00:00:00
This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.
00:00:33
Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. If audiobooks are your thing, or if you've been meaning to listen to more of them,
00:00:40
you should check out a podcast called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn.
00:00:46
Each episode spotlights standout audiobooks on Audible across all kinds of genres.
00:00:51
Sci-fi, comedy, romance, thrillers, and more. With Cal talking to guests who help break down what makes each story worth listening to.
00:00:57
It's a fun, easy way to discover your next great audiobook. Check out Earsay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:06
Goodbye! The best parts of summer aren't just places. They're feelings. It's the scent of fresh ocean air, sun-warmed skin, and long evenings outside.
00:01:15
Pure's new summer collection is designed to capture those fleeting moments and make them last.
00:01:20
Restore your sense of place with clean, premium fragrances you control from your phone.
00:01:24
Bring the feeling of summer home. Discover the collection at Pura.com. Goodbye. Happy 4th of July.
00:01:46
Hello. Wait, let's start over. It's not 4th of July anymore. Oh, oh. Happy 5th of July.
00:01:53
It's not the 5th. It's the 6th. Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder. Hi, welcome.
00:02:01
Thanks for coming. That's Karen Kilgariff. Why do we always start it with? It's super uncomfortable.
00:02:08
We've gone over this a million times. We're staring at each other. Maybe that's part of it.
00:02:12
We just stare at each other. To see who's going to go first. And then the fakest voices that we have to offer come out of our heads.
00:02:20
And then we ask to start over. But we don't. And we never plan anything. I mean, what?
00:02:28
What are you going to plan? What are you going to plan? I mean, we have an ending.
00:02:31
What more do you want? Who cares anyway? Yeah. Of all the things. Have you seen that picture?
00:02:37
The newest pictures that have come back from the Hubble telescope that show the galaxies.
00:02:43
They're purple. They did it basically. It's like black background. They did purple were the galaxies in the picture.
00:02:49
And orange was the gas, the different things of gas that make stars. And there's a countless number of galaxies in this photo.
00:02:58
You're giving me an anxiety attack. I'm just saying, who cares how we start this podcast?
00:03:02
Did or stardust. Did or made us start. I can't even start to think about it. Wait, is it the vastness of space gives you anxiety?
00:03:14
The vastness of space, the reality of life. What is it? What are we? We're aliens, clearly.
00:03:21
I mean, everyone is. I'm not. I'm not, I'm actually Irish. Which is worse and harder.
00:03:31
There's, you know, that podcast we love, Mysteries Abound, that we go to sleep to.
00:03:35
The last episode is like, are humans actually aliens? And it's like, yes. I got so into that episode that when I landed, when I went to Petaluma for Father's Day,
00:03:48
when I landed and Lauren Adrian came and picked me up, I got into the car and was like,
00:03:52
So the thing is that there's a really good chance we're all aliens. I said that to Vince, too.
00:03:56
And I explained it very poorly. He was like, I don't know. And then I turned to him one night when Elvis was sitting on me and I said, do you think cats are aliens?
00:04:07
And he was just like, no. I am the weird one in the relationship. He is the like, what's it called?
00:04:16
He's the voice of reason? Yes. Oh, speaking of which. there's a reason we can never think of the word trophy and i would like to say i would like to
00:04:25
take responsibility for it because i think every time it's happened it's been in my story where we
00:04:29
like a serial killer takes trophies yeah they take a thing they keep it so they can look at it and
00:04:35
remember the bad thing they did that's called a trophy okay but it's the word memento which is
00:04:40
what we use this is the fucking same word yeah but i guess i guess the most often used term and
00:04:47
the ones that people tweet to us in all caps with 17 exclamation points after is trophy.
00:04:53
Yeah. So maybe here in the podcasting loft, which we finally moved into and everyone,
00:05:01
are you going to ever tweet picture or put pictures on Instagram? Yeah, I just like didn't
00:05:06
feel like it was done yet, but I should just post it. It's so good. You guys, all of the awesome
00:05:11
art you sent us and dolls you've made us and pictures and everything Georgia has arranged
00:05:18
in her loft. Obsessively. And it looks so cool. It's super fun to report in. I'll put it up on social media.
00:05:26
But there's like things I want to frame still and things I need to put up here and there,
00:05:30
but I'll post it for now. And there's also a drawing of a Let's Sit Crooked and Talk Straight drawing.
00:05:37
And I thought it was so funny when I hung it crooked. Yes. Well, I saw it immediately and it made me laugh.
00:05:44
It's driving me crazy like as a fucking OCD person. But it's got a point. There's a reason it's that way.
00:05:50
There's a reason I don't need to download the app that is a measure leveler. Oh they have that I can have that Dude Dude You can have an app for anything I know man when the grid goes down we going to we screwed on belief Nothing will be
00:06:05
straightened. No frames will be straight. And that you won't know, even if there are like land
00:06:10
lines, if they can get a hard line in some way, could you, do you know even your own phone number
00:06:14
anymore? Yeah. Oh, do you know mine? No, I, Vince and I purposely memorized each other. So
00:06:22
I'm going to give it out right now. Okay, great. Please call us day or night. Do you know what I, like, I'm super prepared, trying to prepare for earthquakes, you know?
