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00:02:54
Sure. Maybe you have the same accent. Absolutely. Do we like vocal fry? Hell yes.
00:03:00
Yes, we do. Are we pushing it more than ever before? Yes. It's a selling point. Yeah, girl.
00:03:10
I just belched at Georgia while smiling and pretending I was about to say something.
00:03:13
I was not buying it, which is why I scream so loud. Please don't play that. Stephen, please mute the...
00:03:19
Stephen, please... Actually, will you just put a beep like it's weird? No, no, leave the burp in. Leave me screaming the microphone off is what I'm saying.
00:03:27
I thought you were asking me. No, I would never censor your burps. Are you kidding me? I live for them.
00:03:33
You censor your burps, though. I do, because there's so many. They almost seem like aggressive at one point, you know what I mean?
00:03:40
Like, she's doing that on purpose. She's just doing it for attention. My gut microbes are like overflowing with joy.
00:03:49
How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. Good. Good. Good, good. Yeah, you seem good.
00:03:54
Thank you. Oh, really? Uh-huh. Oh. To me. In what way? Oh, calm, easygoing. Really?
00:04:00
Kind of like, what? Okay. I'm not. That's fine with me. A lot of that kind of stuff.
00:04:05
Oh, cool. Yeah, it's nice. I like it. Interesting. I'm working on matching your energy.
00:04:10
Okay. I think it's my big sweater energy. That, well, and I should mention that you did offer to give me that sweater.
00:04:18
I said I might. it's Georgia has the best sweater on right now because it's cable knit it's a cardigan
00:04:26
black but it has silver threads in it and it's like loose it's not my style at all and I saw it
00:04:32
on a website and I specifically bought it for podcasting I was like that is a great podcast
00:04:37
sweater cozy kind of like yeah it's an outfit but you don't have to commit it feels like I'm
00:04:43
wearing a like I'm in a blanket at home. Yep. But I'm in the studio where I don't live. You're
00:04:49
saying get your get your own sweater. No, no. Yeah, I think it. Yeah, if it if it works. Okay.
00:04:55
Yeah, don't doubt it. All right. You get to be comfortable. Thank you. Thank you for that.
00:05:00
No problem. Hold on. Yeah, get it on the record. Take that off. Do not take it off.
00:05:05
That one was like... Low and slow? Yeah, that one was like foul in like a little guttural...
00:05:14
Uh-oh. Sorry. Did you hear that, Cia? No. I slapped the table and all the audio went out for me and Georgia.
00:05:21
Plug our things in. Do you hear yourself? Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, we're in. Let me talk about the Exactly Right Network and what you can look forward to right now.
00:05:30
This is Georgia's podcast guide. Don't press fast forward because this is good shit, too.
00:05:35
Yeah, there's our upcoming other shows. Sometimes there's people that tweeted us and say, excuse me, I just listened to the whole
00:05:41
all every episode. Now what do I do? Well, here's your answer. Oh, here's what you do.
00:05:47
Oh, right. Handpicked by us. So the Fall Line, incredible podcast. Their new season starts on the 12th which is two days ago Two days ago Yesterday Yeah And they doing the Beaufort County Jane Doe the whole season It going to be really good This podcast will kill you
00:06:05
Everyone's fucking favorite podcast about infectious diseases. Who doesn't want to hear about it?
00:06:11
They're doing a coronavirus special. Yes, they are. Which is really exciting. It's topical.
00:06:17
It's the fear on everyone's lips these days. And it's all in the news. and the ladies are going to break down the coronavirus for you.
00:06:26
It's exciting. Murder Squad did a Jean Benet special. Oh, also on Murder Squad on the 17th, Phoebe fucking Judge.
00:06:32
Phoebe Judge comes through. And then the next. That's criminal. It's criminal. That's criminal.
00:06:37
How much we love her. And then on the 24th, fucking Josh Mankiewicz. Sweet. Our personal friend.
00:06:43
The greatest. From Dateline. You know him. You love him from Dateline. That's right.
00:06:47
Josh Mankiewicz will be on Murder Squad. That's right. They've got quite a lineup coming.
00:06:51
They do. The Perkast has the Well hi The southern Gentle lady If you haven't seen it just look up well hi cat
00:07:00
And you'll just have the best time And then oh my god On the 19th the Perkast Is having celebrity
00:07:08
Jackson Galaxy Cat celebrity for all us cat people Jackson freaking Galaxy Do you want to tell us about Do You Need a Ride?
00:07:17
And what's on that? The great James Spritz One of the great L.A. standups everyone here knows, loves and worships him.
00:07:24
He does incredible work in the comedy field. And he is our guest. And he's so hilarious.
00:07:32
It's such a fun, chilled out. He just he had just come home from spending the holidays with his family.
00:07:40
Is he a Chicago dude? No, he is, I believe, Kentucky. And he had a dark time. But then we're all in the car together.
00:07:46
It's really real and funny. and as sad as it is great. And he's just the funniest person.
00:07:53
I really love him. Love it. Yeah. So that's what's going on on Exactly Right Network.
00:07:56
That's right. So tune in lots of, and there's so much exciting stuff. We're so close.
00:08:03
Actually, we had to work on a press release last night of the new shows that are about to come out.
00:08:08
That's how real they are. They're super real and they're right on the verge. So we will, of course,
00:08:12
keep you updated, but there's some, we have two podcasts coming out in the next couple months.
00:08:16
and even more slated on the way. So just hang in there because we have all your new favorite new podcasts
00:08:23
that you haven't heard of yet coming. That's right. 2020 is the year of exactly right.
00:08:28
That's true. And if I may, if we can do just a tad, just dip into the podcast recommendation area.
00:08:34
Yeah. You barf through your face. Through my sweater and then I give you my sweater.
00:08:39
Oh, here, here's that sweater you wanted. I wanted to have this. I just wanted to say my friend,
00:08:45
Carrie O'Donnell is a guest host on a podcast called Sexy Unique Podcast. And it's hosted by
00:08:51
a woman named Laura Marie Schoenhals. I believe that's how you pronounce her last name. And
00:08:57
basically, she started it as a, I believe it was a Vanderpump Rules recap podcast. But now they have
00:09:05
gone out. So she has lots of different co-hosts. I started listening because my friend Carrie O'Donnell
00:09:11
is hilarious and great. He's on Twitter. So they did like season two of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
00:09:19
They do Real Housewives. They do Vanderpump, obviously. They do. There's a show called Gallery Girls
00:09:25
that used to be on that they have done the entire season of. Right now I'm listening to them
00:09:30
covering Lohan Beach Club, I believe. I didn't know that was a thing. It was an MTV show.
00:09:36
I think it was a year ago. I like that. Old stuff. And here's what's funny. I don't watch any of these shows.
00:09:42
A reality TV makes me very uncomfortable and it makes me feel like I have to get up and start producing these people.
00:09:49
Like it makes me feel like it's my job to make it work. And it stresses me out. We all talked and agreed that you are responsible.
00:09:56
Why do you have a clipboard if you're not going to produce? Truly. So I can't watch it.
00:10:00
But I realized listening to these two hilarious people recap and do the voices of the Real Housewives of New Jersey or Lindsay Lohan.
00:10:12
It's one of the funniest podcasts. Excuse me? It's one of. The second. It's one of the second funniest podcasts.
00:10:19
It's just so delightful. And I've really been doing that thing where it's like I'm – it feels like I'm spending time with my friends.
00:10:27
Love it. It's actually me just listening to this. So it's called sexy, unique podcast.
00:10:31
If you're into reality shows and comedy, this is definitely the podcast for you because the way they discuss everything, it's really hilarious.
00:10:41
But then it gets very thoughtful. Like they they flame people and they like definitely shit on behavior.
00:10:47
But then they start talking about why people are doing what they're doing. I got to listen to that because I don't watch any.
00:10:52
I mean, the last one I watched was like rich girls. Remember that? With fucking Hilfiger, Tommy Hilfiger's daughter.
00:10:58
remember that from like the early 2000s was that did that get filmed in LA no that was so New York
00:11:03
okay it was so good yeah that sounds good I need to listen to stuff like that without having to
00:11:07
watch that shit because I love like bachelor recaps on like BuzzFeed or whatever right I don't
00:11:12
want to watch it no I can't it I genuinely suffer when I watch reality TV the it embarrasses me I
00:11:17
get embarrassed in my living room too but to listen to my funny friends or my one funny friend that I
00:11:23
know in real life and though my other funny friend that I don't actually I've never met her um but
00:11:27
they do these voices, everything about it is just very enjoyable. So if you're looking for something
00:11:34
that's very different than true crime, very different than any of that stuff, but you're
00:11:38
into reality TV, I think Sexy Unique podcast is for you. I love it. Speaking of reality TV,
00:11:43
I watched the new Ted Bundy special. Oh, yes. Shockingly, I watched it with Vince,
00:11:49
who's like not. He can't do that normally. He can't. So but he I was like, can we just put this
00:11:54
on it we just interviewed the amazing director and producer and creator trish wood it uh Ted Bundy falling for a killer Yeah And it just interviews with the women who are involved in the case
00:12:06
And so I really wanted to watch it from that angle. So I put one episode on. I was like, let's just watch this.
00:12:11
And then later he was like, we had watched one episode only. And he was like, let's put that show on.
00:12:16
And I was like, what show? And he's like, that Dahmer show. Like he doesn't even know what serial killer it is.
00:12:22
But it was so good. the daughter of his girlfriend, Liz, that lived with him when she was a little girl.
00:12:30
She is so incredible, as played by Renee Zellweger, for sure. In the future film?
00:12:37
In the future film, a punk rock Renee Zellweger. And I just fucking loved her. They're so strong.
00:12:43
And everyone in the whole show is just, they're incredible women. Well, and it's such a cool thing.
00:12:49
You know, we had a long, long conversation with Trish, but it all got edited down to a very short thing.
00:12:55
But maybe we'll make that available. It was just such a fascinating thing to actually discuss with the creator director about looking at it.
00:13:07
It feels like this is the trajectory. True crime. The culture of true crime interest is now taking because the majority of the audience is women.
00:13:16
and the interest has to do with being kind of being a woman. And the idea that we're now taking these things and instead of the strange attention that we're paying to the perpetrators of the crime,
00:13:30
instead we can't identify with at all in any way, which is part of the fascination is what type of monster is that I want to be able to recognize that.
00:13:38
Totally. Whatever. But instead to look at these women who, the ones who did survive, what they go through, what that's like, and the strength that they have from somewhere to not only continue to live, but thrive and help others.
00:13:56
That's right. I mean, it's just that that's the best story that can be told. Absolutely.
00:14:00
So it's so cool that it's being told around this, such a dark, horrible kind of subject matter.
00:14:06
Yeah, 100%. A hundred percent. She really Trish would really pulled it out there, you know, really got a story going that hasn't been should have been.
00:14:14
But also, I think people were very respectfully keeping their distance, you know, and it's like it had to be their decision.
