his amazingly supportive wife, who I'm honored to have for a sister-in-law.
01:48:47
And fucking hooray for the Jordan era Chicago Bulls who have brought crazy luck to my family at this time.
01:49:00
SSG GM and hug your siblings, Lauren. That's beautiful, Lauren. Amazing. Yes. This is from Jess Danielle.
01:49:09
And it's not a fucking hooray. Well, it is later. But it says, fun fact. I was named after baby Jessica.
01:49:15
The story goes, my older sister was three years old. And after my family watched the story, she kept saying, they got baby Jessica out of the well.
01:49:24
Now we need to get baby Jessica out of mom's tummy. And then there's one of those emojis of, you know, thank God, because my father originally wanted me to be named Tranquilia.
01:49:37
Tranquilinia. Tranquilinia. Uh-huh. And then there's an emoji of a hand slapped to the face.
01:49:44
But Jessica stuck thanks to my sister who wouldn't stop calling me baby Jessica after that.
01:49:50
Fucking hooray for big sisters who pick better names than my parents do. Tranquilinia.
01:49:56
What's wrong with Tranquilinia? It's so soothing and relaxing. It is. Okay, this is sent by MFM007 Murderino.
01:50:08
Okay. James Bond. Since March 16th, I have been at home with both kids 9 and 11 full time.
01:50:14
So we've been doing new activities to keep ourselves busy while still at home. One of them is chalking up the driveway.
01:50:22
At first, it was all of us. Being that the kids get bored easily, they left the art activity and I fell deeper into the activity.
01:50:30
And then in parentheses, better than doing laundry and dishes. Now I am a chalk legend of the neighborhood.
01:50:38
I have created some easy ones. I had created some easy ones at first, but I have leveled up.
01:50:43
I have a lot of neighbors looking forward to the new pieces. Also, I made a new friend while doing this.
01:50:49
She is a true muralist. She's come over a couple of times and was extremely generous and made two art pieces.
01:50:56
I wish I could upload the photos. She did a real... It's just like, I wish I could, but I can't.
01:51:01
No, but it's... Yeah. She did a realistic vulture and realistic butterfly. I have done a tree frog, a sea turtle hatching from an egg, and a funny shark bird.
01:51:11
That's right. A bird with a shark's head. I saw a meme of it and I couldn't resist.
01:51:16
Good thing about this. This art is every time it rains, I get a new canvas. Thank you, ladies, for what y'all are doing and take care.
01:51:23
We will be chalking it up even after this goddamn pandemic is over. Yours, Cheryl.
01:51:29
I love it. So good. Also, it's like you're forced into these things. And it's like, yeah, that's awesome that you're doing chalk murals in your driveway.
01:51:39
Yeah, I bet it's like so stress relieving. Can you please do us a favor and do a, what is it, a river dolphin?
01:51:46
Please. Please do a water dolphin or a river dolphin. Whatever makes most sense to you.
01:51:54
My last one is from JC Nicole. My fucking hooray is that after four years of working full time and going to college full time, I finally paid off my car.
01:52:05
I'm only 20 and I've learned responsibility the hard way. I have to remind myself that even amongst the chaos going on now, I am still capable of accomplishing things.
01:52:14
Every week, you and Karen remind me that even though we're in a pandemic, it's not a productivity contest.
01:52:20
That's right. I'm proud of myself and I'm proud of everyone who is making it through life right now.
01:52:27
Hell yeah. Nice. Okay, this one is from formaldehyde. That's a good one. So good.
01:52:35
my fucking hooray is that I didn't do shit I didn't leave my house for anything other than groceries
01:52:42
I didn't let my kids flout the common sense rules that are in place for everyone's safety I stayed
01:52:48
home ate the same boring ass food that we've been eating for eight goddamn weeks watched every
01:52:54
episode of Golden Girls for the millionth time kicked my family's ass in Settlers of Catan and
01:53:00
Rummikub oh I fucking love Rummikub so much I forgot about that one yeah it's a good
01:53:04
game. Survive the shit show that is e-learning for a first grader, a sixth grader, and a
01:53:10
tenth grader. Oh, honey. Fuck, mom. And most importantly, I didn't contribute to the spread
01:53:16
of COVID-19. Stay sexy and stay the fuck at home. From Malda Heidi, you win across the board.
01:53:26
And we want to say that stay at home and be safe is for the people who can't stay
01:53:32
at home, for the essential workers who have to be at the grocery store who have to be you know the cops and the first responders and the
01:53:39
hospital workers and all the people who cannot stay at home we working at domino's pizza totally
01:53:46
they're or the people who have to work at instacart right now because they need the
01:53:50
fucking money so they can pay for their families to live yes let respect those people and stay at home if we can Exactly And be like formaldehyde and stay home and don do shit And play gin rummy
01:54:06
If a mother of three young kids can fucking do it and like make it interesting. Do it.
01:54:14
You can't. You can do it. We can all do it. We love you guys. We hope we're helping during these crazy times.
01:54:21
And we we got your back. and thank you guys for listening to us and letting us still do this insane thing
01:54:27
that we get to do thank you for all your support and it's especially these days it's such a fun thing to look forward to
01:54:35
it's great thank you all so much and stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye Mimi do you want a cookie?
01:54:48
okay so this is pretty exciting Apple TV Plus' new crime drama is called Defending Jacob. And it follows an assistant DA whose life is turned upside down
01:54:57
when his son is accused of murder. So the assistant DA is played by Chris Evans. And it also stars
01:55:04
Michelle Dockery and Jaden Martell. Everyone is so good in it. It's a limited series and they play
01:55:09
a family whose fate hangs in the balance of the legal system. Right. So Apple asked us to partner
01:55:14
with them to create this special content to give our listeners a chance to put themselves in the
01:55:19
Barber family's shoes. That's right. And we were lucky enough to sit down with the show's screenwriter,
01:55:23
Mark Bomback, as well as the director, Morton Tildum, who's they're both so talented. And we're
