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The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. Why is it always chaos when we link up?
00:01:08
Because nobody plans anything, bro. Good thing the Rogue's ready like that. For real.
00:01:12
Rain, dirt, whatever. Available all-wheel drive. Five modes. We still outside. And they got some kick too.
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That turbo? Torque is crazy. The most in its class. It moves, moves. Rogue doesn't mess around.
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00:02:21
My favorite murder Oh, you're welcome. My pleasure. It was easy. It was fun. It felt right. We had a great time.
00:02:57
Oh, remember? Remember? Remember when I introduced you? The old switcheroo. We talk about your mug.
00:03:04
I'm drinking out of this is actually Stephen's mug brought to the office. And someone made it for him when he was working on the Great Malls, Molly McAleer's podcast, Mother May I Sleep With podcast. And someone handmade it.
00:03:18
It's just straight up Sharpie. Hold on a second. Okay, so it's a Sharpie on one side that says,
00:03:23
Mother, may I sleep with podcast? And it's a design that looks like a butt with a rainbow.
00:03:27
It looks like a butt. And you drink it that way, so I have to see the butt all the time?
00:03:31
Yeah, I guess because I'm right-handed. You use it all the time. It's my mug. It's my favorite.
00:03:35
And the other side says, Mr. Jodi Arias. And I thought, I didn't really know how it got here,
00:03:41
but every time, Stephen and I were talking about it, it's the perfect shape for coffee because it's more than a coffee cup size.
00:03:48
But it's not so big your coffee gets cold It's just like the perfect extra amount
00:03:52
But as I was reading these sides I looked at the bottom And it says best mustache in podcasting
00:03:59
At the bottom Wow You made it for yourself Admit it Oh no What a bummer that Stephen can never shave his mustache now
00:04:10
It's just like You're a stepdad forever What if Stephen shaves his mustache And he just has a white skin mustache underneath
00:04:17
because he's had a mustache for so long. What if he shaves his mustache and there's just a mustache underneath?
00:04:22
Do you know I've never seen my father without a mustache? Really? Except for in pictures.
00:04:26
Wow. He's always had exactly that mustache. Wow. Except for in the 80s, it was slightly longer on the outside.
00:04:32
Of course. He's a fireman, and I think they were required to have them. It's an extra protection against flames.
00:04:38
Yep. Watch that lip. Yeah, you know that if your mustache starts singeing, that's when you know to get out.
00:04:44
Get the fuck out of there. It's your personal fire alarm. If your lip gets hot, you're in too far.
00:04:50
That's right. Yeah. That's the old fireman saying. Here's to mustaches. Yay. Of all sorts.
00:04:56
Do you have any? What do you have? Well, we have an exciting announcement. Yeah.
00:05:00
So let's just do that first. Let's fucking do it. Because we're stoked that we finally get to announce a new podcast.
00:05:05
You guys. Coming to the Exactly Right Podcast Network. Finally. Oh, this is a good one.
00:05:10
This is a joy. So exciting. Yeah. It's in the comedy chat form column. Our friend, the great Bridger Weineger, who you might know him from Twitter.
00:05:21
He has a hilarious Twitter account. He's written on all your favorite shows. And he has a podcast that he's going to be doing on Exactly Right called I Said No Gifts.
00:05:31
Yeah. When you brought this to me, you were like, Bridger wants to do a show. And I know you've been friends with him for many years.
00:05:36
And you told me the premise. I was like, absolutely. It's greenlit. Yeah. Such a good idea.
00:05:41
It's so good. It's called I said no gifts, but all of his guests are required to bring him a gift.
00:05:46
Then he says, I said no gifts. And then basically the whole podcast is about gift giving worst birthday presents best you know like all the basically all the anecdotal stuff that comes up around giving and receiving presents Smart It so smart It really funny And he got all kinds of great you know people on his podcast as guests It just going to be hilarious and wonderful And the theme song
00:06:10
he had his friend right then record the theme song. No big deal. Amy Mann. Amy fucking Mann.
00:06:15
He went to Amy Mann and he said, I need my Cheers theme song for my podcast. And she said,
00:06:21
No Problem and then wrote A song that I honestly Since it was played for me I've been humming
00:06:28
So anyway we are going to play the trailer For this new podcast for you at the end of this episode
00:06:34
So stick around at the end And the launch date is March 12th So we're less than a month out
00:06:40
Is it on iTunes listed yet? Can you subscribe? I believe by the time this comes out
00:06:45
You will be able to subscribe so that when it launches It'll come right in your feet
00:06:48
It's going to be every week on Thursday So you can stop listening to this fucking podcast and replace it with Bridgers podcast.
00:06:55
Or you can double up or double up even listen to this and get bummed out and then listen to Bridgers and relax.
00:07:01
Yeah, because it's a delight. And he's the funniest. I said no gifts. Yeah, so excited.
00:07:07
Hopefully we'll be able to start doing this every month for you guys and announcing a new podcast.
00:07:11
Yes, that's the dream. And there's another one coming up on on I said no gifts tale that we're very also very excited about.
00:07:17
But it's too early. Yeah, but there's more. So stop it. We're so excited. Speaking of the Exactly Right Network and the podcasts that are on it, we had the pleasure of hanging out with Laura and Brooke, the creators and hosts of the Fall Line podcast that has their new season out right now.
00:07:33
Yep. God, they were fucking incredible. They're the best and they're doing true crime right over on that show.
00:07:41
If you haven't listened to the Fall Line podcast, do yourself a favor and go get into the work they're doing.
00:07:48
they are it's uh laura is a college professor yeah um and she actually started teaching a class
00:07:57
in podcasting she was telling us about it which is amazing like a researcher and she's so smart
00:08:02
and like goth and cool and i love it and clearly can do everything and then brooke is a grief
00:08:07
counselor so when they go and uh talk to the people that they're talking to about these cases
00:08:14
The survivors and the victims families. And the victims families, they have a qualified person that's there that knows how to have these conversations that they're the real deal.
00:08:22
And it was so cool. They have all these great ideas for upcoming seasons and other things are going to work on.
00:08:27
And we're so we're just so honored that they're on our network. Totally. And that we get it.
00:08:31
You know, we get to do stuff with them. Yeah, it's so rad. It's so cool. They're such incredible women.
00:08:37
Speaking of incredible women per cast. That was rude. I'm sorry, Stephen. I didn't mean it.
00:08:42
I didn't mean it like that My co-host Sarah, she's great Sarah's very talented This week
00:08:50
None other than Jackson fucking Galaxy Is on the Perkast Which for us cat people is like the get of the century
00:08:59
I mean truly, peaked I can stop now Jackson Galaxy That's incredible Now it's time for the dog cast
00:09:07
Lizard cast Lizard Oh, right. That transition right into Jurassic Park. And then this podcast will kill you. Their episode this week is called Whoop. There it is.
00:09:20
Yeah. About the whooping cough, which is just so clever. Oh, my God. It's so much fun.
00:09:24
I love taking credit for what they're doing. Because they're on our network. Yeah.
00:09:28
We own you. And it's our thing. Actually, we did it. We did it. It's our thing. Yeah. We're very proud of our little burgeoning family that we have here.
00:09:38
You know who I'm proud of? Who? Well, a couple people, but I'm proud of a listener named Tiffany Colon.
00:09:47
There's an accent on her name. And I'm proud of her because she sent me and you, but you didn't see it on Twitter, a tweet that said,
00:09:57
is that little baby G Hardstark I spotted in an episode of Dharma and Gray? And there you are, the tiniest Georgia Hardstark.
00:10:07
I've watched this clip now 20 times. I have. Look at you. Look at, first of all, you're acting so casual.
00:10:14
I'm an extra. You're so 90s. I'm extra as an extra. You're so extra and you're so 90s.
00:10:20
Can I say how excited I remember everything about it? I remember what I was wearing that day.
00:10:24
And it was like, I was new to LA. I wanted to be an extra. I was going to be around the scenes.
00:10:29
And I got this Dharma and Greg thing. And then I got sat next to the woman who had lines.
00:10:34
Yes, you're in the shop. I know. That's you. And you have like weird 90s braids in your hair.
00:10:40
I must be 19 there. Look at my cheeks. They're like their baby cheeks. Yes. Oh, yeah.
00:10:45
You look 12 years old. I do. How old were you? Like 18 or 19. Okay, I'm going to retweet this right now.
00:10:51
Do it. Okay. That was really exciting. That was an exciting moment in my life. Dharma is holding a baby and you only look a little bit older than the baby.
00:11:02
In this. yeah there's also if you can see there's an episode of the tv show clueless and then in the
00:11:11
movie um the sleepover right yeah okay it's called sleepover okay it's a movie from 2004
00:11:18
and i just walk by in one scene it was really exciting you're not sleeping over anywhere no
00:11:25
i'm not sleeping over anymore sleeping bags i just ate a bunch of peanut butter and jelly
00:11:28
sandwiches at craft services because i had no money for food just sat there all day and there
00:11:33
were no like laptops yet so it wasn't like you could just go work no no you're waiting for 12
00:11:37
hours that was back when you had to just sit there with your thoughts it was a terrible fucking time
00:11:42
or like talk to other people which was my nightmare or manage uh being on diet pills right and try not
00:11:48
to scream all the time right which was my reality oh my god that's so great i love that someone saw
00:11:54
that yeah tiffany uh she at tiffany jade co well you you retweeting it she nailed it oh Oh yeah it on my page Great job She nailed it Thank you Good job everybody Really one of my proudest moments
00:12:06
It should be. What I like is that you do this thing, and I did this myself once when I was in a background
00:12:12
actor in a Mr. Show sketch. It was a classroom sketch, and I looked down almost the entire time.
00:12:18
And what I didn't realize at the time and I see now is it is a way it's actually a way of upstaging people.
00:12:25
Oh, when you look down like you're not in the sketch. Oh, wow. It's and I also used to bite my fingernails during scenes, which is another way of like chewing up the scenery behind people.
00:12:38
It's very like it's almost like pointing at your own face. It is. And of course, I didn't realize I was doing it.
00:12:44
But in retrospect, I was just like, oh, my God. I didn't know how to like pretend to watch a movie.
00:12:50
How do you pretend to watch a movie? You don't. You watch that movie. Right. Even though you're staring at an audience, right?
00:12:57
Yeah. It was so awkward. It's all. I had to do a voiceover thing today and I was very excited about it.
00:13:02
It was super cool thing. And maybe I'll talk about it later when it actually comes out.
00:13:06
But I was so honored and excited. And it's that thing where the second it starts, you're like, I don't know how to say words anymore.
00:13:14
It's all I've been doing for the past four years. I've had nothing but practice wearing cans and talking under a microphone.
00:13:20
And the second it started, I was like, how are you today? Like everything came out.
00:13:24
It's so awkward. Terribly. Well, we do those amazing those voices on that amazing show, Craig of the Creek.
00:13:31
Oh, Craig of the Creek on the Cartoon Network. It's such a good show. We're the witches.
00:13:35
And yeah, as soon as we got in there and they're like, here's your character. I'm like, I don't know what her voice sounds like.
00:13:40
And now it just sounds like me. Right. Because I have no other voices. I know. I mean, yeah.
00:13:45
You're so good at it, though. I love watching you do it. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I love to do it, but it's very it's the thing where I'm I have to tell myself so many times before I arrive, you're not going to get it right the first time.