00:06:30
And so I got like, this is boring. This is so boring. Nobody cares. Right as I take a huge sip of Diet Coke thinking you're going to cover for at least 30 seconds.
00:06:39
No. Preparing for earthquakes is necessary and a reality in California. What'd you do, buy some flashlights?
00:06:47
Come on, zh it up a little bit. I have a flashlight. I have external batteries in my car and in my house.
00:06:53
The hand crank kind? No, no, no. They're for the phone. Like that have a charge on them.
00:06:58
Oh, right. Listen, everyone, be prepared. It's very important. I have an earthquake kit in my front closet.
00:07:08
I have one too. But all I think of is, what if that's the part of the house that goes down?
00:07:12
Dude, I have one in the loft. And I'm like, clearly the loft is going to collapse.
00:07:16
What is it doing here? I stick flashlights under everything in my whole house. And I've actually, when I bought my house, I had to sign a piece of paper declaring that I understood that my house is on land, that if there's a strong enough earthquake, it turns to liquid and sinks into the earth.
00:07:34
What? I will get my own sinkhole, which is, as many people know, one of my great passions of life is sinkholes.
00:07:41
Well, I have a question. What kind of liquid are we talking about? Because it's something fun like Kool-Aid.
00:07:46
I'm like, great. Yes, I have. There's a Kool-Aid spring underneath my house. No, it's because I'm near the quote unquote L.A. River.
00:07:56
The one that's feet from my door. Yes. Well, that goes right up kind of near my house.
00:08:01
You go north and that creates the water table is right, I guess, close to under my house.
00:08:10
So basically, if the ground shakes, the kind of silt or whatever ground is under my house will just mix with the water, become like sand, quicksand.
00:08:22
Goodbye. And goodbye. And goodbye. And goodnight. So just things to... Skippers.
00:08:29
Come back. Skippers. This is what you need to know the most. Skippers in places where there isn't and won't be earthquakes ever.
00:08:37
Hi. You never know, though. Do you think there's a geologist who listens? Is that an earthquake doctor?
00:08:43
Yes, definitely. Okay. You mean he's going to email us? You are completely incorrect about all of this information.
00:08:47
I signed paperwork. Listen. Speaking of, I'm not, oh, experts. That's right. I have a letter, an email from a girl who, so I did the mainline murders, the fucking insane mainline murders last week.
00:09:03
Yes. And the girl who was, whose dad was involved in the case emailed us. Whoa. Okay.
00:09:09
I'm so excited when you covered the mainline murders in your last episode, as my dad was very closely involved in the case.
00:09:14
He prosecuted Karen Reinhart's lover, William Bradford, Patches. Patches the professor?
00:09:19
Yeah, for stealing from her estate. So the one thing he got in the beginning. He described Bradfield as a master manipulator and a truly evil man, despite being a prosecutor for over 30 years and putting hundreds of murders behind bars, including billionaire murderer John DuPont.
00:09:35
Ooh. Wait, wait. Is that the fox catcher guy? Hell yes. My dad says no case has ever affected him quite like this one.
00:09:44
He's a father of four daughters, and he still tears up when he talks about the kids, the innocent children, and the discovery of Karen's art museum pin on the floor of the car.
00:09:53
And by the way, I accidentally called her Carol at the very end of it. And that's just horrible.
00:09:57
You were off the page, though. You were just trying to talk. Yes. That's always a mistake.
00:10:03
It's the mistake that we're dedicated to making on this podcast. Yes. Never apologize for like I just apologized.
00:10:09
So Patches and Principal Smith were co-conspirators, he thinks, and that Patches had agreed.
00:10:15
I'm just calling them this. Yeah. Agree to split Karen's life insurance money with Principal in exchange for killing Karen and her children.
00:10:22
To this day, he's still heartbroken over the police mishandling the evidence that led to J.
00:10:26
Smith's conviction being thrown out. Thank you guys so much, et cetera, et cetera.
00:10:30
John Bonet, JFK. Thanks again. Stay sexy. Don't get murdered. Brianna. P.S. And Stephen said he asked, can I read this, Stephen?
00:10:37
Oh, no, you're going to be embarrassed. It's fine. I don't want to embarrass you.
00:10:42
Say it, and then we'll decide after. Okay, we can cut it out, Stephen. P.S. is Stephen Stingle.
00:10:46
Nope, I said that wrong. Is Stephen stinky? Yes, totally. Is Stephen single? Oh, sorry, Stephen, I'm going to take this one.
00:10:56
Wait, can we say that? You can cut this out, obviously. You're in charge of this whole show.
00:11:01
We'll get everything out. Well, there's got so many listeners like this. Yeah. Inquiring minds.
00:11:10
He's a cat guy, which lots of girls like. But don't mistake that for innocence or any kind of...