01:55:29
going to have a little deeper dive into Defending Jacob. So enjoy. Okay, we are very excited to be
01:55:35
talking to screenwriter, Mark Bomback, and director Morton Tildum. They have their new show on Apple
01:55:42
TV Plus. It's a crime drama called Defending Jacob. Congratulations, you guys. Thanks for
01:55:48
talking to us today. Our pleasure. Our pleasure. Thank you so much for having us.
01:55:52
Aaron and Georgia, it's so nice to meet you. I've been a murderino for like a while.
01:55:57
Really? Yeah, in fact, while working on the show, because I live in New York, I used
01:56:02
to drive home on the weekends, and very often your podcast would be the thing I listened to as I was driving home.
01:56:08
Oh my goodness. So honored. Thank you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you guys got involved in
01:56:14
this project? Sure. This is Mark talking. So I was sent the book that this show is based on, really responded to it.
01:56:22
And so I dove right in and wrote a pilot script and an outline of what I thought those first few episodes could be.
01:56:31
And I was talking with the producers and we were talking about who might be a good director to bring in.
01:56:37
And Morton's name came up and I was overjoyed. I thought bringing his Scandinavian sensibility to this and his artistry would be a great fit.
01:56:45
I love making stories which is all about character which are great. I don't believe in like people are inherently good or inherently evil. We're all kind of exist in this weird place in between. Where is our moral contact? What are we willing to do?
01:56:58
I think that's what makes the show so different is that it's not a typical whodunit. It's got those little nuances where you think to yourself, what would I do in that situation? Not having kids, I'm like, turn them in, which of course wouldn't really happen.
01:57:15
So what do you guys think sets this apart from the typical whodunit? Is it the morality of it? Is it family?
01:57:21
It's very much about that parent-child relationship and putting that to a stress test.
01:57:28
And, you know, oftentimes we live our lives with little fractures in our relationships,
01:57:33
whether it's with our parents or with our spouse. And we can go a very long time that way.
01:57:39
And then something like a crime occurs and really puts it to the test and starts to rip it all apart.
01:57:45
Well, and that is interesting because we all like to think that we are good people and moral people and that we make the right decision and how you would start rationalizing what you will do that's different than if it was a normal situation.
01:57:59
You know what I mean? Like suddenly it's just like, yeah, I can see hiding that. I can see pretending you didn't know that. I can see, you know, getting rid of evidence or whatever because it's your family member.
01:58:10
You guys got like an insanely stellar cast for this show. You know, Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Jaden Martell.
01:58:18
So it's Captain America, Lady Mary, and the child hero from It. Like every, you know, every person that walks on screen, you're like, whoa, whoa.
01:58:27
We went into this not thinking like, let's get the biggest name possible. We want to, who will be perfect for this?
01:58:34
Who do we really would love that? And I think we also wanted to cast a little bit out of the box.
01:58:39
And then it happened to be Chris Evans, which we're now thinking, after shooting with him, it couldn't be anybody else.
01:58:47
Yeah. Which is so perfect in the part. And Michelle came on, and we both love Michelle in, of course, Downton Abbey, but also Godless, where she has an American accent.
01:59:01
Amazing. Really impressed us. And Jaden is just uncanny. He actually auditioned for the part.
01:59:07
And when we saw it, it was like, it was so, it just jumped out of it. And it was obvious that he has to be Jacob because he kind of has the hardest part.
01:59:19
He has to add a layer on top of his performance because you're never really supposed to figure out what's actually going on inside of this character.
01:59:27
And I think also he has to add that layer of being a teenager and never fully answering your parents' questions with anything more than a nod.
01:59:35
And he does that so well. It's very fascinating to think about that part where I'm like, am I judging him because I don't like his personality?
01:59:43
So I'm attributing like, yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, or is that what's happened sometimes where it's these surface things that you're actually putting on somebody that could be completely innocent?
01:59:54
Right. That's the great thing about teenagers as suspects is that their behavior is very dubious.
02:00:00
And so no matter what he says or does, especially in Jake, Jaden is just, as Morton was saying, uncannily gifted at being enigmatic in a way that feels very plausible and very appropriate for his age.
02:00:15
And, you know, that's the subjective fear we're trying to instill in the audience is that you're at the mercy of his performance in the same way his parents are, where you're trying to determine, is this just normal taciturn teenage talk or is this someone feeling something?
02:00:32
Yeah, definitely. I think one thing everyone wants to know is, can you tell us one, you know, negative thing about Chris Evans so we're not so in love with him?
02:00:43
Yeah, there's got to be a downside. Just one little. You do almost look for a chink in the armor because he is really a great person inside and he's blessed with these bizarrely good looks.
02:00:55
And he's very humble about them. So it sounds totally like a cliche, but I really can't think of anything.
02:01:04
It's really hard. Well, Mark and Morten, thank you guys so much for talking to us today.
02:01:09
This has been so fun. You have to follow at Apple TV on Instagram and Twitter to join the discussion about Defending Jacob each week.
02:01:16
They're going to post a crucial question about that week's episode. So you can find out what you and other viewers would actually do in those situations.
02:01:24
And watch Defending Jacob on Apple TV Plus every Friday. Thanks, guys. Thanks, you guys.
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Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 90
    Most heartbreaking
  • 90
    Biggest twist
  • 85
    Most shocking
  • 85
    Most unpredictable

