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00:02:04
Goodbye. What's up, San Francisco? Yay. My God. Yes. What is this, some sort of festival or something?
00:02:44
Are you guys clustering and festivaling? Me too. I thought you were going to say clustering and fucking.
00:02:52
because that's, I'm sorry, but it's a play on words. It is. I mean, you can really see the bar menu from here.
00:03:01
Can you? Yeah. Let's see if I can read it. Can I hit four Budweiser Tallboys, please?
00:03:06
And a time machine to 1996. I got some work to do. Do it. Oh, my God. And my request for the fan and the smoke machine came through.
00:03:17
This is amazing. We wanted a psychedelic rug. we're both on LSD my rug tell them about the dress fiasco
00:03:27
oh guys it's um look listen because don't cheer for mottos it makes us look bad at the comedy festival
00:03:42
be cool be cool I put on my dress because I was excited because a murderino made me this dress.
00:03:55
And you want to know how she did it? She ran up at a meet and greet when we were in Toronto.
00:04:01
She ran in and went, is it okay if I fit you for a dress? And then went like this.
00:04:06
Measure the shit. Really fast and ran away. We didn't even have time to say no, but please don't measure me.
00:04:12
It's like, do not put that measuring tape around my waist. And it was too late and she did it.
00:04:17
Sarah Duke is her name. CIRDU.org.gov. And then I got it, and then I was surprised because she did an amazing job, and I love it.
00:04:28
So I put it on too early, brushed my teeth, and dripped as many drips of toothpaste down the front of this dress as I possibly could have,
00:04:37
to the point where it was as if I'd never used toothpaste or toothbrush before. It's so relatable.
00:04:43
We've all been there. You know when the first time you brush your teeth, but you're 50?
00:04:48
So, also, backstage, I tried getting rid of it by using white paper towels. Guys, she made it so much worse.
00:04:59
So much worse. And just kept putting shit on it. It was epic. Next was, I tried some mascara just to cover it up.
00:05:08
And I was cheering her on the whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, try mascara. Try this.
00:05:11
Have you tried that? I grabbed some ice. Look, they have cranberry juice. any stainable thing. I was like, this coffee is amazing. Let's throw it up here.
00:05:19
She really was about to put coffee on it. I was. And then someone came in with a Tide
00:05:24
Tide stain stick, ladies and gentlemen. Promo code murder. It's our newest sellout, the Tide stain stick. We refuse. You can't handle basic shit.
00:05:37
Oh, do you have pockets? I do. I didn't even know! Sarah Duke! Sorry. Sarah really flexed on you right there. I didn't mean to do that.
00:05:52
What if I just ripped pockets into my dress Yeah I actually could have done that I had to sew myself into my dress because it vintage So that means it old By the way this is the podcast My Favorite Murderer if you don know
00:06:10
Thank you. This is Karen Kilgara. This is Georgia Hardstark. We're honored. We're honored to be here at Clusterfest this year.
00:06:20
It's very, very exciting. We have a dressing room. It got whisked into a dressing room.
00:06:25
It was very exciting. And just looked away from everybody, yelled no eye contact and slammed the door.
00:06:31
This is the day I've been dreaming about for years and years. It's finally happened.
00:06:35
I'm happy for you. Here in my hometown. Thank you. That's right. Thank you so much.
00:06:42
Well, Petaluma is my hometown, but I have to count it. I have to. No one knows what that means.
00:06:48
They all came out for you. The whole town did. They came out. Who's watching the chickens, y'all?
00:06:55
Okay, should we sit down? Let's sit down. Yeah. Sit down. You're going to sit that way?
00:07:03
Really set yourself because you're not going to have a lot of movement once it's set.
00:07:09
You've got to just give it a, no. Of course, cheat out a little bit. Don't let them look at your, okay.
00:07:14
The only reason I sewed my dress is because I knew that this side faced the audience and I didn't want everyone to be like,
00:07:19
I can see her Spanx the whole time. You're of the theater. Oh, I flashed my Spanx.
00:07:25
Did you? Yeah. But it just looked like my leg because it's tan. Like it's leg color.
00:07:29
You're Spank colored? I'm Spank colored. Lucky, lucky. I flash mine. They're like weirdly blue with veins.
00:07:40
Spider veins and blue. What? Whose grandma's leg is that? I think there's some people who have been sitting here all day waiting for Patton to go on.
00:07:51
Hey. So we should tell you guys what this podcast is. Yeah, we'll call you the all-day eventers.
00:07:59
Hey, how does it feel to be rich? Congratulations. This is a true crime comedy podcast.
00:08:07
Sometimes when people don't know about it, have never heard it, they hear that, and then they say that's wrong and that's bad
00:08:13
because those two things, it should never be combined. Comedy and then the worst person that could happen.
00:08:18
I mean, the worst thing that could happen to a person. Stay with me, everybody. The Tide Stain Stick is getting me high as a kite right now.
00:08:29
So anyhow, we take this time in all of our live shows to explain to people in the audience who might not know that that we are not laughing at the fact that people get murdered in this life.
00:08:42
It's horrible and we don't like it. But we've been obsessed, both of us, with true crime since we were like 12 years old.
00:08:49
and simultaneously we deal with all the shitty aspects of life through humor. And so although those things run parallel in our conversations,
00:08:58
they don't necessarily intertwine. And essentially what we're saying is if you don't like it, get the fuck out right now.
00:09:08
Put your jacket on your seat. You can come back, go to the bar, the menu, the corn dogs.
00:09:15
There's a really good subway around the corner from here. It smells so much like a garbage can inside.
00:09:21
You will love it. You're first, right? I am. Okay. Karen's first. I'm trying so hard not to look at your paper and know what your story is.
00:09:34
Just keep your eyes off the paper. I'm going to. It's simple. Okay. I like surprises.
00:09:39
It's not like I can put the paper anywhere else. I like clip it to a thing off my head.
00:09:44
That's from the kids in the hall. I'm going to do the Mitchell brothers murder. Yeah.
00:09:54
I've been waiting to do this for quite some time. All right. So I got a lot of this information from a 1991 article called The Naked and the Dead,
00:10:02
a porn killing for the Washington Post by a writer named Michael Ibera. And also from some articles from the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Dark Horse IMDb.
00:10:14
Oh, that's weird. someone got up onto IMDB with their, what do you call that, when you get this specialty,
00:10:22
when you pay extra for belonging to IMDB so you can go on there and just kind of
00:10:27
write your shit out. And someone did like a four-page report on the Mitchell brothers.
00:10:32
Thank you, random weirdo who is clearly Christian because there's very judgmental writing in this.
00:10:40
A lot of judgment. So let's just start. If you don't know, these are the Mitchell brothers.
00:10:46
Jim and Artie Mitchell. I don't know this story. You don't? No. Not yet. You lived in San Francisco, though, right?
00:10:53
And did you ever go to the O'Farrell Theater down on O'Farrell? Oh, yeah. You loved it there.
00:10:59
I love it there. It's my favorite. After work, I'd go and hang out. Just hang out.
00:11:05
Lay down. Stare into some crevasses. Okay. Okay. So this is Jim and Artie Mitchell.
00:11:13
Jim, the older brother, James Lloyd Mitchell, is born November 30th, 1943. And his younger brother, Artie J. Mitchell, was born just about two years later on December 17th, 1945.
00:11:27
Their parents, J.R. and Georgia May, settled the family in Antioch, California. Let's hear it.
00:11:35
Really? What was that, 707, Erica? No way. No way. I don't know the story, so am I allowed to think they're... Can I say they're hot?
00:11:46
Yes. Or are they bad? Okay, great. I wish you would. Okay, good. Because you know you're like... You don't know... Okay, great. You guys know.
00:11:52
I mean, look. Look, listen to the podcast. They have great features They seem very modern with those beards and with their kicky hats Yeah There are men who say we can wear a hat
00:12:07
I don't care what your weird standards of my head are. What? What are you talking about?
00:12:13
We don't have time for this. Tide stick. You're not supposed to sniff it. Can we turn the fan down from Beyonce right down to Solange?