00:13:58
And that's good. Totally. Let them tell you how they want you to do it. Yeah. My thing is, because I had never had any training doing anything, and I was usually on some kind of white drug.
00:14:08
My thing would be like, I didn't do it right the first time. And then I would be so weirdly freaked out.
00:14:13
I wouldn't allow anything. Whereas like if you get hired for a part, the people that are doing the show want input on what you're going to do.
00:14:21
You're not supposed you're not expected to deliver perfectly and walk away. They want to be able to tell you, hey, can you adjust this way and that way?
00:14:29
And the whole job is to be open to that and then be able to give them what they're asking for, which is like it took me, I think, 24 years to figure that out.
00:14:38
Yeah. Little baby George is still learning that. It's hard, though, because you don't like the idea is like, is everyone happy immediately?
00:14:45
Yeah, like they won't be. It's fine. That's life, too. Yeah, everyone wants input and wants to give you notes.
00:14:51
And it's not going to be perfect the first time. And just to wrap that up with a magic three.
00:14:56
Nobody wants to be the last to know. That's the most valuable piece of information I learned.
00:15:00
The first big job I had is that you have to figure out who is if they're the last to know.
00:15:07
Can they like light you up? Can they get you in trouble and tell that person first?
00:15:13
Because no one wants to be the last person to know that like either something went wrong or something's changed or whatever.
00:15:18
Yeah. So figure out who you tell, because you can't not tell anybody. Yeah. And you have to make sure the people like because no one wants to be the last person to know.
00:15:27
No one wants to not know something. OK. So you have to who are you looping in and how quickly is the key to life.
00:15:33
Got it. Tucking that away. Total sidebar. I didn't declare that sidebar and it couldn't have been less relevant.
00:15:43
Speaking of stuff. Right. I read an article that I was really excited about this week that the L.A.
00:15:51
County prosecutors, prosecutors, they're teaming up with this company called Code for America, who are using a new technology to wipe out as many as 66,000 old marijuana convictions.
00:16:05
Are you serious? Yeah. Here, let me read you a quote from it. I just got a weird chill. Isn't that amazing? So like, yes, we legalize pot. But now all these
00:16:12
people still have these convictions, whether they're misdemeanors or not for pot for pot.
00:16:18
Yes. You know, petty pot crimes. What? Yeah. And so it's their quote was the dismissal of tens of
00:16:24
thousands of old cannabis related convictions in Los Angeles County will bring much needed relief
00:16:29
to communities of color that disproportionately suffered the unjust consequences of our nation's
00:16:34
drug law and that was laws and that was district attorney Jackie Lacey said said that yeah so
00:16:39
they're they're wiping them out using technology because I guess they had to do them manually one
00:16:43
by one when someone would write in and be like can you you know it's it's a law that we do that
00:16:47
but you have to write in first so now they just use technology to wipe out a ton of them isn't
00:16:52
that amazing that's the best that's incredible that's just like getting a job yeah it's happening
00:16:57
yeah it's it's necessary it's happening and voices are being heard which might not be fast enough
00:17:03
Yeah, it's definitely not fast enough for the people that sat in jail for years. I mean, I have definitely read articles here and there about people that like they got arrested for pot and then they were given eight years in jail or so, you know, the destruction that has happened and can't ever be fixed.
00:17:22
but but people speaking up and being like it has to change and it should start changing now and we
00:17:28
voted luckily here in california that you know pot should be legal and the people in the past who
00:17:33
have been um you know i don't know the butt of those well now that all pot stores look like apple
00:17:40
stores and it couldn't be more accepted and it's happening all the time it's like well if that's
00:17:45
the case then you have to do right somehow totally and so someone's actually doing yeah it's how
00:17:52
exciting It made me really happy A little ray of light in this fucked up world Very nice Good job Yeah Anything else I don think so Okay I think it time right It time and I think you first I think I am too Stephen says yes Stephen nodding
00:18:05
Stephen nods silently from the side. Thank you, Stephen. Hi, this is Tori Spelling from Miss Spelling.
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The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. Try it today and get 20% off of your next order or service.
00:18:55
Go to madison-reed.com slash Tori and use code Tori20. Why is it always chaos when we link up?
00:19:03
Because nobody plans anything, bro. Good thing the rug's ready like that. For real.
00:19:07
Rain, dirt, whatever. Available all-wheel drive. Five modes. We still outside. And they got some kick too.
00:19:14
That turbo? Torque is crazy. the most in its class it moves moves rogue doesn't mess around and peep the space merch on merch
00:19:22
gear mics all the fits load up we out 2026 nissan rogue built for all of it auto pacific segmentation
00:19:31
2026 rogue versus latest in-market competitors in the x suv mainstream midsides class excluding
00:19:37
electrical vehicles based on manufacturer websites ryan reynolds here from mint mobile the message
00:19:43
for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop.
00:19:49
With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird.
00:19:56
Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan,
00:20:04
equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available.
00:20:08
Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. This story I'm doing this week was suggested by a listener named Ariel Giraldi.
00:20:17
She she gmailed it in. OK. And it is one of the oldest and most controversial murders in the state of Georgia.
00:20:24
It's the murder of Mary Fagan. Ready for this? OK. OK. I've never heard of it. Even when we did story, we did shows in Atlanta.
00:20:33
Yeah. I never found it. It's crazy. OK. Wow. So a bunch of this information is from a New York Times article from 1982 that was written by Wendell Rawls Jr.
00:20:44
Also Wikipedia, all that's interesting dot com. So good. I think in the past I've been calling it all things interesting dot com.
00:20:52
It's all that's interesting dot com. Yeah. Sorry for the mistake. All that's interesting dot is.
00:20:57
and a website called the the vintage news.com which is one of those old news sites nice so we
00:21:09
start it's sunday april 27th 1913 okay and a man named newt lee uh who's the factory night watchman
00:21:17
i almost did this in atlanta yes georgia just threw her hands in the air i was like that name
00:21:24
sounds so familiar i started working on it in atlanta and then was like this is not a live show
00:21:30
episode right right it's no it's heavy can you imagine it's it's so heavy and it's very heavy
00:21:36
right racially and otherwise and in every way uh okay okay so newt lee is the factory night
00:21:42
watchman at the national pencil company in atlanta georgia so before we get into the horror of this
00:21:48
I just want to talk about how much I love Pencil How when I was a child for some reason
00:21:55
Like in second grade they showed us One of those weird let's go to the pencil factory
00:21:59
And they showed how pencils are made Totally Mr. Rogers style I remember it All the pencils are rolling out
00:22:08
Rolling all together And then things get put on Completely automated I've always been a fan of the
00:22:15
Dixon Ticonderoga pencil classic number two. Look at you. Writing with a pencil is like my favorite,
00:22:22
most satisfying way of writing. Thoughts on mechanical pencils? Love them. On board.
00:22:26
You know, when I have a mechanical pencil is when I go take my crossword puzzle on a plane.
00:22:30
That's right. I've seen you. I've been with you as we scoured Hudson News' and Hudson News' until you could find you a mechanical pencil.
00:22:37
I need a mechanical pencil because I don't have a sharpener for a classic pencil.
00:22:40
Of course, I didn't bring my own classic pencil. Even though I have drawers of all kinds of,
00:22:46
Do you want to hear the song I made up? I don't care what the next couple of words are.
00:22:52
The answer is yes. Do I want to hear the song you made up? Yes. This is just an example of how much time I spent alone as a child.
00:23:02
I made up this song. Dixon, Dixon, Ticonderoga. It's not an original tune, I don't think.
00:23:10
But I used to, that was always the pencil that was in my hand. You loved your pencil so much that you wrote a song for it.
00:23:15
I fucking love it. And my favorite is when you find a pencil that and usually it'll be like at a doctor's office or somewhere public.
00:23:24
And it's a classically sized pencil that has been used down to the nub. Oh, you want like a little guy.
00:23:29
A little guy that's been used by everybody. Because when do you ever see that? No, you don't.
00:23:33
Usually pencils, when you get halfway, they break and they go by. Or it's brand new.
00:23:38
But when you get when someone has been so conscientious as to use the whole pencil.
00:23:42
Or like that was their pencil and it meant like they loved it so much. Yes. It's a thing.
00:23:48
I love it. It's very old fashioned. No, it really is. But like, I remember the pencil machine in our library.
00:23:53
And when you got a quarter and you could get a pencil and it was like, you could buy a pencil.
00:23:57
Yeah. And like one of those little like a. Handy machines. Yeah, yeah. It's very exciting.
00:24:01
Oh, that's cool. You should get one for your house. I'm getting that for you for your birthday.
00:24:05
Don't tell me. Steven, remind me to get Karen that for her birthday. Edit that out of my memory, Steven.
00:24:10
Also, that just made me think of the pencil, the affixed pencil sharpeners for the oldest
00:24:15
of people. Oh, yeah. Affixed on the wall in the grammar school. So you had to walk up and go.
00:24:20
I still have those in my house. I haven't posted. I have a couple old pencil sharpeners.
00:24:25
Do you really? And it's like so kitschy and cute to just put a pencil sharpener up in your house.
00:24:28
Yeah. People are like, why do you have a fucking pencil sharpener? And you're like, well, I'm a influencer.
00:24:34
I'm a lifestyle influencer on Instagram. And I have quirky things everywhere. I'm retro.
00:24:41
And I like old things made of lead. Paints. Pencils. Gasoline. Whatever it takes.
00:24:50
Just plain lead. Okay. Now I'm thinking of there was once a, and now I can't remember if this was on Tumblr or if it was on Twitter.
00:24:58
someone did a portraiture of used pencils it was a series of photos of those kinds of pencils i was
00:25:06
describing that were like used down to the nub if anyone finds that let me know please okay anyway
00:25:10
if they can find my fucking dharma and greg episode they can find that fucking pencil did
00:25:15
you lose your shit when you saw that it was just like i didn't at first i didn't know what i was
00:25:19
looking at because i'm as you well know the results of this i skim things yeah for like
00:25:24
a noun I recognize and then I just keep going. So when I was looking, I was like, what? I'm not
00:25:30
going to watch an old episode of Dharma and go, what? And it took me like eight seconds
00:25:34
to realize what was happening. Because I remember you saying it, but I didn't remember it was Dharma
00:25:39
and Greg that you're on. Yeah. Yeah. Hilarious. Got it. Okay. Back to us. Fun time sidebar over.
00:25:45
Now we're back into this horrible story. Right. And we're at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta,
00:25:50
Georgia. That's where it all started. So the night watchman goes down to the factory's basement
00:25:56
around 3 a.m. to use the bathroom. And as he's leaving, when he's done, he spots something in
00:26:02
the back of the basement by the incinerator. So he goes over to inspect it and he realizes it's
00:26:07
the body of someone he knows, 12-year-old factory worker, Mary Fagan. Awful. Okay. So let's talk
00:26:15
about Mary and Mary's life. So she was born on June 1st, 1899 to a family of tenant farmers in
00:26:21
Georgia. Her father dies before she's born. I'm sorry. Oh, no, that's right. Her father dies before
00:26:29
she's born. And so she's basically raised by a single mother named Francis in Marietta, Georgia.
00:26:34
In 1907, they moved to East Point, which is a neighborhood southwest of Atlanta in southwest
00:26:40
Atlanta. And Francis opens a boarding house. And then two years later, in 1909, Mary drops out of
00:26:45
school and takes a part-time job at a textile mill to help support the family. She's 10 years old.