00:14:22
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00:16:34
Okay. Tell me a story. I'm going to tell you a story. Okay. I'm going to tell you about the mysterious death of Davina Buff Jones.
00:16:40
Okay. I got information from articles from Forbes. There's an article by Stacey Dietrich.
00:16:46
Stacey Dietrich? Mm-hmm. A Charlotte Magazine article by Adam Rue, and of course, our friend Reddit, and then also our Rose over at Generation Y Podcast.
00:16:56
Yeah. Let me first start by telling you about a little place called Bald Head Island.
00:17:02
Is my dad there? I told you I didn't want to talk about him anymore. He's there with my husband, and they're having a grand old time.
00:17:08
And a lot of people we know, actually. That's right. It's pretty hot. It's a hot island.
00:17:14
It's a pretty hot island. It's kind of attractive. I noticed that island the moment I walked in that bar.
00:17:18
Bald Head Island is on the southern tip of North Carolina's Cape Fear Coast. Yes.
00:17:24
Which means nothing to you and I from Southern California, but I think a lot of people, it means something to them.
00:17:29
Probably their grandparents went there. Maybe they saw the movie with Robert De Niro.
00:17:34
Or maybe they saw the movie, the fucking tour de force 1989 movie, Weekend at Bernie's, which was filmed there.
00:17:41
Are you serious? I swear to God. Oh, I bet you that's like a that's a deep cut like film nerd piece of information.
00:17:47
It's like, you know, where Weekend of Bernie's was filmed. Cape Fear. That's right.
00:17:51
That's amazing. So, yeah, it was filmed there. And in the movie as you know they go to this island and there like rich people on one It like that the theme of the movie OK And it totally accurate I sorry Weekend at Bernie was filmed on Bald Head Island or Cape Fear
00:18:06
Bald Head Island. Oh, got it. So the place we're talking about. Got it. So it's a place for one percenters, million dollar plantain style beachfront homes.
00:18:14
Like fucking plantation. What did I say? Plantain. I wrote plantation. It's not plantain style.
00:18:20
That would be gross. It's a delicious little banana that's been fried up, a little sour cream.
00:18:26
Oh, truly love them. A little creme fraiche on there. The more problematic plantation-style mansion.
00:18:31
That's right. Got you. You know, in that style of fucking rich people. Sure. The island, it's only accessible by a 20-minute ferry ride.
00:18:41
It's that kind of place. And according to the website, it's 12,000 acres total. And 10,000 of those acres are just beach, marsh, and forest preserves.
00:18:50
Wow. So it's not built up. People love nature and, you know, there's things that money can buy.
00:18:56
And you're free to be bald-headed if you want to. That's right. It must be nice.
00:18:59
They almost are insisting. Don't wear that hat. Yeah. We celebrate you here. Show it to the world.
00:19:05
The island has a small year-round population, but then, of course, there's tons of vacationers
00:19:10
who have their vacation homes there, and they love the island has these beautiful sand dunes.
00:19:14
It's got Spanish moss on trees. The air is all lovely and saltwater. Spanish moss just kind of hung on a wire.
00:19:21
That's right. On the ground. Yeah, just laying there. Spanish moss doesn't grow on the ground, right?
00:19:25
I mean. You can imagine. Okay. So since it's only 20% developed, there's no cars allowed.
00:19:32
So everyone fucking goes around in golf carts. I love it. Do you? I genuinely do.
00:19:38
Okay. You can only go so fast in the golf cart. Right. But as fast as you can go is really fast for a golf cart.
00:19:45
Sure. And so it makes it really fun. Right. Okay. That's cool. So I wasn't sure I felt about it, but I can deal with that.
00:19:51
If there's a car, it's only because it's like a government person's car, like a police officer's car.
00:19:57
So in 1999, one such officer was a 33-year-old woman named Davina Buff Jones. So Buff was her last name.
00:20:05
Jones was her last married name. Got it. So that's her name. But she goes by Dee to her friends and family.
00:20:11
Okay. Growing up in 1970s in Charlotte, North Carolina, she had been known as a tomboy because of her smoking spitting and cursing hey welcome yeah
00:20:21
she was a scrawny teenager with a big you know hair and she had a toothy smile she looked like
00:20:28
anyone in the 70s and 80s um growing up at that time who was named deborah she just looked like
00:20:33
that with the short hair on top that was like feathered a little and the longer hair in the
00:20:37
back that was curly totally just like you know pretty and standard stuff she had worked at her
00:20:43
parent's steakhouse with her sisters in Charlotte. Her parents described her as talkative and outgoing
00:20:47
at times, but other times hostile and withdrawn. So she kind of had a dual personality. She's a
00:20:53
classic overshadowed middle child. That's the worst position to be in. I know. I'm sorry.
00:20:58
In the birth order. Oh, truly. And I, yeah, I have all the qualifications of a middle child,
00:21:05
but I'm the youngest. Right. But I have middle child tendencies. Oh, do you? Yeah, because I got
00:21:09
plenty of attention, but I was still like, hello, my baby. Like, I just couldn't get enough.
00:21:15
By Dee's 30th birthday, she's been married and divorced twice. In 1994, she's charged with
00:21:21
simple assault for, are you ready for this? Spitting on the mother of her then husband's
00:21:26
child during an argument. Look, that's a tough situation. No spitting allowed. This is just like
00:21:35
pool rules always. Yeah. No bottles, no cutoffs, no running, no spitting. I think that's a great
00:21:40
rule. And you could throw no gum in there if you're one of those kind of people. Yeah. And
00:21:44
like maybe take a shower before you get in the pool. And if you have diarrhea, don't go in the
00:21:48
pool. Stay out of the pool with diarrhea. That's right. These are this pool rules apply to all of
00:21:53
life. That's right. Yeah. So in January of 1999, back on Bald Head Island, the 33 year old graduates
00:22:01
from the police academy and starts working for the bald head PD, where crime is like
00:22:06
non-existent. It doesn't happen. She's 4'11 and 90 pounds. Oh, no. So she's a teeny tiny little thing.
00:22:13
Okay. Davina is a little spitfire. She doesn't have a golf cart. She has one of those little kids, the cars that kids get for Christmas.
00:22:21
Yeah. She has two Australian shepherds named Lord Adam and Precious Queen. Oh, so they have papers.
00:22:28
These are breed dogs. Probably. Wow. So she has to sit on a phone book in her car to make everything work.
00:22:36
Wow. Can you imagine trying to have authority and then you're like, I'm out of here.
00:22:39
And then you jump on a phone book. That's got to be hard. That's where the spitting comes in.
00:22:43
Yeah. You've got to be pretty tough to be taken seriously at 411, I feel like. True.
00:22:47
Especially as a cop. Very much so. Yeah. She gets assigned to work with Keith Kane.
00:22:53
He's a former truck driver who had been on the force less than a year. He's seven feet tall.
00:22:58
They're the perfect combination. Yeah. Yeah. So but, you know, like many first year cops, she is a rule follower.
00:23:04
She doesn't believe in bending the rules for anyone and for the rich people who could name drop on the island and who were contributors to political bullshit.
00:23:15
Yeah. Of course, they didn't like that. She'd be writing them a citation and be like, do you know who I am?
00:23:19
And she'd be like, I don't give a shit and give them a citation anyway. Okay, just imagine.
00:23:23
Yeah. Bald Head Island for the one percenters. Every goddamn asshole on that island is, do you know who I am?
00:23:31
Right. And none of them stop at a fucking stop sign. You know that in their golf cart.
00:23:35
No, they slide on through. They're always three gin and tonics in. Oh, my God. They're living their life.
00:23:41
Oxycontin here, Oxycontin there. Sure. They're not ones to be corrected or disciplined in any way.
00:23:47
That's a nightmare. Yeah. So she refuses to, you know, tear up citation and bend and that kind of thing. And so locals on the island start complaining about her. She's kind of hassled a lot, it seems like, in the short time she's a cop.
00:24:00
there. By fall of 1999, Davina is unhappy with the whole situation and she starts sending out
00:24:06
her resume to police departments across North Carolina, hoping to find a new job, which has to
00:24:11
suck. On the night of October 22nd, 1999, Davina is doing a routine patrol with her partner, Keith.
00:24:18
They return to the station. And as Keith explains, Dee unexpectedly is like, I'm going to go out on
00:24:24
patrol. And he's like, why don't you just wait for me? And she's like, no, no, no, I'm just going to
00:24:27
go. So she heads out. It's possible that she just wanted to be alone so she could make a phone call,
00:24:32
which she does at about 11, 19 p.m. at a pay phone at the marina. The call is to her ex-boyfriend
00:24:39
who had just broken up with her that week. So she probably wanted to go out, call him, be alone.
00:24:45
Yeah. She showed up at his place drunk a couple nights before, which was totally out of character
00:24:50
for her. She apologizes to him on the phone and tells him she wants to stay friends. He wants to
00:24:55
stay friends too. It seems pretty like an amicable split. Okay. The call lasts a couple of minutes and
00:25:00
she says she'll talk to him later. And then she goes back out on the road patrolling. She heads
00:25:06
towards the island's lighthouse known as Old Baldy. Sure. Yeah. It's a theme. Yeah. It's just
00:25:13
decorative. It doesn't actually fucking work. Oh. At 1148. So she radios into dispatch says through
00:25:19
the, what is it called? Radio. Radio. She says that she's out with three people. Basically,
00:25:26
she says, show me out with three, please stand by. So it's basically, I've come upon three people
00:25:32
standby. Maybe she's still in her car, like about to, you know, get out of her car. Maybe
00:25:37
she's on foot and like comes across three people, but that's what she calls in. Okay. And then she
00:25:44
leaves her mic open so she doesn't have to press on it anymore and then there's another transmission over her
00:25:51
open mic where she calmly but firmly says and you can hear this online there ain't no reason to have a gun here on
00:25:57
Bald Head Island, okay? You want to put down the gun? Come on do us a favor and put down
00:26:02
and then there's a high pitched squeal, it's like feedback, you know when we get
00:26:07
too close on the mics and it fucking does awful feedback, you hear that the signal breaks up and that's
00:26:13
it. That's all you hear. Except Generation Y, when they played it, they kept playing it. And you can
00:26:19
hear a voice that says, Oh, Lord, oh, my God. Oh, my, like, you can hear a woman's, it's probably her
00:26:25
saying that. Oh, and they I hadn't heard it anywhere else. And there's not a lot of articles
00:26:29
about this or videos. So the fact that they were they found that is pretty interesting. That's
00:26:33
very cool. Yeah. But you know, you don't hear any other voices. You don't hear anyone yelling at her.
00:26:37
It's just her voice saying that. Okay. All right? Yeah. Okay. So after hearing her radio transmission, her partner, Keith, runs out to try to track her down.
00:26:46
She hadn't said where she was. And he's driving around for about 15 minutes. And then he comes upon her white pickup truck at the old Baldy Lighthouse.
00:26:55
The truck is sitting at the end of an alley. It's backed into a dead end about 20 yards from where the street ended and the sand dunes and trees started.
00:27:04
The truck's lights are on and the engine is running. And her flashlight is on the seat, which he said she always took with her when she got out of the car at night.
00:27:13
So next to her truck, he finds D's body laying face down near the base of the lighthouse by a white picket fence.
00:27:20
I know. She has a single gunshot wound to the back of her head. And her 40 caliber Glock duty pistol is near her right hand.
00:27:30
Oh, wow. Yeah. So Keith checks her pulse. He doesn't find one. He calls in the rescue unit.
00:27:35
And then he takes her gun, he picks it up and puts it back in her truck, like on the ground of her truck, which seems weird, right?
00:27:45
Yeah, I can see my logic of that would be I don't know who's around here and I don't want anyone to pick up her gun.
00:27:52
That's exactly what he said was the reason. But it also disturbed a crime scene.
00:27:56
Yes. But I'm sure he's panicking at this point. His partner is on the ground. He doesn't know what's going on.
00:28:01
And I bet you there are very few murders on bald head. Exactly. If even if a police officer is just like, yeah, this is this is this is unlike anything they deal with on a daily basis.
00:28:14
Right. So, OK, here's fucking crazy. The only available backup arrives. It's volunteer fire chief Kent Brown and two EMS workers.
00:28:25
One of those EMS workers had had a sexual harassment complaint filed against him recently.
00:28:31
I think the week before by Davina Buff Jones. So he's one of the people who show up on the fucking scene.
00:28:37
The men lift her body onto a gurney and transport it to the ferry dock, which I totally don't understand because she has no pulse.
00:28:44
She's dead. You should leave the crime scene as it is. But they take her to the ferry.
00:28:49
I think thinking to take her across to the mainland hospital. Yeah, exactly. But they leave her body there uncovered and totally exposed to the elements for the ferry.
00:29:00
Yeah. so there's just no nobody has any sense of how crime scenes are processed or anything wait it
00:29:08
gets worse okay sorry meanwhile at the scene there's a bloody palm print on the back of divina's
00:29:14
truck there's drag marks there's blood spatter evidence but none of this is preserved because
00:29:20
there's a wedding of a prominent bald island family scheduled to start in just a few hours
00:29:26
at the chapel next to the lighthouse. So the volunteer fire chief thinks the prominent family
00:29:32
shouldn't have to look at this crime scene, so he orders the whole crime scene to be hosed down with a fire hose.
00:29:39
This happens a lot in these stories where you think, and it's easy for us, 2020, hindsight, except.
00:29:46
It's 2020. It's 2020. I'm Barbara Walters. This is 2020. But how this is going to hold up in three years No one gives a shit about that Right Like I bet you if you ask the family they would have been like we would never want a crime scene hosed down Totally Just because people you know like the logic behind that is so strangely self
00:30:09
Yeah. And just, it's a bad move. Well, it's also suspicious as fuck. It's so suspicious.
00:30:15
It adds so much to that. Totally. That. Exactly. Yeah. To be like, we can't trust anybody that's running stuff on this island.
00:30:23
Right. Police Chief Karen Grasty. She orders the scene contained until the State Bureau of Investigation could arrive.
00:30:29
And she's reportedly told twice to go home and shut up. Quote. By who? The fire chief?
00:30:35
I guess so. Ooh. When the medical examiner finally conducts her autopsy later that morning after she hasn't been, you know, properly her body hasn't been properly stored to preserve evidence.
00:30:49
He writes a four page report that's incomplete, inconsistent and factually incorrect in some places.
00:30:57
For example, the head wound diagram, he draws a rough circle behind and slightly below her right ear, even though the wound is and this isn't disputed.
00:31:06
The wound is actually the very center of the back of her head. I mean, yeah. So the ME later blames his errors on a lack of sleep and a rush to move quickly to provide information to investigators like they were like we need it.
00:31:18
Almost like they need to wrap this up because we don't want the residents of Bald Head Island to be freaked out that there's a murder on the loose.
00:31:25
You know, I mean, there's a real issue. This is a real issue with rich people. They're a real problem.
00:31:31
Yeah. In this country. Oh, my God. Seriously. But also that doesn't really hold up again.
00:31:37
Say if this was IBM and this is the way you were doing your job. So you're hurrying up to give incorrect information.
00:31:44
Right. Like you're hurrying up to get this information in that won't help anything.
00:31:49
Right. Because you're actually screwing the case up more. Or it's almost like, you know what they want the end result to be, which is whatever ruling is.
00:31:56
And so you're hurrying through it because you don't you're not actually looking at any evidence.
00:32:01
You're getting to the conclusion that they want. They want to. Yeah. It's also I mean, they're all drawing suspicion down on themselves.
00:32:10
100%. The death was at the time immediately determined to be a homicide. But two weeks later, Brunswick District Attorney Rex Gore determines the cause of death to be suicide.
00:32:21
Oh, no. So two theories about Davina's death emerged, homicide or suicide. Okay, so I'm going to give you the case for homicide. There were allegations of large drug transactions happening on the island.
00:32:34
And there were like these inlets and hidden creeks that traffickers used to make drops of weed and coke.
00:32:40
Almost it sounds like, remember in Bloodline when they would be going through the little...
00:32:43
Yeah. It's like that kind of thing. Like a swamp, kind of. Yeah. Maybe. Ten years earlier, in August of 1988, a vacationer, fucking jogging down the old beach or whatever,
00:32:56
finds a soggy pillowcase near the water, and in it is eight kilos of coke, which is worth about three million on the street.
00:33:04
So they dragged that pillowcase up onto their own porch. So they kept running and minded their own fucking business and don't get involved.
00:33:12
You know what I mean? I see no pillowcase. I feel like, what would you do? I would not touch it and I would anonymously call the police.
00:33:21
Let's see. I would look in there. I would see it was Coke. And then I would duck and run because that's the only thing that's going to happen after you discover $3 billion worth of Coke is someone's going to come for it.
00:33:34
Right. So you don't want any part of that. You don't. Even though you think, I could make some money off this.
00:33:38
No, you can't. I could have a great weekend. No, none of those things are going to happen.
00:33:42
This isn't Weekend at Bernie's, everyone. No. Stop being immature. Or your boss is dead.
00:33:45
Stop it. Why do I have to keep telling you these things? The week Davina died, she had told her dad that she wanted to look into the drug activity on the island.
00:33:56
Like, you know, she wanted to be a cop and she wanted to do it well. So she was like, I'm going to look into this.
00:34:02
She told him she arranged a meeting with the sheriff's investigator who handled narcotics cases like she was into it.
00:34:09
She wanted to go undercover to help track down drug runners and distributors. And she also told her ex-boyfriend a few months before she died that, quote, she got information that they were making big drug deals down by the lighthouse, not quarter bags.
00:34:23
He said kilos, big suitcases of money were being transferred. OK. Yeah. But I mean, you can't, you know, it's noble intentions.
00:34:34
Yes. You cannot do it by yourself. Yeah. I mean, you just can't. And that's like, you know.
00:34:39
Well, it doesn't sound like she was. It sounds like she was trying to get involved in it.
00:34:43
But who knows? It could go all the way to that. Well, and also, but she went by herself.
00:34:47
So she didn't even include her partner. Right. She didn't have backup or anyone covering her.
00:34:52
But she could have just been doing simple patrolling. True, true. She might not have expected to come upon anything.
00:34:57
I'm just saying just watch Beverly Hills Cop because then you watch a renegade who gets into the middle of drug dealing.
00:35:05
It ends bad. You need your friend Judge Reinhold to work in the Beverly Hills Cop Department.
00:35:12
Everyone needs a Judge Reinhold. We always said that. We always do. You guys won't listen to us.
00:35:16
Just check your exhaust pipe for a banana. That's all I'm saying. That scared me so much as a kid.
00:35:21
I was like, anyone can put a banana in an exhaust pipe? Sure. Okay. It also came out that at 6 a.m. the morning after Davina's death, three men had been discovered trying to sneak off the island via the ferry.
00:35:34
They had been briefly questioned and released. And then when Chief Grasty, she attempts to reinterview them later.
00:35:40
She's given a stern warning to, quote, just let it lie. She's told the men are, quote, good Christians and not considered suspects.
00:35:49
They're good Christian drug dealers. Who are sneaking off an island at 6 a.m. Because they killed somebody.
00:35:54
Right. G Allegedly Allegedly Doing her own investigation Grasty finds that the men all have criminal records over 48 pages long So they not who you think they are
00:36:05
And you should have fucking looked into them either way. Yeah. Grasty believes that Davina interrupted a drug transaction and was killed as a result.
00:36:12
So it's found that the bullet that killed Davina came from her own gun. There are no identifiable prints on the weapon at all.
00:36:18
Of course not, because it got touched and picked up. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Davina was wearing fingerless gloves at the time.
00:36:26
And they do find some particles of gunshot residue on the back of her right glove.
00:36:30
But it could have come from when she's at a shooting range or whatever. It didn't say it was like recent.
00:36:36
From that moment. Exactly. So there are theories about how Davina could have fired her.
00:36:41
Oh, God, this is so fucking crazy. So there are theories about how she could have fired her gun into the back of her head of the center.
00:36:48
And you should have seen Vince and I sitting there on the couch. And I'm like, do you think you could shoot yourself in the back of the head?
00:36:53
No way. And it was just this weird conversation that I would never expect to have with my husband.
00:36:58
But there's yeah, he was like, there's no way you could do that. And also just there's no reason to do it.
00:37:04
If you're. Well, I can tell you, I'll tell you what there are. What the reasons are.
00:37:08
Yeah. OK, so basically, let me just finish this. The trajectory of the bullet is up and to the left from the center of her head, which means that she did fire the gun.
00:37:17
She wasn't holding it upside down. So the theory is that she was basically you hold a gun in front of you facing you and you put both of your hands over your head and point it to the back of your head with your hands with the gun upside down.
00:37:28
Right. That's their theory. And that's how you could have possibly shot yourself in the back of the head.
00:37:34
But then the problem is that the shell casing should have gone to the left and it said it went to the right.
00:37:38
So it just doesn't make any and she, you know, it doesn't make any sense. Also, just trying to move your arms like that.
00:37:46
I don't I don't know. Plus, she was 4'11", so we've got to assume she had really small hands.
00:37:50
Right. So that's a big old fucking Glock, you know, being able to do that. Also, if you're trying to kill yourself, if that is what you're actually trying to do, you're not going to do it in a way that might just leave you very brain damaged.
00:38:04
You're going to put the gun in your mouth. Right. But that's, okay, yes. So. There's an argument to that.
00:38:09
The case for suicide, which is why would she have staged her own suicide to look like a homicide?
00:38:15
Oh. So it's families of police officers killed in the line of duty are entitled to death benefits and payouts.
00:38:22
But police officers who take their own lives are not eligible. OK. But the thing is, she didn't have children.
00:38:29
Her parents, her sisters were all doing fine. They didn't need the money. It wasn't like, you know, some scam like that.
00:38:35
Right. Those who believe the suicide theory point to the fact that between 1994 and 1998, Davina had received over 170 outpatient treatments for, quote, adjustment disorder with mixed emotional fears and chronic depression.
00:38:51
That sounds like a big number. But if you think of going to therapy every week between 1994 and 1998, it's not.
00:38:57
Yeah, it's actually you only that's only a little over two years worth of therapy.
00:39:00
Right. If you went every single week. Right. It's like if that had happened in the past two months, sure, that's a lot.
00:39:06
But it's really not not a huge amount. Not over two years and not over four years.
00:39:10
Exactly. At all. But when she was in high school, Davina had swallowed a bunch of Tylenol and had to get her stomach pumped.
00:39:17
So they the people who think it's suicide said that she had, you know, suicidal tendencies in the past.
00:39:23
OK. Right. I mean, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Maybe she was in high school. And it would be interesting if you forced people to be really honest with you, what you could pull out of people's past that would justify something like an act of violence.
00:39:39
I have them apps. Everybody does. Yeah. Fucking high school sucks shit. It sucks shit.
00:39:44
And people do stuff. And, you know, if you don't have support and you don't have people around you.
00:39:49
Yeah. You're going to go to therapy a bunch of times. You're going to get, you know, especially depression.
00:39:53
I mean, depression is a fucking bitch. It's rough. So two days before her death, Davina had told her doctor that she experienced suicidal thoughts the previous week that involved wanting to walk out into the ocean and tell us until she couldn't swim anymore, which is pretty a passive way of saying that.
00:40:10
Yeah, it's that thing that I've had in depression where I don't care what happens to me.
00:40:14
I almost want something bad to happen to me so I can take my mind off of this. But I don't really want something bad happening to me.
00:40:20
Right. It's almost feels it's a coping mechanism to say, here's what I think I could manage.
00:40:24
Right. Here's how much I don't care anymore. Yeah. Her doctor referred her to a psychiatrist.
00:40:29
She set up an appointment, but the doctor didn't believe the comment warranted hospitalization.
00:40:34
In his opinion, it was more of a fleeting thought than like actual suicidal ideation.
00:40:39
But he made her promise that if she started seriously thinking about suicide, she would call him.
00:40:44
And in his opinion, Davina was a low risk for suicide. Yeah. But it is, you know, it is interesting that two days before she said that, you know, you can't.
00:40:54
I want to defend her and defend her and defend her. But that is a compelling point.
00:40:58
Yeah. And it's, you know, at this point, anything is possible. But it also makes me think if I had a job where I was trying to do what I thought the job was and I was actually getting kind of attacked for it.
00:41:10
And sexually harassed. And sexually harassed. And there was all these kind of problems.
00:41:14
Part of that could have been just it's the statement I always use is I don't have the bandwidth for it.
00:41:20
But that could come out as I want to walk into the sea until I can't swim anymore.
00:41:24
because what you're saying is I can't deal with this. Like, help me because I can't deal.
00:41:28
That's a good point. And you think about the fact that she's 33 when she becomes a police officer, divorced twice.
00:41:33
Like, there's probably this exciting new beginning for her. And it's not fucking going well.
00:41:38
Yeah. It's going badly, I would say. If she's trying to do this thing and then the culture of the island and the department is saying,
00:41:48
shut up, sit down, stop doing your job. and then she's like this will be my noble fight
00:41:54
it's tough that a lot to deal with and she looking I mean the fact that she looking for another job actively means there like she has some hope Right You know Yeah she wants to work somewhere else When Davina parents Loy and Harriet they just these incredible people they go to their daughter house that day the day she dies
00:42:12
And they find, so she had those two dogs, right? They find her back door propped open and there's like this makeshift DIY tunnel so that the dogs can go in and out as they want.
00:42:23
and friends and family say they'd never seen that kind of setup before. So that led some people to think that she knows she's not coming back anytime soon.
00:42:31
So she wants to let the dogs in and out. OK, right. But like who sees their friend's house in the middle of the day when they go to work?
00:42:37
Right. And whatever setup you might have there. True. Yeah. But on the flip side, they also find a to do list on the kitchen table with things that
00:42:45
she had planned to do after her shift that day. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So because of this information, district attorney Rex Gore, he influences the medical examiner to rule Davina's death a suicide.
00:42:57
Huh. Yeah. So some say that the campaign, some say that it's because the residents of Bald Head Island, they thought their property value would decline if there's like a murder on the fucking island.
00:43:09
And it's just, you know, of course, yeah, they're voted in. They're going to get influenced by that.
00:43:15
Absolutely. And also, if there if there is a issue with the drug trafficking, which they're like, I'm going to go out to my vacation house and snort up all the cocaine that I can write.
00:43:24
They don't want anything interfering with that either. Yeah, totally. Later, there are local, state and federal independent hearings.
00:43:31
They include extensive testimony by experts. So everyone's trying to look into this and form their own opinion.
00:43:37
But unfortunately, because the crime scene was so compromised, there's not a lot to go on except looking into Davina's life.
00:43:47
Yeah. And figuring it out on their own and then also looking into the gunshot wound and having their own.
00:43:52
It's really an opinion. Right. Can you do that yourself? Can you not? They had all these women of her size try to try to like, what's it called?
00:44:00
Recreate that. And they really weren't able to do it. So in November 2001, District Attorney Rex Gore, he closes the case, calling it a suicide and refuses to reopen it.
00:44:12
Wow. So after he closes the criminal investigation, the Buff family files a civil action for the they want to determine the cause of death.
00:44:19
They are horrified to see their daughter's name dragged through the mud and they want it ruled homicide.
00:44:28
Yeah. And, you know, have justice. So none of Davina's journals indicate that she had any suicidal thoughts or the type of planning that it would have been necessary to carry out such an elaborate suicide disguised as a murder.
00:44:41
It's pretty complicated. Her family says that, quote, losing her was indescribable, but slandering her and death was worse.
00:44:49
I bet. In 2003, a North Carolina Industrial Commission hearing resulted in the finding that Davina's death was likely a homicide, and they awarded her family $50,000 in death benefits for law enforcement officers.
00:45:04
No, it's good. That's what they they didn't want the money. But in 2006, the US Department of Justice awarded the Buffs nearly $147,000 for its Public Safety Officers Benefit Office.
00:45:16
So it's not they're not ruling it different, but they're saying probably was homicide.
00:45:22
Yeah. They're like, in the meantime, you should get the benefits in case it wasn't that.
00:45:28
And there's no hard evidence that it was suicide. So we can't say that it was right.
00:45:33
In 2011, this dude, John David, he fucking gets Gore out of office in the race for the Brunswick County DA's office.
00:45:41
John David criticizes Gore's handling of the case and wants it reopened. and he makes the case file available to a group of retired FBI agents.
00:45:50
Oh, here we go. Which I want to fucking sit in that meeting. Hey, there's the bald head island I do want to visit.
00:45:56
That's right. But the agents, they were like split. Really? Again, like not half and half, but again, some thought it was suicide.
00:46:03
Some thought it pointed to homicide, which just tells you how complicated the case is.
00:46:07
Yeah. Without any evidence to be used. Right. John David concludes that the file will remain open and any new leads will be pursued.
00:46:15
So it's not closed anymore. And in 2007, Brunswick County Sheriff Ron Hewitt is indicted and found guilty of federal obstruction charges.
00:46:25
He's arrested and investigated for several crimes, including embezzlement, sexual harassment and showing up at crime scenes intoxicated.
00:46:33
Oh, don't do that. It's not allowed, apparently. Apparently. And in 2013, Gore pleads guilty to allegations that he conspired with an assistant DA and fraudulent travel reimbursement schemes.
00:46:45
And he gets 18 months probation. So the people who are ruling at suicide aren't like clean.
00:46:50
Right. I mean, yes. Yeah. There have been at least eight separate reviews of Davina's death in the nearly 20 years since she died.
00:46:58
Wow. Loy and Harriet Buff hired private investigators throughout the years and they try to come up with new leads.
00:47:05
and Davina's sister Elaine Buff wrote a book about the case called Out With Three,
00:47:10
The Murder and Betrayal of Baldhead Island Police Officer Davina Buff Jones. And the Buffs scattered Davina's ashes from the pier where she used to go fishing with her
00:47:19
grandfather. I know. But there's no memorial marker for Officer Buff at the spot on the island
00:47:25
where she died. And Davina Buff Jones's death is officially classified as undetermined. And that is
00:47:33
the mysterious death of Davina Buff Jones. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Also, like, I mean, I want to get into my assumptions because it's like...
00:47:44
Do it, do it, do it. When you start talking about, like, the people that were like, it's obviously suicide, I
00:47:48
was just like, wait, what? Yeah. Like, no, it is not. It's not obvious. And the idea that she would call in, like, I feel like if she was trying to stage anything,
00:47:59
mm-hmm. Involve like opening her own radio and involving people like letting people overhear anything makes no sense.
00:48:07
Right. It's like, yeah, it's it's too it's too tricky. It's very risky. Like, I mean, but who knows?
00:48:15
But the I feel like it's so difficult to argue with the quote unquote coincidence that she opens her radio, says she's there with three people.
00:48:25
And then three guys are trying to sneak off the island. 100 percent. That alone, it moves it up into a different category.
00:48:32
Yeah. Where. Yeah. I mean, those cases where the people in charge and the people who rule who like rule with the cases when they are so dead set on one answer.
00:48:43
Yeah. It's just drives me crazy. It's infuriating. Yeah. Well, and also just that over time, I think it's maybe a thing that people are only starting to realize now that like the truth will out.
00:48:54
It always does. And so. It might not. I mean, there are definitely times where it doesn't.
00:49:00
No, you're right. I'm so negative. But I mean, I think in the eventual, there's going to be a technology that like we can set some drone over there.
00:49:09
It can recreate the scene and it's impossible to bubble, you know, that thing. Well, you hope that the evidence, like the actual evidence, which is like the wound and, you know, the I think there were blood spat.
00:49:22
There was blood spat around both her hands. So why wasn't there gunpowder residue on both her hands?
00:49:28
That kind of thing. Those hard evidence points. And then like, yeah, it's just crazy.
00:49:34
And also, how about we pull in the guy that decided to hose the whole scene down?
00:49:38
What's his background? What are any of those decision makers? When are they going to get pulled in the way her personal life has been pulled in and judged and taken apart?
00:49:47
And, you know, every little thing you've ever done. I mean, I think it's very telling that, you know, she she was confiding and saying things to her therapist, but not enough to put them in her journal.
00:49:58
So maybe it was the thing of like after she spent her breakup, you know, right. And after a long conversation, it's like, oh, I just want to walk into the sea.
00:50:06
I mean, that's like it's so up to interpretation. Yeah. Do you want to hear the audio?
00:50:12
Oh, no. Of her? Yeah. No. Here you can play it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:50:19
I can find it online. Okay. I mean, I believe you. And the Generation Y guys, but no way.
00:50:27
That's because she sounds so calm. That's the, like, she sounds like a police officer doing her job and stopping people.