00:12:21
Because my thing blew away. Karen. If someone could. Karen with the words. Okay, so
00:12:29
their dad, JR, was a professional gambler, and this isn't a tragic story. He did it so well,
00:12:36
he kept the family in their beautiful home in Antioch, and everyone did fine. Everyone was happy and well-adjusted.
00:12:43
It's the rare, rare story of a professional gambler that doesn't devastate his entire family.
00:12:49
So, if you want to find a glimmer of hope and a sliver of inspiration. There it is.
00:12:56
And Jim and Artie growing up are inseparable. They're very popular with other kids.
00:13:02
They remain lifelong friends with all of their childhood friends, which is always a very good sign.
00:13:08
Okay. I'm not friends with any of my childhood friends. They were dicks. No, I'm kidding.
00:13:15
A whole room full of kids is like, hmm. Okay. So in the mid-60s, Jim Mitchell, I think it's, I think Jim is there on the left.
00:13:29
He looks like a Jim. Almost positive. So he goes to San Francisco State University.
00:13:36
The fighting. No, the fighting, Coit Towers. Yes. Can you imagine if your team went out and there was just a bunch of Coit Towers waiting there to kick their ass?
00:13:52
You would cry. They're all running around. They're so tall. It's like, this isn't fair.
00:13:57
They're hundreds of feet taller than us. Too bad. Play them. Okay. So Jim wants to be just like Francis Ford Coppola.
00:14:06
He wants to make great film. He's very interested in film. But for money, he works at a place called The Follies,
00:14:14
which is a theater that shows what they called back then, nudies. Yeah. All the good music?
00:14:23
Wait, I think I just did the Hokey Pokey. Yes. Interestingly enough, the Hokey Pokey was the soundtrack to one of the first porns.
00:14:34
Put your right foot in. Come on. No. Don't make me walk you through it. It's very obvious.
00:14:42
Okay. Nudies were short, plotless films of naked people fucking. Sounds about right.
00:14:52
So every time he would go into this theater, which was disgusting and small and dirty and cramped and smelled,
00:14:59
he saw that it was always packed with public masturbators. And when his brother Artie gets out of the army, Jim says to Artie,
00:15:09
look, if these guys will go to this disgusting theater to watch these terrible movies,
00:15:14
imagine if we opened a really nice theater and made good porn movies for them to watch.
00:15:19
But then they can't jerk off in the theater. Why? Because it's nice. Don't be crazy.
00:15:25
That's even hotter. You're like, oh, velour. Oh. Oh, yeah. The maroon velour. What?
00:15:36
Were you going to make a sconce joke? Yes. The sconces in here are beautiful. Jerk, jerk, jerk.
00:15:44
Okay. We are terrible. Well, this whole story is quite terrible. So buckle it down.
00:15:54
So on July 4th, 1969, they team up with a plan to open their own dirty movie theater.
00:16:01
They enlist the help of Artie's wife, Meredith Bradford, who was an Ivy League graduate and a business genius.
00:16:08
And they were like, get in here. We're just pervs. We need some money people. We need a bottom line person.
00:16:13
They get together. Oh, and this is, sorry, this is Meredith Bradford and Artie and their daughter, Liberty.
00:16:20
In the 70s when everyone was the best. Don't make me do it. The jingle that you hate me for getting in your head.
00:16:29
Do it. One, two, three. Liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. That's all we hear on TV on tour.
00:16:35
The past six months have been that commercial over and fucking over again. I think it's a commercial that runs during Forensic Files.
00:16:41
So at night, we'd go home from a show and we'd be in the hotel room and then we'd watch Forensic Files at the same time.
00:16:47
and then watch that fucking commercial 29 times. And then later on the next day,
00:16:52
when something would come up that would be nerve-wracking or upsetting, we'd be like, yeah, oh, we have to do that.
00:16:57
And we have to take care of it. Liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. So if you're a little bit crazy like us,
00:17:04
I highly recommend. It's now our inside joke, everyone here. Look, we're 15 minutes in and I'm still on page one.
00:17:10
Go, go, go. Let's get serious. So on July 4th, 1969, they open the O'Farrell Theater.
00:17:21
Hot. Nice. It was the old Pontiac showroom at 895 O'Farrell Street. They converted it.
00:17:29
It's a two-story building. They converted it into their beautiful dream movie theater.
00:17:33
Get those cars out and those butts in. Butts and dicks in. So, two weeks later, the Vice Squad shuts them down.
00:17:42
And thus begins the Mitchell brothers' years-long war with the San Francisco authorities.
00:17:47
Luckily, there's plenty of lawyers around, ready and willing and stoked to argue
00:17:52
First Amendment free speech That is the first one right I should have double that Over the years they fight almost 200 legal battles against obscenity charges because of the O Theater
00:18:07
and they manage to win almost every single one and keep the theater open. So, it's all about, this is basically post-sexual revolution, post-summer of love,
00:18:19
when everyone's like, yeah, let's actually do something with these ideas and get to fucking on screen.
00:18:23
I hope none of my relatives are here The theater of course is an instant success
00:18:31
With the people there are lines of public masturbators Around the corner waiting to publicly masturbate
00:18:37
They show up in droves They're like, me too, this is my dream Do you like velour?
00:18:42
Where's that trench coat from? Oh my god, it's gorgeous Is that London Fog? Burlington Coat Factory
00:18:49
More than great coats Okay, so. Go. Duped. In 1972, so basically they're watching the public masturbators' love and life in this theater,
00:19:04
finally free to be who they truly are deep down. Guys who jerk off constantly. So they're running the nudies and the loops.
00:19:13
They call them these shorter films. And then Jim is like, we need to make a full-length dirty movie that's actually good,
00:19:21
that people are going to be excited about watching. So Artie had heard this story
00:19:25
that was kind of like a well-known story in the Army, so he dreamed up the plot of what would eventually become Behind the Green Door.
00:19:36
We're going to play it in its entirety right now. Ladies and gentlemen, Behind the Green Door.
00:19:43
Okay. So is she like a hoity-toity? Okay, I don't want to guess the plot. It's interesting.
00:19:49
She's a pearl diver. And she finally finds her 500th pearl behind the green tool.
00:19:57
What if that was the plot? They make it for around 60 grand, and it will eventually make just about $30 million.
00:20:09
Holy shit. Gross. When it's shown at the Cannes Film Festival a year later, it gets a standing ovation.
00:20:16
All right. I bet. Yeah. this is very san francisco to me this part of the story where it's like
00:20:23
yes we're smut dealers but we're also artists we make con bend to our will yeah we are san francisco
00:20:32
and we hate los angeles okay i know i know we do too we know that giants rally the other night was unbefucking leaveable
00:20:42
they should have won it they should have won it okay so that's called pandering so the star of the film is uh one marilyn chambers and her performance
00:20:54
although wordless is considered groundbreaking for the time she doesn't say a word oh in the
00:21:01
whole film okay um i can picture it she while that movie came out was also the model on the
00:21:09
box of ivory snow detergent. Oh. She looks really happy about it. Yeah. Is she okay?
00:21:16
She loves all her jobs. Well, she gets to do more drugs on this job. Okay. I actually had to ask Jay.
00:21:22
He sent me this picture as one of the pictures to pick. And I said, I'd like to use the ivory snow picture, but can you crop it so her bare vag
00:21:30
isn't sitting there in front of us? Okay. Because that's the real picture. You can still, there's a little nip slip right there.
00:21:36
There's some nip. Good for her. But apparently they had Brazilians back then, which is great news.
00:21:41
So Marilyn Chambers basically broke the mold of what everyone was used to seeing in porn or dirty movies.
00:21:50
Usually it was bleach blonde women, huge boobs, the dead eyes with a bunch of black eyeliner.
00:21:58
Marilyn Chambers looked like the girl next door. It was like if Sybil Shepard was from Cupertino.
00:22:03
So everyone's like, yeah, I could get her. she'd fuck me, the public masturbator.
00:22:11
You gotta have a dream, you know? Right? But more importantly, maybe for the first time in history,
00:22:20
it was a film that portrayed a woman having sex not only on her own terms, but even more groundbreaking, enjoying it.
00:22:27
Oh my God. Don't tell God. He'll be so mad. He will be so, he hates that. Okay, so.