00:26:52
Which is like kind of the norm back then, right? Completely the norm back then. In 1912, her mom remarries a man named John Coleman,
00:27:00
and the whole family moves into Atlanta proper. In the spring of that year, 12-year-old Mary takes a job at the National Pencil Company because she's still helping the family out.
00:27:11
And then just quick historical context, in the early 1900s, Atlanta basically is switching from being an agricultural community into the Industrial Revolution and the factory boom.
00:27:23
So there's factories pop up everywhere, and the working conditions are harsh, sometimes dangerous, and almost all factories rely on child labor.
00:27:32
A group called the Populist Party and other bigoted Southerners blamed Jewish business owners for exploiting children.
00:27:40
But the reality was, as reported in the 1913 Atlanta Georgian, the state of Georgia's standards regarding child workers were the worst in the country.
00:27:49
So factory owners of every faith, ethnicity and background made it constant practice to hire children as young as 10 years old.
00:27:58
And in southern cotton mills in the turn of the century in 1900, 25 percent of the employees were under the age of 15 and half of those were under the age of 12.
00:28:10
That's insane. So it was completely common practice. It was had nothing to do with who owned it or what religion they were.
00:28:16
It was what everyone was doing because children were, of course, much easier to manage than adults.
00:28:22
They would do whatever you told them, wouldn't question their bosses. They were small so they could get into things and things were broken.
00:28:29
They were just used. And they were cheaper, probably. And they were cheaper, much cheaper.
00:28:34
Yeah. So Mary's job at the pencil factory is operating a knurling machine. K-N-U-R-L-I-N-G.
00:28:41
That's the thing that puts the rubber erasers into the metal ends of the pencils.
00:28:45
And she works in the metal room, which is on the second floor. And it's called the tipping department.
00:28:51
She works 55 hours a week. and she works, she earns 10 cents an hour. Wow. Yeah.
00:28:58
So she basically for all that makes about five bucks a week. So after working at the pencil factory for about a year,
00:29:05
there's a shortage of brass sheet metal and Mary gets laid off. So around noon on April 26th, 1913, which is a Saturday,
00:29:15
Mary goes to the factory to pick up her last paycheck for $1.20 from the factory superintendent, Leo Frank.
00:29:22
So Leo Frank has come moved down to Atlanta from New York City. He graduated Cornell. Now he's here to run his uncle's pencil factory. And so he's he's there giving out paychecks on a Saturday.
00:29:35
Basically when Newt comes upon Mary's body He calls the police immediately They arrive
00:29:42
They see Mary's head is bruised and battered Her face is scratched Her clothes are disheveled and torn
00:29:48
Her dress is pushed up above her waist And her petticoat is torn Which indicates she could have been raped A strip of the petticoat Has been torn off and wrapped around her neck along with a seven foot cord So and she covered in dirt and soot So she not only been strangled to death
00:30:08
but the police, it's clear that she put up a fight there in the basement. The police look
00:30:15
around the rest of the basement for clues. They see there's a lock on the sliding door at the top
00:30:20
of the basement service ramp that's been tampered with. And there's bloody fingerprints on the door.
00:30:26
And there's a metal pipe nearby, which the police theorized that was used as a crowbar.
00:30:32
There's footprints in the dirt that lead from the elevator shaft to the spot where the body was found.
00:30:37
But in investigating, the police just walk over those footprints over and over. So they can't be identified or even measured. Leo Frank is called in. He gets there about seven in
00:30:49
the morning. He speaks with police. They say later on that he looks pale and nervous and he's rubbing
00:30:56
his hands together and trembling. When they say Mary's name, Leo responds that he's not familiar
00:31:02
with it, that he would have to check the books to identify her. Other than that, he cooperates with
00:31:07
police, gives them a tour of the entire factory. He cooperates with police and shows them around
00:31:12
the entire factory. So when at the crime scene where the body is, the police discover there are
00:31:19
two notes that are written. They're riddled with spelling errors, and it's kind of hard to make sense of either of them.
00:31:25
The first note reads, quote, he said he would, W-O-O-D, love me, land down, play
00:31:32
like the night witch did it, but that long, tall, black negro did boy his slef, S-L-E-F. So it's hard
00:31:42
to even know what anyone meant by that. The second note reads, quote, ma'am, MAM that Negro higher down here did this. I went to make water and he pushed me down that hole,
00:31:57
a long, tall Negro black that who it was long, slim, tall Negro. I write while play with me.
00:32:06
So the idea they believe is that someone's trying to make it look like Mary was leaving notes to say
00:32:13
who did this to her before she died. So they interpret the phrase night witch is from the first note to mean night watch.
00:32:23
Newt Lee, who is the night watchman and an African-American, when they read the note says,
00:32:28
quote, it looks like they're trying to lay it on me, which clearly it did. Because of the note, police arrest him that morning
00:32:35
for the murder of Mary Fagan. So they immediately are like, you're here, we read these notes,
00:32:40
you knew who this little girl was. Yeah. But even with Newt Lee in custody, the police still are suspicious of Leo Frank.
00:32:48
So the next day, Monday, April 28th, 1913, Leo comes into the station with his lawyer and he gives the police a written deposition stating what he did on the day of Mary's death.
00:33:00
So he writes, Mary Fagan came into his office between 12.05 and 12.10 p.m. that day to pick up her check.
00:33:07
Then at 4 p.m., Newt Lee arrives for work, but Leo tells him to come back later because he still needs to be in the office.
00:33:14
Then Leo says he leaves the office around 6 p.m., at which point he sees Newt returning to start his night shift.
00:33:21
Leo also tells police that there were actually gaps in Newt's time card for the night of Saturday and the morning of Sunday.
00:33:28
Leo agrees to let police examine his body for cuts or injuries that he may have sustained if he had struggled with Mary.
00:33:36
they find nothing on him. They also search his home. They don't find bloody clothes or any kind
00:33:41
of evidence of wrongdoing at his home. But they are still suspicious of him. And they basically
00:33:47
say he seems nervous. So after Leo gives his deposition, he meets with private investigators
00:33:53
from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. So he hires them to help prove his innocence,
00:33:59
but they're bound to terms with the police. So it requires they give any and all findings
00:34:05
of their investigation to the police. So they're like a separate outfit. Yes. And they can help you as you can hire them as a private detective,
00:34:13
but they're also bound to the local police officers and have to give them the information as well.
00:34:18
Everything they find they have to turn over, even if it incriminates their clients.
00:34:25
Because basically the Pinkertons used to operate like when there wasn't necessarily the law around,
00:34:32
if there was no sheriff and no police chief, no police station, whatever the word is, the Pinkertons would come in and they would just do it.
00:34:41
But then it was like, well, whoever's paying you, you know, it became like in the Wild West time.
00:34:47
I'm basically telling you this based on three cowboy shows I've watched. But it's like they would come in and kind of do it.
00:34:54
But they it was just based on it was like rich people. Yeah. Anyway, everybody correct me on that, please.
00:35:01
I'd love to learn more about the Pinkertons. But that's from what I've watched. it's like you can hire them to come in but then you know yeah so it's like you you wouldn't hire
00:35:08
them if you thought they were going to find anything incriminating against you it wouldn't
00:35:12
make sense yeah because i bet you leo frank knew that that was the agreement so he's like
00:35:16
yeah just get get out there and get that information okay so the following day tuesday
00:35:21
april 29th at 11 a.m detective john black goes to newt lee's house to look for evidence there he
00:35:28
finds a shirt with blood smeared on it up to the armpits in the bottom of newt's burn barrel but
00:35:33
because of the weird way that the blood is smeared and because this shirt quote smells unused,
00:35:40
a detective black suspects that this is fake evidence that's planted by Leo Frank and his defense team.
00:35:46
Oh shit. That's quite an assumption. Yeah. Quite an assumption. So I think that in reading that it kind of indicated to me,
00:35:53
clearly it like you have it out for this guy for your own reasons You going to twist any evidence to look look bad for him But it was actually very smart of Leo Frank to hire Pinkertons to be like yeah I going to need more than just the locals here
00:36:07
Yeah. Okay. So half an hour later, the police arrive back at the pencil factory and arrest Leo Frank.
00:36:15
Shit. Just based on this. Yeah. Yeah. So then on Wednesday, April 30th, a coroner's inquisition is held.
00:36:23
Leo testifies he repeats his account of what he did on the day of Mary's disappearance.
00:36:28
He has a few witnesses corroborate his story, but some of the former female employees of Leo's testify that Leo came on to them when they worked for him.
00:36:36
And another young man testifies that he heard Mary Fagan, quote, complain about Leo.
00:36:42
Police still don't have any hard evidence on Leo about this crime or on Newt about the crime, but they keep both in custody.
00:36:50
Okay, so the next day is Thursday, May 1st, and some pencil factory workers alert the police when they see factory janitor Jim Conley washing what they claim to be blood out of a work shirt.
00:37:03
They put it together that Jim had also been at the factory on the day of Mary's murder.
00:37:08
Jim Conley is also black, and the crime scene notes indicate that the murderer might have been black.
00:37:15
So police arrest Jim Conley. Jim tells them it wasn't blood on his shirt. It was rust.
00:37:21
So the police examine it and they see that he's right. But they keep him in custody.
00:37:26
They're just fucking arresting everyone all over the place. Everyone that isn't white.
00:37:30
You, you, you. Yeah. Leo Frank is obviously Jewish, right? He's Jewish. So two weeks later in mid-May, Jim Conley gives his formal statement.
00:37:39
He tells police that he had spent that Saturday, the day of Mary's death, shooting dice and drinking at saloons.
00:37:44
But some witnesses say that they did see Jim in the lobby of the factory that day.
00:37:48
They all police also discover that Jim can read and write and he could have written those notes left behind at the crime scene.
00:37:55
When they test his spelling, they discover that he makes the same spelling errors that are on the notes.
00:38:01
No. Yeah. So the police are now suspicious of Jim. And on May 24th, Jim admits to writing the notes.
00:38:08
But he says that Leo Frank made him do it. And over the next few weeks, Jim is interrogated more and he ends up giving three more statements to the police, changing his story slightly every single time.
00:38:23
But he's always sticking to the same concept, which is Leo Frank murdered Mary Fagan, then coerced Jim Conley into helping him hide it.
00:38:31
okay so in the final story that Jim gives police he claims Leo bumped into him on the street told him to follow
00:38:38
him back to the factory and once he was there that Leo had him hide in a wardrobe
00:38:43
while two women visited Leo's office after the women leave Leo tells Jim to write the
00:38:50
murder notes then gives him a pack of cigarettes and sends him on his way Jim tells police he didn't know
00:38:56
about Mary's murder until the day after so So on May 24th, Leo Frank is indicted for the murder of Mary Fagan.
00:39:05
Leo's defense team urges officials to indict Jim Conley, too, but they don't. Wow.
00:39:10
OK, so police give Jim Conley's latest story to the newspapers and the newspapers run with it.
00:39:17
And because of this media portrayal and because of the rampant anti-Semitism at the time, most of the public immediately believes that Leo Frank is guilty.
