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00:01:32
And begin. Hello! Hi! Welcome to our podcast. Welcome to our podcast. Right? Yeah.
00:01:47
I don't know when it's okay for me to speak. I feel like now. Now's a good time.
00:01:51
So, ladies and gentlemen, this is the first ever combo podcast of My Favorite Murder combined with Conan O'Brien Has No Friends.
00:02:01
Yes. That's not really the title. That's not the title. Sorry. That's Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.
00:02:08
Karen Kildareff, right? What you just accidentally said is Conan O'Brien has no friends.
00:02:15
What I wanted to imply with my title was I have a lot of friends, but I'd like some more.
00:02:19
What you intuited was Conan O'Brien has no friends, which is shockingly close to the truth.
00:02:26
I'm sorry. Let me try it again. This is take two. Oh, no. We're keeping that. Are you sure?
00:02:30
That was really good. Because my take two is this is the first dual episode of My Favorite Murder combined with Conan O'Brien is shut down Irish Catholic and emotionally stunted.
00:02:41
Yes. Wow. Right? That should have been the title. You please consult with me on these things.
00:02:46
So you can probably tell that I am a thin-lipped, very uptight Irish Catholic. Yes.
00:02:55
There's a lot, but you know what's interesting? There's a lot broiling inside me.
00:02:59
And I didn't say boiling. I said broiling. Broiling. It's mostly from the top. What about broasted?
00:03:05
Remember broasted? It's unbroasted. Inside, there's a lot broasting. You have an Irish Catholic right here, too.
00:03:12
That's right. I think you said craftlet. I think I did, too. I didn't realize we all drink beforehand, which is fine by me.
00:03:20
I am more than happy to get loaded with you ladies. This is one of the more high stakes conversations.
00:03:27
And we are, when it's the lowest of stakes, we fuck up constantly. So the fact that it's now high stakes, it's like we don't pronounce things correctly when it's the chillest version of podcasting.
00:03:37
So now we feel like we've been kicked up into like the A circle. I said Worchester instead of Worcester on the show.
00:03:45
It's Worcester. Oh, everyone let me know. You just said Worcester. I totally did.
00:03:50
And you thought that was the correct version. Say it like you spell it, bro. Like, come on.
00:03:54
Wait a minute. You guys have been in the podcast game for a while, and you've got a killer podcast.
00:03:59
So, I'm the newbie. So, you should act like two Fonzies to my Richie. I refuse. I'm Ralph Malf.
00:04:11
If only, if only we could, if only we could kick that proverbial. Well, I guess I am that leather jacket wearing Jewish motorcycle riding Fonzie style person to begin with.
00:04:24
Oh, you're claiming to be the Fonz. Yeah. You sort of, your hair, you could comb that into the Fonzie hair.
00:04:30
You have very beautiful hair. Thank you. I went to Jewish camp with his daughter.
00:04:35
Really? Really? He's a lovely man. He was so nice. He's one of the nicest men. Yeah.
00:04:40
He really is. Truly. And he wears great sweaters. If only one of us could think of his name.
00:04:45
Keep covering. Keep covering. It's Henry Winkler. It's obviously Henry Winkler. Of course it is.
00:04:50
Everyone knows that. It's Henry Blinkler. Welcome. Okay, so. There's no transition here.
00:04:56
No. No. We should actually have no transition so we can take that part out if we want to.
00:05:02
The whole beginning. Fucking edit. I don't edit anything out anymore. I think let the people hear everything.
00:05:09
Really? Let them hear how flawed we are. Yeah. Because I'm tired of people thinking I'm some kind of Christ figure.
00:05:16
It must be exhausting. Let them know that when you cut me, I do bleed. I do resurrect, but I do bleed.
00:05:21
He does it all. Yeah. Welcome to the podcasting world. It's fun. Thank you. You made a splash.
00:05:27
Yeah. It's been a lot of fun. I think after 25 years of having to talk to people in very constrained circumstances, and I loved that.
00:05:41
I grew up watching that, but seven minutes and then you have to go to commercial break and then you have to start it up again.
00:05:48
and being in a room with people and having a very intimate conversation and letting the part of your brain go that works in a writer room that part of the creative process and let it go unfiltered has been a real joy we only i don know we released five or i think we
00:06:08
released five uh and they've been really fun to do that's been the biggest surprise is how much
00:06:14
it doesn't feel like work to me it's not right it's just chatting and riffing and yet we're
00:06:21
making tens of dollars. Oh, my God. Hundreds that are rolling in monthly. Yes. But more about me undies.
00:06:30
Underwear. That's fun to wear. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, it's really fun. And I think for you, it's good, too, because whenever you're interviewing people or talking
00:06:38
to someone, it's about their career and what they've got going on and whatever stupid movie
00:06:45
that is coming out. Yeah, what they're promoting. Did you say stupid? Yeah. Oh, no.
00:06:49
Everyone's movie is amazing. It is amazing. Paramount put a chip in my brain about 15 years ago.
00:06:55
So all movies are amazing. Great. I have a hard time watching. I love talk shows.
00:07:00
I love your talk show. The interview part always makes me really nervous. In the same way that watching an award show, the speeches make me so uncomfortable and cringe.
00:07:09
Right. You're worried for, I hope, I'm worried for these people. Right. Yeah. Well, I feel like when you're sitting in that seat, you have to pull off natural conversation that's entirely planned.
00:07:21
And you have to be a good enough actor to make it seem real. You have to stay in the moment.
00:07:25
So you have to have a little bit of improv awareness. Right. And you can't drive it too hard.
00:07:30
I've seen people that I know that have gone on there and just really try to drive it themselves, which is always bad.
00:07:35
It doesn't work, no. There's so many ways for it to go bad that I think there's a stress because it's just not a regular conversation.
00:07:43
One of the things I found out a long time ago about doing one of these late night talk shows or probably any talk show is the trick – people used to say you've got to figure it out.
00:07:53
You've got to figure out who you are. And I used to think, well, that's not the case.
00:07:58
The trick is to figure out who you were all along, be completely yourself but in the most unnatural environment you can imagine.
00:08:09
Because I know you've worked for Ellen and it's lights and it's cameras and audience and you have to get out in six minutes and it has to be on a laugh.
00:08:23
Then you get back into it again. And what I have found is that it took me a while to figure out how to be Conan in that situation where that didn't feel weird and then get to the point where I started hunting for I don't want to hear the prepared story.
00:08:39
Yeah. The prepared story is really good. Great. But I'm always on the hunt for the accident.
00:08:44
Yeah. Or someone sort of mispronounces something. I'll say, wait, what was that?
00:08:48
And then we go down a rabbit hole and that's where the joy is. Yeah. And so if you can do that in that weird situation, that takes a couple of years to get to where you have that confidence.
00:08:59
But the nice thing about this format, and I listen to a lot of podcasts and I really enjoy, there's this ancient thing where someone tells you a story or people are talking and you fill in the rest.
00:09:14
And we're so digitally obsessed that we think you have to see everything while it's happening.
00:09:21
But I now listen to podcasts while I'm lying in bed. And it reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom, there were six kids in our family.
00:09:30
And we were all in different rooms. I was in a room with my two brothers. There were three of us.
00:09:37
And my mom would put on records. And she would put on like a Bob Newhart record.
00:09:41
We would listen to comedy records and we would fall asleep. And it was someone telling a story.
00:09:47
And so just having that in your ear, having something in your ear and you're filling it in is lovely.
00:09:55
Well, and we get that all the time. People saying, you know, you don't know me, but I feel like you guys are my best friends.
00:10:01
And it's because people obviously listen to podcasts when they're working or doing stuff they don't want to do or when they're alone.
00:10:08
So they are having this experience that like whatever the actual experience we had when we were recording it, they're having this then third party experience.
00:10:16
It's kind of like filling up a part of their day that either they used to dread like it's a commute or it's work where it's making work better.
00:10:23
And it's like we get all this credit, you know, when people like it so much. And it's also like you've made my commute go by so fast or whatever.
00:10:30
It's like we're just benefiting from the byproduct of people being able to be in their head.
00:10:35
And it's not a visual medium. Well, I also think that you're making connections with people.
00:10:41
And I'm sure you've seen this. I'm sure you've done live shows. Yeah. And you see when you do a live show, people come and they have this connection to you too, which is might flip you out.
00:10:53
But they've been building that connection because it's extremely intimate when someone's talking to you.
00:11:00
And they're listening to you sometimes in intimate situations like people are lying in bed or in their car alone.