00:22:36
After this, obviously, it's explosion. The Mitchell brothers ride this wave of success,
00:22:41
and they take their money, and they start making more and more porn films, including such hits as...
00:22:47
Oh, my God. These are some of the posters. Well, the last... Resurrection of Eve.
00:22:53
More pearls. Sodom and Gomorrah, The Last Seven Days, which apparently they went way over budget.
00:22:59
What the fuck? That's a porn? Yeah. Yeah. It's a Bible porn. Bible porn. The fervor that was kicked up.
00:23:11
Sitting in there in the old feral theater with all your friends, jerking it to Bible porn.
00:23:18
Oh, then also, of course, because it was a trend that hit CB mamas. Yes. What's that?
00:23:26
No. Oh, I get it. Nobody's interested in. Okay. All right. 10-4 then. There was also the autobiography of a flea.
00:23:34
What the f- were they all- oh so they were on acid. They were on so much acid. Okay, and cocaine.
00:23:41
Acid, coke, booze, pot, and whatever was on the floor of the dirty, dirty movie theater that they ran.
00:23:48
There was a whole bunch of other ones. Never a Tender Moment, Beyond Desaude. They made a movie in 1985 called The Grafenberg Spot, which is about people trying to find the G-spot.
00:24:00
And which is right. Yeah, that's horrible. It's great. Hey, let's get that on the docket.
00:24:07
But I mean, all that matters is that you're looking for it. You don't have to give it a whirl at the very least.
00:24:13
Yeah. Fun fact. They said that a special, it's a special effect. They uses, they used garden hoses in that film.
00:24:21
So, so spoiler alert, they found it. Okay. So. here's jim directing oh yeah he is take off your fucking transition lenses jim you goddamn creep
00:24:37
yeah i'm trying to work i'm trying to do my process here and you're over me like every
00:24:44
serial killer mug shot i've ever seen but how would they know who the director is if he didn't
00:24:48
have those terrible shades on indoors that's true right because he refused to wear his beret okay
00:24:53
All of this work, and it is a very large body of work that they put out in a very short amount of time,
00:24:59
earned them a place in the Adult Video Industry Hall of Fame. Then, organized crime, the mafioso.
00:25:08
I just put up a picture of Tony Soprano. Sorry, we gotta go. Organized crime starts basically bootlegging the Mitchell Brothers movies and selling them.
00:25:20
and so Jim and Artie do the thing that they do best that they've been doing for years in San Francisco.
00:25:27
They take the mafia to court. Don't do that. Yeah. At first, the judge rules that materials cannot receive,
00:25:33
obscene materials cannot receive copyright status, but then when that, so they lose that case,
00:25:41
but they take it to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They win and they're granted copyright protection
00:25:46
and that legal decision is the reason why you see FBI warnings at the beginning of every video you watch on your old VHS player.
00:25:55
Oh, my God. Thank you, Jim and Artie, for making people who are afraid of authority
00:26:00
make their heart jump a little bit right before they try to watch Crossing Delancey for the 15th time.
00:26:07
That's my story. But no matter how many legal battles the Mitchell brothers face,
00:26:12
they somehow always win. Oh, that's clearly cut and pasted from a different area.
00:26:17
fame, bribes, they have a lot of money and they're white so they continue to turn a very
00:26:24
hefty profit for the O'Farrell Theatre and their success allows them to expand their business
00:26:30
and open 11 more theatres on the west coast so many public masturbators they were coming out in droves
00:26:37
and also they would carpool sometimes they'd carpool from city to city and be like, do you want to go jerk it down in Manteca
00:26:44
because they opened a new one down there And then we'll go to the water slides. Local jokes get local work.
00:26:53
Okay. So, of course, in the city of San Francisco, Artie and Jim skyrocket to local counterculture fame.
00:27:05
That's a rough one. It was hard. They make friends with every big name in the city, not just the artists and the writers, but the local politicians.
00:27:13
which may be why they were able to then, after the movies exploded, they start adding live nude dancing to their theater's lineup.
00:27:23
Eventually, Huntress Thompson would refer to the O'Farrell Theater as the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.
00:27:31
Classy. That's how you know you've made it. Practice, practice, practice, public masturbators.
00:27:37
They never claimed to have invented the lap dance, but they were the first people to bring it to San Francisco
00:27:44
because their dancers sat on customers' laps for tips as early as 1980. Oh, wow.
00:27:51
Check this shit out. Oh, my goodness. What, you can't handle it? It's natural. It's natural to be fully nude with a bunch of super weird dudes
00:28:04
slumped down in their seats jerking it at you. So that's and that's Marilyn Chambers, by the way.
00:28:11
Is it? Yeah, that's her. She's striking a pose. Yeah. Great. OK, thanks. In your face, spearmint Rhino.
00:28:23
So L.A. reference. OK, in the 80s, the Mitchell Brothers, what's happening? Tried to add live sex shows to the bill.
00:28:34
But then the city finally said, boys, you've gone too far. And they outlawed it.
00:28:40
At this time, Mayor Dianne Feinstein was in office. And she was doing everything she could to shut down the O'Farrell Theater.
00:28:48
She had that thing raided constantly. She was on their ass. And after one raid, the Mitchell brothers actually put up on the theater's marquee
00:28:56
for showtimes, call Mayor Feinstein. And then they put her home phone number on it.
00:29:01
Oh, my God. Yeah. Right? I mean, fucking respect, right? Yeah. Jesus. If you're going to come for the queen, you better come for it.
00:29:12
That's some old school trolling. And then she sat at home, ringing phone, but her hair was perfectly coiffed.
00:29:23
Diane. Okay, so the Mitchell brothers are beloved in the city as much for their legal fight for the liberation of public masturbators
00:29:33
as for their large donations towards popular causes of the time, like saving the whales and saving the rainforests.
00:29:40
And during the AIDS crisis, they gave generously to local charities, and hospitals were very active and poured a lot of money into fighting AIDS.
00:29:50
That's awesome. Yeah. They were good old hometown boys When Geraldo Rivera came to them and asked if he could film inside the O Theater for a piece he was doing on his show they said sure you can after you donate to an AIDS charity
00:30:07
So they were, again... Amazing. So San Francisco. And just really quick as a sidebar.
00:30:17
So when I lived here, the big joke we had, the O'Farrell Theater has an amateur night, or had an amateur night in the 90s.
00:30:25
So any old gal could run on down and see if she could make it as an exotic dancer at the O'Farrell Theater.
00:30:31
And it was my friend Dawn Fraser. I worked at the Gap with her, and we'd get our paycheck.
00:30:36
And then she'd look at her paycheck, and she'd go, it's time to go to the O'Farrell Theater.
00:30:43
But then my friend Abby actually went down and auditioned one night. And she was so sure she had the perfect routine.
00:30:52
and it included, and I wonder if she was doing it as a reference, she was wearing a rubber shirt, like a rubber turtleneck.
00:31:01
So it was like a shirt that was like latex, really tight, right? It's the 90s. That's what the masturbators like.
00:31:08
And then she was wearing a set of pearls. And so she's kind of doing pretty good at the beginning of her thing,
00:31:14
and then she tries to take the shirt off, but it sticks to her skin. Like she can't get it up.
00:31:20
It's taking her forever. And the music, like, she's passed all her dance cues and stuff
00:31:25
because she can't get the shirt off. She didn't rehearse with the shirt. And then she gets it up, and it gets stuck on her head.
00:31:32
Like, she cannot get it up over her face. And the pearls break, the string of pearls break in there with her.
00:31:41
And then when she finally gets the shirt off, it's like a pinata of pearls just bursts on the stage.
00:31:46
Then she gets down on her hands and knees to pick the pearls up Because she doesn't want to trip the girl that's coming out after her.
00:31:52
Because you only have like five minutes or probably two. Five, that would be an eternity.
00:31:57
Anyway. That was a great story. And that woman, which is someone famous sexually.
00:32:07
Okay. Okay. So then in 1985, they make Hunter S. Thompson's famed writer, the night manager, oops, of the O'Farrell Theater.
00:32:17
Vince Averill? What's that? You mean Vince Averill? That's true. My husband? Has he ever been here for Halloween?