00:39:26
Yeah. Several of the factory workers are not buying it They suspect Jim was trying to rob someone else
00:39:32
Saw Mary and decided to attack her instead And in an attempt to remove all doubt
00:39:37
Police arrange This is so weird They arrange a meeting between Leo Frank and Jim Conley
00:39:43
For May 28th So they can discuss things in person with the police Interesting But Leo doesn't go
00:39:50
He says he won't go without his lawyer present Yeah And his lawyer's out of town
00:39:55
So Leo not showing up for this meeting makes everyone right. It confirms their suspicion.
00:40:01
Yeah. OK, so Leo Frank's trial begins July 28th, 1913. It draws a huge crowd. The courtroom's packed.
00:40:10
People watch from outside through the windows. It's like it's big, big news. So there's this strange bigotry that the jury has, but not in the standard, typical way.
00:40:23
Instead of assuming that Newt Lee and Jim Conley are guilty and that Leo Frank, the white man, is innocent, they think that Newt and Jim wouldn't be able to come up with a complicated story like that because they're black.
00:40:36
What? And then that Leo Frank being Jewish is guilty because of all the anti-Semitism that clearly he's this factory owner that doesn't care about children and is just doing whatever he wants.
00:40:51
Wealthy, yeah. It's all very convenient. So on top of this, rumors are spreading about Leo Frank's sexual habits. Many women who used to work at the factory say that Leo was always, quote unquote, flirtatious. One person even says he once saw, and this was an ex-policeman, says that he saw Leo in the woods with a young girl.
00:41:11
after that statement is given by this ex-policeman it's proven to be a complete fabrication but once
00:41:19
it's out it doesn't matter that it's that it's proved that way because the damage is done and
00:41:24
everyone it's like everyone is sitting there waiting to hear which basically which minority
00:41:31
person right they get to hate publicly right right um out of this so during the trial the
00:41:38
prosecution uses the stomach analysis from Mary's autopsy to argue that she had to have been killed
00:41:43
somewhere between 12 and 1215. And Leo's earlier statements, he said Mary came to his office around
00:41:50
that time collected her check and left But a witness named Monteen Stover who also worked at the factory testifies in court that she went to Leo office between 1205 and 1210 to get her check and that Leo wasn there
00:42:06
Also, a 15 minute period, like stomach contents, that's like, especially back then.
00:42:12
Back then? It's impossible. It's insane. Yeah. And everything is like predicated on this, like a 10 minute time window.
00:42:19
Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Toward the end of the trial, Leo's defense team requests a mistrial, claiming that the public opinion of Leo had been swayed too much by the media.
00:42:29
This request is denied. Meanwhile, just outside the courthouse, there are angry mobs screaming, kill the Jew.
00:42:36
And a local newspaper had described Leo Frank as, quote, a Jew sodomite. Oh, my God.
00:42:43
But apparently there was no problem with what the media did to Leo Frank. All right. On August 25th, 1913, the jury deliberates less than four hours before returning their verdict of Leo Frank is unanimously found guilty of the murder of Mary Fagan.
00:43:01
Wow. So the next day, Leo is sentenced to death by hanging. The hanging scheduled for October 10th, 1913. But Leo's defense team appeals the death sentence on the grounds of trial misconduct. His lawyers cite several examples, including jury intimidation and the damaging rumors that were being spread.
00:43:19
about Leo's character. And they also pointed outside and went, the defense rests.
00:43:25
Look at them. These people? So Leo's initial appeals are all rejected, but they do spark further investigation.
00:43:32
And when looking at the timeline of events again, authorities find it plausible that Monteen Stover
00:43:37
could very well have arrived at Leo's office just before Mary's arrival. Then this would mean that her interaction with him
00:43:43
would have no bearing on whether or not Leo was involved in Mary's murder, that basically that whole 10 minute window thing is bullshit and should not have basically come into the case at all.
00:43:55
Plus the amount of grime that Mary was covered in when her body was first found indicated that a struggle must have happened in the basement.
00:44:04
It wouldn't have happened in the office. So Jim Connolly's questioned again, and he changes his story again to say that Leo Frank gave him $200 to move Mary's body to the basement and burn it in the furnace.
00:44:17
Holy shit. And as a result of that, on February 24th, 1914, Jim Connelly is found guilty of being an accomplice in Mary's murder, and he's sentenced to one year in prison.
00:44:28
Yeah. Okay, so Leo's hanging is rescheduled multiple times, but finally on June 21st, 1915, after two years of deeper investigations and legal back and forth, Governor John Slayton commutes the sentence from death by hanging to life in prison just days before the governor's term expired in 1915.
00:44:51
This commutation produces a furor of protest. People go crazy. Armed mobs roam the streets, forcing Jewish business people to board up windows and doors.
00:45:03
A mob of several thousand people armed with guns, hatchets and dynamite surrounded the governor's mansion until they were dispersed by state militia.
00:45:12
Wow. The publisher of a local magazine called The Jeffersonian, a man named Tom Watson, wrote,
00:45:18
This country has nothing to fear from its rural communities. Lynch law is a good sign.
00:45:24
It shows that a sense of justice lives among the people. Yeah. And then a group of 75 men who call themselves the Knights of Mary Fagan, including Tom Watson, they all meet at Mary's grave and devise a plan for revenge.
00:45:42
On August 16th, 1915, the men drive 175 miles southeast down to Milledgeville to the prison farm where Leo Frank is being held.
00:45:50
A month before, he'd had his throat slashed and he had survived it. The Knights of Mary Fagan cut the prison's telephone wires, break in, handcuff the warden, and abduct Leo Frank.
00:46:08
They drive to Marietta where Mary Fagan was born. And in the early morning of August 17th, they lynched 28-year-old Leo Frank.
00:46:18
Fuck. Yeah. no one's ever arrested for leo frank's murder but tom watson does publish a statement on september
00:46:26
2nd 1915 um in that issue of the jeffersonian saying quote the voice of the people is the voice
00:46:34
of god uh hey tom no it's not yeah no it's fucking not no it's not and you're a megalomaniac
00:46:43
and hi tom this is god stand down you don't know what you're fucking talking about
00:46:48
An estimated 3,000 Jewish citizens leave the state of Georgia. I mean, fucking like goodbye.
00:46:57
Can you imagine? Yes. And the people that stayed there were like locked it up. Totally.
00:47:02
I mean, basically had to go into hiding. Yeah. And this is 1915. Yeah. It's crazy.
00:47:11
Historians believe that the popularity of the actions of the Knights of Mary Fagan gave way to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
00:47:18
clan fuck yeah that's but it also became a lightning rod for a chicago attorney named
00:47:26
sigmund livingston who had just weeks before leo frank was lynched founded a new organization
00:47:32
called the anti-defamation league oh my god its mission was to quote stop the defamation of jewish
00:47:38
people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all and so upon seeing this the way that case
00:47:46
played out, what happened in the press and everything, Livingston makes it his mission
00:47:51
to never let a bigoted public opinion sway another trial. Basically, that's the case and that's what happened.
00:47:59
So... 69 years later, in 1982, an 83-year-old man named Alonzo Mann gives a sworn statement to the Tennessean newspaper, saying that he knows for a fact that Leo Frank did not kill Mary Fagan.
00:48:15
What? So these two reporters from the Tennessean, Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherbourne, they get a tip from someone saying you need to go talk to Alonzo Mann.
00:48:25
And so they go and interview him. And Mann finally tells his story. And he supplies them with notes, with pictures and other materials.
00:48:33
He submits to a lie detector test and a psychological stress evaluation. And he passes both impressively, according to the Tennessean.
00:48:43
Holy shit. The newspaper reports that a two month investigation found Alonzo Mann's information to be historically accurate and his claims to be valid.
00:48:52
And his claims are this, that in 1913, he was 14 years old. He was working as Leo Frank's office boy, and he saw janitor Jim Conley carrying Mary's limp body by the waist over to the trap door leading down to the factory basement.
00:49:11
And Mann says that he was standing. So basically what had happened, it was Saturday, and there was like a Confederate memorial parade outside.
00:49:20
And Alonzo Mann had gone out to go to the parade. He was supposed to meet his mother there.
00:49:24
And when his mother didn't show up, he went back to work. He went back into the factory, but no one was expecting him to be there.
00:49:31
And when he walked in, that's when he saw Jim Conley. And so he witnessed Jim Conley.
00:49:37
And then Jim Conley looked over his left shoulder and said, you keep your mouth shut or I'll kill you.
00:49:45
Alonzo Mann goes home that night, tells his mother what happened. And his mother says, stay out of it.
00:49:52
Oh, because his mother sees what's happening, you know, in that town. So man, Alonzo Mann actually testified at Leo Frank's trial, but they only asked him a couple of questions.
00:50:04
It was very, like, very basic. And he basically kept the secret because it was like, we don't want to get pulled into this.
00:50:11
We don't want to get killed. Yeah. I say we as if I'm him talking for him and his mother.
00:50:16
But it's that idea where like who who knows what could happen, you know, to get to get up in the middle of all this.
00:50:23
And, you know, thousands of people storming the governor's mansion. I mean, like how scary must that have been?
00:50:31
He actually then 30 years later after the trial tried to talk to a reporter. And the the phrase from The New York Times from this article from 1982 said he was rebuffed.
00:50:43
So I don't know what that means, but it was like they weren't interested in hearing it.
00:50:47
Lots of people have written books over the years about this case. No one ever went to talk to Alonzo Mann.
00:50:52
What the fuck? Yeah. So basically when Alonzo's story breaks in 1983 in the New York Times, it leads to the Anti-Defamation League filing for a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank.
00:51:06
Wow. At first, the state of Georgia rejects the filing. But then in 1986, three years later, they grant the pardon, admitting their failure to protect Leo Frank's name during an ongoing trial, which made them partially responsible for his death.
00:51:24
So Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned for this murder. And and that's the story of the murder of Mary Fagan and the revenge murder of Leo Frank.
00:51:35
Wow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, I never got that far into the research. So that's like and and the weirdest part is that Sigmund Livingston, right?
00:51:45
That's his name that started the Anti-Defamation League. He had started it two weeks before with two hundred dollars and like two desks in his law office.
00:51:54
And he was like he kept seeing things written where talking about Jewish people were just be like very, very low key, but insidious.
00:52:04
So it's like apparently there was a manual for the U.S. Army that talked about how Jews are lazier than other like other army men, like things like that, where he was just going through things and just being like, take that out, take that out and just continually submitting to places to do that.
00:52:23
And that was two weeks before Leo Frank was murdered. So it was almost like then when he saw that, he was like, now I have to get serious about this because it's truly life and death.
00:52:33
So if you have any extra cash and you want to support the Anti-Defamation League and the work they do fighting hate speech, go to ADL.org.
00:52:41
Click on their Ways to Give tab. Because, quote, because the fight against one form of prejudice cannot succeed without battling prejudice in all forms.
00:52:52
Amazing. From their website. I didn't make that up. Wow. Isn't that nuts? Yeah. Great job.
00:52:59
So many. I mean. What an awful story. It's an awful story and it's a very worrisome story because we're always scared to talk about these huge, awful race related murders.
00:53:11
Totally. You know, I'm sitting there talking about like Leo Frank was lynched, but almost entirely lynchings happen to black people.
00:53:21
Right. You know what I mean? Like you don't want to start talking about lynchings in the South and only talk about this one case.
00:53:29
Totally. But, you know, like and then you don't want to talk about this case. And there's two other black men that are implicated. And one actually may be guilty, but it was never proved. And we don't know. Everything about this is worrisome, nervous making. Yeah. And yet, like, it's a story that has to be told.
00:53:47
And also I say this the creepy thing about when I was reading the article on the vintage news is when you look in the comment section fucking straight up anti in a way that I was thinking because we were just talking about that when you go through and on some websites people come in and go i heard about this story
00:54:05
from my grandma and people like talk about shit the stuff i read on that website i was like
00:54:09
holy fucking shit like you basically it was people kind of arguing that he should not have been
00:54:16
a pardoned and that right but it immediately was the most racist hateful speech i've seen
00:54:22
I mean, it was like it was crazy. So. So we're not done. Lots and lots of work for everybody to do.
00:54:30
That's right. And get conscious about. And come on, America. Yeah. Let's get our shit together.
00:54:38
If not now, when? Fucking. Here's the thing. Fuck racism. Yeah. Fuck anti-Semitism.
00:54:44
Yeah. What might help you if you feel the need to blame other groups of people you do not know
00:54:52
for what's happening to you or what's wrong in the world. What you're really doing is talking
00:54:57
about yourself. That's just the truth of life is we all want to other so that it's not on us.
00:55:05
That fact that we don't have what we want or we're not in the place that we want to be or
00:55:09
whatever, but you can, you can shortcut a lot of pain and a lot of misery and a lot of continual
00:55:17
black hole feeling inside of you by instead of blaming other people going, what am I doing?
00:55:23
What, what is this? What am I doing right now? Why am I doing it? Yeah. Because it's, it's a, uh, it doesn't work that way.
00:55:33
Right. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. And all people that don't look like you aren't responsible for your problem.
00:55:37
Absolutely not. I hate to fucking tell you. Yeah. You're number one in the responsibility department of your problems.
00:55:44
Yeah. Sorry. Sorry if your grandma told you different But Sorry if your grandma was a racist
00:55:52
Everybody's grandma Was a racist Sure she was super sweet in other ways But like
00:55:58
It's just She can't It's how it was And nowadays No fucking way Knock it off Hello beautiful
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Default terms at MintMobile.com. Okay. All right. All right. Great job. Thank you so much.
00:58:21
Fucking incredible. Story number two. Yeah. So I recently finally finished the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
00:58:30
Yes. a great movie. And it made me think of another Hollywood murder that I can't believe we haven't
00:58:38
done. Oh, and I was like, maybe it's not that interesting. So then I looked into it. And I'm
00:58:41
like, it's fucking interesting. Which one? How we not Dan, the Wonderland murders. Oh,
00:58:48
oh, yes. Right? Yes. And I had to look it up to make sure we hadn't done it. Because I was like,
00:58:52
there's no way. And it's also known as the four on the floor murders. I got information from a
00:58:57
website called Celebrity Net Wealth. Okay. An article by Dina Zipin. AllThat'sInteresting.com.
00:59:05
AllThat'sInteresting.biz. That's right. An article by Katie Serena. An LA Times article by
00:59:11
Robert W. Stewart. A Medium article by Lisa Marie Fuqua. And then there's also a whole podcast series.
00:59:19
I think it's like six episodes called The Wonderland Murders. Oh, wow. That tells the whole story.
00:59:23
Cool. As well as the 2003 Val Kilmer vehicle called Wonderland. I like to call it a
00:59:30
Janine Garofalo vehicle. She was in it! She had no lines, essentially. Well, I do want to, like, let me get out
00:59:36
the IMDb so we can talk about who's who throughout, but hold on a second. You know who's in it?
00:59:41
Which Vince had to point out to me. I didn't even realize it was him, but the guy who plays one of the
00:59:47
detectives on it is none other than fucking Ted Levine. What? Yeah. She's that big fat girl.
00:59:55
She 14 Roomie Yeah and you can barely tell it him It really exciting And it like oh I love that he in another murder movie is she a great big fat person she a great big fat person i fuck me ted lafine has fucking range he has range because then he went on to become like the police
01:00:12
chief on monk where he would speak and then every once in a while you'd get a dip of uh buffalo bill
01:00:19
and i just feel like oh no that's why he gets these little buffalo bill fucking zingers if you
01:00:24
guys don't know what we're talking about, and you don't know Silence of the Lambs by heart,
01:00:27
then what are you even doing with your life? Then G-T-H. Get to Silence of the Lambs.
01:00:32
It's on everything. Just watch it. Please do. It's a perfect film. It is. So at the start of the 1980s, Karen, the two-bedroom split-level house with a carport at
01:00:46
8763 Wonderland Avenue that's located in the safe and affluent Laurel Canyon area of Los
01:00:53
Angeles. Very safe. Very affluent. Right. It's the Hollywood Hills. Famous people fucking live there.
01:00:58
It's expensive. It's fancy dream area. Totally. Yeah. So there's this house there.
01:01:06
And in it, it lives a well-known, it's like a well-known drug house at this time in the
01:01:11
early 80s. It's the home of LA's most successful distributor of cocaine from the 1970s.
01:01:17
Oh. Called the Wonderland Gang. Shit. So they had been doing really well through the 70s.
01:01:22
It's 1981. and they kind of all fall into heroin and start doing heroin and shit falls apart at that point.
01:01:30
Yeah, it usually does when you introduce heroin. Right. When you start tasting your own supply or what is it called?
01:01:36
Get an eye on your own supply. Thank you. You mean my saying? He's high on his own supply?
01:01:40
Yeah. Yeah. So they mostly deal cocaine out of the Wonderland Avenue house, but some of the group members are now heroin users.
01:01:46
Sometimes the gang also makes money through burglaries and armed robberies. and they're just kind of bad guys.
01:01:53
Yeah. So the house, it's a fancy house filled with bad guys. Yeah. And the neighbors like hate them.
01:01:59
You know what I mean? But they're scared to call the cops. Yeah. Yeah. And the cops know like they've busted all these people.
01:02:05
They're all convicts for the most part. So the leader of the group is 37 year old convict Ron Lanius.
01:02:12
So he and his wife who are, he's kind of estranged, but she had come back to try to make things
01:02:17
up with him. Her name's Susan. She's 29. They live in the house along with the gang's second-in-command, 44-year-old Billy Devereaux, and his girlfriend, 46-year-old Joya Miller, as played by Janine Garofalo.
01:02:30
By Janine. So can you tell me who the other parts are? Yeah. Because I love this.
01:02:35
Yeah. And I really can envision it. It's fun, and I love that you're about to write all this down.
01:02:38
I have to write it down. Well, first of all, Carrie Fisher makes a cameo in the very beginning.
01:02:42
Yes. What's she doing? She's a holy roller trying to straighten out a girl and takes her back to her apartment.
01:02:48
It's like, why are you with your drug addict boyfriend? Let me help you. Just a random fucking cameo.
01:02:53
Hell yeah. So Val Kilmer's John Holmes. Ron Lanius, who's the head, is played by Josh Lucas.
01:03:01
Oh, yeah. Is he in shit still? Oh, absolutely. Sorry, Josh. Josh Lucas was just in Ford versus Ferrari.
01:03:08
Okay, great. An asshole that works for Ford. He was great. Okay. Always great as an asshole, that guy.
01:03:12
The guy who plays the second in command is none other than Tim Blake Nelson. Yes.
01:03:17
Who's an incredible actor. You know him from Brother Arthur. His wife is played by Janine Garofalo.
01:03:26
Ron Lanius' wife is played by Christina Applegate. Oh, nice. Yeah. I bet she has perfect 70s hair.
01:03:33
Well, she's barely in it. The women in this movie don't have a lot of lines. God, that's weird.
01:03:39
Wait, what? A Hollywood movie? Yeah. It can't be right. And then, okay, so then...
01:03:46
Wait, sorry, what's Josh Lucas' name? Ron Lanius. That's Ron. I love that you're taking notes.
01:03:50
Tim Blake Nelson's name is what? Is Billy. This is going to come alive in my head.
01:03:57
Okay, great. I love it. Okay, go ahead. So Ron Lanius, like the head guy, is a U.S. Air Force Vietnam vet, but he had been dishonorably
01:04:06
discharged because he was convicted of smuggling heroin back from Vietnam. Oh, shit.
01:04:13
Oh, shit more. He did it by hiding the heroin in the bodies of his fallen soldiers.
01:04:19
Oh, no. Yeah, that is dishonorable. That's very dishonorable. Discharge that. That's horrible.
01:04:25
Yeah. So he's a bad guy. In May of 1974, he had been charged with the murder of an alleged police informant.
01:04:32
But then that police informant witness. Wait, sorry. In May 1974, he had been charged with the murder of an alleged police informant who had been killed over a botched drug deal.
01:04:42
deal. But then a witness, a key witness for that case gets killed in a separate incident.
01:04:48
There's just all kinds of crazy shit going on in LA in the 70s. Sure. And so the case is dropped. But later that year, Ron is convicted of smuggling heroin
01:04:57
and cocaine across the US-Mexico border. And he serves three years of an eight year
01:05:02
sentence in federal prison. So he's a bad guy. Okay. By 1981, police investigators throughout California believe they have 27 open homicide
01:05:11
cases that can be tied to him. Oh, my God. Yeah. Meanwhile, the freeway killers going up and down.
01:05:17
The hillside stranglers are doing their thing. That's exactly right. There's like a lot of shit going on at the time.
01:05:22
Real dark area, Southern California. That's right. Ron had become friends in prison with a dude named David Lind, who's like a 41 year old
01:05:31
white supremacist, as played by he's played by Dylan McDermott. Oh, but he Dylan McDermott's playing a bad guy.
01:05:41
in this movie and it's just so hard for me to just like stretch that far because he's got like
01:05:47
a goatee he's like a motorcycle guy and it's like Dylan no you're a sweetheart then you're
01:05:53
America sweetheart you have to put on the family stone right after and just cleanse that palette right come back it like his agents were like Dylan we want you to like change up your persona when I play like you know bad guy
01:06:05
And he was like, all right. Wait, is that the guy from the law show? Dylan McDermott?
01:06:10
Or are you thinking of Dermot Mulroney? Yeah, I was thinking of Dermot Mulroney.
01:06:14
He's in the family stone. Okay. But Dylan McDermott, he's the more clean cut looking guy.
01:06:20
He's in the practice. Yes. Okay. He's in. No, that guy can't be a bad guy. No. at all. He's like, he's got a baby
01:06:26
face. He's too hard, but he's good in the role. He's a good actor, but it's just so hard to see him
01:06:32
as like a white supremacist bad guy. Well, also because he has two, he has the golden ratio
01:06:38
features where his face looks like a cartoon of a face. Yeah. He's so kind of perfect looking. He's like a pretty actor.
01:06:45
I'm sure he had fun with the role. Sure, he did. You could tell. So they had met in prison.
01:06:52
They had met in prison, Ron and David Lind. And together they were like, hey, let's steal drugs together when we're both out
01:06:59
of prison. And they were like, that's a great idea. And they spit into their hands. They shook on it.
01:07:03
Yeah. And then so in 1981, David comes to Los Angeles from Sacramento to help with the gang's
01:07:09
lucrative drug dealing business. And he brings his girlfriend, who's 22-year-old Barbara Richardson,
01:07:14
and they crash in the living room sofa of the Wonderland house. And she is played by Natasha
01:07:19
Gregson. Okay. Who's a great actress. Tasha Gregson Wagner. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She's done a
01:07:25
ton of stuff. Yeah. Oh. It's Natalie Wood's daughter. Is it really? Yeah. It's Natalie Wood's daughter?
01:07:31
Yeah. And you guessed that I was doing Natalie Wood's death? That's crazy. That's the creepiest thing I've ever heard.
01:07:37
She's Robert Wagner's daughter. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. She used to be on a sitcom in the early mid-90s.
01:07:46
Yeah. I totally... Yeah. She's done so much stuff. Okay. Oh, my God. Okay. So they come to L.A. to help with this lucrative drug business.
01:07:53
They crash at the Wonderland house. There's always parties there, and there's tons of drugs.
01:07:56
Everyone's on drugs. Yeah. Let's cut to July 1st, 1981, around 4 p.m. Okay. Furniture movers working at the house next door, they hear a woman moaning in pain, and
01:08:06
they go to investigate, and they find the bloodied dead bodies of four of the Wonderland gang
01:08:12
members and one person still clinging to life. Oh, my God. And the Wonderland house becomes known as one of the grisliest murder scenes since the Manson murders.
01:08:21
Whoa. And one of Hollywood's most gruesome killings. So I'm going to get back to that.
01:08:26
But the day after the murders, police find David Lund, a.k.a. Dylan McDermott. He had come back to the scene of the crime, like gets into the house that has all the police tape and shit.
01:08:37
He's looking for drugs. He finds out that, you know, his girlfriend might be have been killed.
01:08:43
He hadn't been there that night. And the cops find him there and they're like, what the fuck?
01:08:47
And he's like, I'll tell you everything. They take him in for questioning. And he tells the investigators that the reason for the murders all centers around the well-known adult film star, John Holmes.
01:08:57
He's at the center of this murder. Right. So who's John Holmes, you ask? So 36-year-old John Holmes, in the 1970s, he had become a famous porn actor in this new era of adult films, which had become more mainstream.
01:09:13
I mean, it was more like movies. They were more like movie stars. Yeah. And they.
01:09:19
Well, I mean, to a degree. Yeah. Right. But they had become famous. Right. These leading actors and actresses.
01:09:26
Especially John Holmes. Especially John Holmes. He was like famous. And if you. So Boogie Nights is really loosely.
01:09:33
There's some plot lines that are based on John Holmes and his life. And so Dirk Diggler is essentially John Holmes.
01:09:40
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because John Holmes was known for having the biggest dick.
01:09:44
Right. Yeah. Right. I'm sure you can find it on the Internet. Yeah. If you so please.
01:09:49
I don't know. Do they still have porn on the Internet? At the time, John Holmes was one of the most prolific male adult film actors starring in over 500 porn films and is best known for his portrayal of the detective Johnny Wad.
01:10:05
So remember in Boogie Nights when he becomes he is like karate fighting detective slash porn.
01:10:11
star. That's all based on John Holmes as Johnny Wad. It's almost a biopic. Exactly. But by 1981, John Holmes had become addicted to freebasing cocaine. And as a result,
01:10:24
his career declined because of his chronic impotence. So he had become a frequent visitor
01:10:29
at the Wonderland house. And the gang had let John hang out mostly for novelty. It seems like
01:10:35
they treated him like a joke. And he was kind of like a mooch. It seemed like they portray him as
01:10:41
like a hapless mooch who he was selling drugs for them, but he had been doing the drugs himself.
01:10:49
And so he had gotten into deep debt with the Wonderland gang and owes him a bunch of money.
01:10:54
So when the gang finds out about this, they cut off his access to the Wonderland house and they
01:10:59
threatened to kill him if he doesn't pay back the money. Like this is real shit. This is real deep
01:11:03
fucking shit. And it's that that trick too of like, because I think I actually watched a
01:11:09
documentary about John Holmes and the way his life went. And that whole thing of like,
01:11:14
he lived in because porn films where it was this kind of like a party atmosphere and drugs were
01:11:19
obviously in the 70s. Like that's back when people thought cocaine was good for you.
01:11:24
Right. That was actually flowing. Everyone did it in the late 70s. It's like, oh, yeah,
01:11:29
it's just it's just like it's uppers, you know, like it's not that big of a deal.
01:11:33
Right. Yeah. With the early 80s, the come down of like, yeah, now you're now you're
01:11:38
dabbling in heroin. Now you're in a thing where you can't get out. Totally. So dark.
01:11:43
It seems like that's what had happened. Yeah. So according to John Lind, who's telling the
01:11:47
police officers the day after the murder, why John Holmes is involved. He says that John Holmes had
01:11:53
tried to get out of his debt by tipping off the Wonderland gang to a rich friend of his name, Eddie, who he said always
01:12:00
Had a ton of drugs, cash and valuables laying around his house. And he's like, I can get you inside the house.
01:12:06
He drew them a map of the house, showed them where like the safe was and where the valuables were.
01:12:11
And he's like, this will be how I pay you off. And I'll even leave the back door unlocked for you guys.
01:12:17
I know. Like drugs make you do the dumbest fucking thing. Every plan is a bad plan.
01:12:25
Every. Yeah. Just it's all in. The feelings are bad. And they don't go away. Right.
01:12:31
When the end game is to get more drugs, whatever you're fucking planning is a bad idea.
01:12:36
It's going to go wrong. That's right. Yeah. Or you'll just get in a weird car accident on the way because you're just not in reality.
01:12:44
Right. Exactly. You're not thinking straight. Yeah. So on June 29th, 1981, John Holmes visits his friend Eddie's house in Studio City.
01:12:52
It's his mansion. Early in the morning, he goes there, he parties, he buys drugs.
01:12:57
But on his way out, he leaves the patio to the patio door to the kitchen unlatched.
01:13:03
So Wonderland gang members, Ron, Billy and David, they perform the robbery while another member waits outside in a car.
01:13:10
And the men enter the property through the unlocked door and confront Eddie, who's at the house with his 300 pound bodyguard named Gregory Diles, who lives there.
01:13:19
Like, that's how crazy it is. Yeah. So they pretend to be police officers. They go to handcuff Eddie and his bodyguard.
01:13:27
But David Lind is bumped while he's handcuffing him and accidentally shoots him.
01:13:33
His gun goes off, but he only grazes the bodyguard. Okay. But his gun does go off.
01:13:37
Yeah. And the gang force Eddie to open the safe, and they end up making off with, it seems like $100,000 worth of stuff.
01:13:45
I've also read $1.2 million worth of stuff. It's hard to tell. But it's cash, jewelry, guns, and drugs, including eight pounds of cocaine.
01:13:53
Shit. And 5,000 quaaludes. all the quaaludes those were the last 5,000 quaaludes
01:14:01
god damn it it says that today the total worth of it all would be 3.4 million so they fucking robbed him blind
01:14:08
I don't know if that's the right number it might be lower than that but it was a shit ton of money
01:14:12
this guy was also a drug kingpin and he got fleeced here's what I'm going to tell you
01:14:18
now the biggest problem is that the Wonderland gang hadn't just robbed some pedestrian friend
01:14:23
of John Holmes They had robbed the wealthiest and most powerful organized crime boss operating on the West Coast, notorious club owner, Eddie Nash.
01:14:34
Oh, shit. We've talked about in other episodes before. I'm nervous right now. You should be.
01:14:40
So in the movie Boogie Nights, when they go over to Dirk Gently. No. Diggler. Dirk Diggler's.
01:14:49
Dirk Gently's. The British show? It's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh, yeah.
01:14:55
So when they go to Dirk Diggler's like rich friend's mansion and he's wearing a robe and like bikini briefs and he and his lover is popping off pop rocks.
01:15:06
Yeah. That's based on Eddie Nash, like almost exactly. Wow. Yeah. So Eddie Nash owns several famous nightclubs and restaurants in L.A. and he was super into drugs.
01:15:18
His drug habit was so intense. It was reported that he used one million dollars in drugs every year.
01:15:23
Oh, no. Yeah. And he was missing part of a sinus cavity because of his addiction.
01:15:27
Yeah. And his story is crazy and fascinating as well. The podcast, The Wonderland Murders, talks more about it.
01:15:36
But he had become withdrawn and reclusive, as you do. And he really left his house, but it was like a party house.
01:15:42
And he would wear a maroon silk robe and bikini briefs and just have people, you know, drug addicts through the house.
01:15:50
Sure. Essentially, he was not someone you wanted to fuck with. No. And Rob, not to mention humiliate, which the Wonderland gang had done when they had forced Eddie Nash to beg for his life on his knees with a gun in his mouth.
01:16:03
So they not only robbed him and shot his bodyguard, but they fucking humiliated him.
01:16:09
And he could he could take the money loss. It was, you know, making him look stupid that the problem was.
01:16:16
Yeah, that was the problem. Yeah, I mean. Yeah. Because if you're the biggest drug dealer in, you know, did you say Studio City?
01:16:26
Los Angeles. In Los Angeles. Then clearly it's about power and prestige and status and all that stuff.
01:16:34
I mean, that's like you have the guts to do it. And then these little pricks on fucking Wonderland Avenue are ripping you off and tricking you.
01:16:42
They're scaring you because they pretend to be cops. You think the shit's going down.
01:16:46
And then it turns out. But Eddie Nash is like in bed with the LAPD. They wouldn't have come and raided his house then.
01:16:53
So do you think he knew immediately that they were fake? He knew immediately. Within 48 hours of the robbery, Nash is pretty sure that he knows that the Wonderland gang is behind the heist.
01:17:05
And that his friend, John Holmes, who Nash had taken under his wing and he called him brother, had a hand in it.
01:17:12
But he's rich enough that that doesn't matter. It's just the fucking humiliation.
01:17:17
Yeah. So two days after the robbery of Nash's house, Holm ends up back at Nash's house after John Holmes is spotted wearing one of Nash's stolen rings.
01:17:30
Oh, shit. Yeah. So like he got a cut of the robbery, including jewelry and not smart, not smart at all.
01:17:35
Not smart. Nash, you know, beats up John. He takes his address book and says, I'll hunt down and kill all of your friends and family if you don't tell me who robbed the house.
01:17:45
this is just a guy from ohio who wanted to get into porn because he had a 10 inch dick
01:17:50
yeah and he just getting himself steven almost spit up his perrier you hadn heard how long it was sorry you didn know Stephen just Quite large A big one Sorry Yeah He was doing awesome visual comedy over here with his spit takes and you can see it
01:18:10
So, of course, John Holmes is terrified of Eddie Nash. As he should be. As he should be.
01:18:17
But he also... It might be that he's also pissed off at the Wonderland gang because he only got a little
01:18:22
paltry split of the prophets and he gives eddie nash their names so two days after this robbery of
01:18:30
eddie fucking nash at around 3 a.m on july 1st um john holmes is brought to the wonderland house
01:18:37
by the bodyguard along with two other unidentified men your face is right yeah this is not gonna go
01:18:44
well no so this is the story that's been kind of plucked out from everyone's story based on
01:18:51
And like that no one really knows because everyone there got murdered. No one really knows because everyone got murdered.
01:18:55
The people who were involved, of course, are not talking. So this is what we kind of have figured out has happened.
01:19:00
OK. Is that there's an intercom. There's a security gate. And John rings the intercom.
01:19:05
And he's like, hey, it's John. And because they know him, they buzz him in. Not knowing that they're buzzing in three armed dudes along with him.