00:11:07
And I do think that there's something, there's a reason why podcasts, they may not, you know, more people may watch the Grammys, but their connection to it is not that deep.
00:11:24
Right. Whereas people that connect to what you're doing and how you're talking and what you're talking about, it's this mind shaft that goes really deep, much deeper than other kinds of entertainment.
00:11:37
I think that's what's really cool about this. Yeah. Yeah. I think that when they say, I feel like I know you or you're my best friend, it's like if we're doing it right, then you totally know us.
00:11:45
You know everything about me. Well, when I listen to you, I feel like I know both of you and I'm very angry at you.
00:11:51
That makes sense. You're two very good friends who betrayed me. Who will not let you talk No matter what you say I keep talking When I listen to you guys I keep talking and you not talking back We rude And then I become enraged
00:12:05
Sure. Which is what we're like in real life. Yeah. I actually used to have that where I was – there's a couple podcasts I was obsessed with in the beginning, and I would fall asleep listening to them and then have dreams where I was standing at a party, and the people who hosted the podcast would be talking, and I'd keep going, yeah, but –
00:12:21
And like literally trying to break into a conversation for the entire dream. That's when you're like, I need a podcast.
00:12:27
Here's what happened when I listen to a podcast when I fall asleep. When I wake up, I realize I fell asleep during the podcast, which is fine because you want to go to sleep.
00:12:35
But then I have to go back and find out around where I lost consciousness. Yes, exactly.
00:12:40
And that's really hard because I'm like, wait a minute. I think I remember this part.
00:12:43
I got to go further back. It's all slightly familiar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sleep timer, man.
00:12:48
That sleep timer function. Oh. Then you know you went a half hour back. Let me give you some technical.
00:12:53
Let me tell you guys real quick. This is where the tips part rolls out. You're like the Spock of this enterprise.
00:12:59
I have bad insomnia, so I sleep with, yeah, always podcasts in my ear constantly.
00:13:04
Nice murder stories. Murder stories. Well, that's my jam. Let's hear it. That's crazy.
00:13:11
Lifelong? Well, okay. Let me tell you something about, I have had a, and everyone knows this about me.
00:13:18
When I told friends that I was coming on this podcast, they laughed because not derisively, they just laughed that it's the perfect place for me to go because my entire life I've been fascinated with murder and very morbid.
00:13:35
It started with the Lincoln assassination. Whoa. And I was four. You were there?
00:13:41
I was there. Yes. I know I'm older than you ladies. But yes. That play was amazing.
00:13:48
I was born in 1858. I was a child usher at Ford's Theater. But yeah, I was, I was, I remember we took a, a child, my, my dad got us all to pile into the station wagon and we drove to Washington DC and he wanted us to see all the sites.
00:14:05
And I would have been, I think six maybe. And we visited Ford's Theater and I was just, I couldn't believe that someone got shot there, let alone the president of the United States.
00:14:17
And then we went downstairs and they showed you could see the gun and they have the bullet at the basement of Ford's Theater.
00:14:25
And then we went across the street to the Peterson house where they have the bed.
00:14:29
And I was transfixed and just read books about the Lincoln assassination as a child over and over and over again.
00:14:38
and then in my family they make fun of me my brothers make fun of me because i always like my
00:14:46
we visited hawaii and the big island and there was some big battle that took place
00:14:52
uh there and they i was not paying attention and we're up on a mountain and i'm not paying
00:14:59
attention and the guide said some say to this day if you look closely enough you can see the bleached
00:15:04
bones of the Hawaiian warriors. And I ran and leapt and leaned way over the railing. And my dad
00:15:10
had to catch my belt so I didn't fall like 500 feet. My brother Luke was there. And he was just,
00:15:15
he, so everyone's always known that I've been an incredible freak for murder. And I was embarrassed
00:15:24
about it for a while because I know so much about so many different murders. And when people
00:15:30
start to talk casually about a murder I know something about. And I start to say, well,
00:15:37
it was the knife had a copper hilt. Come on. And it's interesting. The blood type was B.
00:15:45
Non-secretor. You know, whatever. And they, it's gotten to the point where I just finished a tour,
00:15:51
an 18 city tour. And in every city, if you look hard enough at the right time of night,
00:15:58
you will find forensic files. Oh, yes. And what I love is that forensic files, and what I loved is that I was in one hotel where they had a channel that was just yoga,
00:16:07
and it was this beautiful woman wearing super tight Lululemon doing yoga. And I was like, uh-huh, where's forensic files?
00:16:15
And then I find forensic files, and they always pretty much tell you who the creep is who did it,
00:16:20
but then he has a, quote, alibi. Yeah, yeah. And then they basically, they tail him for a while and they get his DNA.
00:16:29
And then they trap him and then it's him at the end crying. Yeah. And that voiceover guy is the most, I used to know his name offhand.
00:16:40
Sure. The worst though is that it's so dated, which I love dated crime shows, because there's so many of those forensic, the shit they used back then.
00:16:50
Let's watch the language. Excuse me. This is primarily a show for children. My young daughter is listening to this right now.
00:16:57
Oh, no. Shit. Fuck. She listens to everything. God damn it. Penis. Vagina. Those aren't bad words.
00:17:06
They're not bad words, but they're not words used in my house. Oh, okay. Got it.
00:17:09
They're bad to the Catholics. You guys are units. No one's allowed to identify their genitalia in my home.
00:17:14
Please don't. I mean, what is more fun than identifying your genitalia, though, around your house?
00:17:19
There it is. Yeah. Oh, everything's dated. Hair samples and all this bullshit. It's all really dated.
00:17:26
All the stuff that doesn't hold up in court anymore. Right. All the stuff that they find.
00:17:30
And always it's an acid wash jacket. His flock of seagulls acid wash jacket left a trace.
00:17:38
And so, yes, it's very late 80s, sometimes early 90s. Also, those repetitive, if they can get a reenactment where a young woman is wearing a red bra, they'll show that thing four times.
00:17:50
It's just like, oh, no. And that's like someone trying to fend off a knife. They don really do that anymore They gotten Everyone gotten a little more hip too They got a little woke How disgusting that is Yeah Exploitive I do think one of my all time favorite shows it was Autopsy on HBO
00:18:06
Yeah. And my only problem with that show is that they didn't make enough of them. They clearly
00:18:11
started to run out. So when I had the late night show on NBC, I was so obsessed with that show that
00:18:16
I got the forensic pathologist from that show. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got him on the show.
00:18:23
and all he did was tell jokes the whole time. I mean, I got him there because I'm a huge fan of,
00:18:29
I love that show and it was so graphic and it showed you the autopsies and the photos
00:18:34
and explained how it happened. So I got him on the show and he told autopsy jokes.
00:18:39
No. Like forensic jokes the whole time and they were really dirty forensic jokes.
00:18:43
No, they weren't like forensic dad jokes or anything like that. Well, one of them, I actually remember,
00:18:48
you can edit it out if it's too much, but he was talking about, But they were doing an – once a forensic pathologist was doing an autopsy on a man, they removed the sheet.
00:19:00
And the man, the body had a giant penis. And he said to this female assistant, well, that penis reminds me of mine.
00:19:08
And she said – the female pathologist said, wait, it reminds you of yours? Is yours that big?
00:19:13
And he said, no, but it's dead and lifeless. And I was just like – And then you burst into tears.
00:19:19
No, no, I was just like, no, I'm here to find out about murder, not to hear. But he clearly thought, oh, I'm on Conan.
00:19:25
I better load up the old pathology dick jokes. I better do the thing I'm not good at on TV and ignore the thing that I am.
00:19:33
That's a great show, though. That's amazing. It's really graphic, though, and you don't like the crime scene photos and the graphic stuff.
00:19:40
Me? Right? Well, I don't like, I'll watch a TV show of it because I can just kind of turn away,
00:19:46
and then when I turn back, other stuff is happening. but I won't look up a crime scene photo just to stare at mangled bodies.
00:19:53
Yeah, I can understand that. It just kind of sticks in my head, so I don't like it.
00:19:56
Me too, but I fucking can't help myself. Again, with the language, please. You're just going to have to keep saying it, because that's how she does it.
00:20:03
This is her podcast. Part of my deal is that all of these air on Nickelodeon the next day.
00:20:08
Oh. Yeah. You know you're not allowed to have a podcast if you don't curse in it.
00:20:12
I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, all of them. Getting laundry clean. Oprah, you know.
00:20:18
All of us. Super Soul Sunday is filthy. Yeah. Super fucking Soul Sunday was the original.
00:20:24
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the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA.
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00:23:30
Goodbye. It is funny how what I've said to my people, this is how much I'm into it.
00:23:39
My wife found a company recently. We have this door that's always blowing open that leads to our backyard.
00:23:45
And so she went to get, you know, we had a doorstop that wasn't very good. she just happened upon a company that makes big wooden blocks that hold the door in place and you can print anything you need.
00:24:00
want. Now, she's my wife of 16 years. So you think it'd be like, I love you or Conan rules
00:24:05
or something like that. For me, for my birthday, it says murder. Because she knows I'm obsessed
00:24:14
with murder. And so people come in, my head writer for the first time, he's been to the
00:24:18
house before, but he hasn't seen this block. And he just held it up and went, what the fuck?
00:24:23
It says murder. And that's one of my obsessions. I just feel like when you, you know, knock on wood someday die, she's going to be suspected based on that brick alone.
00:24:34
Well, the other thing I've always said is I love murder so much that my goal is to either murder or be murdered.
00:24:43
Great. And people, I've said that to people and they're like, don't say that. And I'm like, no, no, no.
00:24:48
I really either want to murder or I wish to be a murder victim. But I'm so into it that being a murder victim would feel like, oh, I'm part of this whole cool thing.
00:24:58
Well, yeah, you've studied so long and you've put so much work into it. I would know how to lie on my shag carpet just the right way.
00:25:06
Oh, okay. I've really put a lot of thought into it. You have a shag carpet? Yeah.
00:25:10
Nice. Well, just because all murders happen on shag carpets. Yeah, that's right.
00:25:14
You have to be wearing a red bra, too. That helps. Trust me. Don't even. I'm wearing a red bra now, yeah.
00:25:20
Don't ask about the panties. But I, yeah, I just have always been fascinated with it.
00:25:26
Well, we brought you here tonight, too. It's the game we play on the show now called Kill Us and then we'll kill you.
00:25:31
Kill or be killed. Do you think growing up in Boston had anything to do with that, with your Whitey Bulgers and the people that were around in that culture?
00:25:42
I'll tell you, Whitey Bulger did not influence me at all. I was not really that aware growing up in the late 60s and 70s.
00:25:52
I wasn't that aware of Whitey Bulger. I was very aware of the Boston Strangler. And I heard a lot about the Boston Strangler.
00:26:00
And one of the detectives who worked the case apparently lived sort of in our neighborhood down the street.
00:26:07
And my mom would talk about him working on the case. And all I knew about that case, because obviously it was not a case that was appropriate for a kid to be reading about, but I was always interested in it and I always felt intuitively dissatisfied with the result of that case.
00:26:27
Yeah. And then later on, when I read about the case, it does not have the resolution that gives you satisfaction.
00:26:36
No. and so it's always in my mind and all of those murders happened around the time
00:26:43
probably short maybe shortly before i'm born i'm born in april of 63 in boston but they all happen
00:26:51
in the areas where my my families my mother and father are living in belmont and then they moved to brookline but it's all very close to where we were and the ones that
00:27:04
intrigue me are always the ones where i think you know what i don't know what the answer is
00:27:08
yeah we don't and i think there was a little bit of a sense in boston like well we arrested
00:27:14
somebody they stopped he dies in prison so we're done yeah and you think i don't know if that would
00:27:20
hold up today with today's forensic pathology i don't know they found dna on that matched him on
00:27:27
eventually on one of the victims but you know there's however many eight other victims that
00:27:33
don't have a dna match i think you can't just blame all of them on him well and also i feel
00:27:40
like definitely back then there was so little oversight that any cop could go put any dna
00:27:47
anywhere they wanted because i think that was one of those things of like like comic book style of
00:27:51
like we got to close this case the pressure's mounting you know what i mean like in those
00:27:54
those murders especially were so uh graphically horrible and like even hearing a little bit about
00:28:01
the details of those cases just like old women splayed it's disgusting and horrifying it's like
00:28:08
end it and we're not talking about it i think the other thing too is now there's this sophistication
00:28:13
about um you know crimes that involve only women there's this sophistication about um
00:28:21
male rage male inadequacy and how it's manifests itself with women and there were certain things
00:28:31
that whoever the Boston Strangler was was doing to these victims, which was meant to humiliate them as women.
00:28:38
And so clearly you're dealing with someone who's got incredible gender stuff they're dealing with.
00:28:45
And today I think they'll be much more sophisticated about it. But if you look at black and white photos of – I mean so many crimes back then.
00:28:55
You see these sort of big, heavy, working class guys in heavy coats with guns strapped to their hips.
00:29:04
And they're nine to five guys. And this is freaky. This is not – this is way above what anyone can imagine.
00:29:13
Well, they're still human beings. So like no matter how grizzled a detective you are, you know, a lot of those cases that are like the really high profile ones like Richard Speck or whatever, whereas like the guys, they immediately call in the guys that have the most experience and people are walking into that apartment building in Chicago, walking out and vomiting.
00:29:31
And they're just coming in and out like as if they're being told to do it because it's that there are levels and limits to even what an experienced detective has experienced.
00:29:41
and those people were seeing things they'd never seen ever. I just feel like in the modern era, they've broken it down so that, literally, scientists
00:29:54
go in and they looking at things They not looking at the whole picture they just there to see i here just to look at you know what dna evidence is on the scene well i here to look at
00:30:09
what the gun splatter is what the blood splatter is you know and i'm here to look at and so
00:30:14
because they've been able to break it up into different categories it might be more tolerable
00:30:21
for people i mean i don't know when there's that a school shooting like sandy hook and then you
00:30:27
think human beings had to go in there yeah and i i don't know how they can i don't know how you can
00:30:37
do that um and my i have incredible respect for people that could do that yeah i just think it's
00:30:44
absolutely and how do you do that and i would if i had to do that i would retire immediately
00:30:49
afterwards. A hundred percent. You know, I would just say, okay, I saw that and now I'm no longer able to do this for a
00:30:56
living. Because those are also the, like those cases are the extremes of the business.
00:31:03
You know what I mean? It's not like, thank God those aren't as common. I mean, that's becoming less and less true.
00:31:09
But I think especially for the, I mean, some of those cases from the 60s or whatever, the
00:31:14
cops went in with members of the press. Like there was not only no taped off crime scene and please be careful where you walk.
00:31:21
It was everybody come on through and take a look and let's just see what happens.
00:31:26
Like the more recent advancement of all this forensic stuff is like it basically is kind of it's opening all those doors.
00:31:35
And then at the same time, it's kind of like making people realize how wrong it's been.
00:31:40
Like it used to be if a guy went in and was there at the crime scene for the Boston Strangler, he would see something horrible and be like, no one's talking about this.
00:31:48
Do not take pictures. Like he would be making decisions as a human being that were very bad for crime solving.
00:31:55
You know what I mean? And thinking he was doing the right thing because this is a human being.
00:31:59
And you know what I mean? Like that's he was doing what he thought was best. And now we only now we know with like the advancement of technology that like, no, no, no, nobody comes in, but we have to talk about it.
00:32:10
And it has to be brought to the light of day because people need to know that this is a possibility.
00:32:15
I mean, I think that's why, especially these days, true crime is more and more people are going, yes, I am interested in this because I felt like I was a ghoul before when nobody seemed to be interested in it.
00:32:27
And now I can say it now that it's like, quote, unquote, a trend. I think there's a thing where it is comforting to know that there are just people that are interested in this.
00:32:35
What makes somebody, as someone who was raised Catholic and I think with a really good moral compass,
00:32:41
I've always been fascinated by why would someone do the worst thing that you could possibly do?
00:32:49
So surprising. Why would someone do that? And then I found myself just getting immersed in McDonald's, like the Green Beret.
00:32:58
Like, what really happened there? What made him, I don't see it. When someone, quote, snaps, and it was just in the news recently where someone kills his pregnant wife.
00:33:13
And it was three children and two children. Yeah, two children. And, you know, you can't help.
00:33:22
I can't help but think as a dad, I don't understand what gets you there. I don't understand. I've been annoyed, but I don't understand what gets you there. That's beyond. And we're used to thinking, well, we're pretty smart. We can understand things. But what it's why of all the murder cases and I've read I think I've read about so many murder cases.
00:33:48
the one i've got a few that i'm really fascinated with one i've never understood is the john benet
00:33:55
ramsey i don't understand it i've read a lot about it no explanation makes sense to me yeah
00:34:02
even the one i've the answer i've settled on that i think a lot of us have of you know what is your
00:34:07
answer uh an accidental you know fatal blow by the brother and the parents helped cover it up to
00:34:15
not tarnish his entire life their own name all this bullshit even that is like kind of it's so
00:34:23
far-fetched and like so far out there that a parent that parents would do something like that
00:34:27
to their kid but also i thought she was um wasn't she's she might have been sexually assaulted
00:34:34
before history of it yeah so that nothing makes sense no that one and then it's so tragic all
00:34:40
around because the mom passes away and you know you think um you know just to lose a child and
00:34:50
then if you're if someone is being wrongly accused that's yeah you know what if we're inflicting more
00:34:57
pain just did that so i don't know i just so i i get into this uh but i mean that one has every
00:35:03
piece though because it it's just as likely or like uh you know percentage wise because they
00:35:09
had so much money that they could be covering up and the you know potentially somebody in that
00:35:17
family is like a sociopath so they don't care they're they just want to make sure that their
00:35:22
shit is covered and everything like the decks are clear you're not buying that someone came that
00:35:28
you definitely think it was someone in the house i mean statistically yes the statistics would say
00:35:33
overwhelmingly it's someone in the house yeah yeah and the fact that the dad said let's go
00:35:37
searching and he went down and found her first is very weird. Suspect. And, I mean, this insane ransom note that just has –
00:35:46
But how come they've never been able to match up the handwriting? They matched it to her.
00:35:50
They did? I don't think conclusively, but yeah. But the problem is then it like basically a small police force in Yes Is it Colorado Springs or Boulder It Boulder And it Christmas Day right
00:36:05
So the most inexperienced people went to be the first people on the scene because everyone else was like, I have time.
00:36:13
I'm going to stay home with my family. And they, from minute one, began to botch it.
00:36:19
And then on top of that, there's somebody who potentially – now, it could be entirely victims and some weird thing happened and someone broke in.
00:36:27
But also, it could be that there are people with the money and the resources to begin to cover things up and do things that you or I wouldn't do.
00:36:34
Like invite all their friends over when the ransom note says, do not call the cops, don't tell anyone.
00:36:38
They invite all their friends over, which we know when someone kills someone, they want someone else to find the body.
00:36:45
Right. So he's leading them around the house and they're not finding her body where he hid it.
00:36:50
Right. Finally, he stumbles upon it himself. The other thing about murder, which we've learned like a billion times, is how money affects it, how much it is about class.
00:37:04
Yes. So and this is clearly like a legitimate source of anger for, you know, members of the, you know, American population that don't have money or they're a certain race and they feel like no one cares.
00:37:19
You know, 35 of us could get killed and no one cares. And then a rich white person is murdered.
00:37:26
and what happens is um you know ironically many people think it happened in the oj case where
00:37:33
because he was a celebrity yeah he's african-american but he's a celebrity and so because
00:37:38
he's a celebrity they showed him so much deference and they cut the interview off when they finally
00:37:45
did get him and with a little pressure he might have said more but they they clearly cut that
00:37:50
interview off and i think it is very common when people come into a house and a big house and a
00:37:55
fancy house and someone who has status is saying being polite to them they show them deference
00:38:02
yeah yeah and uh then you get you don't get the same result as if you know law enforcement was
00:38:11
going in and saying hey wait a minute we're going to assume 95 percent of homicides that happen in
00:38:18
a home the person was killed by someone in the home so we are going to treat everybody that way
00:38:23
until we get the answer. That probably doesn't happen if they're rolling in a rich neighborhood.
00:38:29
I think it's an automatic bias that they call them high-risk victims. And it's almost like when you call them high-risk,
00:38:41
it's like you deserve it a little more, and it's more likely to happen to you, so we're going to care a little less about it.
00:38:48
You brought it on yourself. I mean, we learned that lesson because liking true crime for so long, I never put it together or realized it.
00:38:56
But it's like these true crime cases I was interested in are the ones that have been served up.
00:39:01
So it's like your John Wayne Gacy's and your Ed Gein's and your Boston Strangler's and all these ones.
00:39:06
But then as you look at it, you're like, oh, but you can go in and find just as many people.
00:39:12
Like the Grim Sleeper was active in like South Central for over 20 years. He just killed women whenever he wanted, however he wanted.
00:39:22
People in the neighborhood knew. Everybody knew. It's such a huge case that we've never covered it because it would take so much research for a 20-year serial killer.
00:39:30
Right. When most of them work for like five max. And if he's operating in Brentwood, California.
00:39:36
And blonde ladies were disappearing. It would be a totally different story. But this is like, it's things like that where I had no awareness of it until we start telling these stories and then realizing these are the stories that get brought.
00:39:48
That the media knows if it's a blonde little girl that gets murdered, people will buy more newspapers.
00:39:55
Or at least that's the story they tell us and themselves. And so that's the way things get prioritized.
00:40:01
And the story of the Grim Sleepers, it's about police complacency and negligence.
00:40:07
It's not about this serial killer. I mean, it is, but it's about victims mattering or not mattering.
00:40:15
You know, it's funny because this brings up one of the tropes I've noticed most about any murder show, whether it could be Forensic Files, it could be American Justice, it could be a Dateline.
00:40:30
All of these shows begin the same way. They had the perfect life. And I've noticed this over and over again.
00:40:37
they always describe these people as having the perfect life then they'll go on and describe the
00:40:42
life and a lot of times you'll think well wait a minute um they had the perfect life he was you
00:40:49
know a successful biology teacher you know she was a stay-at-home mom they had a small lake house
00:40:55
they had it all you know but lurking behind the american dream was american tragedy and i think
00:41:03
they love to set it up as they had it all and i think americans and probably this probably is
00:41:10
worldwide or it may be unique to america we love to think that this person quote had it all
00:41:18
and the shorthand for that i think a lot of times is that you know there's this white couple
00:41:27
that owned three cars and a boat and they lived in a house with more than three bathrooms in it
00:41:36
they had it all and that shows no understanding of mental illness right um just you know
00:41:45
domestic abuse domestic abuse a substance abuse it shows no understanding of any of that and so
00:41:52
they love to start with that and someone could literally be almost homeless and these shows will say they had it all He had a sterno can and he had a hot dog and he had one shoe
00:42:07
He was living the American dream. Because he had three cars. Right. Everyone thought he slept in three cars he didn't own.
00:42:13
But then it all went sour when he strangled someone. Well, okay. You know, to me, that is the trope they keep handing us over and over again and that we seem to love.
00:42:28
And I think it's why the JonBenet case is huge, why initially, you know, there was so much schadenfreude with the Sharon Tate murders at first.
00:42:41
because everyone thought, well, this beautiful movie star and the wife of this great director, Roman Polanski,
00:42:51
and this hairstylist to the stars and these rich people are all butchered. So it must be their fault.
00:43:00
And it must be they had it all, but of course they were having drug-fueled orgies
00:43:05
and a drug dealer paid them back. And it's so heartbreaking to watch the footage of Polanski.
00:43:11
This is when everyone still believed that long before anyone dotted the I's and crossed the T's, which led to Charles Manson and his family.
00:43:19
They're all – he's there saying that was not Sharon. That was not her. She didn't do drugs.
00:43:25
She was pregnant. She was incredibly good. And he's telling them all, and you know the press kind of isn't buying it because they're like, well, yeah, you just did Rosemary's Baby.
00:43:33
You people are sick. Right. And it was a refusal to believe in the sad randomness of it all.
00:43:42
Sorry, but that doesn't sell enough magazines either. The story as they were trying to sell it is the combination of a celebrity magazine and like pulp horror magazine.
00:43:54
It's like it's the perfect story the way they were telling it in that way. Whereas like do you like celebrities that have orgies and do a ton of drugs?
00:44:01
Also, are you interested in murder? well, this has everything, instead of like, this is massive human loss.
00:44:07
I wonder if there's part of it, too, with those people who have everything and get it
00:44:10
taken away, which is why the stories are so good, is that we, you know, kind of love to
00:44:15
see those people get everything, you know, we love to see the downfall, because it makes
00:44:20
us feel better about our not having everything. Oh, certainly. You want to say, there's part of people that want, you know, that want to say, like with
00:44:29
a with a klaus von bulow sunny von bulow okay i may not have what they have and they have so much
00:44:37
but look what that leads to yes so i'm content with with what i have and and that's why i say
00:44:43
it's there's this schadenfreude to you know almost um you know it's it i mean it's ancient
00:44:51
it goes back to one of the most famous murders of all time is caesar and caesar's you know caesar
00:44:58
is one of the most famous conquerors of all time and he's stabbed by all of his friends in the
00:45:06
senate and stabbed by one of his best friends and dies and it's like one of the most it's a very well
00:45:13
considering that it happened almost 2 000 years ago it's such a well-documented murder and it
00:45:21
really was well look out for you know if you fly that high yeah and you try and become too powerful
00:45:28
oh, that's what happens, there's almost a comfort that I think people take from it.
00:45:33
Yeah, then you're sitting on your little plaid couch and you're watching a special on it
00:45:38
and you're like, I'm fine. I don't want to fly that high. I'm good. I cannot have a plaid couch.
00:45:42
I would never have a plaid couch. Listen, it matches your shag carpeting and you know it.
00:45:46
If you have a plaid couch out there, I will murder you. Come and I will murder you.
00:45:50
But you're less likely statistically to be murdered if you own a plaid couch. Did you know that?
00:45:54
Is that true? No, but what if it was? That'd be the best. I wonder if there's...
00:45:58
Can I say, if I was a celebrity and, you know, an affable – And you are. Let's say I'm an affable celebrity.
00:46:04
Okay, let's go with that. And I start just murdering on a massive scale. Does that put me on – that puts me in the books, doesn't it?
00:46:12
Some kind of record book? Do you want to be in that record book? No, I don't want to be or do not.
00:46:18
How many bodies are there? Just like the police are like – They're putting up pictures of me and they're like, this is Conan.
00:46:26
We all know who he is. This is not a joke. He's out there. We think he's headed to Topeka.
00:46:30
Nope, he's headed north, and I'm just going on a spree. What about instead if you just start showing up to crime scenes before the cops get there?
00:46:37
Let's pretend you have a scanner and it works. Oh, I have a scanner. Leave some of your hair at the crime scene so they can tie you to it.
00:46:45
Trust me, my hair is everywhere. I have a lot of it, and I leave it everywhere. You know, I have another theory alongside your Schadenfreude theory.
00:46:54
and mine is because this is just my personal interest aspect is um i want to i want to see
00:47:02
it's scooby-doo i will call it the scooby-doo theory okay is i want to see the monster among us
00:47:07
unmasked so like on those date lines when it turns out to be the doctor husband who is there
00:47:12
on dateline to tell you he didn't do it with his weird dead eyes and his lack of affect in any way
00:47:17
and you're like it's clearly him like you're getting weird cold chills through the tv because
00:47:22
you can tell this person is not right. And they are a socio or psychopath, we could debate the
00:47:29
term that's supposed to be used, but they clearly don't, they think they're smarter than everybody.
00:47:33
So they know it's fine that they go on this TV show because they're going to dictate reality.
00:47:38
And that's the life they've always lived. To me, that's the most fascinating one. And that's
00:47:42
sometimes why I am cheering for it to be this person that, oh, that's so sad if he's being
00:47:48
maligned, but also it would be amazing if it's him because the double life, leading a double life and
00:47:54
the second life being you being a total monster, I think is so fascinating. So for example,
00:48:00
Jeffrey McDonald, the Green Beret, you guys are both like, he did that. I think so.
00:48:05
Yeah. They've come out a million times different ways that he didn't do it. And I think, no, I don't understand it.
00:48:12
Right. I honestly don't understand it. I don't understand what gets you to killing your wife and children like that.
00:48:20
I mean, but we see it all the time. It's really simple. It's these people. You know, it's the thing of like.
00:48:25
You think it's just they're too tightly wound and then they snap? No, and I think actually the word – I think that we call it snapping, but it's not fair to the victims who would testify that, no, he was always this narcissist.
00:48:35
He was always controlling. It wasn't him snapping. It was him still having control over people, over his life, and he didn't want to be in this marriage anymore.
00:48:44
He didn't want these kids anymore. He had other fucking ideas and plans and affairs.
00:48:48
You know, this makes me so crazy when so many murders, so many murders are a guy who, yeah, you know, I met this girl at the bank and she's really hot.
00:49:02
And I've got this wife and kids. And, well, only one thing to do. Yeah. Murder them all.
00:49:09
And I think, wait a minute, I have another idea. You go to your wife and you say, we got a problem.
00:49:16
Yeah. And you go through a messy divorce. And I know that that's terrible for me to say.
00:49:22
But guess what? It's so much better than I'm going to commit murder and 20% chance I get away with it.
00:49:30
That's why I don't think it's snapping. I don't think it's snapping. I think that person in his entire life has done what he wants and does what he needs to get his way.
00:49:38
So it's the thing that you and I can't believe because we're not like that. Or I'm pretending not to be honest.
00:49:43
Right. You're doing great. Oh, yeah, that's right. But you're eventually going to reveal.
00:49:47
Listen, I am very good at putting on the affect of someone who really understands what you're saying and is appalled.
00:49:54
It's the hand gestures that work for me. But I am using these hand gestures that show that I'm a creep.
00:50:00
Everyone was going to say we would have never suspected Conan. Listen, is it possible that I came on this podcast to talk in depth and sensitive way about murder to use that as evidence later on when I murder?
00:50:15
Yes. And you two will come in and you'll be like, no, no, no, no. He talked in a very sensitive way about murder.
00:50:22
No. Or did he? Or did he? Your Honor, I want to go on the record. I always thought he was a creep.
00:50:26
I think he fucking did it. I will testify against you immediately. I'll flip. As a sociopath, I think you're both in love with me.
00:50:34
Yeah. And you won't flip on me. There's a murder case that I became enthralled with and I actually took it to the next level,
00:50:44
which was when I was a writer on Saturday Night Live, there was this America's Most Wanted that came out.
00:50:52
And it was for John List. Yes. And John List. The best. Famously, John List is this guy who had, I think, probably a problematic marriage.
00:51:03
He had all these kids. He was very sort of fundamentalist, orthodox, religious. and he really, he bought this massive mansion in New Jersey
00:51:16
and couldn't really afford it, then lost his job. He's having trouble. He's worried that his daughter is becoming sexually active.
00:51:23
He's worried about his kids and losing control of his family. He pretends to go to work every day.
00:51:28
This is the part that's so eerie. He gets up every morning, he's lost his job, but he goes to the train station and he eats a sandwich and reads books
00:51:37
and then comes home at night after his, quote, long, hard day of work. And the whole time he's doing it, no money's coming in, the debt's rising,
00:51:45
and he starts to think of this plan. So what he does is he gets a gun, and then he starts his morning by getting up,
00:51:56
killing his mother, who lived in, I think, on the attic, kills his wife, then waits one by one for his kids to come home and kills them all,
00:52:04
shoots them and then drags all the bodies in the living room drives to the airport i think he drives
00:52:09
to jfk airport takes off this is before there are like digital records of where you're going and you
00:52:15
don't need to show an id and real casual airport time this is back yeah long in the old days good
00:52:21
old days when a murderer could really leave space and he leaves and it's such a creepy story because
00:52:28
nobody knows he had written notes to the school saying i'm taking the kids out of school
00:52:32
so slowly it's getting closer and closer to christmas the lights start to go out in the
00:52:39
house because they burn out and people notice it and then finally policemen are called they break
00:52:46
in and the eeriest thing is that there was a sound system in this big mansion that was playing sort
00:52:52
of like imagine bach kind of funereal weird you know not weird but creepy to hear at night
00:53:00
orchestral funereal music and the cops break in and it's dark in there and they hear this music
00:53:06
and they come in and they see all the bodies lined up he's nowhere to be found so um america's most
00:53:14
wanted does a uh they do like a sculpture of what he would look like today it turns out to be very
00:53:21
accurate someone sees it and says that's my neighbor they arrest him he has married again
00:53:28
And this is 20 some odd years later, maybe 25 years later. He married again. He was starting to have trouble with her.
00:53:37
As they will. They arrest him. He denies it until they see these identifying scars.
00:53:42
So they put him on trial in New Jersey. I'm a writer on Saturday Night Live. And I hear about this and I'm just electrified by this story.
00:53:51
So in my downtime at SNL I start driving to the courthouse No Yes Are you serious There no downtime at SNL Yes there is actually it called summer wait a second were you pretending to have a job at snl and you leave every morning and go
00:54:06
to the courthouse and eat your sandwich there yes exactly and then i would come back and my
00:54:10
girlfriend at the time was like there's no money coming in from snl and i was like no it's over
00:54:15
for you and then she killed me because i'm stronger um but uh no i went to the trial and i
00:54:22
Because I was staring at this guy and I was looking at John List and I was staring at this guy and I'm trying to see the evil.
00:54:31
You want to see it. I want to see it. And you know what? Completely uninteresting.
00:54:34
Yeah. A schlub. A guy who, I mean, I don't – there was no there there. Yeah. There was nothing there that satisfied me.
00:54:44
And so I watched the trial for a bit and he just sat there and then proceeded to be found obviously guilty of this, you know, multiple murder.
00:54:54
There's no death penalty. So he's sentenced to life in prison. He later dies, but he gives a lot of interviews afterwards.
00:55:00
And he just says, you know, I'll see them in heaven and we'll all talk it out. He thinks he did them a favor too, right?
00:55:07
His rationale was they're going to go to hell if they keep going the way they're going.
00:55:12
So I'm doing them a favor by murdering them. Yeah. But that was just I mean, and I and I also drove to the site of the house, which had burned down after the murders.
00:55:26
No one I don't think would live in the house. So it burned down because kids just used to break into it.
00:55:31
So it burned down and they built a new house there. So I went to the site of the and this is before you could Wikipedia stuff.
00:55:40
this is before you could use google maps i like found where the house was so i'm a creep
00:55:46
tell the addendum that i was gonna say and this i think this is the uh the lifeblood of being
00:55:55
interested in stuff like this it's almost like we know these secret dirty stories and there's only
00:56:00
a handful of us that want to talk about it right so that when we're talking it's just like the
00:56:05
entire time it was so hard not to basically sing it along with you because it's like i did this
00:56:11
story on our podcast i know every word he's saying oh and you know it's the the great oh henry irony
00:56:16
the tiffany yes so he's in debt that's it can't out murder us and there's a well i'm doing pretty
00:56:26
well i mean you didn't go to the court there's this yeah hey guess what i didn't see you guys
00:56:30
there hey but um yeah there was a tiffany original tiffany skylight which if he had known that
00:56:38
he could have sold it and been out of debt yes uh and and actually uh you know more than out of debt
00:56:46
he would have had a he would have had a nice profit if that wasn't a script they'd be like
00:56:50
you have to take that part out it's too cheesy it's too simple what they would do is at the end
00:56:54
they would just have at the end of the story they would have everyone's cleaning up the crime scene
00:56:59
I mean, that's interesting. What's up, bub? What are you doing? Oh, that skylight.
00:57:03
So what? Big deal. Well, that's Tiffany. Yeah? So what are you saying? That's worth over $140,000.
00:57:09
Really? Well, he owed $20,000. That's why he killed everyone. Yeah. Real shame. Slow pan up to the ceiling.
00:57:18
Pan up through the skylight. The Bach song. To heaven. This is what I love, though, about he was this boring guy who you couldn't see the evil in him,
00:57:26
which I love. I'll be at a grocery store or like a party and lean to my husband who is not into murder at all and be like, who here do you think killed someone?
00:57:34
Because chances are, if in a room of 100 people, someone fucking killed someone once.
00:57:38
Which random person that looks totally normal do you think it is? And it's just like, I don't know, it's like electrifying to me that that's right.
00:57:45
That's what that's really what humanity looks like. What if that person is your husband?
00:57:49
He is the last person anyone would suspect, too. Which means he did it. Mr. Cool and nice.
00:57:56
yeah murderer that's the way i would play it casual hands i'm just saying there's some serious
00:58:03
casual hands who won't kill lincoln one of the most acclaimed actors of our day john wilkes booth
00:58:08
let him into the box he'll be okay that's like if george clooney shot the president and then ran
00:58:14
away yeah uh so i mean i think it's terrifying to us that you know that uh these people can
00:58:25
seem so normal you know and and then later on you're looking for this reason everyone's looking
00:58:32
for this chip and they never get it like no but what's the ingredient and there isn't one
00:58:40
there's no one little thing that you can identify that shows up on a cat scan yep you got that
00:58:47
you're a murderer except if you hit your head as a kid a lot it's very common we don't know he wasn't
00:58:57
we don't know I trailed him for a while in the 70s I did see some suspicious activity
00:59:03
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01:00:59
whether or not it's of interest of you, I'm not sure, but people who listen to our podcast
01:01:04
have decided to call themselves murderinos, which is actually a word that was taken from The Simpsons.
01:01:10
Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. Somebody saw it in, I think it's a Halloween episode
01:01:14
of The Simpsons. Ned Flanders comes over and he's like, I was going to say, it has to be Ned Flanders
01:01:19
Because he adds Enos to everything. Yeah. And so they call themselves that. I'm just saying it seems to be fateful.
01:01:28
That's true. That you are actually one. There would be, of the Simpsons writers that I knew back in the day, I haven't written there in a long time, there would be a number of them that would be murderophiles.
01:01:40
And when you're in a writer's room, as you know, you're constantly looking for, can we talk about something other than the script we're supposed to be breaking?
01:01:49
yes can we please so if someone brings up a murder and people have theories that will take
01:01:55
precedence over how do we get bart out of this ice cream shop it's way way more interesting to
01:02:01
talk about all i want to talk about is theory like all i want to talk about is cold cases
01:02:05
and theories and i don't i want to hear everyone's theory i don't think i'm right ever it's just the
01:02:10
most fun conversation to me especially because nobody wants to have it with you except a few
01:02:14
of your select friends and people you know there was a good i mean um i was obsessed with the jfk
01:02:20
assassination as a long time as a kid and then um this book was written called case closed
01:02:28
uh and i'll think of the author in a second but it came out in 1993 and it did me such a favor
01:02:35
because I read it and it's so logical. And when you read it, and this is going to get people angry
01:02:48
because you cannot reason with conspiracy theories. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you read it and it shows you, case closed,
01:02:59
oh, there could only be one answer. there is one answer which is lee harvey oswald he worked in the book depository before there was
01:03:10
even a plan to go to texas before there was any itinerary and conspiracy theorists are so weak
01:03:17
well that's because 800 people in the pentagon got him into the no they did no they didn't he's
01:03:22
he's a violent person uh he buys a rifle he had a history of trying to kill uh you know a right wing
01:03:30
a political leader and um he has a history of being this erratic troubled person and
01:03:39
you know a goes to b goes to c and it's not super hard shooting as everyone says it is and so that's
01:03:48
going to get a lot of people saying well wait a minute you've been fooled by the establishment
01:03:52
everything but i don't know pose um what's his name i think his name is uh posen just wrote this
01:03:59
great book called case close and if you read it and he says in the beginning i wanted to
01:04:05
crack this and find the murder because then i'd be really rich and famous and the conclusion i came to against what i wanted to find was that there's no other explanation
01:04:18
what do you think is like is scarier or more like earth shattering to you that it's just this one
01:04:23
fucking little bitch was able to change the trajectory of our entire fucking lives for
01:04:30
generations and generations. We don't want that to be true. It'd be so much better if there was
01:04:36
this insane background, this insane conspiracy, because we just don't want to think that this
01:04:41
fucking asshole was able to do this. History always turns on the slightest little flap of a butterfly's wing. And I think that's
01:04:50
something we are very uncomfortable with yeah very uncomfortable with the idea that
01:04:55
lee harvey oswald with a really crappy rifle no real assassin would buy that rifle with a bad
01:05:02
telescopic sight you know and happens to work that building and oh the president's going by i don't
01:05:09
even think there's no evidence he had animosity towards kennedy it was just an opportunity well
01:05:14
But what's also crazy is there's so many, it makes you realize that, say, if that author is right, or if that really is the ultimate truth, we'll never know.
01:05:23
But because there are so many conspiracy theories, because if you analyze anything, there's always the lady in the polka dot dress somewhere.
01:05:31
There's always not just a red herring, but like an entirely feasible theory that's standing there waiting that anyone can develop.
01:05:39
You know, I have a theory that if you put enough attention on any small event, you can start to – let's take tonight, for example.