00:32:23
No, he should, huh? So Hunter S. Thompson, so this description is taken from a website called Hunter S. Thompson
00:32:32
Films by someone named Wayne Ewing. He was once given a tour of the O'Farrell Theater in 1985 by Hunter S. Thompson, the
00:32:40
night manager, and he described it thusly. One of the first floors, on the first floor were three venues, New York Stage, where one
00:32:48
girl would dance while others gave lap dances to the audience, which I think is what we saw
00:32:52
there in that picture. The Copenhagen room where patrons sat around the perimeter with
00:32:56
flashlights and girls performed in the middle or on your lap. And then the ultra room, a room with private cubicles
00:33:03
from which you watched while the girls did each other in the box and you fed them tips through slots in the glass. That's complicated.
00:33:12
Right. There were just like a variety of different Madonna videos is essentially what was happening inside there. And as they were on the tour, one of the
00:33:21
dancers walked by and said, be careful not to touch the walls. Oh, I mean, that's a good lesson for,
00:33:28
I mean, rule for life, really. All the time. Never touch a wall. So Hunter S. Thompson later
00:33:37
wrote about his relationship with the Mitchell brothers in his 2003 book, Kingdom of Fear,
00:33:41
where he said, Jim and Artie Mitchell were as bizarre a pair of brothers as ever lived.
00:33:46
I loved them both, but the sex business had made them crazy. They were deep in San Francisco politics, but they were always in desperate need of sound political advice.
00:33:55
That was my job. The night manager gig was only a cover for my real responsibility,
00:33:59
which was to keep them out of jail, which was not easy. So, of course, they had this huge success.
00:34:06
Money, drugs, all the things we said came along with it. They both got divorced twice.
00:34:13
Jim had four kids with his second wife. Artie had six kids total, three with his first wife and three with his second wife.
00:34:21
But by the mid-'80s, they were both single, and they were both having flings with various O'Farrell Theater dancers and different porn stars.
00:34:28
So they did make a sequel to Behind the Green Door in 1985, but it's regarded as one of the worst porn films of all time.
00:34:37
It was the height of the AIDS crisis, So they decided to make, which was very conscientious and very San Francisco of them,
00:34:43
they decided to make the first safe sex porno. And everyone hated its guts. And also at the same time, Artie was, Artie's drinking and drugs were getting out of hand.
00:34:57
He also very much liked shooting guns and playing with guns. He accidentally put three bullets into the ceiling of their office in the upstairs office.
00:35:06
I mean, I guess I could see one, but how do you do three accidentally? Well, you're drunk and you didn't hear the first one.
00:35:12
Oh. So you're like, is this what just happened or is this? No, but do it as a drunk Karen.
00:35:19
Wait, hold on. I think I heard something. It's just this gun. It's just a gun. No, it's mine.
00:35:30
You get your own gun. Also, he starts affecting the business badly. For example, he started bouncing checks,
00:35:42
not because they didn't have enough money, but because the bank did not recognize his signature anymore.
00:35:47
That's how fucked up he was when he was signing checks. Cool. That's a bad sign.
00:35:51
Finally he went to May Oyster House on Polk Street with a gun With a gun though Oh no Boo I like the first part Yay oyster Oh He wanted to shoot open some oysters at Mays So when he had to be disarmed
00:36:11
at Mays, they said, how about you don't come into work anymore? And co-workers, family,
00:36:15
and friends were all turning to Jim, saying that he was the one that had to solve the Artie problem.
00:36:20
In fact, Artie's ex-wife Karen called her brother on February 18, 1991, after she was
00:36:28
forced to get a restraining order that only allowed Artie to see his children under court
00:36:32
supervision. Yay. So she'd had to send the kids over to his house on the weekends, and then he was so
00:36:37
fucked up that she was worried about them and they basically had to get someone to intervene.
00:36:44
And so again, she tells Jim, you have to do something about Artie. Artie didn't like being the one with the problem,
00:36:50
so he argued that everyone at the theater did drugs and drank and was fucked up and smoked pot and shotguns into the ceiling,
00:36:57
so why is he the one getting picked on? And he begins leaving taunting messages on his brother's answering machine
00:37:04
saying, I'm not the only one that needs to quit something because you smoke. I mean, smoking kills.
00:37:12
No, it's true. Not back then, though. Oh, great. Back then it was still super chill.
00:37:16
So now Artie is not only not helping with the theater, but then he's fucking with Jim and Jim has to handle everything and do it without his brother.
00:37:26
So it's February 27th, 1991. Artie is living on Mohawk Avenue in Corte Madera with his girlfriend of nine months, Julie Bejo.
00:37:35
She was a 27 year old ex O'Farrell theater dancer who had to quit because of a knee injury, which you don't think about that.
00:37:42
Yeah, that the physical toll that it takes. on the knees and joints. So Artie had always said he had an open door policy at his house,
00:37:53
which literally meant he left his front door unlocked every night because he wanted to make sure that all his party friends had a place to stay
00:38:00
if they needed somewhere to go. And steal his money if they needed to. Yes, maybe threaten him physically.
00:38:06
So that night, February 27th at 10.15, Artie and Julie are in bed and they hear the front door open
00:38:13
and then someone banging around in the living room. So it isn't totally out of the ordinary until they hear a gunshot.
00:38:21
And so Artie gets up to see who it is. He grabs an empty beer bottle for protection.
00:38:25
Julie jumps into the closet to hide. She hears Artie yell, what's going on? Who's out there?
00:38:30
As he walks into the hallway and then six more gunshots ring out. Julie reaches out from the closet, grabs the phone and calls the police.
00:38:38
And as luck would have it, Officer Kent Haas was making a traffic stop right around the corner when that call came in.
00:38:46
So he pulled onto Mohawk Drive. He parked a couple doors down from the address that was given.
00:38:51
And he sees a man with a limp walking down the street carrying an umbrella. And it had been raining around that time.
00:38:58
So that wasn't too weird. But he still thought he should at least question this person.
00:39:04
So he ordered the man to stop. And instead, the guy real quick ducked down behind a car and started pulling at the waistband of his pants.
00:39:12
Scary for tons of reasons. So Officer Haas tells the man to stop or he'll shoot.
00:39:18
And the man complies and puts his hand up. And when backup arrives, they pull the man up from his hiding place.
00:39:25
It's Jim Mitchell. And he's got a .22 rifle shoved down his pant leg. And he also has a .38 in a holster underneath his jacket.
00:39:35
and inside the house, his brother Artie is lying dead in the bathroom doorway. He's been shot in the shoulder, in the torso, and through his right eye with a .22.
00:39:46
Jim Mitchell is arrested and charged with the murder of his brother. And of course, within hours, a media circus ensues.
00:39:53
So this was right on the cusp of court TV. And they actually, during this trial, had an argument whether or not they should air this on television.
00:40:03
because it, of course, had everything. It was like siblings and porn and what more do you want?
00:40:10
That's plenty. So this infamous trial begins on January 13, 1992. The courtroom is filled with cops, strippers,
00:40:19
Entertainment Tonight producers, O'Farrell theater patrons and employees, and at least one porn actor.
00:40:27
You've got to hope there was one person who was all of those things. Yes. You know?
00:40:32
Mary Hart. Okay, don't tell her I said that. They all watch this person after person testifies that Jim Mitchell loved his brother,
00:40:41
he was his closest friend, and he was only going over to Artie's house for an intervention that escalated into a heated fight.
00:40:47
And then in a fit of rage, Jim decided to put Artie out of his drug-addled misery.
00:40:53
That's the story that the defense tries to mount. But the prosecution counters this theory, because if that were true,
00:41:00
then why did Jim park blocks away from Mohawk Avenue so no one would see his car?
00:41:06
And why did he bring two guns? And why did he shoot his brother seven times with three hits?
00:41:13
And why did he slash Artie's tires before he entered the house? Lots of questions.
00:41:19
Very good, valid questions. According to the D.I.D.A., these actions told the story of a premeditated murder,
00:41:26
not a heat of the moment accidental death. But when the verdict came in, the power of the Mitchell brothers and their legend in the city came through because the jury threw out the first degree murder charge and found Jim Mitchell guilty of voluntary manslaughter.
00:41:45
At his sentencing notable San Francisco figures like former Mayor Frank Jordan former police chief Richard Hongisto and Sheriff Michael Hennessy all speak on Jim behalf vouching for his good character literally the opposite of every single obscenity trial that they had to sit through in the 70s
00:42:07
where all the politicians and law enforcement accused Jim and Artie of ruining the city.
00:42:12
Jim Mitchell, at the end of that sentencing, is sentenced to six years in San Quentin.
00:42:18
Wow. Uh-huh. Oh, here's some pictures. That's him in the courtroom with his lawyer.
00:42:29
Oh, those guys watching the game up there? That was the weirdest golf clap of all time.
00:42:37
Woo! Courtroom shit. And this is what I love. This is an out of order, like, time-wise.
00:42:47
This is clearly from a 70s or early 80s trial that they had to go to. But I just like that picture of him.
00:42:55
I just think it's kind of haunting and beautiful. Who would play him? I don't know who has insanely round glasses these days.
00:43:03
Just bring your glasses and you can play him. If you can get those glasses again.
00:43:08
So Jim serves just over three years in San Quentin and is then released. Yeah. He immediately returns to the O'Farrell Theater to continue managing it,
00:43:18
and he sets up the Artie Fund, which raises money for a local drug rehab center,
00:43:22
as well as for the surf-rescue squad of the San Francisco Fire Department, who had, in 1990, saved Artie's life when he had been carried out by a riptide
00:43:32
trying to save his own kids, who he thought were drowning. Do not swim in the San Francisco beach area.
00:43:40
It's cold, it's saltier than normal seawater. And it's trying to kill you all the time, especially if you're very young.
00:43:50
Jim Mitchell eventually retires to a farm on the outskirts of a little town I like to call Petaluma, California.
00:43:58
Yes. We have them all. Winona Ryder, Lloyd Bridges, fucking Guy Fieri, Snoopy. Snoopy.
00:44:07
Fucking Snoopy lives there. Okay. Okay, and then it's in Petaluma that on July 12, 2007, Jim Mitchell dies of a heart attack at the age of 63.
00:44:18
He is buried next to his brother Artie in their hometown of Antioch, California.
00:44:24
So just a couple things in the aftermath. In 2011, Jim Mitchell's son James was tried and convicted of murdering the mother of his child with a baseball bat while she was holding their daughter.
00:44:39
And his trial took place just down the hall from where his father was tried almost 20 years earlier.
00:44:46
On an up note, on July 28, 1999, then Mayor Willie Brown declared it Marilyn Chambers Day.
00:44:54
So you've got five shopping days left. Get on it. And then back down on a down note, in the year 2000, a movie about the Mitchell brothers starring real life brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
00:45:09
entitled rated x okay that's that yeah they put the x in sex it says right there yeah
00:45:20
they wrote that okay that that's why they look so proud in that pictures because they wrote that
00:45:26
tagline uh and then my favorite quote of the story don't go next i won't my favorite quote
00:45:34
of this entire story is one time Artie Mitchell once said to an ex-wife, you never really realize
00:45:40
how ugly bodies are until they're stuck in your face every day of the week. They look a lot better with clothes on.
00:45:46
And that is the insane story of the Mitchell Brothers murder. Amazing. Sorry, that was so long.
00:45:53
We got Vince. Oh, great. Oh, nice. Vince. My husband. Vince just came out specifically to tell me I did a good job.
00:46:09
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There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Goodbye. Let me tell you guys. That one's yours. Thanks. Okay. I'm doing the Unabomber.
00:48:28
whoa yes yes finally yes i've always wanted to do it and now i have to do it in six pages which
00:48:40
is going to be really hard so it's like the fucking truncated version go home and read about
00:48:45
it there's a show called the unabomber that's good but let me tell you the quick version of it
00:48:50
All right. This is Ted Kaczynski. For 17 years, between 1978 and 1995, Ted Kaczynski was one of America's most feared men.
00:49:02
From the comfort of his home, he sent more than 16 homemade bombs to unsuspecting victims in what he deemed as he wanted to start a revolution against modern technology.
00:49:13
Me too. It sucks. But through hugs, guys. Oh, oh. Okay, Todd Kaczynski is born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago.
00:49:25
And he's born in a hardworking family. It seems like they're totally fucking normal.
00:49:30
And he's a happy baby. And then he gets a severe case of hives and is forced into a hospital isolation.
00:49:36
And then for months, he just shows no emotion. So I think that you can't just put a baby in a room by itself and expect everything to be fine.
00:49:43
Everyone. That's how they used to cure hives, was isolate babies. That was always the solution every time?
00:49:50
Yeah. But this is when they decided that wasn't true. The 1940s, leave babies alone.
00:49:56
Okay. In elementary school, so he's an interesting kid. In elementary school, his test scores show that his IQ is 167.
00:50:05
Yeah. That's quite high. Mine too. And he skips sixth grade. So he later describes that as a pivotal event in his life.
00:50:14
And I think that when you skip, when you get, he said before he could make friends and,
00:50:17
you know be a normal kid but then after skipping school he didn't feel like he fit in with the
00:50:22
older kids it's so hard okay you know what i would have loved to skip sixth grade because
00:50:29
that's when they did the presidential fitness test and oh fucking i had to go first
00:50:36
i had to go first on the arm hang i dropped after three seconds the entire class booed me
00:50:41
I never blew anybody up I should and I might I mean did you say I'm never going to use the arm hang
00:50:51
in my adult life it was so hard it's hard I don't want to he's considered an outsider
00:51:02
by his classmates they regarded him as a walking brain so he just was like nobody liked him I guess
00:51:08
he graduates high school at 15 he's accepted to Harvard he starts in the fall of 1958
00:51:15
on scholarship at 16 years old hell yeah and I wrote same dude as a sophomore at Harvard
00:51:23
he participates in a study okay this is fucked up ready for this he participates in a study
00:51:29
described by author Alston Chase as purposely brutalizing psychological experiment
00:51:38
led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. So subjects are told they'll be debating personal philosophy
00:51:43
with a fellow student, so they're asked to write essays detailing their personal life and aspirations and hopes and dreams
00:51:49
and everything about them. And the essays are then turned over to an attorney who, in later sessions, it's a weekly session,
00:51:56
they confront and belittle the subject using the content of the essays as ammunition.
00:52:02
A lot of people think this was an MKUltra experiment. Actually, it sounds like girls in junior high.
00:52:09
I think they just, this was the old junior high test. Yeah, you're not wrong. Draw it out of you.
00:52:14
Use it against you. So this is some straight up a clockwork orange shit. They put electrodes that monitor the subject's physiological reactions.
00:52:25
Their encounters are filmed, and then the subjects are, they are played the film of them fucking looking sad and shit.
00:52:33
they have to watch themselves be belittled that's horrifying this is like straight up
00:52:40
but that's also kind of Instagram isn't it oh you're not wrong that was the first test pilot
00:52:48
the experiment lasts three years with someone verbally abusing and humiliating Ted Kaczynski each week
00:52:56
he spends 200 hours as part of the study what? so that'll make you fucked up That's him.
00:53:04
That's like around that time, I believe. You want to make kites, you idiot? That used to be his dream.
00:53:12
I get it. Right? That's dumb. That's dumb. Kites are dumb. So people think that the experiments are part of MKUltra.
00:53:21
Of course, the CIA's research into mind control. Sounds like it. I love it. I'm going to go on record and say it was.
00:53:27
Oh. This is the official? Yeah, this is it. Okay. So Ted does earn his bachelor's of arts degree in math from Harvard in 1962,
00:53:36
graduating in only three years. Super fucking smart. In 1962, he enrolls at the University of Michigan,
00:53:42
where he earns his master's and doctoral degrees in math and is offered a teaching position.
00:53:48
So in 1967 at 25 years old he starts teaching at fucking University of Michigan math Right Oh no Yes and then he becomes the youngest assistant professor of mathematics in the history of UC Berkeley Wow You guys went there
00:54:06
My dad calls it cow. Oh, it's old school. But all his students hate him. And so he resigned.