00:50:34
Like, I feel like if she had been making the whole thing up, she would have sounded fake panicked.
00:50:39
Yes. You know what I mean? There would have been a little, a layer of acting in it.
00:50:43
And there's no acting. It's this, you know, trained person asking someone to put the gun down and trying to casually have a conversation with them, not like screaming at them or anything.
00:50:56
Right. So it just is, it's creepy. Yeah. Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Eric, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter.
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00:52:56
you did your time i did my time you served your time okay this story uh i actually saw this when
00:53:05
one of the pieces of this story broke as a news item. But then recently, one of our listeners,
00:53:12
her name's Elise Chiribio. That's her name on Twitter also, at Elise Chiribio. And she sent
00:53:18
this and said, this story is unbelievable. And it's a survivor story. So this is the survivor
00:53:24
story of Tiffany Taylor, and these New Jersey women who stopped a serial killer. Are you ready?
00:53:31
A hundred percent Oh sorry There was I got other information from all things interesting dot com Right Great But the article that Elise linked me to was from a website called www And it was written by a writer named Christopher Mag But there was also contributing reporters Julia Martin Tom Nobile Kel D Ortiz and Svetlana Shkolnikova So it 2016 We start 2016 33 Tiffany Taylor lives with her mom and her young daughter in Roselle New Jersey
00:54:07
which is just south of Newark. Okay. Where the fuck is Newark? I mean, it's by the Newark airport.
00:54:13
It's by the airport. Got it, got it, got it. Okay. Also, she's originally from Jersey City.
00:54:19
Cute place. I don't know about that. I've been. It's actually cute. For real? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:54:23
Oh, okay. It's cute. I only ever hear, let's like, I've left over 80s comedy ideas of New Jersey, where it's
00:54:29
like, New Jersey, everyone's, it was always shitting on New Jersey. But then all the people I know that are from there are vigorously proud of being from New
00:54:38
Jersey. Totally. So. Enough shitting on New Jersey, guys. I mean. Or go ahead. There's great stuff about it.
00:54:45
Sure. They have that really big mall. Good stuff. There's bad stuff. You know, like any place.
00:54:50
You know. Okay. Okay. So Tiffany, she was raised in the housing projects, the one called Salem Lafayette Apartments.
00:54:59
She and her mom moved to Orlando briefly because Tiffany was a professional dancer.
00:55:04
And she went to a place called Valencia College down there to study psychology and music.
00:55:10
Cool. But after a few years there, she gets pregnant unexpectedly. So her and her mom basically move back to New Jersey.
00:55:18
Yeah. They move home. Then, okay, so basically once she's back home, Tiffany eventually meets this guy.
00:55:26
So it's a guy that her mutual friend's hooking up with. He's 20 years old. His name's Khalil Wheeler Weaver.
00:55:33
Not easy to say. The two of them, Tiffany and Khalil, get along. Sometimes they hang out.
00:55:38
Like she's played video games with them, whatever. But, you know, nothing big. But Khalil starts obsessing over Tiffany.
00:55:46
He asked their mutual friend, the one he's sleeping with, if like how to get him hooked up with Tiffany.
00:55:52
Awesome. Right. Tiffany's not interested because he's already sleeping with her friend and he's really young.
00:55:59
He's a lot younger than her. She's just always turning him down, telling him to get away from her.
00:56:04
In spring of 2016, he starts just begging her openly to have sex with him. Oh, my God.
00:56:09
And she always says no. He eventually starts offering to pay her. Oh, my God. And it's not until he offers her $200 to sleep with him that Tiffany's like, sure.
00:56:20
But she actually has no intention of sleeping with him. Her plan is she's going to take that money and rob him, basically, and not sleep with him.
00:56:28
Because she was sick of being treated like a sex object. That's actually a quote she ended up giving in one of the newspapers.
00:56:33
So around 8 o'clock on April 10, 2016, Tiffany goes to Khalil's parents' split-level home in Orange, New Jersey.
00:56:41
So he lives there with his mom and his stepdad. He meets her at the front door He gives her $200 cash
00:56:47
Then he walks her up to his bedroom She says he has the tiny bed of a boy Oh my god
00:56:53
A tiny little, what I imagine to be a twin bed Can you imagine? Maybe shaped like a race car
00:56:58
It's the tiny bed of a boy Maybe a bunk bed I mean, just little Maybe it's like a slightly larger dog bed
00:57:06
A cot or a dog bed Okay, once she's in his room She pretends that she left the condoms that she brought out in the car.
00:57:15
She's like, oh, sorry, let me run out to the car and go get those. She says she'll be right back.
00:57:20
Instead, puts that 200 bucks in her pocket and drives away and she never sees him again.
00:57:24
Later days. Right? Okay. So then soon after that experience, Tiffany's entire life has turned upside down.
00:57:32
Her mom is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The treatments, the medical bills start to pile up.
00:57:38
It leaves them penniless. They get evicted from their apartment. They have to live out of Tiffany's car.
00:57:43
Oh, God. So when Tiffany finds out she's pregnant with her second child. Getting cancer shouldn't make you fucking live out of your car.
00:57:50
That's horrifying. That's America today. That's unacceptable. It really is. That's not human rights.
00:57:58
No. It's not fair. No. It's not fair. Because you have to be rich to survive cancer these days.
00:58:04
Totally. It's insane. Guys, let's fix the system. Fix the health care system. Good luck, everybody.
00:58:12
Okay. So Tiffany decides that she's going to take up sex work. She needs to earn money for this family and for, you know, now it's going to be four people.
00:58:20
Yeah. And it's... Who's the fourth person? She already had a child. Oh, I get it.
00:58:26
Okay. Her mom. And now she's pregnant again. Got it. So she's like, I have to make money.
00:58:31
Okay. Then in November of 2016, she gets a side job from that, which is basically picking up crack for someone who pays her just to go pick it up.
00:58:40
And that person lives in room 32 of the Ritz Motel, which sounds classy, but actually is not.
00:58:48
It doesn't sound classy. The Ritz, honey. The Ritz Motel. I fell for it. Oh, I could have guessed.
00:58:55
I was like, ah, the Ritz. We're going to the Ritz for high tea. No, that's the Ritz Motel.
00:59:00
high t is right real high yeah crack level high yeah it's on route one in elizabeth new jersey
00:59:08
oh sure which is where all the great motels are okay so around the same time okay so she's
00:59:15
basically like this this person's like if you go get my drugs i'll pay you for it she's like
00:59:19
basically just doing what she can to survive yeah and to make sure her family survives um
00:59:24
around the same time she starts getting text messages from a stranger who's begging her
00:59:29
to pay her for sex. So this is what she's basically already doing. It doesn't shock her.
00:59:35
It doesn't come as a surprise, but she doesn't know who the person is. So she just keeps declining.
00:59:41
They continue to contact her even after she gets a new phone. He somehow finds her new number
00:59:47
and hits her up again. She says no until he offers more money. And then she on November 15th,
00:59:54
2016 she finally decides the price that he offers is going to be worth the risk of not knowing who this person is And again her plan she going to go get that money and then and rob him
01:00:05
That scares me. OK, so Tiffany decides to meet this John that night outside the Ritz.
01:00:10
Sure. Around eight at the valet, out at the valet. She's like, says goodbye to her boss.
01:00:16
Thanks so much. I picked up enough hours this week. I'm going to grab some cucumber water on my way out.
01:00:21
Just and I might just put those on my eyes and lay in the chaise lounge. in the waiting room. Oh, sure.
01:00:26
The waiting room? The waiting room at the Ritz. It's just gorgeous. You've never heard of the waiting room at the Ritz?
01:00:33
It's the classiest fucking place. So, it's 50 degrees outside, and when the guy shows up,
01:00:39
he's dressed in a black hoodie, black gloves, and a black ski mask. Wait, what? Yep.
01:00:45
Tiffany's like, oh, he must be cold. No! Yes, she doesn't red flag it at all. Is the ski mask
01:00:50
around his face or like a beanie? I think it's since it says ski mask instead of beanie or hat that he's wearing a mask.
01:00:59
Okay. I have a problem. Okay. Right. It's not good. Yeah. But she's like, I need to get this money.
01:01:05
You know, she's in it. She's in a bad place. Okay. So he gives her 80 bucks up front.
01:01:10
Then she borrows the phrase. Jay did this research for me. He keeps referring to the person she runs and gets crack for as her boss.
01:01:21
Jay. I mean, that's very fair of him. But it is technically her boss. Yeah. So she borrows her boss's Burgundy Lincoln sedan.
01:01:29
It's probably also how it's described in the newspapers or whatever. But she borrows this Burgundy Lincoln sedan and they drive.
01:01:35
They basically leave the Ritz Motel. Okay. They pull away. And then as they go, he asks her after a little while to pull over because he has to pee.
01:01:43
So she doesn't know what happens next because he either hit her over the back of the head with a blunt object.
01:01:50
or she had an iced tea that she had in between the two of them in a cup holder. And she was like, I was so out cold.
01:01:58
He could have drugged me. Wow. And because when she woke up, her head was pounding.
01:02:02
So she knew that was something either she was struck or drugged. But she wakes up.
01:02:09
She's in the backseat of the link and her hands are handcuffed behind her back. Her mouth and nose are wrapped with duct tape.
01:02:15
And he has her pinned by the throat and he's raping her. Oh, my God. So this causes her, she like wakes up to this nightmare scene.
01:02:24
She bites her tongue so hard it starts to bleed. Oh my God. The blood, between the blood and the tears coming out of her eyes, it loosens up all the duct tape.
01:02:33
Wow. So she starts screaming. He takes off the ski mask and he says, do I look familiar?
01:02:40
Do you remember me? You took my money. And that's when she realizes it's Khalil, Wheeler Weaver.
01:02:46
Oh my God. She begs him not to kill her. she explains, please don't kill me. I'm four months pregnant. And he just simply states,
01:02:53
I know. And that's when she realizes he's going to kill her. Okay, now. Now we're going to go,
01:03:00
we're going to change the story. We're going to change the time frame. Okay, you're going to leave
01:03:05
me here. Yeah. Sorry. We're going to put a pause on that. Okay. Because we have to tell a different
01:03:10
story. Okay, here we go. So we're going to talk about Robin West. She is a rebellious,
01:03:15
adventurous young woman from Philadelphia. Mostly she lives with her mom in West Philly,
01:03:20
but she also spends time with her dad, who is a Philadelphia school district police officer
01:03:26
and assistant church pastor. He lives in North Philly, and she goes to church with her mom on
01:03:32
Sundays. She sings in the choir. Sometimes she even sings lead, which she must be good,
01:03:37
because that's where all the good singers are. But as she grows up, her rebellious side takes over.
01:03:42
She won't stick to curfew. She argues with both parents a ton. When she's 14 years old, she gets sent to a place called Wordsworth Academy, which is a treatment center for young people with behavioral and or mental health issues.
01:03:59
But it's not as nice as it sounds. And actually, the living conditions are terrible there. There's allegations of counselors who beat and abuse and even rape the students that go there.
01:04:12
Oh, my God. So Robin goes there and she makes two great friends there, Tracy Johnson and Bernisha Patterson.
01:04:20
And they're like sisters, the three of them. Yeah. So when Robin gets out, she's still struggling with depression.
01:04:26
She still fights with her mom. So when she turns 18, she moves out of the house and tries to make it on her own.
01:04:31
Yeah. She starts stripping to earn a living. Her friends and family keep track of her on Facebook, but she kind of is like off trying to make it and do her thing.
01:04:42
Yeah. So one day, August 2016, Robin and Bernicia decide to go to New Jersey together.
01:04:49
Remember, they're from Philly. At first, I was confused. I'm like, this is New Jersey.
01:04:54
So they're from Philly. They go to New Jersey. They stay at the Garden State Motor Lodge in Union Township, which is about 15 miles outside of Manhattan.
01:05:01
It's the Ritz of Union Township. It's the Ritz Motel of Union Township. That's right.
01:05:08
They've got a waiting room. Putting on the Ritz. Yeah. And it's like a dish with three old Ritz crackers in it.
01:05:15
And then you go to take one because you think they're complimentary. It's like that's $11.
01:05:19
Oh, $11 for a Ritz. They pulled a Ritz on you. Okay, so essentially they stay there for a few days.
01:05:26
They run out of cash. They decide to turn tricks to get money. Robin isn't experienced, and this isn't something she does.
01:05:33
She's just been dancing. Bernicia shows her the ropes. August 31, 2016, around 11 o'clock at night.
01:05:39
Robin and Bernicia, they walk on Newark's Nye Avenue. And that goes through a really bad neighborhood where it's like abandoned lots, burnout buildings, rough stuff.
01:05:51
But that where the sex workers go to get fine Johns So they hanging out there A man in a silver sedan pulls up He starts talking to Robin So Bernicia the genius goes over and writes down the man license plate number in her phone
01:06:08
and saves it. Smart. So when Robin gets into the car to go have a date with this man,
01:06:13
Bernicia tells the man, be careful with my sister because I love her. So Robin is now in the car with this John.
01:06:21
He drives her to an abandoned house at 472 Lakeside Avenue in Orange. He spends an hour inside and he leaves at 127 a.m.
01:06:33
23 minutes later, a neighbor calls 911 to report this abandoned house on fire. When firefighters show up and put out the flames, they find a body inside.
01:06:43
And the lead arson investigator and firefighter, Matthew Pashero, who works for the Orange Fire Department, and he's been investigating arson for 17 years, describes what they found as the most destructed body I've ever come across.
01:07:01
So the next day, when Robin doesn't show up, Bernicia reports her missing. She gives the police the license plate number of the man whose car she got into from the night before.
01:07:12
They link it to a silver BMW. Two weeks later, on September 13th, 2016, investigators are able to use dental records to identify the body of Robin West. And it's just eight days after her 20th birthday.
01:07:27
That's so sad. Okay, now we go to another story. This is the story of Joanne. Her nickname is Billy Jo Brown. She's one of eight kids, two girls and six boys. She's born in Augusta, Maine. When she's five years old, her family moves to Newark, New Jersey. She has bipolar and schizophrenia, but her friends and family describe her as warm and fun loving.
01:07:55
when she gets older, which is very common with a lot of people with mental illness.
01:08:00
She self-medicates with drugs and she begins working as an exotic dancer and a sex worker.
01:08:07
She uses the alias London. So her family and friends are very concerned that she's gone into this line of work.
01:08:13
They ask her to stop. She tells them it's she's not giving it up and it's her livelihood and it's how she's making money.
01:08:20
But eventually she does end up going to a place for drug addiction. She gets housing, counseling, drug treatment, but it's too hard for her to live that structured lifestyle.
01:08:32
So she keeps on doing her sex work and she skips her counseling appointments. So on October 22nd, 2016, Billy Joe, who is now 33, and her friend Amina Nobles, they're hanging out near Popeyes on the south side of Newark.
01:08:48
And at 1.16 in the afternoon, a man shows up in a silver sedan and he starts talking to Joanne.
01:08:54
She agrees to take him as a client. Normally, when she leaves with a client, she'll call and meet her friend Amina and tell her where she's going and when she'll be back.
01:09:03
That's usually the setup they have. But she had lent her friend a phone before she left.
01:09:07
So she asks this John if she can use his phone instead. He says yes. She calls Amina at 1.30 from the car.
01:09:16
and basically gives her the information. So the thought of having to call your friend to tell them where you are every time.
01:09:27
Yeah. It's just, you know, you're at risk and you still have to do it anyway. You have to do it.
01:09:32
It's just so sad. What a hard life to live. Yeah. Okay. So they drive to an abandoned house at 354 Highland Avenue in Orange, New Jersey.
01:09:43
And they go inside. This John wraps Joanne, Billy Joe Brown's head in duct tape.
01:09:50
He strangles her with a jacket and he leaves her on the second floor landing. So at 309, Amina Nobles gets a call from the number that Joanne had called her from at 116.
01:10:03
Yeah. And she basically picks up the phone and says London because that's the fake name she used.
01:10:10
The caller says nothing and then hangs up. So Amina calls back three or four times, but he doesn't pick up the phone again.
01:10:17
Creepy. Yeah. So she goes to the Newark police and reports Joanne missing. Now we're going back to Tiffany Taylor's attack.
01:10:25
It's on November 15th, 2016. So they're in the backseat of her boss's Lincoln sedan.
01:10:33
So in the middle of this attack, she's screaming, crying. Then she thinks quickly and she realizes she tells him that the handcuffs are way too tight and asks him to loosen them.
01:10:45
And he does. And when he does that, she realizes that she can get the upper hand here.
01:10:51
So she will later say, quote, once he agreed to that in my head, I said, I got him.
01:10:57
He's weak. Wow. Yeah. So she keeps talking to him. She reminds him that he texted her and their entire conversation is on her phone, which is back at the motel.
01:11:09
And that if the police find it, he's screwed. And this actually plants like a real seed in his brain.
01:11:15
He starts to get nervous. And he was like, we have to go back and get your phone.
01:11:19
And he climbs into the driver's seat and heads back to the motel. Tiffany's still in the backseat and she's double jointed.
01:11:27
So she manages to slip a hand out of her handcuffs. dude yes okay so then she makes this plan in her head she's like if he drives past the motel
01:11:37
i'm gonna sit up i'm gonna put these handcuffs around his neck and strangle him and then even
01:11:42
if we crash at least i'll kill him 100 is what she's thinking in her head then she's like
01:11:47
but if he stops at the motel then i'll run yeah so he stops oh my god so she puts her
01:11:54
hand back into the handcuffs yeah and he lets her out of the car he puts a jacket over her
01:12:00
shoulders to hide the handcuffs. He leads her to the room of door 32, her boss's motel room
01:12:06
at the Ritz. He says, go in and get the phone and come back out. She kicks the door to knock it.
01:12:13
The boss answers. She runs inside and slams it behind her and deadbolts it. He's shocked. He
01:12:19
can't believe he's shocked. He screams, come back outside. She goes into the window and just shows
01:12:28
the handcuffs come only dangling off one hand. Oh my God. And then he runs. Okay.
01:12:34
So she texts him. This is the most amazing part. She texts him and says, you need to bring back the keys to the Lincoln.
01:12:41
And if you just drop the keys off, I won't call the cops because it's her boss's car.
01:12:45
And like, you don't steal my boss's car. He fucking does it, but she's already called the cop.
01:12:52
Yeah, she has. So when he comes back to drop off the car keys, the police are there so there's surveillance footage catching him dropping the keys on the
01:13:02
doorstep and running away i'm on the edge of my fucking seat right now isn't this incredible
01:13:08
incredible it's incredible i mean yes it's horrible it's horrible it's the beautiful
01:13:12
shining human story of when you're in the shit and you fucking turn it around for yourself
01:13:18
because it's like she bit her own tongue and then loosened the duct tape like so she could talk him
01:13:24
out of the and every little tiny get and gain that she got she used and used to her advantage
01:13:31
yeah it's amazing okay so he's still there basically they they kept the surveillance
01:13:38
tape sees him go and drop the thing off he's still there when the cops show up at 9 28 p.m
01:13:43
he drive they let the cops let him drive away in his own car and she and then the police come and
01:13:49
interview her she basically says here's what he did to me here's how he attacked me you know my
01:13:54
whole head was duct taped um here's his phone number here's his home address here's his facebook
01:13:59
account here's his full legal name khalil wheeler weaver um she shows the injuries on her body
01:14:06
the handcuff that's still on her wrist they don't believe her because she's a sex worker because
01:14:13
They're at the Ritz Motel. God damn it. Probably because she's a woman of color.
01:14:19
On and on. Right? The usual bullshit. Damn it. They accuse her of sex work. They threaten to arrest her for that.
01:14:26
What the fuck? After an hour of back and forth, and as she said, being treated, quote, like trash, the
01:14:33
cops leave. I just don't have the words. That's... Well, it gets worse. Insane. Of course.
01:14:39
Because seven days after Tiffany's attack... No. He strikes again. No. She tried to fucking stop it.
01:14:46
She tried to stop it. And she did. She did like superhuman things to stop it. And and yeah, that's it's on them.
01:14:55
That's the thing. It has to change. It has to change. Yeah. OK, so now we have to talk about the final victim that, you know, could have been avoided.
01:15:05
Didn't have a chance. Sarah Butler is one of three girls. her parents were Jamaican immigrants
01:15:11
who worked hard to make the best life for their family in Montclair, New Jersey which is just north of Newark
01:15:16
she worked several jobs during high school she buys herself her own car she's a dancer who practices tirelessly
01:15:24
with her own dance troupe or with a dance troupe I don't know if it's hers in June of 2016
01:15:30
they actually, her and her dance troupe they get to be on Amateur Night at the Apollo
01:15:35
nice they come in third place Oh, my God. They place on it. I mean, that's a big fucking deal.
01:15:42
That audience doesn't like anybody. After she graduates from high school, she goes to New Jersey City University.
01:15:48
She's the first person in her family to go to college. Wow. But she does have trouble adjusting there and making friends.
01:15:55
She feels like she doesn't have enough friends. So in November of 2016, she joins the social media platform Tagged.
01:16:06
Never heard of it. Never heard of it. Yeah. Steven's on it. I can see him writing.
01:16:10
Steven. He's like, oh, I got to get an account quick. Steven's like, big cat 632.
01:16:16
He's like, I got to get the percast in account before someone steals it. Jurassic cat party 987.
01:16:22
Plus mustaches. Mustache cat party 8388. Okay. So somebody with the username Lil Yacht Rock messages her with just a phrase, sex for dollar sign, question mark.
01:16:37
poet right she writes back wow well how much fair enough like i mean okay what are you what are we
01:16:47
doing here he asks how much she wants she says 500 he agrees okay she's like what is like what's
01:16:55
happening she writes back you're not a serial killer right lmao he writes back no what does
01:17:02
lma on me laughing my ass off got it did you really not know that i've never known and i see
01:17:08
it all the time and i've just never asked anyone but it's like the grandma move where they think lol means lots of love yeah it's like
01:17:19
so sorry about the death of your mother lol oh god that's my favorite that went in when facebook
01:17:27
first started coming out and you could tag people to a picture and grandparents would start to write
01:17:33
grandma, but it would turn into Grandmaster Flash. Yeah, because someone that would had already been
01:17:38
used so many times. I've never heard this. So people, yeah, so people would get like family
01:17:43
pictures and Grandmaster Flash would be tagged in every single one of them because their grandma
01:17:46
was trying to write. That's the best thing I've ever heard. Grandma's house. At Grandmaster Flash's
01:17:51
house. Oh my God. Isn't that the best? So basically he as I said he says no they make plans to meet up but she gets cold feet She stands them up Also let me just say this Sarah Butler was not a sex worker She was a student
01:18:05
Yeah. It's circumstances for all of them. It's circumstances. It's circumstances. And, uh,
01:18:10
it makes me think of, did you hear that, um, Harvey Weinstein's female lawyer recently said,
01:18:15
cause somebody asked her like, uh, what would you do if this was you? And she said,
01:18:19
I would never put myself in that position. That is it's fucking cunt. It's how dare you.
01:18:25
But here's here's how they dare. This is the rationalization. This is it's this weird leftover
01:18:31
problem from women my age and older, because that's the only line that ever got fed to anybody,
01:18:39
which is you. It's on you to prevent a rapist attacking you. It's on you. And that's what all
01:18:46
of culture said. And that's what all of other people said. And there was no social media with
01:18:51
super cool feminist writers that were going, absolutely not. It's the rapist that needs to
01:18:56
stop raping. And like that, it's just such an old mindset. But the idea like these days to hear it
01:19:03
back now. Yeah. So to hear that a woman was sexually assaulted, it's like another point
01:19:08
in your favor, because yet again, but it's never happened to you. And so you must be doing something
01:19:13
right. And you know what I mean? Like, instead of that being, it's, you just never know.
01:19:18
I would love to actually crack that open though, and really see what's behind that, because
01:19:22
I can't believe that a woman that's, that's a very successful defense attorney actually believes
01:19:30
that. I can't believe it. And I, I can't believe it. And I can't believe that she would say it
01:19:34
unless she is just an absolute like mercenary sociopath that simply doesn't give a shit about
01:19:40
other women or other people. I think that's what it is, is you hate other women. You also
01:19:45
don't know the nuances of sexual assault and you want to blame. You just want to blame.
01:19:53
Or you'll do anything for the money your client is giving you, which includes basically telling
01:19:59
like a bold faced lie. You can't control the situation. You can't control that. You would
01:20:05
like to think you could. It makes you feel safer. Yeah. It makes you feel safer and it makes you
01:20:09
feel superior like you have some control over your life sorry and it makes it makes it so that
01:20:14
you don't have to empathize with harvey weinstein's fucking victims victims exactly and yeah you don't
01:20:21
have to empathize you don't have to feel like shit for being a fucking for defending harvey
01:20:25
weinstein well and also because it just also then takes the focus which happens all the time in in
01:20:31
sexual assault situations and cases the focus magically gets taken off the rapist yeah and
01:20:38
were suddenly talking about what the victims did or didn't do to deserve what they got.
01:20:42
Fuck you. Bullshit. Yeah. We could go on and on. Okay. We could go on forever. Okay.
01:20:47
So essentially she thinks it's like she's flirting with somebody on this app and talking about
01:20:53
stuff. So they make plans to meet up. She gets cold feet and stands him up. Okay.
01:20:58
Two days later, she changes her mind and messages him. Sorry about the other day.
01:21:02
I got really nervous. I feel like an ass. Your voice and your pick don't seem like a match.
01:21:07
He tells her, I'm a really cool guy when you get to know me. On the night of November 22nd, 2016, Sarah does her hair, red extensions in a ponytail, and she borrows her mom's blue minivan.
01:21:20
And she meets up with who she knows to be Lil Yacht Rock at the address he gave her, which happens to be the abandoned house at 354 Highland Avenue in Orange, New Jersey.
01:21:31
When she pulls up to the house, it's 9.55 p.m. and Khalil Wheeler Weaver gets into her car.
01:21:39
She drives to a 7-Eleven. Surveillance cameras capture him buying condoms. He then has Sarah drive up to a wooded hillside of a park called Eagle Rock Reservation.
01:21:50
And up there, there's a restaurant called High Lawn Pavilion. And it's like up on a cliff.
01:21:55
He directs her to the back of the restaurant's valet lot behind a green trailer.
01:22:00
I'm sure she thinks that they're driving to like go make out or hook up or whatever.
01:22:05
Instead, he attacks her. He wraps her head in duct tape. He rapes her. And then he strangles her to death with a pair of sweatpants.
01:22:12
My heart hurts for her. It's awful. When he removes the duct tape, he takes off some of her red extensions with it.
01:22:19
He drops her body behind the trailer and basically puts leaves and twigs over it.
01:22:25
When Sarah doesn't show up the next morning, her mom calls her cell phone. it goes right to voicemail. So they, her family reports her missing. Yeah. Three days later on
01:22:35
November 25th, 2016, Bassania's friend spots the blue, and I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing that name
01:22:40
wrong, but that's what it looks like. They spot the family's blue minivan in this, in that same
01:22:46
lot. So Bassania and her friend Lamia Brown, along with the police, go check it out. And that's when
01:22:52
they see Sarah's hair extension. So knowing she's in danger, Lamia and Bassania drive to
01:22:59
Sarah's house. Lamia knows Sarah's laptop password. So they log in to see if Sarah's been chatting with anyone. And that's
01:23:07
when they find the conversation with Lil Yacht Rock and they get this idea. So they have another friend named
01:23:13
Samantha Rivera create a fake account and start chatting with him. A day later, the three women are at the police
01:23:21
station giving another statement about Sarah's disappearance. When Lil Yacht Rock messages Samantha,
01:23:26
He says his name is Taj and he tells her everything he was telling Sarah, basically offering money for sex and saying, let's go hook up.
01:23:34
So the texts turn into a phone call with Taj while they're at the police station.
01:23:40
So Bassania pulls out her phone and takes a video of Samantha having the conversation.
01:23:46
Yes, it's all there. The women trick him into meeting up at a nearby Panera Bread.
01:23:52
Then two detectives take the women place and meet him there Holy shit So when he shows up he gives police his real name which is khalil wheeler weaver the police question him there no body there no clear evidence that he has anything to do with
01:24:07
sarah's disappearance they still don't know where sarah is and they can't there's there's nothing to
01:24:13
arrest him on so they talk to him and they let him go but they continue the investigation they use
01:24:18
sarah butler's phone to trace her last movements they see that there's a ping um shown to be the
01:24:24
Eagle Rock Reservation. And on December 1st, 2016, police go to that location and they find
01:24:31
Sarah's body there. So four days after that, on December 5th, 2016, two housing contractors arrive
01:24:38
at 354 Highland Avenue in Orange, and they go to inspect the house because the owners want to sell
01:24:45
it. And when they get there, they find the body of Joanne Billy Jo Brown. She's the second victim
01:24:52
who he left on the stairs. They never found her. She was just missing. Oh, shit.
01:24:56
Yeah. So police now realize they have a serial killer on their hands and that all the women in these cases are connected.
01:25:04
So on December 6, 2016, police arrest Khalil Wheeler Weaver. But it takes them three years
01:25:11
to build their case against him. When the police question him, he lies to their faces.
01:25:17
He shows them where he met the woman. He claims he returned them all safely and soundly none of it's true and it isn't until they look into his phone records that they actually
01:25:27
get the evidence that they need so the phone actually shows he was at every location where
01:25:32
each girl was murdered those fucking pings man yeah you can't you can't do it anymore you can't
01:25:38
and but and also you can't do it anymore because he googled things like quote how to kill people
01:25:44
with bleach and quote homemade poisons to kill humans and he also googled police entrance exam
01:25:51
practice test. Yeah. Oh, yes. Which is kind of a weird common thing with serial killers. A lot of
01:25:58
them want to go into police work or like are super interested in, in what, in police stuff.
01:26:05
Probably because they want to outsmart them. Right. Yeah. Okay. So Tiffany Taylor does not
01:26:11
find out about Khalil's arrest from the police. She reads about it in the paper three weeks after
01:26:18
her attack and subsequent escape. So they don't even reach out to say, we got this guy.
01:26:24
We arrested him. Because we didn't believe you to begin with. Right. When Khalil is arraigned in Newark court on December 13th, 2016, Tiffany Taylor is there.
01:26:32
Yes. And she goes back in February of the following year when he is indicted for three counts
01:26:40
of murder, one count of attempted murder, aggravated arson, desecration of human remains,
01:26:46
aggravated sexual assault and kidnapping. And at this point, of course, her mistrust of police and of, you know,
01:26:55
law enforcement. Yeah. But in this system entirely, she fears them. She doesn't trust them.
01:27:01
It has not worked for her. But she still shows up to testify against this guy in court.
01:27:07
She faces him from the witness stand as she describes her attack, which is the exact same MO of the three murdered women.
01:27:14
she is quoted as saying, quote, I want him to see me. I want him to know it was me.
01:27:21
Wow. And it is Tiffany Taylor's testimony that seals Khalil's fate. Because on December 19th, 2019, just three months ago, the jury finds Khalil Wheeler
01:27:32
Weaver guilty of 11 felonies, including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and aggravated
01:27:38
arson. He is still awaiting sentencing. And that is a tragic story of the murders of Robin West, Joanne Brown and Sarah Butler and the amazing survival story of Tiffany Taylor.
01:27:51
Wow. Just happened. Wow. Just happened. That is incredible. So when Sarah Butler was murdered, that that was an article that I remember reading online because of the thing where she said, LOL, are you a serial killer?
01:28:06
And that was kind of the how they pulled all that out. But I don't think they knew about the stories of the other victims and how much they intertwined and how much, you know, Tiffany Taylor, like she couldn't have had more proof.
01:28:20
She couldn't have had more evidence. She fucking handcuffed on her person. Yeah.
01:28:26
And she was dismissed because of what she did for a living. And that is incredible.
01:28:32
I'm so glad I went first and don't have to follow. There's no way. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's incredible.
01:28:41
It's such a good story. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elise. That was such a good suggestion.
01:28:47
A plus. A plus work. Amazing. It's incredible. I honestly, for the first time in my life, I'm speechless.
01:28:55
As the baby sister, I can say the first time in my life. For the first time, you have no retort.
01:29:00
I can't believe that. I know. It's incredible. And also just the bravery of Tiffany Taylor to go show up to the man that violently and brutally attacked her and was just like, goodbye.
01:29:11
Yeah, it's me. Yeah. And the friends of the victims who wouldn't let go. And, you know, sister and friends.
01:29:19
I know. And friends are closest sisters. That's beautiful. It's beautiful. Wow. Great job.
01:29:24
Thank you. Great job. It reminds me of the Alaskan story that you did recently to a little bit.
01:29:28
Yes. Like survivors not being believed. Right. you know and having to basically just power forward anyway right yeah yeah wow so what's
01:29:41
your fucking array now you're fucking here and i don't want that to be right i there it can't be
01:29:47
possums that are visiting my patio like it just can't be it has to be something else so let me
01:29:54
Let me think. Mine possums And it can be So let me think well no this is it not connected these are like
01:30:05
now this is just the what's making you happy it's the palate cleanser it's the thing of
01:30:09
we focus on these stories because we want to hear these stories we embrace these stories
01:30:14
we want to lift up these stories but also we have to then put them down and make sure
01:30:19
that reminds me when Vince watched all episodes of the Ted Bundy doc, which he was so into. And we were just like commenting. It was so good. Vince is becoming
01:30:28
such a good feminist. At the end, he was like, I'll meet you downstairs for bed in a minute
01:30:34
because I need a palate cleanser and has to watch something like lighthearted. Yeah. So,
01:30:39
he totally has that too. He can't, he can watch these horrible things, but has to have a palate
01:30:42
cleanser. A hundred percent. So, that's what this is. Yeah, that's what we're doing. So,
01:30:46
mine's possums. Well, so, we have a balcony patio thing and there's a tree that animal,
01:30:54
we've realized animals climb up too and we've seen raccoons and we have squirrels and uh
01:30:59
so last night there was a little baby possum and so i just kept throwing we just kept throwing
01:31:06
food out and it looks like we're composting on the patio but really we're just throwing all our
01:31:09
fruit and vegetables so the possums because i love possums yeah so it's and dotty is so into it and
01:31:15
it's just really exciting because she will absolutely eat one of those possums if she
01:31:18
gets outside they're bigger than her oh are they yeah but she's just like yeah it's like watching
01:31:23
TV for her. Yeah. But I, yeah, I just love those animals. Um, what's yours? I think it is this
01:31:33
somehow I am in all of my, um, the thing I never thought I would be able to do in this life is not the second a feeling struck me, believe it and go with it. And then basically
01:31:49
my mouth would go connected to it. Sure. That, I remember talking about wanting to do that long ago
01:31:55
and then just being like, this is never going to happen. Yeah. Never going to happen.
01:32:00
Kind of being overtaken by storylines and story writing and kind of future thinking
01:32:07
and pretend mind reading and all those things. And you get, and you feel and you get the emotions
01:32:12
that go along with it, which aren't healthy because they're not real. They're not real.
01:32:17
I've made myself cry from imaginary scenarios. Oh, my God. It's like one of my pastimes working through scenarios.
01:32:25
And there was I can't remember. It wasn't anything big. But I remember just this week talking to my therapist about having a moment where there was like a feeling struck me that was big and sad.
01:32:41
And then instead of the reaction, going straight to the reaction, just going, oh, what's happening here?
01:32:48
And like and not being so because it's this feeling that I'm interpreting as negative.
01:32:55
I have to do something about it right now. And I have to convince that it's not that or I have to whatever, like caretake around.
01:33:03
You have to manically control it in whatever way you can. You have to manically control it.
01:33:08
It doesn't feel good. No. And the idea is if I don't manically control it, then the bad feeling is just going to expand and take over and I will be annihilated, essentially.
01:33:20
And so the practice of actually just having a feeling and not doing anything at all, which is brand new.
01:33:28
And I'm sure there's some people that are like, what the fuck are you talking about?
01:33:31
No, but there's so many more people who are like, thank you. Yeah, it's weird. It's just like to have a feeling that is strong and negative and not do anything about it, not say anything, not use anything, not eat anything, not drink anything, just to sit and be like, this is interesting because I observe it.
01:33:51
Yeah. Which is like, I remember when we used to talk about that, say, eight years ago, and I'd just be like, I'd kind of nod and smile.
01:33:57
But in my head, I was like, impossible, like ridiculous. This is stupid to even talk about.
01:34:02
I don't know. It's that it's I think also because our lives are calming down so much and this kind of strange explosion that has been a true blitz, like as great as it's been and no complaints and all the things we always say, but a huge adjustment and very threatening to me.
01:34:21
Very threatening. Yeah. Because there's nothing scarier to me than potential happiness.
01:34:27
That's just like you might as well come at me with a gun. Yeah. So it's like, so all these kind of like, you know, reactions to fix or prevent, which is the intention.
01:34:38
And then the thing that actually happens is kind of like, what the fuck are you doing?
01:34:41
And then you also don't let anything in. So like, whether it's positive or not, like the positive thoughts and the daydreams, like how nice would that be?
01:34:49
Instead of the everyone hates me, you know, I think Jay thinks I'm lazy and like hit me this week that I'm like, it hit me this week that I'm not lazy.
01:34:58
Like, that's always been my voice in my head that I'm lazy and I'm lazy and I'm lazy.
01:35:02
And then I'm like, there's no time to be lazy. Maybe Jay doesn't think I'm our assistant.
01:35:06
And also, it's like, he's not thinking things like that. I really don't think he is.
01:35:11
But yes, because that would be like, you've decided that's the worst thing you could be.
01:35:17
And therefore, oh, that must mean someone thinks that. And then now I have to do a thing to make sure that goes away.
01:35:24
Oh, God. And instead, that idea that maybe just the feeling being able to build up a tolerance to negative feelings and watch them sit there and then watch them go away is like, I remember trying to do this when I like lived in Chicago, when my life was also very terrible.
01:35:43
And there was kind of no silver lining whatsoever. And I would listen to the like Pema Chodron getting unhooked.
01:35:49
I would listen to the here's what Buddhists do. And I'd just be like, what are they talking about?
01:35:55
those negative emotions and those negative thoughts at the time might have been helpful for you because they got you out of a
01:36:00
you didn't want to be in. Yes. Right. So like, like the negative feelings and negative emotions, the shit that I have, it's like
01:36:06
it totally served a purpose at some point in my life. I just haven't caught up to the fact that it's not working anymore.
01:36:11
And there's time. It's time for a new. Yes. Or like you're in the in that middle area where you're like, I'm I don't think this
01:36:19
is working anymore. But there's no way I'm letting go of this of this fake steering wheel.
01:36:23
Right. Because I have to drive this car. And it's like, no, sorry, you're Maggie Simpson.
01:36:27
You're not driving the car. Sorry. You're high if you think you're driving this car.
01:36:32
Amazing. Right. So just getting like this handle on, there's also the option to do nothing, which I think it's a thing of like, and sorry, because I know this is going on forever.
01:36:43
No, I love it. I need it. It's just all my life. That was my it was like, I'm uncomfortable.
01:36:48
I'm going to make a joke. I'm uncomfortable. I'm going to talk super loud. I'm uncomfortable.
01:36:52
I'm going to be mean to somebody else. I had like five options. Yeah. And I didn't like any of them.
01:36:58
But there I it was like I didn't have a choice. I noticed last last night we were in fucking meetings all day yesterday and I noticed you did a thing where you yelled at me about something.
01:37:09
And I was like, I know. And then you were like, I know. Like you didn't yell back at me.
01:37:14
You that sounds terrible. But like, you know, you got mad at me about something, understandably.
01:37:18
And it was just like, oh, yeah, OK. Instead of like us fighting about it. Right.
01:37:22
Yeah, because I fuck it up. But sometimes my reactions are like the scale is incorrect.
01:37:28
And it also I talk to you like I talk to my sister which isn accurate to our relationship Your sister can scream back at you And also that all my whole family it literally like turn out the light and i like where are they mad at me they hate me
01:37:43
why don't the light are so stupid i can't believe what the fucking light on this whole time god
01:37:48
georgia you're over there going jay thinks i'm lazy and i'm like it's like we we are perfectly
01:37:55
set up to like trigger each other but it's that thing of like then then i would normally be in a
01:38:01
reaction of I just did that wrong, but I can't be wrong. So I have to make you wrong. And then blah,
01:38:08
blah, blah, as opposed to drop it, just drop it. Oh, sorry. Oops. Didn't mean to say it like that.
01:38:14
Oops. You can absolutely go back real time. I can, I should say. I mean, I can. As someone who,
01:38:22
yeah, it works. It works. Immediately apologize. Immediately go. Oops. Shouldn't have yelled that.
01:38:28
I just spent five days with Jim Kilgariff. Everything is on volume 11. My apologies.
01:38:34
Where it doesn't have to be a thing. And everything isn't this, like you're saying, it's not this proof that I'm this fucking the worst person.
01:38:42
It's all just like human reaction. It's what everyone does. And it's been working for us for so long.
01:38:48
Maybe there's a better way. And you know what I think is like, I think that at the very center of the circle is the podcasting sweater.
01:38:56
And I think that. It's time for you to give it to me. Oh my God, I'm handing it to you.
01:39:00
No, we'll both wear. We'll wear half and half. You do not have to give it to me.
01:39:03
I'll get you one. You knit me one. I will fucking, I'll learn how to fucking knit.
01:39:08
Knit. And I sit in front of the TV and I fucking knit you as well Sorry look at me I had to make a joke because I was so I know Okay I was going to say prove you not lazy and knit me a sweater No I don do that anymore
01:39:21
Fuck you. I will not be oppressed by my own ideas. Is that... I mean that one or should I have said possums?
01:39:31
Cleaner, shorter. Oh, possum. Well, we've done it again. We did it again. There.
01:39:37
Take it. All of us together holding hands. We were skipping. Barfing it out. We barfed it all out.
01:39:43
Telling the stories. Suggest more stories for us because these have been really helping us.
01:39:48
Oh, my God. We've been getting great suggestions. Thank you all for participating.
01:39:52
Also, people are being very thoughtful about the stories they're suggesting. It's really cool.
01:39:56
Yeah, that and then, oh, shit. We were going to do fucking hoorays. People have been telling us their fucking hoorays.
01:40:01
Oh, right. And Jay printed them out for us. Yeah, and then we completely forgot because we didn't record last week.
01:40:05
So our brains have that much. We have them somewhere. Yeah, we'll do it. read you back your fucking hoorays next week so if you want to comment i literally thought you
01:40:14
forgot we just did it i'm like did i talk so long you forgot that i wasn't doing a fucking
01:40:19
hooray you're like that story was great so anyways possum do it possum no the other one
01:40:30
stay sexy don't get murdered goodbye elvis you want a cookie Bro from the show last night to this drive why is it never chill cuz this is our life
01:40:41
backstage on the road it's loud messy real and that's the best part whole crew no plan
01:40:48
just moving good thing Nissan builds for that kind of chaos not just test tracks real life scenes late nights road trips all of it That why it holds up Nissan was ranked number one in
01:40:59
initial quality among mainstream brands by J.D. Power. Yeah, you can tell. 2026 Nissan Rogue
01:41:06
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visit jdpower.com slash awards. Awards based on 2025 model year, newer models may be shown.
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