01:05:53
I was eating at a restaurant nearby thought I was much closer than I was and I always on time I a punctual person very punctual and I doing your podcast I don want to be rude but I in this restaurant and I
01:06:06
with two friends of mine who work at the show and I thought we were right next door to where we
01:06:11
taped the podcast because I've been here before and we leave and then we're but we're late and so
01:06:16
let's say something of historic significance happened right now with the three of us it was
01:06:22
just yeah exactly wow sociopath but but if you start to break it down i think you killed karen
01:06:32
yeah but no if you start to break it down i'd be like wait a minute conspiracy theorists would say
01:06:37
like conan was 10 minutes late he said he was you know didn't he was late because he didn't realize
01:06:42
how far away earwolf studios was conan's taped at earwolf many times and we know historically he's
01:06:48
always on time and he's you know and like he's on time but wait a minute he's been at earwolf so
01:06:52
then that's the thing and then it's wait a minute you know isn't that weird that and then you start
01:06:59
to break it down like pick 15 random things why did he bring his head writer and his digital guy
01:07:06
that night you wouldn't need them for the podcast what was going on and then you start to go more
01:07:12
into it which is why were you wearing that watch you were a lot of but why that one tonight you can
01:07:17
start to tease apart anything and that is what humans do our brains are very good humans at
01:07:29
finding patterns the only problem is we're really good at finding patterns that aren't there yeah
01:07:33
and that's where a lot of wait a minute there were nine people in dealey plaza with blow blow darts
01:07:41
and mortar shells and 35 different rifles. And I mean, if you look at Oliver Stone's movie,
01:07:50
what he's really kind of positing at the end involves about 750 people. Yes. It goes all the way to the top.
01:07:59
All of whom would be instantly famous and rich if they went on Oprah at any time in the 80s and said,
01:08:05
okay, here's what happened. Any of their children, their spouses, anyone. Anybody.
01:08:11
Deathbed confessions. Deathbed. All of that. Well, however, though, you have to admit Sirhan Sirhan was straight up fucking MS-13 mind control, right?
01:08:20
I don't know. I listened to that. I listened to the podcast on that one. And I think, you know, I mean, I don't buy that.
01:08:33
And he was in the kitchen at the ambassador. he fired the gun and then admitted to it
01:08:40
has a diary that says RFK must die and if they've managed to make a conspiracy theory
01:08:44
out of that which involves him being a robot yes which interestingly involves the plot
01:08:53
of a Frank Sinatra movie almost to the letter you think you'd give a robot a better name
01:08:59
which implicates Frank Sinatra by the way yes that son of a bitch should be going down
01:09:02
fuck that guy let's watch the language please remember Just stop calling out my fucking language.
01:09:09
I think also what's interesting is these days, because of social media, and there's so many,
01:09:14
it's almost like all the conspiracy theorists are together on message boards now, disproving each other.
01:09:19
Because to me, that's what most of all of the true crime talk on any of those kind of websites are now, Reddit or whatever.
01:09:28
It's people going, well, here's this theory, and trying to pass that along. Right.
01:09:32
And people just being like, boom, boom, boom, and having the proof and that here's the yearbook, here's the year, here's the police report.
01:09:39
And there's all these people that are now acting like they work for police departments because they can just go through files and they have the access.
01:09:47
It's fascinating. So it's almost like curtailing some of that. I hope so. I think so.
01:09:52
Because we live in this – it's Occam's razor. The most obvious answer is usually the right one.
01:10:02
and i think we have this need that that's too obvious so there's a reason i you know what's
01:10:12
interesting to me is that the police detectives real season detectives they're usually working
01:10:18
off of probability so they know when uh when uh we've all heard the 911 calls where a husband's
01:10:27
like i just came home my wife i mean i don't understand my wife and that when they get there
01:10:32
they know that now sometimes this is to the detriment of solving the crime but the overwhelming
01:10:40
majority of the time is they're working off of you know what i've done this a thousand times
01:10:45
and so we really need to drill down on this guy first and eliminate him because 85% chance it's this guy and he has a story about a guy dressed as Santa Claus coming down the
01:11:00
chimney with a machine gun and he just got home and he was decided to go and get a hamburger at
01:11:05
three in the morning which he never does um drill down on that guy and work off of statistics first
01:11:13
and I think that's why um seasoned detectives are so good at most of the time I mean we've gotten
01:11:21
past the days of like the as you said earlier like the Lindbergh kidnapping where where the
01:11:28
the police and the press show up at the exact same time and everyone's walking around smoking
01:11:35
cigarettes filming it taking touching everything touching everything and Charles Lindbergh is
01:11:41
saying I'm taking charge of this case and people so respect Charles Lindbergh that they let him
01:11:47
and it's just a mess. Yeah. I also think it's interesting the maybe reversal of that,
01:11:55
which is those experienced detectives that when they come face-to-face with a true psychopath don't recognize it because they're a perfect cloaking animal.
01:12:08
They're like, we don't like him for it. He doesn't make the hair on the back, my neck, stand up, whatever.
01:12:12
Where it comes back down to... It's the Ted Bundy effect. Yes. And then the opposite is that the husband isn't grieving the way that they expect someone
01:12:20
to grieve, and so they look at the husband as the person who did it. He's not crying right.
01:12:27
Well, that's also, I mean, that's disturbing when people have to mourn a certain way or you're a murderer.
01:12:33
Unfortunately, most of the time, those people, and then when you look at the shows later on, it's chilling to see the footage.
01:12:42
When later on, when they've later on confessed and they're doing a life sentence and they finally say, yeah, I did it.
01:12:52
And you go back and you look at them saying, I just want her back. Yeah. I know she's out there.
01:12:56
Steph, if you can hear me, you look at them and you think, how do you do that? How do you do that?
01:13:05
But I feel if you've ever taken a scene class in North Hollywood, you see that acting and you're like, no, no, no, no.
01:13:12
This isn't real. Because no one is that good of an actor unless – Excuse me. I was trained in North Hollywood.
01:13:18
Excuse me. That is why I'm confronting you right now. I took those classes to become a murderer.
01:13:23
To become the murderer that you want to be so badly. They were always saying, don't you want to, do you have a headshot?
01:13:27
I don't need it. I just need to learn how to say, who's Steffi? Come home. Why did you saw?
01:13:33
Who's Steffi? That's not the play we're doing. Why did you file your fingerprints off, too?
01:13:37
That's real creepy. All of this is so odd. It's so creepy. Changing your face into a smooth surface.
01:13:43
I think that's why I hate 911 calls so much is just the acting is so bad. When it's someone that's guilty and pretending, it's just the most cringing, horrifying.
01:13:53
like people don't act like that when they're truly in uh panic right and i but i'm dying to
01:14:01
i'm dying to do a thing of where we play you know three 911 calls of a husband and two of them didn't
01:14:07
do it and one did and can we fucking tell which one didn't do it again about the swearing listen
01:14:11
i'm about to leave and consult with my priest no but i think that would be also here he was
01:14:19
dinner with you he's a head writer he's busy murdering um no that would be chilling because
01:14:25
we'd all get it wrong totally yes and uh and you know i i think i mean imagine being on the jury
01:14:33
of a murder case you would and knowing that it must be so hard because um unless i'm and i'm
01:14:43
guessing if you're in that experience and the person clearly did it but what a responsibility
01:14:48
to have to look at people and say, nope, they're lying. And so I will help you either be put to death or go to life for prison.
01:14:58
And we know it comes down a lot of times to who can afford a good defense attorney.
01:15:03
You know, it's like who has a prosecutor better than the defense attorney? Because that's going to decide it more than did you actually fucking do it?
01:15:10
Excuse me. You're out of control. I really am. I didn't realize that. It's pretty standard, actually.
01:15:14
I didn't realize we're in the Navy. Oh, we are. I am. Very upsetting. I am. This is the podcast enlisting with Karen and Georgia.
01:15:22
We should have told you earlier. If the Marines were in town. Okay. Sorry. He's so mad at you.
01:15:29
I know. I know. I need to. Hold on. I'm going to. I have a little. These oils that help me from fainting I have the vapors I have a little fan Swearing is upsetting Vicious murder Oh my God Knife through the eyes Listen I not You there Yeah I there
01:15:44
I'm there for murder, but I'm sorry. Swearing, I will not have it. Too far. That is not how I raised both of you.
01:15:52
Wait, what? It's another sick fantasy I have. When you told the story of John List and you working on SNL, I thought...
01:16:02
He was a really good gag writer, by the way. He just would come up with stuff so fast.
01:16:07
I thought, in my mind, I began to see a sketch, like one of those fake commercials, of something that had to do with that spinning head.
01:16:17
Because I saw that happen real time on America's Lost Women. They made a three-dimensional wax head.
01:16:22
The clay head. Yeah, the clay head. And it's such a specific visual. You didn't ever do anything with that, did you?
01:16:28
No, I never did anything with that. Maybe someone else did. Okay. I was fascinated by that.
01:16:33
Me too. And then it worked. Yeah. It really worked. They came up with, this is what he should look like.
01:16:38
And a neighbor said, guess what? That's Gary. Yeah. Yeah. That's Gary. That's Gary.