00:54:15
Seriously. Is that more of that test that he was in? Yeah. They yell at him. You're
00:54:20
It's stupid. It's still stupid. It's still dumb. After resigning from Berkeley, he moves back home with his parents,
00:54:29
and then he starts writing anti-technology think pieces. He buys 1.5 acres of land in Florence Gulch, which is near Lincoln, Montana.
00:54:40
So he just buys this fucking spacious forest place. and in 1972 he moves to a remote cabin that he built on his new land.
00:54:51
He wants to be, he's totally reclusive. He lives a simple life with little money and without electricity or running water.
00:54:59
It sounds like a nightmare. But tons of kites. So many kites. So many kites. Surrounded by kites.
00:55:03
Just filled, a cabin filled. Look up in the sky, kites everywhere. It's always looking back down at you.
00:55:09
He works odd jobs, and he teaches himself survival skills, such as tracking game and how to identify edible plants,
00:55:18
farming, bow drilling, and other primitive technologies. He starts reading about sociology and political philosophy and anarchism,
00:55:27
and he believes that violence is the only way people will listen to real revolutionaries.
00:55:33
Uh-oh. On May 25, 1978, Ted mails his first bomb, and it arrives at the office of Buckley Crist,
00:55:42
who's a professor of materials engineering at Northwestern University, the home of the screaming.
00:55:50
Calculators? Yeah. No, no, you're right. That's right. Too obvious. No, no, no. That's good.
00:55:56
Okay. So this dude, Buckley, is like, this package is suspicious, and I'm not fucking opening it.
00:56:03
He contacts campus police and he's like, see that package? I don't trust it. And Officer Terry Marker's like, let me open it.
00:56:11
Opens it, it explodes. But he only has injuries on his hand. The second package arrives on May 9th, sent to John Harris,
00:56:21
who's a graduate student at Northwestern University. And the package explodes when he opens it and he suffers minor cuts and burns.
00:56:28
On November 15, 1979, a bomb is placed in the cargo hold of American Airlines Flight 444, flying from Chicago to Washington, D.C., but there's a faulty timing mechanism that prevents the bomb from exploding, but it starts to smoke, so they find it and shit, and they find that the bomb would have obliterated the plane if it had blown up.
00:56:51
So, over... So he's a genius, but he's not that good at making bombs. He's not the best at it, thankfully.
00:56:57
Yeah. He's better at kiting. Over a year later, on June 10th, on June 8th, 1980,
00:57:06
possibly to commemorate my birth two days earlier, I spoke. Thank you. It was fun.
00:57:14
United Airlines president Percy Wood is injured after he opens a package disguised as a book,
00:57:20
and he gets a few cuts and burns, and the initials FC are found etched on a piece of pipe from the bomb.
00:57:26
So Ted Kaczynski does this thing where he makes false things that make people...
00:57:32
Clues. Thank you. So a federal task force is finally assembled, and they start calling him the Unabomber,
00:57:41
an acronym for... So it's University and Airline Bomber. So Unabomber. You get it.
00:57:50
I liked how you sounded it out. Unabomber. Those two heads on electric company that said stuff to each other.
00:57:56
Una. Bomber. Una Bomber. They conduct exhaustive forensic examinations of the bombs
00:58:05
and they try to make links to the victims, but they're so random that they can't make any links, really.
00:58:12
And they conclude that the bomber made his explosives from common scrap materials, including wood, fishing wire, nails, and tape,
00:58:20
but those are all widely available things, so they can't trace any of them. This says, more bombing.
00:58:26
Between October 8th, 1981 and November 15th, 1985, he sends out six bombs, including four that explode
00:58:33
and seriously injure the opener with shrapnel. Shrapnel injuries, serious burns, that sort of thing.
00:58:39
Including the secretary of the intended... You just have a job that you want to get through the day
00:58:44
so you can go home to your cats and have a glass of Chablis. And your boss makes you open his goddamn mail.
00:58:52
Motherfuckers. Damn it. She's trying to sniff that white out and get through the day.
00:58:59
But no. Yeah. Like, what a bummer, right? Yeah. But she's injured. She lives? Yes.
00:59:05
Oh, that's good. The 11th bomb to be sent out becomes the first death caused by the Unabomber.
00:59:11
On December 11th, 1985, Hugh Scrutton, a 38-year-old computer store owner in Sacramento, California...
00:59:19
Not really. We're going to have to bring them another Paul Holes if you keep fucking doing them.
00:59:33
I will. I love the push-pull of my Sacramento relationship. Okay, so he's a computer store owner.
00:59:41
He picks up what he thinks is just like road hazard is the word that's written right here that I use all the time.
00:59:49
what's this road hazard there's so many road hazards in the parking lot outside his store but it actually a nail and splinter loaded bomb and Hugh cretin is killed Fuck that shit
01:00:05
A similar attack against another computer store happens in Salt Lake City two years later,
01:00:10
on February 20th, 1987. The bomb is disguised as a piece of lumber, and it injures Gary Wright, another computer
01:00:17
store owner, and the blast severs the nerves in his left arm, and more than 200 pieces
01:00:22
of shrapnel end up in his body. Wow. Yuck. And also, like, these are computer store owners.
01:00:29
I know. It's like, he's not sending anything to the Waz or anybody down in San Jose.
01:00:35
It's just like... This guy is just like, I just want to work with what I love. I just love PCs.
01:00:40
Yeah. They're the wave of the future, everyone. What's this road hazard? Fuck. Sucks.
01:00:48
And so then a woman recalls that before the attack, She had noticed a man by the scene wearing a hooded sweatshirt and aviator sunglasses, leaving a bag behind at the store.
01:00:58
She's the first eyewitness account of the elusive Unabomber and helps create the now famous sketch of him.
01:01:04
Oh, yeah. Do you remember seeing this? Sure. In 1987? Terrifying. Do you remember seeing it?
01:01:11
Because that happened near you, I guess, kind of. I absolutely remember seeing it.
01:01:15
It was on the news a lot. But also, I also thought it was a poster for the movie The Fly.
01:01:21
Because where did he get sunglasses that huge that you can only get today in a dump store on Melrose in Los Angeles?
01:01:30
Well, so there's so much controversy surrounding this photo, including the fact that the person that she saw wasn't him,
01:01:37
which is why it doesn't look anything like him. He was just a super cool guy. Yeah, she saw that guy, but that's not...
01:01:45
She couldn't get him out of her mind. Right. But also that she said when they sketched it, she's like, that's not what he looks like.
01:01:51
And so there's this controversy and conspiracy that the FBI didn't want to catch him.
01:01:56
And so they didn't put out a sketch that looks like him. Because of MKUltra? Because of MKUltra.
01:02:01
Goodbye. So then Kaczynski goes dark for six years and doesn't reemerge until 1993 when he sends
01:02:09
two more bombs that are set off and injures their intended victims. One is Charles Epstein, a geneticist, right?
01:02:19
Maybe. Yeah, at UC San Francisco. He loses a couple fingers. The other is David Gelter.
01:02:28
He's a computer scientist at Yale. He loses the use of his right hand and suffers severe burns and shrapnel wounds
01:02:35
when the bomb explodes in his fucking hands. Okay. On December 10, 1994, New York City advertising executive Thomas Mosser is killed when he opens a package that's posted to his home in Caldwell, New Jersey.
01:02:50
So that's the second murder. Months later, Kaczynski mails a letter from San Francisco to the New York Times and takes responsibility for the bomb.
01:02:59
He claims that Mosser was targeted for his public relations firm's work for Exxon Corporation,
01:03:06
the company whose tanker, the Valdez, spilled oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
01:03:12
So he sends the bomb to the fucking public relations firm instead of... Don't send it to anyone.
01:03:17
Get those publicists. Seriously. Take them down one by one. Man, you go to work, all you want to do is go home and have a glass of Chablis,
01:03:25
as I've said previously, pet your cat. Okay. Release some statements for your clients, but no.
01:03:32
But no. On April 24th, 1995, timber industry lobbyist Gilbert B. Murray is killed when a package explodes at his Sacramento office.
01:03:42
And the package is actually addressed to the person that Murray had recently replaced as the president of the California Forestry Association.