Episode Highlights

  • Book Club Revival
    The hosts discuss reviving their book club with new reading recommendations.
    “Let's resuscitate this thing.”
    @ 08m 51s
    May 14, 2020
  • Exactly Right Corner
    Celebrating podcasts and their milestones, including a fascinating episode on antibiotics.
    “Congratulations on your 50th episode.”
    @ 20m 30s
    May 14, 2020
  • The Disappearance of Madeline Murray O'Hare
    Madeline Murray O'Hare, the most hated woman in America, disappears mysteriously with her family.
    “Don't worry about it, everything's fine.”
    @ 40m 14s
    May 14, 2020
  • The Disappearance of the O'Hares
    Madeline Murray O'Hare and her family vanish under mysterious circumstances, leading to a complex investigation.
    “This is odd. He can't figure anything out.”
    @ 42m 40s
    May 14, 2020
  • David Waters' Dark Past
    The investigation uncovers David Waters' criminal history, revealing a violent past that raises alarms.
    “Oh, my God.”
    @ 46m 11s
    May 14, 2020
  • Confession and Murders Revealed
    David Waters confesses to the kidnapping and murder of the O'Hare family, detailing a horrific plot.
    “They put a leather belt around his neck.”
    @ 55m 02s
    May 14, 2020
  • Hyundai's Vision for the Future
    Hyundai is focused on the next generation of talent and innovation, making the future accessible today.
    “Next starts now.”
    @ 01h 04m 32s
    May 14, 2020
  • Julianne Kopke's Survival Story
    Julianne Kopke survives a plane crash in the Amazon jungle and embarks on a harrowing journey to find her mother.
    “Her mom says, 'this is the end, it's all over.'”
    @ 01h 14m 49s
    May 14, 2020
  • Julianne's Survival Journey
    Julianne Kopke survives a plane crash and navigates the jungle for 11 days.
    “You just have to keep pushing forward.”
    @ 01h 31m 39s
    May 14, 2020
  • Rescue and Reunion
    After 11 days, Julianne is rescued and reunites with her father.
    “Neither of them were able to speak; they just held each other.”
    @ 01h 42m 29s
    May 14, 2020
  • Celebrating Birthdays and Family
    A heartfelt moment as one brother receives a wonderful birthday gift while celebrating family.
    “Fucking hooray for the best birthday gift.”
    @ 01h 48m 37s
    May 14, 2020
  • Exciting New Show: Defending Jacob
    A look into the gripping new crime drama starring Chris Evans, exploring family and morality.
    “It's a crime drama called Defending Jacob.”
    @ 01h 54m 50s
    May 14, 2020

Episode Quotes

  • Oh, my God.
    222 - That’s How Water Works
  • She's a fucking radical.
    222 - That’s How Water Works
  • It's called Come At Me, bro.
    222 - That’s How Water Works
  • It wasn't that I had left the plane, but that the plane had left me.
    222 - That’s How Water Works
  • You just have to keep pushing forward.
    222 - That’s How Water Works
  • Stay sexy and stay the fuck at home.
    222 - That’s How Water Works

Key Moments

  • Book Club Idea08:51
  • Bra Game Change21:50
  • Soccer Stars Rising22:10
  • Tim Young Joins42:55
  • Criminal Background Exposed45:51
  • Hyundai's Future1:03:56
  • Plane Crash1:13:39
  • Rescue Encounter1:39:01

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown