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Find your summer escape today. Visit Pura.com to learn more. Goodbye. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder, the Maxi-sode.
00:01:51
I've been listening to old mini-sodes. You have? I'll admit it. Okay. And? It's pretty funny. I don't know. I like it.
00:02:00
You always say to me, I've been listening. And I'm like, oh, fuck. Listen, I've been listening. And we really got to tighten this shit up.
00:02:08
Especially the intro. I don't know how to do that. I wouldn't know where to fucking start.
00:02:12
I'm actually not that interested in doing that. We're in an office. What more do you want?
00:02:16
Yeah, we are indoors. Stephen has all kinds of equipment. You should see the equipment.
00:02:21
We have a lovely lamp lit because we don't want overhead lights disturbing our precious, precious eyes.
00:02:27
Because grandma is 69 years old. Nice. And goddamn, fluorescent lighting is rough.
00:02:34
I was thinking how fun it would be if we recorded at my house with the fire going in the background.
00:02:39
But then that would be really distracting to people who don't like the sound of fire.
00:02:43
Places. Not just like a lit fire. Either we light the house on fire and then try to record and get it done before the whole thing goes up.
00:02:50
That's the challenge. We start the fire downstairs. Ready? Trash can. Ignite. Go.
00:02:57
On the count of five, we're going to start a fire and then record a podcast. There's just one episode.
00:03:03
You know what's really funny? It makes me think of and it's. You got it. I'm not going to do it.
00:03:10
I'm not going to do it. What could have Karen said? What do you think it would have been?
00:03:16
I want to talk about. And you, Stephen, you're the one that's going to help me here.
00:03:20
Okay. Sound it out. Our friends, Sound It Out, have a podcast. I'm friends with one of the people on the podcast.
00:03:26
It's called Podcast But Outside. And do you know those guys? Oh, yeah. It's, oh, my God.
00:03:32
Why can't I remember his name? Tall comic who's hilarious in skateboards. Yes. Why can't I remember his name right now?
00:03:39
This is boring and dumb. I can see his face. I can see his face. Well, you look at Podcast But Outside.
00:03:44
They just podcast outside. They just set up a card table somewhere and see who comes and talks to them.
00:03:50
It was so brilliant. It's really enjoyable. I love it. And they've gotten into some shit.
00:03:54
It's really funny. Andrew Michonne. It's Andrew Michonne is the one I know. Okay.
00:03:58
And then Cole Hirsch. Cole Hirsch is the other host. We'll have to listen. I love that idea.
00:04:04
They've done it at the beach. They did it at Cole's or Andrew's father's third wedding.
00:04:10
Oh, my God. I want to say third. I follow them on Twitter, but it's really funny to just see when they post and they're like,
00:04:15
we've got another one. We're at the... Where could they be? We're in the Santa Monica promenade or whatever.
00:04:20
Oh, I love that. And they just set up and like have to podcast what happens. I love that.
00:04:24
That's so creative. I think it's super genius. Sorry, tell me what yours was. Oh, I have one.
00:04:29
It's called Family Secrets. I really love this podcast. It's hosted by Dani Shapiro, who's this incredible author and speaker.
00:04:37
And she interviews people who have had these crazy family secrets in their life that come out or that they kept their whole lives or they just found out.
00:04:45
There's a lot of like, I did my DNA testing and this crazy thing came out and like that's kind of shit.
00:04:50
But the stories are so heartfelt and beautiful. And the podcast is beautifully done.
00:04:55
Wow. Family Matters? Family Secrets. That is a TGIF show starring Urkel. Urkel has a beautiful podcast.
00:05:03
Okay. I mean, I guess. Every way you look. Oh, I know that's. Family Secrets. Family Secrets.
00:05:09
Danny Shapiro. Oh, well, then if we're going to do this, I'm sorry, I forced us into a podcast roundup.
00:05:14
but let's be here. I don't even know why I was mentioning podcasts but outside. Oh, I guess it was just like
00:05:20
we can podcast in any situation. Someone's already doing it. Podcast on fire. Podcast on fire. We're basically
00:05:26
taking Andrew's idea and then just upping it a notch. But I did want to mention do you know Chris
00:05:32
Garcia? He's a comic from San Francisco that I'm friends with. I think I've met him.
00:05:36
You would know him from shows around town. He has a podcast called Scattered. And I was on it, I was his guest one
00:05:42
time because his dad died of Alzheimer's. Right And so he and I had this conversation that pretty great I love him very much And he and I it not like we came up together or anything We didn know each other that well And then we kind of did shows together and figured out both of our parents His father had recently died and my mom was still alive with it And it this very strange immediate
00:06:05
bonding, amazing thing. And we had this conversation talking through the experience that I loved.
00:06:14
And so they're re-releasing it on November 22nd with more time, I guess, an extended version of
00:06:23
a conversation because I think we talked so long that like there were producers that were like on
00:06:28
the phone in New York that were I'm sure sitting there like well we can't interrupt them they're
00:06:32
both crying but we have to stop recording this podcast so um if you're interested um and that's
00:06:39
something that isn't a devastating bummer to you um well one of the things I love when we do meet
00:06:44
and graces or when people meet you is I hear them say thank you for talking about what you went
00:06:49
through with your mom I'm starting to go through it I've been through it whatever and like talking
00:06:53
about it with other people, I'm imagining and hearing other people talk about it would
00:06:57
be so, you know, gratifying. Yes. I think it's such an isolating experience that any time you get a chance to hear anybody
00:07:06
else talk about it and talk about the guilt and talk about the horrible parts, it does,
00:07:11
I think, it definitely helps me when, you know, like when he and I talk. So anyway, if you want to listen to that.
00:07:16
It's just those little things that like you keep secret and you don't want to talk about
00:07:19
because it's too deep and it's too much. with anything in life, all these fucking struggles we go through.
00:07:23
And the minute one person goes vulnerable and starts fucking talking about it, everyone
00:07:27
else is like, oh, I don't have to be ashamed of this. And someone else knows what I'm going through.
00:07:32
And then you meet random people and you're like, maybe they've been through that too.
00:07:35
And then you bond with them. And you never know what people are going through until they fucking talk about it.
00:07:39
That's right. And oftentimes people have been have been raised not to talk about the whole setup in
00:07:45
our family. And I think in a lot of I don't know if it's I don't know if it's Irish Catholics.
00:07:51
I don't know if it's like the second generation immigrant. I don't know what it is, but it's like your problems are not relevant to other people.
00:07:58
They're not anybody else's business. It reflects poorly on the family. Right. And you do not talk about that.
00:08:04
You all you do is put on a brave face and go to work all the time. And that's the solution to everything.
00:08:09
And it's like the relief that people hear from the thing. A lot of people say to me is like when you talk about how like much you hate the parent that has this disease, which is such a terrible feeling.
00:08:22
Well, that's so taboo. You don't hate that parent. You hate the person I'd imagine that that is going through these things and it's become this different person.
00:08:30
Yeah. You hate this situation. Right. But it comes out terribly. Hate's OK. You know, hate is an emotion that we all have.
00:08:36
And talking about it isn't fucking the end of the world. And you're not a bad person because you are suffering under excruciating circumstances.
00:08:45
Yeah. Yeah. Fucking crazy. Say the name of the podcast again. Chris Garcia. It's called Scattered.
00:08:51
Oh, did you have you have a corrections corner? Oh, I do. Our best friend, our number one fan and the man who is brought all of our web platforms together.
00:09:04
Thank God, Denton. He's the reason the fan cult is fucking awesome now. Yes. And the website and the website and the merch store and the fan cult store.
00:09:13
I mean, he's he's he's really and he's my old friend. I know he came. She was like, let me fix this. We didn't have to be like, can you help us?
00:09:20
He was like, this sucks. Can I came and was like me and my 26 year old cousin need you to fix this website immediately.
00:09:27
And we're like, we want to. So anyway, he let me know on episode 193. I said that the fan cult, basically, when you, if you break it down, it costs $0.25.
00:09:38
I claimed that it costs $0.25 a day. It's $39.99 a year. Yes. Or something. And so I claimed it costs $0.25 a day.
00:09:46
Well, Denon immediately texted us when that episode came out and said, actually, I want
00:09:51
everyone to know that it breaks down to $0.10. It's $0.10 a day. Wow. Just less than $0.11 a day.
00:09:57
Wow. Now, not everybody has $0.11 extra cents a day. Understandable. In this fucking day and age.
00:10:03
We get it. So fine. But if you think you can scare up 11 cents a day for a year, you can join the Fan Cult.
00:10:09
And the Fan Cult's fun. We post videos every week. We post a new live episode every month that isn't ever going to be probably maybe played on the show.
00:10:20
Released. Released. Thank you. There's a Fan Cult merch store that's exclusive. Really rad merch for Fan Cult members.
00:10:28
And also now we have fan cult gift memberships available in the regular store that you can buy for your friends for the holidays.
00:10:35
Yeah, that's very cool. If you don't have the 11 cents but you think your mom might, you can go ahead and drop that hint.
00:10:41
Put it on your list that that's what you'd like for the holidays. That's a great point.
00:10:44
And also when you join, you get 20% off your first merch purchase total. Were you going to call it a merch purchase?
00:10:52
Merch-us. Merch-us. Oh, that sounds gross. It does. your first merch-ist you get 20% off
00:10:59
in your merch, your man purse after you've merch-ist it as the path of merch-ism
00:11:04
so you can get a lot of gifts for the holidays oh my god, we're about to fucking drop
00:11:09
as they say an album? the most fire album of 2016 that's right it's going to be just flames
00:11:17
the sound of flames on the side of my face we actually are so excited about the merch items that are coming out
00:11:26
We're collabing with a really awesome Murderino maker. We'll tell you all about it.
00:11:30
There's good, good stuff coming. And also, Denton wanted to tell you that everyone...
00:11:36
This is Denton's corner, really. Many members of the Fan Cult are up for renewal.
00:11:40
Happy Fan Cult birthday. If you were on auto-renewal on the old site, you still need to renew on the new site.
00:11:45
Oh. Because we made it better and different. Basically, it's a brand new website.
00:11:50
So if you don expect anything to happen automatically please come over and update and start afresh Right And we are working Very hard to make sure that it worth your 11 cents a day We really fucking are We really are We even getting into the occult for you
00:12:05
Just so you know. Get in that forum and say what's up to Marty. Yeah. Who bought himself a fan cult membership.
00:12:13
He didn't try to get it from me. No! I wanted to see what the experience was. I fucking swear to God.
00:12:19
Marty's a lover of life. Marty is a supporter of his children. Oh, I have to tell you something.
00:12:24
Please. Okay, let me get this out of the way. Okay. In like less than a week, we're going on tour in the UK.
00:12:31
It's the last of our shows for 2019. Jesus Christ. Isn't that crazy? I'd love to know the number of shows we did in 2019.
00:12:39
Steven! Don't do that right now. That's a lot. I think it's 60-something, right?
00:12:43
It's got to be 60-something. Well, so there's a few tickets left for Manchester on November 22nd, Glasgow on the 23rd, Dublin
00:12:51
on the 24th and 25th. There's like it's like 96 percent sold out on those ones. So, yeah, get your tickets, you guys.
00:12:58
And come see us. Please come see. Already preparing our stories. Yeah, we're going to be so prepared.
00:13:05
We are. So exciting. I'm at one of those places in the like coming up to tour where I'm like, I can't wait to get on that plane and sleep.
00:13:12
I know. You know, it's we there's nothing more fun than touring. It's really a joy.
00:13:18
but when you do it for six months straight and go through two full seasons it gets a little you get
00:13:25
a little bit a little bit exhausted or a lot and then have a nervous breakdown we did have a bit
00:13:31
of a nervous breakdown we had to though but it's i'm excited because usually when we're on the road
00:13:36
or at least the process has been up until this point we go on the road we find our stories we
00:13:40
write last minute there's a lot we add in the tension which is kind of how i always kind of do
00:13:46
everything but this time we were like we've already done it so much that now i'm like i regret all
00:13:51
those times the last time we were in ireland in the uk yeah where i sat in a hotel room because i
00:13:56
couldn't get my shit done in time totally and basically didn't get to look at stuff we're gonna
00:14:00
explore we're gonna go for it we're gonna do it i have just a quick thing to tell you okay okay
00:14:06
it's on the same level and plane and like of existence as the uh cocaine bear oh okay i love
00:14:14
that level of existence. Vince read me this headline today and I was like, text that to me
00:14:18
immediately. I have to tell Karen. Feral hogs find and destroy $22,000 worth of hidden cocaine.
00:14:25
I love those fucking feral hogs. I want to read you this one line. Okay. It's in Italy.
00:14:31
These motherfuckers. Okay. It says an unknown number of boars allegedly dug up and destroyed
00:14:37
this gang's packages of cocaine, dispersing their contents in the woods. It was not immediately
00:14:43
known what happened to the curious animals. Oh, they're just kind of out and about now? Yeah, that's from Newsweek.
00:14:49
Yeah, we don't know. So we have cocaine hogs now. They're down shooting pool and smoking a ton
00:14:55
of cigarettes. That's where they are. And plans for a restaurant. Let's make our dreams come true.
00:15:01
Tapas. I want to talk about stuff. Sushi, but tapas. Sushi. Jam bands. Sushi, but tapas.
00:15:09
Okay, well then, in that realm of I want to tell you something. This is the new segment, I want to tell you something.
00:15:16
Okay, great. Because I loved a listener named Emily George, assuming it's a listener, because she's talking about a mini-sode.
00:15:24
Remember on mini-sode 148, the story about the little girl who said to her attorney father,
00:15:30
fuck you, daddy, it's Bobby Shapira? Of course, it's my lifeblood. Okay. Well, Emily George tweeted to, she says,
00:15:39
I feel obligated to inform Karen Colgariff that Khloe Kardashian would have been around the right age and the daughter of the right attorney for that.
00:15:48
Fuck you, daddy. It's Bobby Shapiro hometown in my favorite murder. Minisode 148, along with a Khloe gif.
00:15:55
No, she's going hashtag fact. How hilarious is that? It's OK. Kim Kardashian. If she yelled, fuck you, daddy.
00:16:04
It's Bobby Shapiro. Then I then she's our new Oprah. Right. but but she's saying it's chloe oh chloe okay chloe was the right age great she's done the math on
00:16:14
this dude emily george went to town on this brilliant i love it thank you thank you for
00:16:18
that information i would never have put that together no i wouldn't have either yeah maybe
00:16:22
it is k dash baby um do you have anything else no all my look at all the shit i had written yeah
00:16:29
you had a lot and you covered it all covered it all slightly sweating i know we really powered
00:16:33
through that like we're like feral hogs on cocaine we really are i mean they didn't just
00:16:41
come upon it like the bear did and like dove in they dug that shit up yeah they were like i don't
00:16:46
know it doesn't smell exactly like truffles it smells more exciting does cocaine smell like
00:16:51
anything i guess people should know that because they sniff it um yeah chemically it's yeah it's
00:16:57
how did they know those smart hogs were like let's have some fun it smells like drano and baby aspirin
00:17:03
That's what my dealer cuts it with. Guys, drugs hurt. They hurt you and they hurt others.
00:17:09
And hog. They hurt hogs. They hurt feral hogs who are just trying to be themselves.
00:17:13
And sweet, sweet cocaine bears who are just trying to live their lives in the forest.
00:17:17
What if those feral hogs tore open those packages with their big crazy fans and started running and they ran into cocaine bears who are coming the other direction?
00:17:27
And they all made friends. And they had the most intense picnic. conversations about
00:17:32
intensities. About beehives and fucking being vegan. Okay. We've worked it all out as much as we possibly can.
00:17:43
I just want to see a little hog put his little paw in the cocaine and rub it on his teeth
00:17:48
and tell his friends, yep, it's cocaine! And he's got a capri in the other hoof. One long hoof
00:17:54
pinky finger Pinky ring What is it One long hook Oh Jesus A pinky nail Thank you And then everyone dives in There definitely a pinky ring on the hook Pinky
00:18:05
That's right. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer,
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Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent. The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14.
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00:20:04
I think you're first, right? Am I? Yes. Oh, well. All right. I'm going to slow down on this whiskey
00:20:10
then georgia georgia she's sleeping it's nap time i actually brought my tweezers because for the
00:20:19
bathroom yes okay you guys need to know at the exactly right offices here we have this bathroom
00:20:24
that has this overhead lighting that is so fucking bright and obnoxiously lit and it's like hey here's
00:20:29
what you really look like you had you had you think you put makeup on didn't do anything didn't do
00:20:35
shit. So we got a we got an office tweezer. Because every time we go in there, all of us go,
00:20:41
oh, should have so many like a black hair sticking out of my chin. It's like you just sit there going,
00:20:47
oh, my God, are other people looking at this? Yeah. So now we have a nightmare. We have a
00:20:50
community. It's probably not super sterile. Community tweezers. We can get some rubbing
00:20:56
alcohol and stick it in there. You could just kind of and every time Stephen's bad, we pluck
00:20:59
one mustache hair please don't it hurts that would hurt so bad so i mean i know personally
00:21:06
it's really fucking bad mine are numb now all my mustache hairs they're like please take us
00:21:11
please help you help yourself okay you know what's funny is when i was trying to find a murder for
00:21:18
tonight when i was looking at my choices i kept finding british murders where i'm like i'm not
00:21:22
doing this one yeah i'm saving it um so that's good getting my homework done yeah uh so i thought
00:21:29
I would do and I wonder if you remember this story because it happened in the early 2000s in
00:21:34
Los Angeles, California. Oh, and it is very upsetting. It's the gray widow murderers,
00:21:41
Helena Golay and Olga Rudderschmidt. Not off the top of my head. Okay. Well, I think you might as I go. Okay. So the sources that I use for this, there's a beautiful article
00:21:52
from Los Angeles Magazine. And the title of it is What Can I Tell You by a writer named Paul
00:21:58
brownfield and uh is this the katy perry connection one no no never mind john benet um no okay uh
00:22:07
wikipedia although in the wikipedia article they call them the black widow murders which isn't
00:22:12
accurate so it's a little bit odd i think they later kind of adjusted that title because it's
00:22:17
not a black widow murder right technically um there was a couple la times articles from the
00:22:23
time just reporting on what happened and then there's a great article written by a writer named
00:22:28
steven johnson for a website called 13thfloor.tv have you ever gone on there for it's really good
00:22:35
and this guy wrote a great and very comprehensive article about these murders um steven johnson
00:22:42
for 13thfloor.tv the website not a secure website just so you know that came up as a
00:22:48
in the little are they ever tell you that up at the top yeah i guess nothing's secure online
00:22:53
anymore. Nothing secure in life anymore. Don't kid yourself. It's all going down the drain.
00:22:59
It's all a lie. It goes all the way to the bottom. It goes all the way to hell. Anyway. Um, okay. Tell me. Let's start in 2003. Okay. Were you working on Melrose Avenue at the
00:23:12
time? I was 23, so no. Oh, okay. I think I was a lunch lady at that time. San Francisco? No,
00:23:18
here. Oh, okay. Back or hadn't gone yet? Hadn't gone yet. Okay. I just need to keep your personal
00:23:23
timeline in my head. I wish you would. Thank you. All the red strings are going in weird triangles
00:23:29
about your life in my head. It's real boring. Okay, so it's 2003. And the Hollywood Presbyterian
00:23:36
Church, the one on Gower, which is Gower and it's at Gower and almost Franklin. It's the one that's
00:23:45
right by the overpass and the one exit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's red brick. Oh, yeah. Yeah,
00:23:50
That real big one. Yeah. It is doing what it can to reach out to the homeless people of Los Angeles.
00:23:57
Among the needy is a 48 year old man named Kenneth McDavid. So on top of the nightmare of being homeless in Los Angeles, he also suffers
00:24:05
with schizophrenia and he doesn't have any family to turn to. So he goes to the big brick church on
00:24:11
Gower near Franklin, hoping that there'll be someone there that will help him. And there he
00:24:15
meets two older women who are more than generous to him. 72 year old Helen Gallay and seven year
00:24:21
old Olga Rudder Schmidt. Seven year old? Did I say seven? Yeah. I picture a little kid.
00:24:28
70. Great. 7-0. They take it upon themselves to find Kenneth an apartment, to pay his rent and his bills, and try to help him get back on his feet.
00:24:37
Amazing. So, of course, this is a godsend for him. And he, I mean, he believes it to be.
00:24:45
And why wouldn't he? Yeah. Because these two nice old ladies, very charitable, they found him a safe place to live.
00:24:51
And all he has to do is sign a little paperwork. Oh, dear. So two years later on June 21st, 2005
00:24:56
Around midnight Kenneth McDavid's body is found in the alley Behind the Bristol Farms grocery store
00:25:02
In Westwood Now if you've never been to Los Angeles I don't think Bristol Farms are national
00:25:08
Bristol Farms are the fanciest Fucking grocery stores When I first moved to LA I wouldn't go inside
00:25:14
No, I go inside once in a while When I'm like in the neighborhood of one And I feel like they want to kick me out
00:25:21
Yes, I always felt like in the 90s when I would go there, I felt like they thought
00:25:24
I was shoplifting. Totally. I think because I was thinking of shoplifting the whole time.
00:25:29
Because it's like these $18 bottles of olives and shit. Everything has truffles in it. Everything is like,
00:25:35
oh, the truffle candy. Truffle sugar. It's all truffles. Yeah. And it's all insanely expensive. It is hoity
00:25:42
fucking toity. Hoity toity like crazy. And only in the way that Los Angeles can be
00:25:46
where it's that, it's very conspicuous consumption bullshit. Totally. Don't fall for it. Yeah.
00:25:52
But they have nice brown muffins. Well, and also it's like, and if you do have the money, you can go and be like, yeah, I'll buy a $37 brand muffin.
00:26:01
Check it out. I don't care about money. I just want to shit. I just want that fiber in my system.
00:26:08
I just want to be regular. And I'll pay any price. Okay, let's get back to the horrible.
00:26:13
Can we? Okay, so this it's also the irony. And it's so Los Angeles that this homeless man who was murdered is his body is behind this grocery store that is literally only for rich people.
00:26:25
And it's in a high end neighborhood. Yeah. Westwood is very fancy. If you went to UCLA, you know that your fucking cookie store.
00:26:34
Anyway, when the authorities get there, they find that Kenneth McDavid's body. There's pooled blood around his head due to lacerations on his scalp.
00:26:42
He has three broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and lacerations on his spinal cord.
00:26:49
Oh, my God. The coroner later describes these as crush injuries. And according to the toxicology report, Kenneth has a high dosage of prescription sedatives in his system.
00:27:00
So authorities find an ID card in his pocket that points them toward a Hollywood apartment building.
00:27:06
They contact the landlord. That person says McDavid has been staying there for a few years, but recently moved out.
00:27:12
and the landlord is able to provide police with the name of the woman who's been helping
00:27:17
mcdavid pay the rent and who signed his lease for him a woman named helen gole so they contact
00:27:25
helen to notify her about mcdavid's death she says that she's his cousin she comes to the morgue to
00:27:30
identify the body and then she pays to have him cremated really so um investigators track down
00:27:37
They're eventually able to track down surveillance video from the hit and run. So they think it's a car accident.
00:27:45
Yeah. Well, basically, with the crush injuries, they were consistent with somebody being hit or run over by a car.
00:27:51
So they find surveillance video that shows a silver 1999 Mercury Sable sedan hitting McDavid and leaving him for dead.
00:28:00
Jesus. But nothing else on the car is identifiable. No plates or whatever. So it's the only lead and it goes cold until the mighty insurance investigator comes calling.
00:28:11
So, yeah, a few months after Kenneth McDavid's body was found, an insurance investigator named Ed Webster shows up to collect the incident report about the accident from the LAPD.
00:28:23
He's been trying to get in touch with the beneficiaries of the five hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy that had been taken out on Kenneth McDavid with his company, Mutual of New York.
00:28:33
They had filed a claim, but Webster had been able, unable to track them down. So essentially, he they filed the claim to get the money.
00:28:43
And then he reached out and said, yeah, I'd like to meet you guys so we can talk about this.
00:28:47
And they never called him back. So that immediately sent his senses tingling. So as he starts looking into this strange case, he discovers another five hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy.
00:29:00
also in Kenneth McDavid's name. The beneficiaries on that policy, also Helen Golay and Olga Rudderschmidt.
00:29:09
So Helen told authorities that she was Kenneth McDavid's cousin, but the life insurance policies state that she and Olga are investment partners
00:29:18
who are funding Kenneth McDavid's screenwriting career. That's just not a relationship that happens in this town.
00:29:26
Nobody funds screenwriting careers. Right. And also unless you're a successful screenwriter.
00:29:31
Right. Then then it's like, hey, we're Paramount. We'd love we'd love to fund your screenwriting.
00:29:36
Insurance inspector Webster smells a rat. So he goes to the LAPD robbery homicide division for help.
00:29:44
And he talks to a detective, Dennis Kilcoyne. So Kilcoyne isn't immediately convinced that these two little old ladies are capable of this level of crime.
00:29:53
He got lots of other other robbery homicide shit to worry about And he kind of like yeah OK until as everyone talking about oh the two little old ladies that people think or whatever and then a colleague reminds kelkoin
00:30:06
of another hit and run case from 1999 in which a 73 year old homeless man named paul vados had been
00:30:14
the victim and when they look into that they find that vados also had insurance policies taken out
00:30:19
in his name and the beneficiaries are Helen and Olga. What the fuck? So they now
00:30:25
have picked up a rock. Thank God someone remembered that. Yes. Well, that's kind of the beauty of like these
00:30:31
people. It had happened what? Four or five years before? Yeah. But they carry that around. Sure. It's like
00:30:39
a 73 year old man in this hit and run. Yeah. Like you know, but they're kind of like, oh, wait a second.
00:30:46
Yeah. And sharing information at least. Yes. And talking about it. Yeah. Okay, so now the authorities get serious about this case, and they call in the big guns, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the baddest of them all, the California Department of Insurance.
00:31:01
Don't fucking mess. That's their motto. Don't fucking mess. Don't fucking mess. They're cold-blooded.
00:31:07
They don't even need to finish the sentence. Okay, so they all begin to investigate these seemingly sweet old ladies.
00:31:14
So let's talk about Helen Golay and Olga Rudderschmidt. they meet in the 80s because they're two health conscious
00:31:23
middle aged women in Los Angeles yeah girl and they meet at a West Los Angeles health
00:31:31
spa and they find out that they have a lot in common so Olga she grew up in war torn Hungary in the
00:31:38
40s suffered injuries from a World War II bomb raid where they said an entire building collapsed onto her
00:31:46
and basically barely escaped World War II Hungary. And Helen had suddenly and tragically lost her father in a car crash at a young age.
00:31:57
So the two women bond over their childhood trauma and they become fast friends. So as the years pass, both Helen and Olga suffer failed marriages.
00:32:06
They have problems with their kids and they have intense financial instability. They have friends who have very distinct memories of the two women complaining about needing big money fast.
00:32:18
And so as their desperation peaks, the two women decide to start committing petty crimes together.
00:32:24
So the story is that Helen Olga would sneak into the Beverly Hills Hotel or the Roosevelt in Hollywood.
00:32:31
Fancy as fuck. Right. They pretend to be registered guests. They go into the locker room.
00:32:36
They change into their pool stuff. Now they're both physically fit. It's very L.A.
00:32:41
They're both these blondes. How come I can't do that? I'm too scared to do that.
00:32:45
Yeah, it's just it's you're not a sociopath. Oh, right. Yeah. So Helen has this big blonde bouffant and she's like she's leggy and she's, you know, used to being a hot lady from the past.
00:32:58
Right. And Olga has like a Zsa Zsa Gabor thing going on. So nobody thinks twice about these two seemingly rich middle aged ladies.
00:33:06
Right. Because when you're a middle aged friend, you can become completely invisible.
00:33:11
It's kind of exciting, actually. No one fucking gives a shit. Oh, God. So what they do is they change into their pool clothes and they go hang out and then they steal purses and credit cards out of people's lockers.
00:33:23
Wow. And no one suspects them because of old white lady privilege. Sure. So essentially it's like, oh, it could never be these two.
00:33:30
Right. They have so much shitty lipstick on. Yeah. Or whatever. She's almost exactly like Zsa Zsa Gabor.
00:33:36
She could never be stealing my fucking credit card. Right. Okay. They do that so much and so often, and they never get caught.
00:33:44
They never even get suspected. So, of course, those petty crimes going on prosecuted emboldens the old gals to escalate to credit card fraud, then insurance fraud, suing small businesses, faking or exaggerating injuries.
00:33:58
Fuck, what dicks. Yes. So they start they start realizing how they can make money, which is basically by ripping people off in all different ways.
00:34:06
Oh, man. Just like these small businesses I think about who are like suddenly have the stress of a fraudulent claim.
00:34:12
Yes. That they have to deal with or just trying to fucking make ends meet. Where it's like you've seen it in a bunch of movies or whatever, where it's like, I'm sure one of them went in.
00:34:20
You like have a little vial of, you know, $18 olive oil or whatever. You throw it on the ground. You got to slip and fall. Now it's a lawsuit.
00:34:28
You own that dry cleaners or whatever. That's the story. And these guys work that system.
00:34:33
So with all these cases, Olga finds herself a fellow Hungarian immigrant lawyer named George Brownfield, and he handles all of her cases.
00:34:42
She turns to him for personal injury claims from auto accidents and slip and falls.
00:34:47
That's one of my favorite petty crimes is a fake slip and fall. Slip and fall. Where people fake slipping and falling and then like, I'm going to sue you.
00:34:56
Oh, it's the worst. All of these cases that she brings to him seem sketchy and embellished.
00:35:01
But George is known for his loyalty to fellow Hungarian immigrants in the L.A. area.
00:35:06
So he continues to represent Olga. And this is the lawyer who Paul Brownfield wrote the article about.
00:35:13
It's his father. Wow. And the article is beautiful. It's all about how he kind of didn't know his father.
00:35:19
And after his father died, he had to go in and he found all these cases, case files and went through all of this stuff to figure out why he would continue to represent this criminal.
00:35:30
I'm telling you, this is some family secret podcast shit right here. It's totally family secret.
00:35:34
OK, so that's Olga's story. Now, Helen Goulet, she's a bit of a mystery lady. But from the L.A. Times article, her hairdresser, who wouldn't give her name because she was afraid for her personal safety.
00:35:49
But she told the L Times that Helen once explained to her quote how a woman could score a windfall by marrying an older man ensuring his life and then secretly feeding him daily doses of Viagra until it triggered a fatal heart attack Oh God what a way to go
00:36:06
You're just trying to cut some bangs into some old lady's hair. And then you're like, sorry, what's this?
00:36:11
I didn't ask you for advice. I'm, ma'am. And then, and listen, this is what she says.
00:36:17
The hairdresser who asked on to be named. Oh, I said that already. the hairdresser quotes go lay uh as saying i am evil you have no idea how evil i am anyway bye
00:36:28
have a good one anyway like oh so three weeks from now we'll just touch up these roots i tipped you
00:36:32
10 see you later i'm evil so i tipped you 10 oh my god yeah that's oh i want to meet that that
00:36:41
uh hairdresser how unnerving yeah to come upon these people in real life and have them be like
00:36:47
Well, you are my hairdresser. I guess I'll tell you my dirtiest secret. And she's just like, can you stop talking?
00:36:52
Please, please go somewhere else. There's a super cuts down the street. Okay, so usually the cases that Olga would bring to George Brownfield were small and petty
00:37:01
until she arrives at his office one day in early 2000 to tell him that her, quote,
00:37:07
cousin, Paul Vados, had been run over and killed in an alleyway. She explains to her lawyer that she and Helen had been taking care of Paul.
00:37:17
who she claims was a, quote, retired electrical technician who was barely getting by on his social security.
00:37:23
Olga explains that out of gratitude for their help, Paul agreed to make she and Helen the beneficiaries.
00:37:29
Oh, it would be her and Helen. Paul agrees to make her and Helen the beneficiaries on his life insurance policy.
00:37:34
But now that he's dead, the insurance company refuses to give them their payout because Paul's death is a potential homicide.
00:37:42
and the authorities couldn't rule out Olga and Helen as potential suspects yet. So George takes the case and fights the insurance company because he's Olga's lawyer.
00:37:56
He says that they can't withhold payment unless they can prove Helen and Olga are actually under investigation for the death of Vados.
00:38:04
And since there's no proof that they're involved, George wins the case and Olga and Helen are awarded their payout.
00:38:10
Holy shit. Their success with this scam emboldens them both to move on to help out another homeless person in need, Kenneth McDavid.
00:38:20
Run! Which is where we started. Oh, my God. But as all of that proof is piling up, investigators are now hot on the old gals' trails, so they start tailing them and watching them in action.
00:38:33
Yeah. So the ladies would frequent that first Presbyterian church on Gower, troll for victims.
00:38:41
And it's usually they would look for alcoholics or people with mental illness. Easy targets for them.
00:38:49
Right. Then they'd offer them food and shelter with no strings attached. And after some time passed and they'd secure the man's trust, they would tell their new charge that they're going to help.
00:39:00
They're going to the bank to help him open his own bank account. This is basically getting him back on his feet.
00:39:06
and they would make sure to take them to Bank of America because at the time it offered a free $1,000 life insurance policy
00:39:14
once a checking account was opened, somehow in connection. So they would sign their, basically their target,
00:39:22
they would sign him up for that. And then it would automatically. It would automatically, and then they would send notifications
00:39:28
to increase the amount. And so by tens of thousands of dollars, it would start out as a $1,000 life insurance policy.
00:39:35
So they'd already signed it so they could just keep increasing. They could keep increasing and they were in charge.
00:39:40
And once they had that policy, they could take out several more policies on the same man with companies that did their business either online or through the mail only.
00:39:49
Right. They didn't have to meet anybody in person. They would just sign him up and then show that he had already had they already had all his information.
00:39:56
Well, I think these policies should be changed. It seems like it's too easy to do that to somebody.
00:40:02
Yeah. And I bet they have been since that time. I would hope. Gotta hope. So basically, Helen and Olga learned how to game the insurance system pretty severely.
00:40:10
They were cunning and calculating and they're cold blooded killers. So so as they're tailing the women, authorities are horrified to discover that Helen and Olga's names have popped up again as beneficiaries on a life insurance policy for a homeless man named Jimmy Covington.
00:40:29
Okay, so Olga and Helen meet Jimmy and offer to put him up in a Hollywood office building at no cost.
00:40:36
But Jimmy Covington is smart. They picked the wrong guy when they picked Jimmy Covington.
00:40:42
Cool. Because he already thinks it's weird that they're these nice old ladies and they're just doing all this stuff for free.
00:40:47
Yeah. But that they keep insisting he fill out this paperwork and provide them with his personal information.
00:40:52
Yeah. So they keep coming back and trying to get him to fill out these forms, and he just isn't doing it.
00:41:00
So one time they just snap, and they get really angry and yell at him. And that's when he knows that he's sure he was right and that something isn't cool about this.
00:41:11
So the next time the grannies go back to check on him and get that paperwork, Jimmy Covington is nowhere to be found.
00:41:18
Get the fuck out of there. He was like, yeah, I'm not buying any of this anymore.
00:41:23
Later days, ladies. But by this time, the police have now amassed enough proof of the two women's 20 year escalating crime spree.
00:41:32
And they have enough evidence to charge both Helen Golay and Olga Rudderschmidt with felony mail fraud and suspicion of murder.
00:41:40
As they were tailing Olga, they just watched her steal her neighbor's mail. No. Yeah.
00:41:45
That's a federal offense, Olga. You can't share where no one's tailing you first.
00:41:51
first. Okay, so on May 18th, 2006, two separate teams of police officers arrive at both Helen Golay residence on the west side and Olga Rudderschmidt residence in Hollywood and arrest them simultaneously
00:42:06
And Detective Dennis Kilcoyne in one of those articles talked about how they wanted to go in.
00:42:12
They went in with all these cops. They wanted to, like, shock and awe dazzle both of these old ladies so that when they brought them in, like, they knew it was a big deal.
00:42:21
Everyone saw. The neighbors saw everybody. So when they came into the same jailhouse where they were getting booked, they would know that they were super busted and it was time to start singing.
00:42:33
And they knew it would only be a matter of time before they each flipped on each other.
00:42:39
Which is kind of a genius plan. So there's lots of pictures of them getting arrested that you can look at on the Internet.
00:42:45
Okay. Yeah, I love it. So once the police are inside Helen's home, they find a mixture of ground up prescription pills.
00:42:51
they say enough to put an elephant to sleep. Fuck. She just has it fucking sitting around in her apartment.
00:42:57
Oh my God, like a mortar and pestle just like... And she's also hand crafting specialty cocktails as well.
00:43:06
Okay, so they also find organized files of all the life insurance policies that she and Olga had taken out on their victim.
00:43:14
Okay, so she's killing people and can be that organized and we're fucking can't...
00:43:18
I know, you know. Yes. well also it's like why would you keep all that stuff right right in your apartment like how how
00:43:24
about you go out and get like one of those um storage lockers thank you storage war that shit
00:43:31
uh they also find documents from three other men that goley and rudder schmidt had tried to ensure
00:43:38
for around eight hundred thousand dollars but those applications had been denied and the police say
00:43:44
that there was no reason for them to believe that those three men were in danger anymore,
00:43:48
but basically that they had kind of gotten processed and denied. Yeah. Yes. Holy shit.
00:43:54
So though Golay and Rudder Schmidt worked as a team, there was evidence that each was
00:43:58
not always aware. Oh, this, sorry. This is from Paul Brownfield's LA Magazine article.
00:44:03
It's a quote. Though Golay and Rudder Schmidt worked as a team, there was evidence that each was not
00:44:08
always aware of the other's activity. Of the 13 policies on McDavid, for example, that's Kenneth McDavid, the murder we started with.
00:44:17
Golay was the sole beneficiary on eight. So she had taken Helen off of eight of them.
00:44:24
You can't trust a murdering liar, I guess. Yeah, no honor. Sometimes they tried to remove each other's co-beneficiaries.
00:44:32
Regardless, insurers sold policy after policy and paid up as often as not. End quote.
00:44:39
So between the two women, Helen and Olga had gotten themselves paid with these scams nearly $2.8 million.
00:44:47
Holy shit. Yeah. Imagine how much they'd make if all of them went through it. Right.
00:44:51
These bitches are dirty birds. Yep. Okay. So authorities also discover when they're going through these apartments that the mercury sable that was used to kill Kenneth McDavid is registered to a Hillary Adler who goes to the same gym as Helen's youngest daughter, Keisha Hale.
00:45:09
Hilary Adler, however, didn't buy the car Years before, her purse had been stolen from the locker room at that gym
00:45:16
Later, Helen had used Hilary's ID to buy the car Telling the dealer it was a gift for Hilary
00:45:22
So, basically, they find that Mercury Sable And they find proof that on the night of Kenneth McDavid's death
00:45:31
Helen Golay had called Triple A to have a broken down Mercury Sable toad No, the car broke down?
00:45:38
Yes After she killed someone with it? After they killed someone with it, they had to have it towed.
00:45:42
And AAA has it on record. Fuck! Yeah. When the police possess the car and they test the undercarriage, they find Kenneth McDavid's DNA on it.
00:45:54
Wow. And so they have everything they need to now charge these women. So the trial begins on March 18, 2008.
00:46:04
They both plead not guilty. Neither one testifies. you know they're lunatics over the course of the three
00:46:11
week trial each woman's lawyer tries to pin the entire scheme on the other woman
00:46:17
it must have been this is really horrible and tragic and it's shocking how cold blooded these
00:46:23
murders are but to sit in that courtroom and see this would be a circus this would be like high
00:46:31
high level courtroom viewing I think I wonder if this was on court TV God, I don't want to remember this at all.
00:46:38
Okay, so Helen's defense attorney argues that her daughter Keisha had conspired with Olga,
00:46:43
referring to records of phone calls between Olga and Keisha to support this argument.
00:46:48
Olga's attorney, however, argues that Helen dazzled Olga with her lavish lifestyle
00:46:53
and manipulated her into going along with the insurance fraud plan. He claims Olga didn't know that the schemes would involve murder.
00:47:01
But then Jimmy Covington takes the stand. Oh, shit. Yes. Our friend who got out and was like, fuck these old two old ladies.
00:47:11
He busts in and blows the doors of both of those defenses. He is their only living murder for insurance scam victim.
00:47:19
And he sets the record straight. And because of that, three weeks after the start of the trial in April of 2008, Helen
00:47:26
Golay and Olga Rutter Schmidt are both found guilty of insurance fraud and of the murders
00:47:31
of Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid. and they're each sentenced to life in prison where they remain to this day.
00:47:38
And that is the truly disgusting story of the Grey Widow murderers, Olga Rudderschmidt and Helen Golay.
00:47:45
Wow, I have never heard of that. You haven't? No. Okay, so wait, let me show you this.
00:47:50
These are the ladies. Show me. Oh, my. That's Helen and that's Olga. Oh, my God.
00:47:56
And then who does Helen remind you of? I don't know. Who? Who? The woman who killed Sylvia Likens?
00:48:02
You're right. Isn't that crazy? They look exactly... Dorothea. Dorothea. She has that crazy look.
00:48:08
Stephen, sorry. Gertrude Banaszewski. Banaszewski, probably. Yeah. Because it's Chuckle's lock-in.
00:48:16
Isn't that weird? She completely looks like that lady. They look exactly the same.
00:48:20
For a second, when I was researching this, I was like, that's the lady that tortured Sylvia Likens.
00:48:25
But it's just that same weird, upsetting, awful face. So do you think they were in the car together when they hit him?
00:48:32
Yes. That's so awful. I hate that. You know, I hate taking advantage when people take advantage of people who are the easiest targets, mentally ill, homeless, you know.
00:48:43
Yeah. It's just like. And I hate that people would have the fucking balls to attend church.
00:48:48
Yeah. As if they're there to help, too. Totally. When actually they're doing the exact polar opposite of helping anybody.
00:48:56
It's so calculating. it's so mercenary and it's totally disgusting that is a fucked up story
00:49:04
isn't that awful? God, good job thank you. I've never even seen it in my my deep dives
00:49:10
into stories. It's when this one came out because it was like no one they were like on the news would be like two old
00:49:16
women like no one can believe old ladies but then these pictures come up and you're like
00:49:19
I fucking believe it. I see it. That's the lady that would like pinch you when no
00:49:23
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Yeah, it was loud. I'm so sorry. I'm so excited that fall is turning into winter here
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and I had to pull out my old thermal long-sleeve shirt. You're double cupping that mug in a really cozy way.
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I really pulled like kind of a Lipton tea looking out the window, staring out the window.
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You did. If only we had a fire. Oh, if only we started this building on fire. And then ran podcasting.
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That would be our podcast. Okay. All right. If you'll humor me, I'm going to start this in a different way.
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Okay. By having an intro and then telling you what it is. Interesting. I know. I'm hooked.
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That's why we're going on vacation together soon. We really are. After London, me, Karen, and Vince are going on a little, we're calling it a retreat.
00:52:59
Yeah, it's a company retreat. Company retreat. Only we get to go to. Because we're already there.
00:53:04
Right. No offense, Stephen. Stephen, we'll think of you. Let me start. Okay. Karen, let me tell you about Speedway, Indiana.
00:53:12
Speedway, Indiana. Speedway, Indiana. It's a middle class enclave of Indianapolis.
00:53:18
Okay. Which we were just in and it's a fucking rad place. We love doing shows in that place.
00:53:22
It was great. All I think of is the crowds that it just went on forever. Yeah. And everyone was great.
00:53:28
Everyone's nice. Yep. So Speedway, Indiana is a town and it's home of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
00:53:34
Sure. Oh, my God. It hosts the Formula Racing's annual Indianapolis 500 every Memorial Day weekend.
00:53:42
Why did you say that like you've never heard of the Indianapolis 500? Those words have never come out of my mouth in my fucking life.
00:53:50
Truly, that's the first time I've ever said Indianapolis 500. You not a crazy NASCAR head That weird There were zero sports in my house I had a single mom Oh yeah that would make sense We just didn have sports We didn have Indy 500 style
00:54:05
Car racing was a different realm. Sure, but you know about it. But I do know about it and I've seen other people like it.
00:54:11
Also, what I hear is when you go there and watch it firsthand, pieces of tires fly up into your face.
00:54:18
No. Like it's intense car experience. I just keep thinking about if they all have fancy, crazy hats on.
00:54:24
But that's the... I was going to say the home run derby. That's the, what do you call it?
00:54:29
Derby. Yeah. The derby. Steven, any idea? The derby. Oh, I just want to say my mom was a huge NASCAR fan.
00:54:35
And she was on a documentary about, I think, Jack Johnson. Not the singer. Jimmy Johnson.
00:54:42
Jimmy Johnson. Yeah, she was a huge fan. She was in a documentary, like a fan documentary about him.
00:54:46
What the fuck? Oh, and it's her birthday when this episode comes out. Happy birthday, Mrs. Ray Morris.
00:54:51
So she's the one exception to the NASCAR rule. You've said the words Indianapolis 500 before then.
00:54:58
Okay, here we are in Speedway, Indiana. During the post-war years and into the 1970s, Speedway became a suburban utopia of Indianapolis.
00:55:08
Low crime, good schools, none of those big problems with the big cities. Yeah. You know.
00:55:13
And by 1970, more than 15,000 people lived there. So it's small, but it's a suburbia.
00:55:19
Okay. Though normally a safe place to live, the year 1978 brought some crazy fucking shit to this relatively small suburb.
00:55:26
I believe it. 1978, man. People are still hitchhiking. A lot of brown cords. That's right.
00:55:31
Great. Set the scene. Well, so first on July 29th, 1978, a local like total church going grandma named Julia Ciphers was shot to death in her own garage in the middle of the afternoon when a stranger showed up at her front door.
00:55:47
Her husband enters the door. the man is like hey you had had a recent rummage sale
00:55:52
I wanted to see some of these like higher end items that you were selling what no that's not how rummage sales work
00:55:59
no and the guy was like okay come back later right so he's like let me get my wife
00:56:02
he grabs Julia and she brings him to the garage to check out them antiques oh and he takes out a gun and shoots her
00:56:10
killing her and then drives off without taking anything what so it's like a hit yeah okay
00:56:16
well oh okay you're like oh okay you'll talk about it again oh I don't have to guess until I get it right
00:56:22
you're going to tell me a whole story this podcast is called My Favorite Murder My Favorite Guessing About Things
00:56:27
then starting a month later so a month after this on September 1st 1978 and lasting until the 6th
00:56:36
so just a few days a series of 6 seemingly random bombs go off in public places around the town of Speedway
00:56:43
what the fuck yeah small town and all these fucking like bombs are exploding The first five explosions didn't hurt anyone.
00:56:50
It's almost like they purposely didn't. They were put in places where like parking lots and where people wouldn't be around.
00:56:56
But then the final bomb, an explosive device concealed in a Speedway High School gym bag, detonated in a parking lot of Speedway High School shortly after a freshman football game.
00:57:09
Yeah. So like all these people are going to see this football game. It exploded there.
00:57:14
And Vietnam War veteran Carl DeLong is struck by the bomb, which severs his right leg and severely injured his left leg and right hand and severed an artery in his wife Sandra's leg.
00:57:26
So this elderly couple is hit. Carl's leg had to be amputated. I fucking look this up on the My Favorite Murder Gmail.
00:57:34
And this woman named Miranda emails us. Oh, God. This badass woman. She says, in September 1978, there was a series of bombings in Speedway, Indiana.
00:57:44
the last of which took place at my dad's high school parking lot and blew my grandpa's right leg off and severely injured my grandma.
00:57:52
My grandpa was a Vietnam veteran and killed himself in 1983 after becoming depressed due to the loss of his leg and chronic pain.
00:58:01
And she says, my grandma is a fucking badass, by the way, just so everyone knows.
00:58:05
I bet she is. At this point, so at this point in the 56 year history of Speedway, only two homicides had been reported.
00:58:13
and just half a dozen robberies a year had been recorded. So it's a safe place. I was sorry, but I was going to go back really quick.
00:58:20
Sylvia is the name of the woman who got shot in her garage. Julia Cyphers. Julia Cyphers.
00:58:25
I was just going to go back really quick and say this about Julia who got shot in her garage.
00:58:29
Now that you say that there is only, did you say two? Two homicides a year. Oh, no, wait, sorry.
00:58:35
Two homicides that have ever been recorded in the history. Okay. So when people, the neighbors and the town found out what happened to Julia, that must have been the scariest.
00:58:46
I mean, like a woman shot in her own garage that neighbors, friends, people I'm sure knew her.
00:58:55
Like what a bewildering, frightening thing. And you have no motive. There's no this woman had no known enemies.
00:59:02
There's no reason for this to happen to this woman. For some reason, the daytime element also.
00:59:07
Absolutely. the world's gone insane and it's targeted and then suddenly a month later
00:59:13
these explosions start happening around town I just want to I don't know why I just felt like we didn't sit on that long
00:59:19
enough where I'm like oh the growing feeling of Julia being murdered for no reason and no one
00:59:24
knowing how to explain it so no one's getting any relief there's no arrest that's just a growing thing and then bombs
00:59:31
start going on the worry over these two seemingly unrelated events which we'll get
00:59:35
back to later yeah the murder of Julia and the bombings was about to be quadrupled by an event that shook the community and still
00:59:42
fucks people up to this day. What? This is the story of the Burger Chef murders.
00:59:48
Are you? Ew. I just got the weirdest chill. Are you? Because what the fuck? 1978.
00:59:55
Oh my All this happened Okay Yeah Please tell me And actually I fucking want your opinion on this because it I sorry to spoiler alert It unsolved No I knew that Yeah Yeah So I need your opinion on this OK I got so much information from Indianapolis Monthly Indy Star Medium There a podcast that their whole first season is about this It called Circle City Crime Podcast or 3C Podcast
01:00:20
and they just cover like the theories and the you know evidence and all this about this podcast
01:00:25
wow about this crime about this crime um the already gone podcast there's an episode about
01:00:31
it and then i read a book i bought on it i bought a book and read it over the weekend called the
01:00:37
burger chef murders by julie young wow okay awesome highlighter and fucking hand so you're
01:00:42
really doing it now so are you saying that's what we have to do now is like really do research
01:00:47
So this is a case that hits all my buttons, like the yogurt shop murders. There's something about fast food murders or store murders that really just get my blood boiling and get my brain working.
01:01:02
And when they're unsolved, I just fucking can't handle it. And I'm like, the answer is there.
01:01:06
We have to find it. And so I want to know everything about it. Yeah, it makes sense.
01:01:09
Yeah. So let's get into it. On the night of Friday, November 17th, 1978, employees of the local Burger Chef fast food restaurant.
01:01:19
Do you know that? You didn't have them. No. So it's basically like Carl's Jr. Oh, okay.
01:01:23
And they were eventually bought by Hardee's and Vince knew about it. It's like a Midwestern kind of chain that everyone knew.
01:01:31
Burger Chef. Okay. Yeah. So it's in Speedway, Indiana. They're closing up the shop for the night.
01:01:36
Assistant manager, Jane Freit, who's 20. She had recently transferred from the Plainfield Burger Chef, Ruth Ellen Shelton, who's 18.
01:01:47
Daniel Davis is 16. And Mark Flemons, who's also 16. So there's a bunch of fucking kids closing up the shop.
01:01:53
Also, I think is part of it. Right. If someone's taking advantage of the youth element in most fast food and retail situations,
01:02:00
where it usually is a couple of 17 year olds pretending that they they're holding it down.
01:02:08
Right. When actually that's like the most exploitable, like they're trapped as a victim.
01:02:14
But it also makes it so much more scary that it wasn't someone alone closing up.
01:02:18
It was four fucking people. Yeah. Okay. All right. So they're closing up in the evening.
01:02:23
A little later after midnight, another employee drives by the burger chef and he notices all the lights are on.
01:02:29
And he's like, that's fucking weird. It should be closed and dark by this point.
01:02:32
So he stops by to check it out, only to find the back door open and all four employees gone.
01:02:39
Oh, he notices that the both female employees purses are still there and there's two coats left behind, which is strange.
01:02:46
It's the middle of fucking November. It's like 30 or 40 degrees. You don't leave your coat behind.
01:02:51
Right. He immediately calls the police. And when they arrive on the scene, they find over five hundred and eighty dollars in cash missing, which doesn't sound like a lot.
01:03:00
But in today's money, it's twenty two hundred, about twenty two hundred dollars.
01:03:04
Yeah. But a couple hundred more and change are left behind. And Jane Freit, the assistant manager, her car is missing from the parking lot.
01:03:14
The cash register tills are like thrown on the ground. The manager's office is kind of a mess.
01:03:19
It's where the safe is. And it shows signs of a struggle. and there's an empty roll of duct tape nearby.
01:03:25
So, but instead of thinking it looks suspicious, like the teenager did who called the fucking cops
01:03:30
and treating it like a crime scene, the local law enforcement assumes that the missing workers stole the money
01:03:37
and later date to go out partying for the night, left the back door open, left their purses and jackets behind,
01:03:43
left it a mess. And it's these four fucking responsible kids who have jobs and are all in like,
01:03:49
I don't know, 4-H or whatever the fuck. Right. If you're a teenager that has a job that's as hard as fast food, you are not messing around like that.
01:03:57
Absolutely not. You're not that kid. That's the rich assholes that have no idea how these things impact people.
01:04:05
Exactly. It's a different style of person. And then you look at clues like purses and jackets, lean left behind, and you know something's not right.
01:04:12
Now, but this pops into my head because we've heard so many of these stories. Yeah. But there was this time where whoever showed up first got to theorize.
01:04:22
And if it was the kind of person who was like, I don't want to do this that much.
01:04:26
I don't want to get basically I don't want to get involved. And I think maybe sometimes it's I don't want to I want to think this because the alternative is horrifying.
01:04:35
Right. Or and also there's only been two homicides in my city in this long. I don't know how to fucking work a homicide scene.
01:04:43
Right. Yeah. And if I don't know how, instead of getting someone that does know how and being like, I don't know, better to just blame and feel superior and walk away.
01:04:52
And walk away. Which I don't know if it happens as much anymore. I don't think I feel like there's more oversight.
01:04:57
Yeah. Well, that's exactly what happened. So. So they call the store owner and the next morning an opening crew are told to finish the closing duties, clean up and open the store as usual.
01:05:11
No. And this is like, in my mind, this is why the case has never been solved. Because they cleaned up the crime scene?
01:05:21
They wiped away any fingerprints that could have been there, any DNA or blood samples.
01:05:26
They wiped down all the countertops. No crime scene photos were taken. There's nothing.
01:05:32
And I want to remind you of the Browns Chicken Massacre, which they had bagged and tagged all the trash, remember?
01:05:40
And then nine years after the murders, they used a chicken and half eaten chicken leg in the trash to as a DNA match to the killers.
01:05:52
So the shit's important. They threw all the trash away Couldn be more important Right Yeah So the next morning though when the four employees hadn shown up at their homes their worried families all knowing their kids weren all
01:06:05
knowing their kids were responsible and reliable they raised the alarm they file missing persons
01:06:10
reports and they're like something's fucking going on yeah later that day jane's missing car is
01:06:15
discovered parked a short drive from the restaurant and just a couple blocks from the police station
01:06:20
oh no i know the car is like vaguely searched and cops find a couple burger chef wrappers
01:06:27
they take some cigarette butts the driver's side door is locked but the passenger door is not
01:06:33
what does that mean i don't know but it's becoming clear that the workers had been abducted while
01:06:38
closing the restaurant and uh possibly when someone was throwing trash bags out because
01:06:43
there was like one trash bag in the dumpster so while the door was open maybe that's when someone
01:06:48
hit. A full-on search is issued for the missing kids, and on Sunday, two days after the Burger Chef
01:06:54
employees are reported missing, some local hikers find a gruesome scene in a rural wooded area in
01:07:00
Johnson County, which is the next county over. It's about 30 to 40 minutes drive from Speedway.
01:07:06
In a clearing, the bodies of the four missing workers this is so sad, all still in their brown and orange Burger Chef uniforms
01:07:14
were found. Daniel Davis and Ruth Ellen had both been shot execution style numerous times with a 38 caliber firearm. So it was almost like
01:07:25
they had them lay down there. Then Jane was found a little ways off and had been stabbed twice in the
01:07:31
chest so violently that the blade was later recovered from her body, but the handle was
01:07:36
never found. Oh my God. So it seemed to me, it seems like Jane and the other employee Mark made
01:07:43
to run for it. Yeah. Right. So about 75 yards away from the others, Mark Flemons is found. He's also
01:07:51
he's the strongest and most athletic of the group. So it's determined that he was
01:07:55
bludgeoned with an unknown object, maybe a chain that was never found. But he also this is fucking
01:08:02
horrible. He also suffered blunt force head injury. So coroners speculate that he tried to
01:08:08
make an escape but maybe ran into a tree while he was running away right and then uh fell and
01:08:15
choked on his own blood and it's possible that the captors thought he had got away and didn't
01:08:20
know until the bodies were found that he had died oh god so sounds like the two of them made a
01:08:24
fucking run for it which is like heartbreaking right it's also sounds like she fought them
01:08:31
yeah if she was stabbed that violently like they were mad at her for doing something yeah and it
01:08:35
does seem to that like it's weird to have three different ways of murder. Right.
01:08:42
So maybe it says there's like more than one assailant. Yeah. Or even two. Right.
01:08:47
Right. So officers from Johnson County, where the bodies are found, Marion County, where the
01:08:53
burger chef was and the Indiana State Police all arrive on the scene. Good. No. Oh.
01:09:01
It's the state police's crime scene since it's inter-jurisdiction. And of course, there's a fact it's 1978.
01:09:07
There's a power struggle between the departments. Johnson County Sheriff Tom Pritchard.
01:09:13
So he was left out of the loop and he was by the state police and he was pissed about it.
01:09:20
And he said, quote, if they're going to treat us this way, we're not going to bend over backward to help them.
01:09:25
Like you're not helping them. You're helping these fucking murder victims. Yeah, it's not.
01:09:29
If you can't handle the basic politics of this stuff, you probably shouldn't be in that business.
01:09:37
I mean, it's so frustrating. Every time anything is like this, I immediately just think of, I start watching the Zodiac movie in my mind.
01:09:44
Yeah. Because it's all that stuff of like, it's all weird, like, pissing contests.
01:09:49
Totally. It's infuriating. Especially for a cold fucking case that, like, is just mishandled.
01:09:55
Yeah. So either way, some of the first officers at the scene claim that the state police moved the bodies before the forensic team or the coroner arrived.
01:10:03
I don't know if that's true. I just read it in a lot of places. Yeah, why would they do that?
01:10:07
I don't know. And since no one roped off the crime scene, there are footsteps everywhere from the three different departments trampling into potential forensic evidence.
01:10:16
Just a different time, too. Totally. after the news of the discovery the burger chef puts up a 25 000 reward for any information on
01:10:24
the case and they help the families with funeral costs uh the town of speedway is of course now
01:10:30
fucking in a goddamn panic i mean that's it's too much that's like too much it's that's three
01:10:36
massive tragedies right you move away from the city the big city to get away from like the crime
01:10:42
and your town is just fucking besieged with it. Yeah. Is that a word? Yes, it is.
01:10:47
Okay, great. The same day the Burger Chef murdered. Oh, okay. This is fucked up.
01:10:53
They're found on Sunday. That's the next day. The murders are in the paper. It's the exact same day.
01:10:59
It shares a headline with the news of the bodies being found of the mass suicides in Guyana at the Jonestown compound.
01:11:09
No. Reverend Jim Jones, he's an Indiana native, had originally formed his people's temple cult in Indianapolis.
01:11:16
So is that true? Yeah. So like this fucking little area is losing its fucking mind.
01:11:23
That's and also that news itself. Eclipsed. Eclipses everything that happened for months after.
01:11:30
Right. So maybe this could have been a national news story and could have gotten more leads.
01:11:34
But instead. Yeah. And everyone's focused on this massive, insane, huge tragedy.
01:11:38
understandably but but still it could have if it had the airtime yeah something could have been
01:11:45
made of it oh god this is awful I know sorry no okay I want to take this on okay you sure
01:11:52
yeah okay thank you because I can stop no you can't if we could have stopped we would have done it
01:11:58
by now but we can't I would have done it 195 episodes ago. The leading theory in the Burger Chef murders is that the employees were kidnapped following a botched robbery when one of the killers entered the Burger Chef.
01:12:12
While one of the employees were taking out the trash, maybe one of the abductors was recognized by one of the employees and they were like, we now have to kill you all.
01:12:22
But it still puzzles investigators that the employees weren't killed at the burger chef because there's so many of these stories from back then where they're found in the cooler or in the manager's office by the safe all killed.
01:12:33
Right. But it's such a huge risk to take them to another location 30 to 40 minutes away.
01:12:39
And four people. Four people who are still alive and they take one of the cars and maybe there's like a car waiting that that's where they take them to.
01:12:48
Whatever. It's just it's really fucking weird and there's no like explanation. Yeah.
01:12:53
So after the bodies are discovered, a 16 year old eyewitness comes forward and he says that the night of the murders, he and his girlfriend were making out on the train tracks overlooking the burger chef.
01:13:04
And they see two suspicious men in a 1973 or 75 green van with bubble windows outside the burger chef just before closing.
01:13:12
It's the only eyewitness. He describes the men as shabbily dressed white men, both estimated to be in their 30s.
01:13:19
One man has a beard who becomes the bearded man. OK. And the other is clean shaven with light hair.
01:13:25
And he's acting suspicious. He keeps looking down while trying to conceal his face with a bandana.
01:13:30
Oh, it sounds like them. Like the people who did it. Yeah. Right. The teen said the men approach them and tells them to leave because there's been reports of vandalism in the area.
01:13:40
So the teens take off. it's almost like they the perpetrators knew that there was someone nearby and they were like get
01:13:47
the fuck out of here they cased it maybe they cased it they see these kids they're waiting for
01:13:51
the kids to leave they're not leaving they know they have to get in there before the trash is
01:13:56
taken out or whatever they make them leave yeah yeah right yeah that makes sense so the police
01:14:02
make a make composite sorry it also just a theory it also maybe points to they only they could have
01:14:10
been totally on drugs. They only wanted to rob it. And then something went wrong. Right. They
01:14:14
weren't looking to kill anyone. Yeah. They just want they wanted no witnesses. They wanted their
01:14:18
money and they wanted to get out of there, which is usually how those things, I think, go. But then
01:14:24
robbers and burglars aren't necessarily murderers. No. Or don't want to be at least one would think
01:14:30
because that's the whole idea. You want to get away and spend your money and just steal money.
01:14:35
right it's a different thing than cold-bloodedly terribly viciously murdering teenagers exactly
01:14:43
also they warning two teenagers to get out of here right they would have just killed those kids if
01:14:46
that was the case exactly if they were but here's the other thing that bothers me these two guys
01:14:51
might have nothing to do with it they're just two weirdo randoms that like yeah it could be a red
01:14:56
herring that's the problem and it's those these two so um the police make composite sketches based
01:15:01
on the eyewitness description of the suspects. Those look incredible and so fucking realistic and creepy.
01:15:07
And so that is the clue because everything else was fucking destroyed. They make 3D clay models when the leads don't come up with the drawings.
01:15:18
They don't look anything. They're the creepiest nightmares I've ever seen. Oh, no.
01:15:22
I know. Bless their hearts. They need to get the artist that did the John List 3D clay model.
01:15:26
Yes, very much so. That genius. I think it was a woman. There's fucking so many theories to get into.
01:15:31
listen to the 3C podcast, they get into them. Okay. Pretty much every investigator, whether they've been assigned to the case or not, has a different
01:15:38
suspect they're convinced as the perp. They're all mad at each other and they all think this is the perp or that's the perp
01:15:44
and no one can, you know, prove it. Okay. Each theorist claims to have inside information regarding their suspect.
01:15:50
It includes ties to biker gangs, armed robbery crews, organized crime, a police officer's
01:15:55
nephew, and connection to the I-65 murders. There's just so many theories going on.
01:16:00
Just can I come in as an armchair quarterback? Yes, that's what we're here for. And say it's not the mob.
01:16:06
No, it's not the mob. You take that off the list. Yeah. Because even though it's stupid, that's not how they do it.
01:16:13
And you know that's not how they do it. The drug smuggling aspect, I kind of believe there's even a theory that like maybe they were using the drug smugglers.
01:16:21
And there were a lot in that area at the time. We're using the bathrooms at the burger shop to like put their drugs in.
01:16:26
And then the person would come pick them up in a hiding place. And maybe one of the Burger Chef employees found it.
01:16:32
And those people lost their shit and also knew that they could turn them in for those drugs.
01:16:36
So they had to kill them all. Yes. Yeah. Like they became witnesses to the to the bigger crime that was going on.
01:16:43
And then they had to be gotten rid of. Exactly. Yeah. OK. OK. Wow. So this is big.
01:16:50
I know. One through line is the bearded man. This guy comes up in like a bunch of different iterations.
01:16:57
Investigators Ken York and Stoney Van from the Indiana State Police are certain that a robbery gang was operating in the Indianapolis area.
01:17:05
They think they're the culprits. Okay. This gang had already hit several other burger chefs and fast food restaurants.
01:17:12
They were like fast food bandits. Okay. Including burger chefs. and in fact after getting a hot tip about one of these dudes dubbed the shotgun man they were
01:17:21
serving a warrant to this guy and his their neck his next door neighbor is mowing his lawn and
01:17:27
they're like holy fucking shit that's the that's the bearded man like apparently looked exactly like
01:17:32
him really yeah and the shotgun man is the fair-haired guy there's other people involved
01:17:37
oh as a result they had the man this bearded man whose name we don't have because he was never
01:17:43
indicted. Okay. He is brought in for questioning and for a lineup. When he shows up the next day, he'd shaved his beard that he had had for the past five
01:17:53
years. Sure he did Of course he did Sure he did Years later when the bearded man dies his son comes forward and says his father had given him a deathbed confession that he had done it But there no there nothing
01:18:06
Okay. There's nothing. Can't prove it. To tie it together. Okay. And there's some of those people who are part of that gang that are still alive that there's nothing to tie them together.
01:18:14
And these investigators are like, the case is solved. We know who did it. We just can't prove it.
01:18:19
Wow. What about those cigarette butts? I don't think they might have just belonged to Jane.
01:18:26
Oh, right. And the Burger Chef wrappers, she worked there. And it might have just been hers.
01:18:30
It's so frustrating. I know. So Marion County Sheriff's Department, a different department, investigators Mel Wilsey and Gary Maxey, they're certain it's a man named Donald Wayne Forrester.
01:18:43
He's a popular suspect among followers of this case. At 34 years old, Donald Wayne Forrester.
01:18:48
This guy's a fucking piece of shit. He had just been convicted of raping a woman in Hamilton County and had like priors for like he was a fucking pedophile burglar piece of shit.
01:18:57
OK. He and an 18 year old accomplice had abducted a woman as she left a nightclub and driven her out of town and raped her.
01:19:05
And she had only escaped by jumping from the moving car. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Hell yes, girl.
01:19:09
Guess how long he got for this conviction. No, no, no. This is a good one. Oh. 95 years in prison.
01:19:15
Really? Can you fucking believe in the 70s? Fuck. Yeah. That's what we're talking about.
01:19:20
That's one female judge in Indianapolis. Jesus Christ. That's incredible. Isn't it great?
01:19:26
Yeah. And he was about to be transferred as a sex offender in the general population of the...
01:19:34
AKA killed. You're going to get killed at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, which what everyone's
01:19:40
saying is this, you'll get killed even if you're not a fucking pedophile. Oh, okay.
01:19:43
If you are, you're fucking dead. Now you're truly dead. Which makes which makes me not believe it's him because he's trying to get out of this.
01:19:51
So he's like, I know about the Burger Chef murders. Oh, got it. You know what I mean?
01:19:56
Yes. It's the jailhouse confession. Exactly. And he never has anything totally concrete.
01:20:03
He is an attention whore, too, which is why many people think that he they write off his subsequent information on the case.
01:20:10
And he eventually confessed on tape that he had shot David. He was the one who shot Davis and Shelton.
01:20:15
And according to him, what had happened was that Jane Freight's brother, James. So Jane is the assistant manager closing that night that her brother owed money from a drug deal.
01:20:28
And in fact, that made sense with James Freight's criminal record. But that's what he's been cleared.
01:20:35
So they say that the brother owed money. He and his associates came to threaten Jane and to threaten her brother.
01:20:42
Okay. And then Flemons, who was one of the kids, stepped in to protect her and he's killed.
01:20:48
So then they have to kill everyone. But wasn't he killed 30 miles away in the forest?
01:20:52
They said like he hit his head and they had to take them all away all of a sudden.
01:20:56
But it's like no blood was found, but also no blood was looked for. So who the fuck knows?
01:21:00
Okay. Okay. So that's just one of the theories. Yeah. Okay. The most compelling fact is that Forrester's ex-wife told authorities in 1979 that her husband,
01:21:09
this guy forester had brought home some shell casings and had flushed them down their toilet
01:21:14
from the area right the investigators years later dig up the septic tank of the house yes and find shell casings fuck yeah which they say match the bullets used in
01:21:28
the burger chef murders but for they must not completely that must not be enough evidence
01:21:33
there must just not be enough it's probably not the it can't be conclusive for exactly which i
01:21:39
think now they're saying that's not conclusive evidence anymore like hair and fiber shit how
01:21:44
they're like blood's batter yeah all these things i mean ballistics though ballistics but they've
01:21:48
been in a septic tank for fucking like a decade yeah metal metal is affected by your acidy urine
01:21:54
that's right by your brand muffins and stuff you're blaming me for the acidy urine i'm so
01:22:01
sick of the way your acid urine ruins. Sorry. No, I love it. So, these detectives spent 18
01:22:11
months pursuing Forrester full time. They just like zero in on him and I think they maybe get blinders
01:22:17
on it and don't. And in my mind, it's like... It makes sense. Yeah, they drive him out and they're like, he picked out where
01:22:23
it was, but now that we know all these like confession tapes on Netflix talking about how easy it is to feed...
01:22:30
To lead someone to a spot. Exactly. Like, it's just hard to believe. He failed two polygraph tests and later recanted his confession, died of cancer in 2006.
01:22:39
So, but they still think it's him. Okay. Roundabout. Remember the bombings? You sure do.
01:22:46
Okay, we're going back to that. Okay. On September 20th, 1978, federal agents arrested a 27-year-old man named Brett Kimberlin for
01:22:54
attempting to illegally obtain United States government credentials. Here's this guy.
01:22:59
He's a fucking odd bird. He's a known drug trafficker in Speedway and around the surrounding areas.
01:23:05
But he also put his money in legit cover businesses like retail health food store, a vegetarian restaurant, an earth shoe franchise.
01:23:12
Earth shoes. Did you know them? Yeah, they went uphill. The front of the shoe was higher than the back of the shoe.
01:23:19
And so I think they tried to sell them like ergonomics or something where it was like you were always walking uphill and it was supposed to be good for you.
01:23:25
Oh, my God. Well, he had a franchise. He had an earth shoe. that's that'd be like if he was like i'm i'm gonna take my drug money and invest it in a
01:23:34
bunch of dr shoals yeah it's basically in health food stores back in the 70s like nobody's that
01:23:38
guy's a genius because no one suspects hippies exactly okay so they obtained a search warrant
01:23:43
after this after they arrest him for his home and vehicle investigators found wiring similar
01:23:49
to those used on the explosive devices of this guy yeah and the subsequent surge of his home
01:23:55
reveals more than 1 pounds of marijuana That too much marijuana That not a problem Oh you right That way too much marijuana But back then It like an elephant
01:24:05
Like one pound of marijuana is equal to like one hit of marijuana. Is it? Today, yeah.
01:24:11
You had to smoke all of that and knock it as high as you could off like a fake pen today.
01:24:16
Off of one gummy that you accidentally eat at the concert that your friend's like,
01:24:19
come on, split it with me. And then you're just like crying in the corner and you can't actually sip your drink.
01:24:25
because the liquid won't go in. Did you see me? Yes. I've been watching. Oh, shit.
01:24:30
Okay. So there's no motive established at the bombing trial, but prosecutors and police believe Kimberlin went on the bombing spree
01:24:39
to deflect attention away from another ongoing investigation that was focusing on him.
01:24:45
What's that other ongoing investigation that he used a bomb to distract from? The murder of Julia?
01:24:50
Yep. Are you fucking kidding? Here's what fucking happened. And while authorities were looking into the murder of 65 year old Julia Cyphers, they discovered that Julia, quote, violently disapproves of her daughter, her daughter's relationship with Kimberlyn.
01:25:04
So her daughter is like in her 20s is friends with this guy, Brett Kimberlyn. And he's and she's Julia is especially concerned about the strange affection Kimberlyn is paying to the her to Julia's granddaughter.
01:25:17
Yeah, who's fucking 10 years old. And he's like 20 something. Yeah. And he's fucking clearly grooming her.
01:25:24
Yes. And Julia's like, no, thank you. No, this isn't happening. No way. Her daughter is kind of letting it happen.
01:25:31
Or blind to it. Yeah, exactly. Julia learned that her granddaughter had gone with Kimberlyn on several solo out of state trips.
01:25:40
No. Nope. And proclaimed that he wanted to marry her when she grew up. No, no, no, no, no.
01:25:45
No. No. So Julia's like, hell no, and was in the process of arranging for her daughter and granddaughter to come move in with her because she wanted to get them away from Kimberlin.
01:25:54
Yes. And it was possible. So she was going to report him for drug smuggling and pedophilia because she knew that her daughter was beginning to help smuggle drugs for Kimberlin.
01:26:06
Shit. So she basically tried to break in on this super, super pervy, disgusting criminal and the bullshit he was pulling on her family.
01:26:15
And before she could do it, she was shot in the head in her garage. So the husband didn't know.
01:26:20
Julia's husband didn't know what the boyfriend looked like. Well, here's the thing.
01:26:23
Oh. He briefly saw the shooter. It wasn't Kimberlin. He knew Kimberlin. Okay. But it was identified as a close associate of Kimberlin's named William Bowman.
01:26:35
And he's the one who shot his wife, he said. Holy. So you were fucking right in the beginning of the hit.
01:26:39
Holy shit. It goes all the way. To the fucking bowels of hell. That's right. In June 1981, Kimberlin's convicted of the bombing and drug charges.
01:26:48
He receives a sentence of 50 years in federal prison. After his conviction, prosecutors released yellow legal pads that they had confiscated from him, which said had detailed plans to kill key eyewitnesses and prosecutors on the case, as well as stage another series of bombings to provide him an alibi.
01:27:06
Dude, the bombing thing doesn't work. So the day of the first bombing was the same day that Kimberlin was supposed to come into the police office to talk to detectives about Julia's claims.
01:27:18
So that's he used a bomb to distract them and make them busy. He couldn't come in and talk to them.
01:27:22
Oh, so the bombing part being a distraction to the investigation is an important clue here, because you see Kimberlin had begun to include Julia's daughter in his drug smuggling business.
01:27:35
And the night before she was going to be called in to talk to authorities, the Burger Chef murders occurred.
01:27:42
So this is fucking conspiracy theory. And there's no fucking proof at all. I'm just getting the feeling of the cop that starts linking these things together and the feeling they must have gotten as they're like, wait, ding, ding.
01:27:57
These random, crazy, awful, violent things are not random. And it's a stretch to go from killing this specific target and setting off bombs.
01:28:08
It seems like he didn't actually plan to hurt anyone. And as soon as he did, the bombing stopped.
01:28:13
Right. But he did counter, Melinda told us, he did counter sue her family when they tried to sue him to get money for her grandparents' injuries.
01:28:22
Are you serious? Yeah. Investigators continue to follow leads relating to possible suspects.
01:28:28
They go to Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago. They go everywhere trying to fucking track down leads, but they've been unable to come up with anything promising.
01:28:35
They can't locate any of the evidence they thought would have been useful, like a gun, any of the murder weapons.
01:28:41
Despite thousands of hours of police investigation, the attackers were never prosecuted, and the case remains officially unsolved 40 years later.
01:28:49
It'll be 41 a couple days after this comes out. Oh, my God. That's right. Retired state police investigator Brock Appleby said, quote,
01:28:57
That investigation could be used as an example of what not to do. During the summer of 2018, the community of Speedway raised money to plant four red oak trees in honor of the Burger Chef victims.
01:29:10
Each tree is a plaque with a short description of each of the victims. Ruth Shelton says creative, honest and kind with a love for music.
01:29:20
Jane Freit says a leader with a sense of humor and a heart of gold. Mark Fleming says friendly and selfless with a sense of style.
01:29:28
And Daniel Roy Davis says talented photographer who made love one smile. And that is the Burger Chef murders.
01:29:35
Holy shit. Yeah, that is un-fucking-believable. How crazy is that fucking story?
01:29:43
It's so weird. And you know, what's funny is that I really did. I've heard the name of the Burger Chef murders.
01:29:48
Yeah. And I assume I put them in. Totally. Put it in with basically every other case you just mentioned.
01:29:54
Browns, chicken murder. There so many Where you just go okay this is a story of human greed where somebody who it the 70s People are all on fucking terrible crank Oh my God
01:30:05
Really bad white drugs. Shit that like no one should have put into their body. They've gone totally insane.
01:30:11
And now they're just shooting other human beings for forty dollars. And like for thrill, like thrill kills.
01:30:17
Yes. And weird bullshit of like, we'll just do this until the cops kill us. Yeah.
01:30:21
Essentially. I mean, that's a common story. so a lot of those ones and we have different interests when we look in these things i'm more
01:30:29
in the serial killer realm of what is this intense psychopathy but stories like that
01:30:35
especially when they're unsolved i find very frustrating and upsetting so i just put this
01:30:41
in the file of all the other fast food murderers basically i didn't know any of that shit i did too
01:30:46
and then i started reading uh the book about it and it's just there's like crimes that like i could
01:30:51
have gone into the i-65 murders i could have gone into like other local there were other local fast
01:30:56
food chain murders that had happened around that time unbelievable there's so many stories about
01:31:00
them and then these four fucking people who you think about what they went through the last couple
01:31:05
hours of their lives being taken away and knowing this was like not going to end well maybe knowing
01:31:11
their killers right personally it's just it's horrific it's horrific oh my god amazing job thank
01:31:18
you yeah oh there was there was something as you told me that i was watching my own reactions to it
01:31:26
and i couldn't stop wanting to say jokes because it was starting to freak me out no no but i mean
01:31:33
when people ask us about the the weird connection or isn't it inappropriate or blah blah blah
01:31:38
it really is the way i deal with stress and being upset and being extremely unhappy for other people is I need to comment on it in a way that we break the tension
01:31:54
you're breaking that because I am filled with tension right now because that's incredibly
01:32:00
terrible yeah yeah sorry no I mean but also it's the kind of tension where you go yes let's all
01:32:06
let's all talk about these stories as long as we have to so that you do have current day police
01:32:12
People saying, you do not do it this way. We no longer do it this way. We have learned the lessons from these terrible cold cases where people are murdered and nobody pays for it.
01:32:23
Well, it's the same thing, too, of why I love hometown stories and why I've always been fascinated by people's hometown murders.
01:32:32
Speedway, Indiana, is this place where everyone was traumatized in the late 70s.
01:32:37
Everyone's parents have this story about it. You know, everyone's parents worked at this fast food place and had the night off and all these.
01:32:44
And everyone was scared of the bombings. And it kind of like you have this little town where this little thing happens that's not national news that traumatizes the town and makes everyone make decisions differently.
01:32:56
Yes. And everyone has those stories. And if it wasn't for the very bizarre coincidence of Jonestown happening, breaking on the same news day, it would have been a national story.
01:33:07
It would have stayed a national story. But instead it just got obliterated Yet it was still there
01:33:14
And for that town It's never not been there I mean unbelievable Yeah wow Should we do
01:33:22
Fucking hooray It feels inappropriate Honestly to do fucking hooray Well that's the whole idea of fucking hooray
01:33:30
It's the record scratch moment Okay we're not there anymore And it's cleansing A little gratitude that it's no longer
01:33:39
1978. Oh, thank God. It wasn't a nice time. I was there. Yeah. I was there riding backwards on station
01:33:45
wagons with 17 other kids in one car. No seatbelts. No seatbelts. Smoking with the windows rolled.
01:33:51
Adele smoking. Children smoking. We were forced to smoke in carpool. That's right, Ann Benedetti. I'm confronting
01:33:57
you. Just kidding. She was the best. Shittiest weed, too. And pounds, thousands of pounds
01:34:03
of weed would still not get you high. It was all sconched. Just give you a headache.
01:34:07
okay speaking of that do you want to go first sure i just my fucking hooray and i guess
01:34:13
no no sometimes you get that tone of voice so you're like i just have to say one more thing
01:34:20
which i love it's not far away okay it is a love okay uh i got to see my brand new baby nephew over
01:34:27
the weekend so yeah you fucking saw the look in my face yeah it's your love voice i recognize it
01:34:32
He's just, he's brand new. How big? Like a month old, barely opening his eyes. Is it like this?
01:34:39
Like not funny yet. Like watermelon size? Not even. Not even. Smaller than? Like teeny tiny.
01:34:46
Cantaloupe? Little oblong? Yes, exactly. And he just smells so good. And he's got these little hands.
01:34:55
And he's just like so precious and sweet and cute. And I love holding him. I'm just staring at him.
01:35:01
But this is my other nephew's baby brother. The 101 to the 405 to the 110. Yes. Just quick reminder, if you don't know, George is of the other nephew who is four.
01:35:14
Four, yeah. Just repeats what he hears his parents say, which is what all children do.
01:35:18
But when you live in Los Angeles, you often say things like the 101 to the 405 to the 10 to the 110.
01:35:25
Well, you know what else he says now? And I feel like he's such a hard start and I love it.
01:35:30
When someone asks him to do something he doesn't want to do, he goes, I'm tired.
01:35:35
Which hardstarks are like champion nappers. And I'm just like, yes, I'm tired. I'm tired.
01:35:42
So he has this little baby brother now. That's the best. So sweet. That's nice. That's a good one.
01:35:48
Yeah. What's yours? Mine's very similar. It's about my fan weekend. No, we didn't because we posted a live show last week.
01:36:00
really got to like I was saying this before we started recording I was saying this to you and
01:36:04
Steven we never really got to like do a full-on yeah um talk down about how that weekend was for
01:36:11
us um so I just want to say now it was bewilderingly wonderful and we were or at least I'll
01:36:21
speak for myself no I can speak for you yes you can we were so fucking worried it wasn't gonna go
01:36:26
Well, we were so worried. There were like so many variables that could have gone wrong.
01:36:31
Yeah. And we were thinking about all of them. And we were worried. We were very stringent about the way we were doing it and how much we were asking of people.
01:36:40
And we were very uncomfortable. And the whole thing was very worrisome. Yeah. In our way of we want people to feel good and be happy that they're participating.
01:36:52
And so I didn't understand how much of that stress I was holding. Until the night one when we walked out to give the welcome speech.
01:37:00
And all of these listeners were standing there. And they also put it in this the most echoey kind of spot that they could have.
01:37:09
But the like the cheering and the clapping that we got in that moment was so exciting and beautiful.
01:37:15
And kind of like another one of those moments where we stand there and go like, oh, they're with us.
01:37:21
Yeah. Like we don't have to worry that all of a sudden all these people are going to be like cross their arms and be like, my thing didn't come on time.
01:37:28
I don't like you anymore. That's not how our people do it. No. And that kicked off the most fun weekend.
01:37:35
We got to have great conversations and talk to people and see people. There are people that have come to so many shows of ours.
01:37:43
There's Laura who came, who, I mean, there's all these people. And there was people that we just kept meeting who kept saying, like, I just met these friends.
01:37:53
I came alone. Yes. I got tagged in so many group photos of we didn't know each other.
01:37:59
And now we're all best friends. And we all came together because we met through my favorite murder.
01:38:03
And it was so heartwarming. It was incredible. Well, then the Murderino makers who came to sell their stuff at the weekend all told us they had the best sales weekends of their lives.
01:38:14
And everyone was so friendly and cool and excited. And the products were amazing.
01:38:19
And it just all felt it was just like it was such a satisfying And then then of course all of our friends got to be there You know we had Perkast Murder Squad I Till It Right DJ Dante Fontana and DJ Fifi LaRue our close friends
01:38:34
Amazing. And then just all the people that came and like threw down and participated.
01:38:38
And the very last night, I will say this, just to wrap it up. This is a big thank you, but it's also like, this is a, it's such a weird experience.
01:38:47
The weirdest. And it just keeps getting fucking weirder. I know. It's like it's hard to anticipate anything.
01:38:53
I felt the same way when we came out that first night. It was like, you're with us.
01:38:57
You're so with us. Like it was 25 times louder than what I thought it was going to be, because I thought it would be like people sipping their wine and being like, oh, yeah, we finally landed.
01:39:05
And the energy and the enthusiasm and the love was so amazing. So lucky. And with great conversations.
01:39:12
But then at the very, very end, the last night, we went back to our hotel and there were two sets of people that were in the hotel in this hotel bar that was completely empty.
01:39:21
Yeah. Except for I want to say one woman's name was Joyce. I bet you're right. And I think the other one's name is Kathy.
01:39:28
But anyway, one was there with it was it was her and her husband's anniversary weekend that he got the package for her.
01:39:34
and he was saying he had a shirt that said keep your eyes on the what was it he had a shirt about
01:39:44
how his wife might kill him right that was so funny never turn never never like sleep with one
01:39:51
eye open when you were married to a murderino yes that's she had made him a shirt that said that
01:39:55
she when we walked into this empty bar basically stood up gave us a standing ovation i walked
01:40:02
straight over because she looked like a familiar person. And then she gave me a speech about how proud she is of us that was so goddamn touching
01:40:09
and so momish and beautiful. And then the other woman's name, and I want to say Kathy, but that's kind of...
01:40:15
She was on her honeymoon. She was on... It was her birthday weekend. That's right.
01:40:19
And her husband got her the package for the birthday, for her birthday as a gift.
01:40:23
They were so sweet. It was just like everywhere we turned, there was a person going, hey, hooray.
01:40:28
And it was cool, too, because like our agents were there who we love. joe and oran yeah steven was there with his amazing girlfriend jay was there with his amazing
01:40:37
girlfriend danielle was there adrian and oran were there it was just like it was a really fun
01:40:42
vince of course and vince of course was running the show but it was like it was really also it was like a shit it was um live show experience for us but we weren alone yeah because we been going out and traveling all around and having those experiences by ourselves
01:40:57
and then coming back and being like bye see you later yeah like it's very weird we hug in the
01:41:01
elevator and like good job and good job like 6 a.m tomorrow please be downstairs at 6 a.m um
01:41:07
yeah so it's it was kind of like pulling everybody in to go can you please come and watch this
01:41:12
experience that we've been having and understand it with us because it's not so long story short
01:41:19
thank you yeah and hopefully we'll do more weekends and in different places yeah we have to do it we
01:41:24
have to do it more because we really we and thank you for cid which the company that arranged the
01:41:29
entire thing every single person said that the people they worked with all the people that helped
01:41:35
them were great everything went on time everything was beautifully done and the arlington theater in
01:41:40
Santa Barbara was so generous and gorgeous, gorgeous. And it was like our home base anyway, just like, oh, my God.
01:41:46
And thank you. And the usual. And if you didn't get to go, almost everybody from Exactly Right Network has posted their live shows from that weekend.
01:41:54
So there's a live per cast. There's a live murder squad. There's us. And there's the Minnesota as well.
01:41:59
Yeah. And there will be more to come. But don't feel left out. We will do it again.
01:42:05
And, you know, for all the people that were there. thank you for making it such a really
01:42:10
special experience I've had so much coffee that I could actually keep on talking
01:42:14
about that experience for 10 more minutes because now I want to talk about the fancy hotel
01:42:18
we stayed at now I want to talk about it's really sweet because there's so much going on with us in our lives
01:42:23
it's only been almost 4 years that's it these live shows are so they've become this thing that we just do
01:42:31
and we go on stage and they're great and we have so much fun and it just happens
01:42:35
and we record in this office and it just happens But then there's these little moments like when you meet a special fan or you go to these incredible weekends or like someone, you know, sends you a lovely letter that just like hits you how fucking big this is.
01:42:51
Yeah. And how life changing this has been for us. It has. This is this is not how I expected my life to be at all.
01:43:00
And it's the most shockingly wonderful thing that's ever I could have ever imagined.
01:43:06
Yeah. Yeah, I might have to go under the table and have a quick cry. I be down there with you but I be making fun of you the whole time That okay Because I can cry It just from the inside of this people tell us from the outside all the time like we proud of you or this is exciting or it been so cool to watch this
01:43:23
Yeah. From the inside, it's been so fucking weird. We can't even explain it. We might as well have been abducted by aliens.
01:43:30
Yes. But thank you for still being there with us because it continues. Apparently, we'll do it as long as you feel like doing it.
01:43:38
Totally. Like, let's fucking just do it. And we appreciate you guys listening. yes thank you so much
01:43:43
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