01:16:44
And he's our local murderer. He calls himself Onist. And that's John Liz. That's totally.
01:16:49
That was dumb. I am Onist. It's me. He couldn't be John Liz. No way. Should we do a fucking hooray?
01:16:59
Excuse me. That's actually the name of the segment. We always close the show with a thing that we're really happy about.
01:17:06
Oh, yeah. So we try to do the positive version of just anything to counteract the story.
01:17:11
When we tell two murder stories in a row, then we feel like it's a good idea to kind of mention something that you're stoked about that's not death.
01:17:19
Yeah. Do you think you have one of those? Does anything bring you joy? You can go third.
01:17:23
All right. I'm going to just mention, and this just came to me, but I've got this new podcast.
01:17:29
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. And you can just get it anywhere where podcasts are free and you swipe up.
01:17:36
And there's no murder on this podcast, but it's a lot of fun. And I think you'll enjoy it.
01:17:42
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Available wherever podcasts are free. That was going to be my fucking hooray.
01:17:48
It was your podcast. And also, I try to keep the swearing to a minimum on a podcast.
01:17:52
Good luck with that. Good luck keeping your podcast alive. Guess what? The original name was Conan O'Brien Needs a Fucking Friend.
01:17:59
I think he would have done better. I think you're right. I'd like to say a fucking hurry this week for my favorite new podcast,
01:18:08
Conan O'Brien Has No Friends, which is this funny little thing this guy's doing.
01:18:14
He's short. He's got dark hair. Really? He's the opposite of me. He's the literal opposite of you, cartoon style.
01:18:20
He's Brian Conando, the opposite of Conan O'Brien. Yeah. Wow. That's him, and he just kind of talks.
01:18:25
What's the opposite of Irish Catholic? I mean, he doesn't say a word. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:18:29
To himself. Because I talk a lot. Yeah, he talks to himself. He just mutters, but he's very sexually liberated.
01:18:33
That's right. There's no repression issues. Opposite of me in every single way. I don't know.
01:18:40
I just, I think most humans are good. I'm going to say that seriously. I do think most humans are good.
01:18:46
Most humans don't murder. It's the tiny minority of us that do murder. And I think most people respect human life.
01:18:53
And I think, I mean, that's something. Don't you think that's something we should end on as a positive?
01:18:58
100%. Let's hold on to that. Yes. You know? Sorry. Let's fucking hold on to that because I think that's-
01:19:03
Let's hold on to that fucking- That's fucking right. Wait, what? What does that mean?
01:19:08
I want to say mine this week for real is I just watched yet another cochlear ear implant video where a baby No not the the operation happening oh the baby for the first time hears its mother voice right i telling you you line up like four of those
01:19:26
and you'll be good to go for the day yeah you'll be crying but it's the most beautiful like and
01:19:33
maybe that does kind of circle back to podcasting but it's the the human voice the effect it has
01:19:38
on babies and people who haven't heard anything. It's so magical to watch someone experience that for the first time.
01:19:44
That's beautiful. It's really good, and I invented it. That's my idea. That's beautiful.
01:19:51
I think the only thing that I can top that with is if you see a really good Columbo with Peter Fox from the 70s.
01:19:58
Truly. One more thing. I mean, I would watch that over, oh, look, I can hear. And he did it with a freaking glass eye and just jacked up teeth.
01:20:07
Oh, exactly. That's true. No one else can do that these days. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say.
01:20:13
I'm sure your thing is moving, too, with the kids and the hearing. I mean, maybe you're into.
01:20:17
But Peter Fop, when he's on his game. Your one-up-and-shit thing is, I'm sure it's great on your podcast.
01:20:22
Listen, what I like to do is challenge people and make them feel bad about their choices.
01:20:28
That's my podcast. Oh, cool, cool. Well, we're sociopaths, so good luck with that.
01:20:33
There's a chance one of you will murder me. I'm just trying to figure out. It's going to be, I don't know.
01:20:37
One, two, three, not it. Oh, that'll get you out. Sure. What if that held up in court?
01:20:43
Yeah. Oh, no. Your honor. We want to talk to you. One, two, three, not it. Well, we find no choice.
01:20:48
We must let you go. Wait, should we give him the sociopath test? You may have heard of this already.
01:20:53
Okay, I'm ready to go. Which one? I don't know. Oh, great. I'll probably fail because I'm in entertainment business.
01:21:00
That's true. That's true. A woman goes to a funeral. Yes. I don't think I got this right yet.
01:21:05
One goes to a funeral. It's like a family member. And there she sees a very attractive man.
01:21:12
She doesn't get his, I think we're sociopaths for not remembering. And she doesn't get his info.
01:21:18
A month later, another member of her family dies, and they're at the funeral together again.
01:21:25
How did the family member die? How is this a test? I don't know. I'm just more. This is a test of us telling stories.
01:21:32
You guys are terrible. Thank you. This is your specialty is describing crime and murder.
01:21:39
Yep. So wait a minute. Let me see if I can do this. Okay. Someone has lost a family member.
01:21:46
Right. They go to the funeral. Yes. And there's this handsome person there. The next time they go, they see that they've lost someone else who's also from their family.
01:21:57
Yes. Okay. Maybe. And they see that same person. that person that they're seeing is in the casket that person is dead no no it's not great it's
01:22:10
really not a great i don't get this wording is incorrect but essentially it's the sociopath
01:22:14
test because they said um people who are sociopaths will get it immediately and they'll go
01:22:20
oh they killed their other family members so they could meet that person again oh you didn't tell it
01:22:24
right yeah i didn't tell it i've done this i've killed people to get closer to people and this
01:22:30
doesn't count you know what i've looked into confessions in podcasts don't count they're not
01:22:36
admissible if it's a podcast if it's a podcast that's popular with millennials it's not admissible
01:22:42
i feel used that's pretty cool though yeah no i know i've done this you know your shit nothing's
01:22:48
cooler than being popular with millennials though that right well they all freelance exactly they all listening with their wool hats and their unicycles and their ukuleles Steven Mustaches Mustaches
01:23:02
and razor scooters and they're eating their cashews. I don't know why I said cashews. It has no
01:23:08
doesn't apply at all. They're delicious. I think that was a plug, wasn't it? For your new cashew company.
01:23:14
Are you working for Big Cashew? God damn it. I'm in the pocket of Big Cashew. Big nut.
01:23:19
Big nut. Thank you for being on. This was really fun. Thank you for having me. And I do mean it.
01:23:26
I'd like to come back because murder has been, ask anyone who knows me. It's the theme in my life.
01:23:34
We were surprised and I love that. I love knowing that. We would love to talk to you more because I feel like we barely scratched the surface.
01:23:42
I have so many murders we can talk about. So that was a yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
01:23:47
Okay, good. I'll be back. I'll be back. The sad thing will be when your listeners complain, why is Conan on for the ninth time?
01:23:54
Yes! Come on. That's awesome. I'm cool with that. You'd be our, like, was it Burt Reynolds that was a regular on Carson?
01:24:01
So many people were regulars on Carson. True. Burt Reynolds, Buddy Hackett. I'll be your Buddy Hackett.
01:24:07
Okay. Yeah, that suits you more. Or your George Segal. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or your Henry Winkler.
01:24:14
He didn't do it. Shit. Come on. Carson Daly. Okay. What? Sorry. Let's just say Carson.
01:24:21
It can be one of the two. I did Carson nine times. Wow, that's impressive. Carson Daly.
01:24:27
Oh, cancel that. Okay. Cancel it. Okay. Are we wrapping it up? I think so. You did your incredibly confusing riddle.
01:24:37
The test? You failed. It was a test and you... No, no, no. You guys failed that test because you couldn't tell it correctly.
01:24:42
We all failed together. We failed together. I think that's the joy of podcasting.
01:24:47
Yeah. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie?
01:24:56
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01:25:17
Goodbye. By now you've probably heard of Reef. They've been making iconic sandals forever.
01:25:23
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01:25:27
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01:25:38
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01:25:45
Everything has to be cute, but also I'm old and I want comfortable shoes. So I feel like the Neptunes are the perfect answer to that.
01:25:52
Yeah, I love how cushy they are. They're like, they go with everything. They're really cute, but your feet are like on little clouds.
01:25:58
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01:26:04
While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup, Hyundai has its eyes on the next
01:26:09
generation of talent. The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14.
01:26:13
Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation. And Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach.
01:26:19
Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle. And by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability.
01:26:25
And Hyundai continues doing it every day because the future isn't some far-off concept.
01:26:29
It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.