01:19:13
And the group enters the Wonderland house. according to the story that john's ex-wife later tells based on his confession to her
01:19:21
who's by the way she's played by um lisa kudrow oh wow really well yeah she's she's an amazing
01:19:28
yeah she plays it so dowdy and perfectly so john is forced to watch as the three intruders
01:19:38
sent by nash attacks the sleeping wonderland occupants and uses hammers and metal pipes
01:19:44
to bludgeon the occupants of the Wonderland gang. Ron and his wife Susan and Billy and his girlfriend Joy are both,
01:19:53
they're all in their own beds and get bludgeoned in their room. And then Barbara, 22-year-old Barbara, who's asleep on the couch alone,
01:20:01
gets bludgeoned on the couch. Oh, my God. Neighbors later report having heard screams
01:20:05
and someone begging not to be killed at the time of the attack. but they say that because the house next door is this drug-fueled you know party house that often
01:20:16
included violent yelling and noise when they heard the murders happening they just thought
01:20:21
it was another party or assume it's a primal scream therapy session oh no which was all the
01:20:26
rage at the time oh really yeah oh no so primal scream is just screaming it out right yes basically
01:20:32
yeah so they kind of were like these fucking neighbors again they already hated them
01:20:36
they're having another rager yeah they're they they don't assume the very worst and try to help
01:20:41
exactly which is awful so bad and the police aren't called for uh over 12 hours at 4 p.m
01:20:50
when those furniture movers heard uh the house next door they hear moaning and they go to
01:20:54
investigate and then call the police um and then so there is video footage it's like the first of
01:21:01
it's kind it's a walkthrough of the crime scene with fucking i mean it's from 1981 so it's not
01:21:08
great footage but it's the bodies you can see everything you can find it on youtube don't do
01:21:13
it if you're not no it's very gruesome oh no and it's um the detective pointing everything out and
01:21:19
and talking you through it it's really fucked up that's horrible but there's blood everywhere i bet
01:21:25
Yeah. So the moaning had come from Susan Lanius, who was lying on the floor of the bedroom that she shared with Ron. Her head had been partially smashed in, but it had been done so in such a way that she didn't bleed out. She actually ends up being the sole survivor of the attack and recovers.
01:21:47
Wow. She's left with permanent brain damage, of course, and that leaves her with amnesia.
01:21:52
So the only thing she remembers from that night is shadows, is what she says. Yeah.
01:21:57
Everyone else who'd been in the house that night is dead. The body of Barbara Butterfly Richardson, David Lynn's girlfriend, is the one lying on the ground near the couch she had been sleeping on, covered in blood.
01:22:09
Joy Miller is found dead in her bed while Billy's body, her boyfriend, is slumped at the foot of the bed, leaning against the TV stand.
01:22:18
And a bloody hammer is tangled in the sheets and several metal pipes are on the floor.
01:22:24
And the bodyguard of Eddie Nash was known. That was his weapon of choice was a metal pipe.
01:22:30
It's so awful. Yeah. But the idea that they're going to go bludgeon people as opposed to shoot them and having it be over quickly.
01:22:39
How do you do that? How do you do that? It's crazy. It seems like the point was to teach John Holmes a lesson.
01:22:45
Yeah. It seems like that was the point. In the neighboring room, Ron Launius is found dead, bloodied and beaten, almost beyond recognition.
01:22:55
Detectives at the LAPD say that the murder scene is one of the most gruesome and bloody murders of all time.
01:23:00
And the video is taken as well. So John Holmes, his handprint is found on the bed frame of Ron's bed, almost like he was leaning over the bed.
01:23:13
And so maybe he had something to do with it. Oh, so he's arrested and charged with four counts of murder in March of 1982.
01:23:20
John Holmes is. He refuses to cooperate in the investigation and spends four months in jail.
01:23:25
By the way, he spends he's in L.A. County jail and the special wings for celebrities called the Keepaways.
01:23:33
And his his cell neighbors are Angelo Bueno and Kenneth Bianchi, the hillside strangler.
01:23:39
Hillside stranglers. Yeah. So those are his fucking next door neighbors. I mean, did a portal to hell open up in like 1977?
01:23:50
It's called Ronald Reagan. My mom is high you and having right now I love it Wow I can believe he lived through that though also to survive that experience
01:24:09
Well, the movie Wonderland, it's so weirdly accurate from what I can tell. And they do these weird flashbacks and this fucked up shit.
01:24:18
And it's just done well. And it looks it's awful, but it's like, dude, when you get involved in drugs, these are the kind of fucking things that happen.
01:24:27
It goes downhill real. Yeah. Like the people you're dealing with are not everyday people.
01:24:32
No, no. So after a three week trial in June of 1982, John Holmes is acquitted. And his lawyer explains that the hand he explains the handprint away by saying that his clients spent a lot of time in the house and would crash in whatever bed was possible.
01:24:46
So that's why his handprint was there. But the handprint was like in blood. So in 1988, almost seven years later, the police are any closer to solving the case, but they hear that John Holmes is on his deathbed.
01:25:00
John Holmes had been diagnosed with AIDS and was at the hospital due to complications from the disease and about to die.
01:25:06
Police try to get one last confession from him, but he refuses to give any names.
01:25:11
Wow. And he dies on March 13th, 1988. After he dies, John's ex-wife tells the LA Times that he had confessed to her his part in the murders.
01:25:21
His wife asked him why he didn't do or say anything while these people were getting murdered.
01:25:26
And she says that John said, quote, they were dirt. Whoa. Yeah. A girlfriend of John Holmes, her name's Dawn, from 1981, verifies the ex-wife's story, saying that John had told her the same thing.
01:25:38
Both women say John insisted that he didn't take part in the actual bloodshed at all.
01:25:43
He just was forced to watch. But investigators believe his handprint is on the bed frame because he participated in the beatings.
01:25:49
And they show that in Wonderland where it's like they forced John Holmes to take part in it, either to teach him a lesson or to have him be implicated in it as well.
01:25:58
Right. Make him hit Ron over the head with a with a pipe. That would make sense. Yeah.
01:26:02
I mean, that's yeah. Yeah, it totally would make sense. And then him denying it to his death because he doesn't he doesn't want to be part of that.
01:26:09
And he seems like this hapless guy who wouldn't be involved in this stuff if it wasn't for drugs.
01:26:15
Right. You know. So in 1990, Eddie Nash is charged in a California state court with conspiracy to commit the murders, while his bodyguard Gregory Dials is charged with participating in them.
01:26:27
And in 1991, Nash's trial ends in a hung jury because it turns out that he had bribed one of the jury members, an 18-year-old woman, with $50,000.
01:26:37
Oh, shit. Yeah. and so he's acquitted. You can't do that. No. You'll immediately look guilty. Yeah. You can't
01:26:43
do that. But they don't find out till later and he's acquitted. Can you imagine being an 18 year
01:26:47
old girl? You're on this jury. These people come to you and they're like, here's 50 grand if you
01:26:51
don't, you know, vote him guilty. And like, they're these powerful fucking bosses. Yeah. You don't say
01:26:59
no because you have like principle. You say yes because you're scared for your life. I mean,
01:27:05
And it's such a what a terrible position. Right. And no matter what you do. Totally.
01:27:11
It's lose lose. Because if you say no to organize members of organized crime, you could get killed.
01:27:18
If you do it, you could go to jail. Right. Like every it. That's terrible. It is.
01:27:23
It totally is. That's why jury tampering is illegal. Don't do it. I'm pretty sure.
01:27:28
Gregory Diles is also acquitted. So Nash ends up being acquitted. Diles is also acquitted and dies in 1997 from liver failure.
01:27:37
Okay. So in 2000, Eddie Nash is arrested by federal authorities for running a criminal enterprise,
01:27:43
conspiring to commit the Wonderland murders, and for bribing the jury in the first trial.
01:27:47
By this time, he's 71 years old. He has emphysema and tuberculosis. The proceedings drag on for 11 more years until Eddie Nash finally agrees to a plea bargain.
01:27:59
He pleads guilt. 11 years? 11 years. So is it just money and he's like living with so many?
01:28:06
Who knows? Wow. Yeah. He pleads guilty to running a criminal enterprise, money laundering and jury tampering, but he refuses to admit any involvement in the Wonderland murders.
01:28:16
He claims he only sent his people to go and retrieve his stolen property. Nothing more.
01:28:21
Yeah. In the end, he spends one year in federal prison and is ordered to pay $250,000 in fines.
01:28:28
And he dies of unspecified causes on August 9th, 2014 at 85 years old. Wow. Yeah.
01:28:36
Any other assailants who might have participated in the bludgeoning of the Wonderland gang have never been identified or prosecuted.
01:28:44
And it's very unlikely anyone ever will. That's the Wonderland murders. A little silver lining.
01:28:51
the girlfriend I was talking about of John Holmes from 1981, who was 15 when she met
01:28:58
31-year-old John Holmes and clearly was coerced and taken advantage of. She wrote a memoir called
01:29:06
The Road Through Wonderland, Surviving John Holmes. She's played, by the way, by Kate Bosworth.
01:29:11
Oh, wow. Yeah. So today, she's revered as an expert survivor leader. She is a national speaker,
01:29:19
educator, consultant, and author in the anti-trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assault, and trauma recovery movements.
01:29:26
Wow. So she's this incredible force now. And you can find her info and her book at don-shiller, S-C-H-I-L-L-E-R.com.
01:29:36
Wow. Yeah, it's incredible. And that is The Wonderland Murders. That's unbelievable.
01:29:42
Wait, can I look up one thing? Yes. Okay. For some reason a 10 inch dick didn't seem that big to me
01:29:49
So I was looking it up Because I want to be like it was 17 inches long You looked up John Holmes dick size just now I just wanted to make sure that was right I guess 10 inches was big back then In today dick size Oh 23 inches Exactly
01:30:05
Oh. I had always thought, and I think it's based on this documentary I have, like, very fleeting
01:30:10
memories of, that it was, you know, medically impossible size or something like that.
01:30:16
Yeah. Like crazy nuts insane. Yeah. That's a crazy. I didn't realize it was so involved.
01:30:22
I didn't realize that John Holmes was so involved in it. You know, you know, what's interesting is I was as you kept referring to Boogie Nights.
01:30:30
I was like, well, then actually it could be argued that once upon a time in Hollywood, being the basically fairy tale version of the Sharon Tate murders, the Cielo Drive murders, I should say, that basically Paul Thomas Anderson did it first with Boogie Nights.
01:30:46
Totally. He basically took the Wonderland murders and made it kind of funny up. hey not everybody's just gonna get bludgeoned i was just thinking that as you were saying that
01:30:56
where it's just kind of like that's a good controversial film opinion that's a good point
01:31:01
pta did it first that's right those are good movies because when i when i watched uh once
01:31:06
upon a time in hollywood and i realized at the end oh this is like that whole ending of her
01:31:11
of them all talking and her walking up the driveway or whatever and then i'm like
01:31:15
oh I get it it's a fairy tale like it took me so long to get that so then it was like
01:31:21
oh wait yeah that is like I like the idea of taking these horrible like stains on
01:31:27
you know history or whatever these moments of absolute abject human tragedy and then just being like
01:31:35
or what about this funny scene where everybody does drugs and everyone acts super weird in the living room
01:31:41
I just you know I can't help but feel so much sympathy for the girlfriends and wives who fall in love with these characters who are so bad for them.