01:03:50
So two months later, on June 24th, Ted mails several letters from San Francisco to media outlets and demands that his 35,000 word essay.
01:04:00
Remember we just did that? Yeah. A piece titled The Industrial Society and Its Future, which was the original name of our book.
01:04:12
We had to change it. He says he wants his 35,000 fucking word manifesto to be printed verbatim by a major newspaper or he would keep sending bombs.
01:04:24
So after debating the wisdom of giving terrorists such a fucking platform, FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno, your favorite, your favorite Reno.
01:04:35
My personal style guru. They authorize its publication because they said that maybe it could help lead to the bombers.
01:04:44
identification. So they fucking put the, on September 19th, 1995, these poor people are like,
01:04:50
Washington Post, what's happening in the news today? And the New York Times published the Unabomber's manifesto.
01:04:57
It rails against the Industrial Revolution and the evils of modern technology. It's like,
01:05:02
you're fucking 95 years too late already, bro. Although I wonder if we all sat down and read it right now, if we wouldn't be
01:05:08
like, ugh, he was kind of right. It's all happening. It's all happening. You do the
01:05:14
math. No, wait. Calculators do the math. Okay. So after this publishing, a woman named Linda
01:05:26
Patrick is casually reading the manifesto in the paper, as you do over breakfast or whatever.
01:05:31
You skim a manifesto before work. She recognizes the language as to be similar to the language in
01:05:38
letters that her husband David receives from his estranged older brother Ted. She's like,
01:05:44
that sounds like his insane rantings that he always fucking sends to him. In his Christmas
01:05:48
letter that I hate getting every year. We don't care what you did in that cabin, Ted.
01:05:53
We not putting you in the newsletter So she like David honey this is your brother shit You should at least tell the FBI And David like no no no no no it can be can be la la la la la
01:06:08
Fingers in his ears. But in February of 1996, he's like, okay, comes forward and provides a writing sample of Ted's to the FBI.
01:06:15
He wants to be kept anonymous, but it's leaked who he is. So on April 3rd, 1996, they're finally able to connect the two,
01:06:22
and they arrest Ted Kaczynski near Lincoln, Montana at his creepy place of residence.
01:06:31
Kite cabin. Thank you. They find a wealth of incriminating evidence inside his tiny cabin,
01:06:36
including another bomb, bomb-making components, and the original manuscript of the manifesto.
01:06:41
Oh. Which is like... That he hand-wrote? Yeah. Lovingly? With his Lisa Frank pen.
01:06:47
people start to theorize that Kaczynski is also the Zodiac killer oh but it's discounted when the
01:06:56
MOs don't match up but I'm like sometimes MOs don't match up for a reason sometimes they like
01:07:01
to throw you off the trail let's check the DNA what does that work out age-wise probably none of
01:07:08
it works out like if he he started uh Zodiac-ing when he was around 14 we did everything else very
01:07:15
young. I want it to be true. So therefore. Okay. So he's indicted on 10 counts of illegally
01:07:24
transporting, mailing, and using bombs and three counts of murder. In late 97, he's put on trial
01:07:30
in federal court in Sacramento, but the case never moves forward because he gets locked up in all
01:07:36
these procedural battles with the lawyers and prosecutors and the judge because of course he
01:07:40
hates them all and thinks he's smarter than all of them and they can all go fuck off in his
01:07:44
fucking mind. He is a neck hand. He asked to represent himself, blah, blah, blah. A psychiatric evaluation ordered by the court
01:07:53
diagnoses him as a paranoid schizophrenic. His lawyers later attribute his hostility towards
01:07:59
mind control techniques and his participation in the study that he had done. Yeah, that adds up.
01:08:05
He doesn't want to plead insanity, so to avoid a long trial and the death penalty,
01:08:11
he pleads guilty to all charges on January 22, 1998, and he receives eight life sentences without the possibility of parole,
01:08:20
and he's sent to a supermax prison in Colorado. Yay. His cabin is seized by the U.S. government when it's put up for auction,
01:08:30
and it's now on display at the Newsom, the Newsium, Newsium. Sounding that one out.
01:08:37
You thought that was someone's last name. Newsium in Washington, D.C. The Newseum.
01:08:42
The Newseum. I wonder what that is in Washington, D.C. So he's now 77. He is still a prolific writer and corresponds in longhand with hundreds of people.
01:08:53
He still produces essays and books. In 2012, he responds to the Harvard Alumni Association Directory inquiry for the 50th reunion of the class of 1962.
01:09:03
I've got my jacket, boys. I'm ready to come and visit you. He lists his occupation as prisoner and his eight life sentences as awards.
01:09:13
What a fucking dick. And I wrote, but really, he's a murderer who killed three people and physically and psychologically traumatized 23 people in his nationwide bombing campaign from 1978 to 1995.
01:09:29
And he now spends 23 hours a day secluded in his cell. And that is the quick Unabomber.
01:09:34
Wow. Thanks. You did that so fast. I'm sorry I stretched out the Mitchell brothers all over you.
01:09:43
No, that was fun. That was... That was fun. And I wanted to be quick because we have a really special hometown that I'm so excited about.
01:09:52
Yes. It's the fun part about doing festivals is there's other people around to come do your show with you.
01:09:59
And so we're excited to bring out our friend and yours, Mr. Patton Oswalt. Yes! Thank you.
01:10:16
We have this chair for you. It's Pat Mosley. Man. Whew. That was a quick Unabomber.
01:10:29
Good Lord. But that's actually good because I'm going to now debut my new one-man show,
01:10:35
Manson in a Minute. So, yeah, very excited. Great. I'll take royalties of that. Please.
01:10:42
Yeah, it was weird. I was reading about some San Francisco. I'm going to do a local San Francisco murder.
01:10:50
And by the way, San Francisco, much like Karen and I in the early 90s, was a place for murderers who became big in L.A. later to come and kind of work out their stuff here early.
01:11:03
That's right. I took my daughter through the hate. I've been here with the family all week, so I walked her by 636 Cole,
01:11:13
which is Charles Manson's old house, where he lived with Van Hooten and From, Squeaky From.
01:11:21
Come and knock on our door. The outfits. Can you imagine the outfits? Exactly. Before, oh, the misunderstandings were hilarious.
01:11:30
And now that house is a patisserie where everything costs $90. Enjoy, Coal Valley.
01:11:40
And also, the Night Stalker committed a murder up here, killed a couple named Debbie and Peter Pan.
01:11:51
No, really? Yes. Is that the one in the marina? I believe so. But the Night Stalker killed Peter Pan in San Francisco.
01:11:58
Oh. What an ass. I have a really good brag that my cousin, Marty, Martin Kilgariff, who is on the San Francisco Police Department, now retired, was the one of the cops that went to investigate right after and found his fingerprint on the windowsill.
01:12:15
He never told any of us that until two Thanksgivings ago when someone's like, hey, Karen, I think you'd be interested in this.
01:12:22
And I stood up at the dinner table and screamed at the top of my lungs. The best thing I've ever heard in my life.
01:12:29
Wow. But what I'm going to talk about very briefly is the Doodler. I don't know if you guys know who the Doodler was.
01:12:38
Oh, shit. Okay, well, the 1970s in San Francisco was quite a time. Really? We haven't heard.
01:12:46
Yeah, almost back to back. You had the Zodiac followed by the zebra killings followed by the Doodler.
01:12:55
The Doodler operated, I believe, January of 1974 until the summer of 1975. He patrolled, prowled the streets of the Castro.
01:13:08
He would pick up gay men. He would sketch them and then kill them. He would do a sketch of them and kill them.
01:13:16
And the police worked the case. And again, imagine like just back to back. Zodiac, zebra killings, and the Doodler.
01:13:23
And by the way, that does sound like late season Batman villains. Like we've run out of, like we had the Joker and the Penguin,
01:13:31
and now we've got, oh, it's King Tut and, you know, the weird Vincent Price egg guy.
01:13:37
Like I don't know who we have left. Sorry, this is a dumb question for sure, but did the people who got sketched,
01:13:46
were they into that part of it up until the physical threat? Was it like, what's your hobby?
01:13:52
I'm going to draw you with a big head and a tiny body, like riding a horse on the Golden Gate Bridge or something?
01:13:59
Was it that? So you play football there, champ? Like a football? All right. Well, there you go.
01:14:05
Well, what I'm wondering is, you know, it was, again, it was a well-known case. So by the ninth or tenth victim, when the sketching started, were they like,
01:14:15
I think this is the doodler, you know? Well, what if it's not? Yeah, exactly. It can't be. I don't want to ruin this. It's such a romantic moment.
01:14:25
Also, it looks great. I kind of want, maybe I'll just take it and run. Yeah. The doodle of me.
01:14:29
All the pictures were very complimentary, so no one ever wanted to interrupt. It was like, that is what my eyes look like. I've always thought so.
01:14:35
Oh, he's giving me that John line I've always wanted to play. That's her dog. Well, here's the other weird twist of the story, though.
01:14:42
There were survivors of his attacks, and the police narrowed down a suspect that they were sure was the doodler.
01:14:51
They were good. I can't believe I'm using the doodler. It's the best. Yeah, exactly.
01:14:56
It be like the Uncle Schmecky murderer But what happened was there were a couple of survivors The police had this guy what they felt like was dead to rights and the survivors would not come forward because at the time it was still looked down upon to be gay
01:15:16
They were afraid of being outed. They would not testify against him, and they never were able to charge the guy.
01:15:23
And here's the last part of this. one of the survivors, according to police and according to an article that I read in The All,
01:15:33
was a very, very famous film actor at the time. They believe it was either Richard Chamberlain or Rock Hudson.
01:15:43
And he escaped the doodler and would not testify. And so that was another reason.
01:15:49
But he's going to testify tonight, ladies and gentlemen. you loved him in the thorn birds let's get him out here folks come on
01:15:58
red your chamberlain from show gun come on um yeah so there was this whole so a basically a
01:16:06
and he he killed 13 people and went free because of people being afraid to testify and so the
01:16:14
doodlers out there well i did read recently they're gonna retest the dna evidence they have
01:16:20
It's in the news recently. Is that true? Oh, I didn't know that. So they might...
01:16:24
Maybe they'll finally get him. God, if we had just produced this correctly, we could have revealed those DNA tests.
01:16:30
Someone in this room is the doodler. You're not the father. Eddie's in the room.
01:16:36
Yeah. But I mean, like, again, it's one of those things of so many of from the 70s, there were
01:16:43
people that kind of went free because of just how primitive a lot of police work was.
01:16:49
one thing that my late wife Michelle kept mentioning to me. My wife wrote a book called I'll Be Gone in the Dark.
01:16:57
But one thing that really disturbed her was she would read police reports about them going to look
01:17:06
at suspects and it was like rang suspects doorbell, no answer and they didn't follow up because he wasn't
01:17:12
home. That was how long the investigation went. He wasn't home. What could we do? I mean he
01:17:17
If someone's not home, we can't interview them. I mean, how could it be him if he leaves the house?
01:17:22
Exactly. There's no way. It's not him. He slipped our dragnet by going to go see Freebie and the Bean.
01:17:27
And so we had to let him go. I don't know what I could do. So, yeah, so all that thing about the...
01:17:33
Again, it would be amazing to really go back and do a true crime procedural show set in the 70s with all of those limitations.
01:17:43
I'm seeing a thing that's, well, I guess he's going to get caught. I don't know what to do all of that and then they're like to the women well
01:17:49
what were you wearing and it's just a really bummer show or they could or it could be the thing of like they have a whole plate full of saliva and they're
01:17:56
like Sarge what do you want me to do with this saliva throw it away we don't need that
01:18:00
help us oh my lord you any bodily fluid get it out of here there a jar of his semen in the fridge we don That disgusting Can we get the press in here really quick Get him to confess or let him go I don know what spitting semen
01:18:16
Come on. Come on, guys. Yeah. Let's quit fooling around. Good Lord. I'm not Mr. Wizard here.
01:18:22
I don't, you know. Wow, did I do mine too quickly? I'm sorry. No, no. That was amazing.
01:18:28
It was a weird, like. That was amazing. I just, again, there was a. I'm just trying to imagine
01:18:33
living in San Francisco in the 70s and just like we got past the Zodiac, we got past
01:18:39
the Zodiac, the Doodler like what the hell, what is next? No wonder they just knocked on doors
01:18:45
like we're so sick of this shit Yeah exactly, what's like the Waffler is next or something, I don't know
01:18:50
Not our precious waffles That was amazing Yeah that was a really good one The Doodler!
01:18:58
The Doodler everyone! By the way, oh my God, I was just over in Galway in Dublin, and I know that you guys are about to tour Europe in the fall.
01:19:10
And you're going to Ireland at one point, right? Yeah. One of the guys that my opener is a huge fan of your podcast and said, tell them to listen to a podcast.
01:19:20
I'm sure you've already heard about it. It's called West Cork. Oh, yeah. Okay. And he was like, West Cork is the weirdest.
01:19:27
it is so insular that there was this very big murder by this guy. It's so clear the guy that did it and got away with it
01:19:35
because the people in West Cork are like, we don't. We don't snitch on each other.
01:19:39
And a lot of weird stuff goes down in West Cork. So if you're over there, maybe go read up on that.
01:19:45
It's a good one. It's a good podcast. And the murderer, I think he's in the podcast being interviewed.
01:19:51
Yes, exactly. Because he's so cocky. Really? And he's anxious to be on the... He's excited that he's on this podcast.
01:19:56
He wants to help. People think that I did it, but it's crazy I didn't. He couldn't walk more into a confession more times,
01:20:06
and they couldn't get him convicted. Those podcasters must have been, they're just like,
01:20:11
are we actually getting this on tape? How is this possible? If you didn't put a tape in this and press record,
01:20:16
I'm going to be so mad at you. Yeah, exactly. But they must have always been like,
01:20:20
this is like the anti the jinx, because he's confessing over and over again, and he's walking.
01:20:26
I'm like, that's okay. We don't care. Hi, I'm Bob the Murderer. How are you guys doing?
01:20:30
Great to be on the podcast. Do you want to talk about MailChimp really quick, and then we'll do the thing?
01:20:36
Or what's going on? Do you have any promo codes you want to give this week? Oh, we have to say some names from, what's it called?
01:20:43
Nope. If I had gotten it, it would have been great. You have it. You have it. I don't.
01:20:46
Go back around. No. Oh. Steven, cut that out. That was terrible, Steven. Well, thank you, Patton.
01:20:54
That was amazing. Thank you guys so much. Thank you so much for capping off our show tonight.
01:21:01
Pat and Oswald, ladies and gentlemen. Pat and Oswald, everyone. Should we say goodbye?
01:21:08
Yeah, I guess we should. What we really need to say right now is stay saved and do God missions That a really important message from our podcast Did you hear that story No Okay so
01:21:21
It already creeped out. We're just going to tell Patton and the few people who don't know the story,
01:21:26
but it really is the best. Oh, boy. A woman walked up to another woman, an older lady she saw, I think, like at the mall,
01:21:32
and she was wearing one of our T-shirts that said SSDGM on the front of it. So the girl goes up and goes,
01:21:38
oh, my God, you're a murdering at two. oh my god and they try to start talking to her and the woman goes yeah i don't know what you're
01:21:44
talking about she said your shirt and the woman goes my daughter told me that this meant stay
01:21:49
saved and do god's missions uh uh fuck you mom fuck you mom fuck you mom i'm a god wow yeah i'm a
01:21:58
god that loves murder how awesome yes yeah set her mom up set her up for public interactions that
01:22:03
she did not understand and that we're not christ-based wow we're not yet could not be less
01:22:10
christ-based that's fantastic so oh man there's there should be someone should start a trend of
01:22:16
giving those shirts and what just give telling their moms different acronyms for things yeah
01:22:20
and then just have then then have murder people run up all the time murder no no it's our campaign
01:22:28
to get people to yell murder in mom's faces across the U.S. Religious mom's faces.
01:22:33
Salty sweet donuts. But more than that, what we really want you to do is stay sexy
01:22:40
and don't get murdered. Thank you, San Francisco. Thank you. Cheap Caribbean Summer Savings
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