01:31:53
And, you know, 22 years old, maybe you're 40 something and divorced with children because
01:31:59
you're a heroin addict. Yeah. And you get divorced. It's like these things that happen in your life.
01:32:04
We're such minor characters in these lives of these people who make really bad decisions
01:32:12
Right. And are in because of that, we're affected by it. It's also I was feeling a lot of empathy toward John Holmes and just what addiction does to people.
01:32:24
And it's that idea that it's when when people are addicts, there's so many people who don't look at it as a disease or as a thing that's beyond the control of the person that's happening.
01:32:35
Right. But clearly it is. If this is the kind of shit you get into and you're so fucked up that you can't make a good decision and you can't, you know what I mean?
01:32:45
Like you're just you're kind of like out past reason and you're doing things because like your body demands chemicals.
01:32:54
I feel like it's so crazy when you're like, I don't even want to be doing drugs anymore and I'm still doing them.
01:32:59
Yeah. It's like there's a ghost inhabiting your body who keeps making these decisions for you.
01:33:04
It's terrible. Yeah. It's terrible. And it leads to some fucked up situations in the hills and the fucking even in the Hollywood Hills.
01:33:12
It's so it's so sinister. The idea it's like, go kill them all in a slow way. That's going to hyper traumatize John Holmes.
01:33:22
Like everything about that is the worst. So sad. It's the worst. Once again. Hey, but hey, but what about not the worst?
01:33:29
How about when we turn it around at the end? We said this. We said that we were going to do this a couple episodes ago.
01:33:35
And now we've collected up all our information and we're talking about fucking hooray.
01:33:40
But we're going to read a couple of your guys's first. Yeah, you guys were so great.
01:33:44
You commented on Instagram, which is the ones I'm reading. And you commented on Twitter, which is what Karen's reading with some really great fucking
01:33:51
hoorays. So I think maybe the next few episodes, we'll just read a few at the end.
01:33:54
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, sure. You want to go first? Yeah, this is from DNA TXN. I posted this in the fan forum, but it seems appropriate to put here since it was a fucking
01:34:04
hooray. I absolutely love every time Marty and Jim make an appearance on the podcast.
01:34:09
My dad died when I was 16, so I don't have any experience of having a dad and being an adult.
01:34:15
I was really lucky to have a great relationship with my dad, and because he was chronically ill, I was able to appreciate every day we had with him.
01:34:22
He was sometimes gruff and old-fashioned, having been in the army most of his life, but he was also kind and funny, accepting that life had knocked him for a loop.
01:34:31
I miss him terribly, but when Karen and Georgia mention their dads, it warms my heart, and I can take a moment to imagine how my dad would respond to something in my adult life, and it helps me remember him a bit better.
01:34:43
So hooray for dads. Thanks for sharing them. That's so beautiful. That's awesome.
01:34:48
What a great fucking hooray to kick it off with. Good job, DNA underscore TXN. That's gorgeous.
01:34:55
This is from June M. Bersum. It's June M. Bersum. This person writes, my fucking hooray is that tomorrow I'll have been officially discharged
01:35:04
from my day program from my eating disorder for a full week. And while it's been a hard last few days, I'm eating and not spending most of my day
01:35:12
in bed. So progress. Hell yes. Fucking awesome. Yes. Yes. Yes. Love it. Take every day.
01:35:19
Do that same thing. Keep on logging days. Put them behind you. Oh, it's so fun. You're going to do it.
01:35:25
Yeah. Lots of us have done it. Totally. Lots of us still have to do it and continue to struggle.
01:35:31
And the more You can talk about it the more it helps You and other people Remember it's about helping other people
01:35:39
100% How about this This is Eeyore the Holland lop Which I think is a kind of rabbit
01:35:46
But I'm not sure Eeyore underscore the underscore Holland Underscore lop My fucking hooray is that after a year and a half
01:35:54
Being in a wheelchair I stood up for 47.9 seconds By myself Yeah! Hashtag fucking hooray.
01:36:02
That's amazing. Congratulations. That is incredible. Keep it up. Love it. So good.
01:36:07
This person writes, my fucking hooray. I'm 22 years old and never thought I would be able to support myself and live and lived
01:36:14
at home. This month, I finally moved out of my mom's house and I'm actually supporting myself.
01:36:18
Things are going amazing and I'm so proud of myself. Yes. Yay! We're proud of you too.
01:36:23
Yes. Congratulations. This is Dances with Larks. I thought it said Dances with Sharks.
01:36:29
Dances with Lark says my fucking hooray This coming fall I'm moving to Seattle To pursue my bachelor's degree at my dream
01:36:35
School after being in community college Land for about five years Amen I finally made the push
01:36:42
Got over my fears and fucking did it Yes Good Do it This is from Aaron KD85 My fucking hooray is crying in my cubicle
01:36:55
Because Karen and Georgia actually make me feel seen I was raped at 18 and lost my dad at 20.
01:37:01
I'm almost 35 now, but that trauma of that time in my life is still very much alive.
01:37:06
I cut off my relationship with my therapist mother almost four years ago after constantly being told to, quote, get over it.
01:37:13
Sometimes I have wondered if there's something wrong with me for still crying and being jumpy until people like Karen in Georgia remind me that healing is a process and that there is nothing wrong with how long I take.
01:37:24
Much love, Erin. Erin, you're so right. You were right. Trust your instincts. What you just named is the things that happened to you will never go away.
01:37:34
And that's true for everybody on this planet. We all have huge scars. We've all been through fucked up shit.
01:37:41
Lots and lots and lots of people. And if you go out into the world and try to find other people that are like you, you'll understand that you shouldn't feel different and you shouldn't feel in anywhere weird.
01:37:54
and the idea I think the mother that you had to cut out because she needed to say get over it
01:38:00
is because she didn't have any better tools to say anything better to you and maybe you were so close
01:38:05
that she felt helpless and that made her feel bad she thinks she's helping you because she really wants it to be how it was
01:38:14
she wants it to be over but you know you're a different person now you on planet I was raped and my dad died and that your planet now and you can thrive there Because your planet is populated with everybody else on this same planet Exactly Yeah exactly
01:38:30
It's, yeah, that's from Dear Sugar. I didn't write that myself. Cheryl Stray, Dear Sugar, everyone needs to read it.
01:38:36
Yes. Well, and I was also just thinking of, I just listened to this. Pema Chodron has a book called Getting Unhooked.
01:38:43
It's so good. And it's just kind of about how we all, every single human being, we just have these moments.
01:38:50
A thing happens that we don't like for whatever reason. We tighten up and then we act a certain way to try to make that go away.
01:38:56
And that's the source of addiction. It's the source of neuroses. It's the source of bad behavior.
01:39:01
It's the source of everything. And the idea is if you can recognize when you're tightening up and then about to do act weird, you can stop and just pause.
01:39:10
That's so weird. I'm going to this, I'm calling her a psychic massage therapist, but really it's somatic therapy.
01:39:17
And part of that is when something goes wrong or you feel off or you feel scared, where in your body do you tighten up?
01:39:23
And where in your body do you feel it? And because my back is so fucked up, all the shit that I refuse to deal with from my life and from my childhood is being turned into back pain.
01:39:36
Muscle tension. Muscle tension and back pain. And she's like, next time you feel this tension and this tightening, go with it.
01:39:45
Yeah. Instead of like letting it absorb everything. Right. Instead of like locking down.
01:39:50
Right. Because it's the we believe like in our reptilian brain that we can't handle it or it's danger.
01:39:57
It's life threatening danger. But it's actually a feeling. Yeah. It's a bad memory.
01:40:02
It's a feeling. It's a pain, which you want to avoid. Normally. Yeah. And naturally.
01:40:07
Yeah. But if you can just accept it and let it sit there, it goes away. But it's that, I mean, easy to say.
01:40:15
But Pema Chudron getting unhooked. There was an anecdote she just told about the Dalai Lama being asked, because there's this idea that like Western culture is very self-loathing and they don't really have that in Tibet.
01:40:27
And he was talking about when he first discovered that it was this whole different thing over here.
01:40:32
And so the person he was talking to asked him, do you have any regrets? And he told a story about an interaction he had with an older monk a monk that was in his 80s and the monk killed himself later And the reporter said how did you get rid of that feeling And then they said that there was a very very very long pause And the Dalai Lama said I didn It still there
01:40:58
It's still there. And then I just have slowly, slowly, slowly learned to not let it take over.
01:41:05
Of course, in early days, it took over. And eventually you work with it until it doesn't
01:41:10
take over anymore. But that's like a growing process. Yeah. I certainly don't know how to do
01:41:15
it. I'm not there yet. But apparently the Dalai Lama does. You want to do one more? Sure. Let's
01:41:21
see. This was from the emails. I'm sorry if this isn't the right spot to share my fucking hooray.
01:41:25
I just wanted to let y'all know that your last episode that discussed the pillowcase rapist
01:41:29
inspired me to reach out to my college best friend and tell her that I had been sexually
01:41:33
assaulted by one of our quote unquote friends. I'd never told her about this experience because I'd
01:41:39
been ashamed and afraid because I'd been drinking when it happened. And I thought it was my fault
01:41:43
for putting myself in the situation. This past fall, you both inspired me to find a new counselor
01:41:49
to deal with my anxiety and my eating disorder that I'd like to pretend didn't exist for,
01:41:53
oh, the last 20 years. Right? That episode helped me shine a light on a dark piece of shame that I
01:41:59
had been hiding for too long. And when I shared my experience with my friend, she even had a story
01:42:05
of her own that she'd been hiding and I in turn helped her share her experience.
01:42:12
You had both inspired me to work on owning my story, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and taking
01:42:17
away power from the dark, shadowy bits of shame that I have tried to deal with by myself for too long.
01:42:23
You two are my fucking hooray, MD. That's so beautiful. That's incredible. That's so beautiful. That's incredible.
01:42:31
I think these can be our fucking hoorays this week. because me saying like Pilates next is not going to fucking match up this.
01:42:38
So I refuse. but you know what? We can't be deep all the time. You know what I mean?
01:42:42
Like literally I was like, what British procedural can I say? I'm grateful for. Let's let these be our guys to comment this week again on Instagram and on our
01:42:52
Twitter, my favorite murder and my fave murder. Tell us your fucking arrays this week.
01:42:56
We'll read them next week. Incredible. And you know, small or big, they don't have to be heavy.
01:43:00
I was just going to say, We all can all be Eeyore the Holland Lop who stood up for the first time after being in a wheelchair for a year and a half But it still good We want to hear it Sarah Sarah Duke who the one who made us Those incredible beautiful dresses That I always wear on stage Oh yeah She said I started smoking 20 years ago And smoked at least 20 cigarettes a day
01:43:19
For most of that time I quit six days ago Which means tomorrow I get to start measuring time in weeks
01:43:25
Fucking hooray Hell yes Sarah Duke Do you have that app that counts days Because then a year
01:43:30
You will have the exact amount of time And it'll tell you how much money you spent
01:43:33
Or you saved By not smoking right Yes There's some good apps that really are like pro,
01:43:38
like make it fun to quit things. I love it. Awesome. Send them to us. Great job, everybody.
01:43:44
Yeah, thanks for listening. Thanks for participating with us. Thanks for being here
01:43:48
and coming to our party. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:43:56
Why is it always chaos when we link up? Because nobody plans anything, bro. Good thing the rug's ready like that.
01:44:02
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