00:11:17
Don't mistake his kindness for gentleness. What is the saying? Don't mistake my weakness for kindness.
00:11:25
I like that. I saw that one time on Tumblr. I dig it. Right, Stephen? This is going to be on my dating profile.
00:11:30
So that whole clip of this podcast, the whole thing can fit on. Where are you going?
00:11:37
Are you going to Tinder? Let everyone know. Oh, I haven't decided yet. Okay. I think you should take it over to what's it called?
00:11:45
Too many fish. The Christian dating site. Too many fish. Is that it? Plenty of fish.
00:11:50
Plenty of fish. There are too many fish. I don't like fish. So I feel like there's too many.
00:11:54
That's true. Yeah Stephen religion That really important to you I mean I am a Satanist so So bring that act over to Too Many Fish and then you know for a change of pace
00:12:07
Speaking of traveling. Can I just say one thing really quick? Yes, please. At the end of that email, did she start calling the woman Karen?
00:12:13
Because Karen was the daughter. Yeah. Now I know only because somebody that has my name.
00:12:19
No, no, no. She said the discovery of Karen's art museum pin at the floor of the car.
00:12:23
So the kids, the kid, the little girl named Karen. But then later on. Yeah, you're right.
00:12:29
She may have. No, you're right. She did. Fuck yeah. Not just me. Right. I just want to make sure.
00:12:35
So the, I know I feel awful. The mothers. No, this isn't right. Okay. Anyways, here we go.
00:12:41
Well, just so, just so they know we didn't do it. Yeah. Should we start? That was just a run through.
00:12:50
I'm going to say this. The Cleveland Murderinos had a meetup. They sent us pictures.
00:12:55
They sent us video. There's a bunch of them. They're a good-looking group. They were all in a bar.
00:13:02
Enthusiastic. And a lot of people were tweeting just saying what a great group it was, how happy it made them to be a part of it.
00:13:10
Other people were writing saying, hey, I didn't know. I wish I was there. And they ended up collecting $500 for End Backlog.
00:13:18
That is amazing. Which is so cool. So thank you guys so much. And congratulations and way to go because that really makes a difference.
00:13:24
That's lovely. Yeah, that's nice. Des Moines. Sorry. Des Moines. Sorry, guys. Sorry for talking shit.
00:13:33
I actually have no idea what it's like there, but apparently it's lovely. Yeah, I think Iowa's like a great place.
00:13:38
And I think there was an Iowa meetup, too, where they went and saw Despicable Me together.
00:13:43
And so does a photo. And I'm like, what? That's cool. You don't have to make a bunch of cocktails with any funny names.
00:13:49
You can just go watch a movie. That's so good. There was somebody sent. I can't tell if it was the person that sent it was wearing the sweatshirt.
00:13:57
Because he kind of looked like a model. Or if it was just showing the picture of a sweatshirt.
00:14:01
But you can get a sweatshirt that says Des Moines D-U-H. Like it's basically spelled phonetically.
00:14:08
But also Des Moines. Which made me laugh really hard. Yeah. Well. So we're, you know.
00:14:14
I guess we're going to Des Moines. No, we're not. We're on each other's radar. We might.
00:14:17
Yeah. We're going to. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of traveling, Stephen is coming with us to Australia.
00:14:24
That's right. Everyone. I don't think we've announced that yet. So don't look. So, OK, there's a friend of a friend of Vince, this girl named Sarah A.
00:14:34
And she is a leather worker and she sent us some handmade. What are they called? Passport covers covers in leather. Smell that.
00:14:48
It's like, oh, and they say SSD GM and they say SSD GM and her name, her Martine is the name of the company.
00:14:57
It's M-A-R-T-I-N-E. Oh, so they're with the rabbit head is this is the symbol. It's like classy, like the classiest thing.
00:15:07
Martine. I've ever had SSD GM. Gorgeous and cool. I know. Thanks, Sarah. Sarah is going to call her Martine.
00:15:16
thank you so much we're all going to be matchy matchy we're going to just walk through security
00:15:22
they're like oh upgrade them I'm going to hold mine like those FBI agents when they flip their thing open
00:15:28
you learn how to flip your thing open with one hand I'm taking over this thing can I say one more thing about Murderina
00:15:35
on Instagram they're having a thing called the lettering challenge which I didn't know was a thing
00:15:40
it's all these people who are written to calligraphy and lettering I guess is a thing
00:15:45
And so they're having a My Favorite Murder lettering challenge. I guess there's like a whole, it's a whole community.
00:15:50
They have challenges for like the month. And so it's hashtag letter MFM. And I think I found the girl who was going to design my tattoo, my My Favorite Murder
00:16:00
tattoo. Oh, that's great. So do you want to get one with me or should I surprise you?
00:16:05
That is so fucking weird. Why? I had a dream the other night that everyone in my family was getting a tattoo together.
00:16:12
and I was in the dream I was like really Aunt Mary in your mid-70s like I was just looking
00:16:19
around at my family like and you know what we were getting a tattoo of some toes
00:16:23
what does that mean I don't know I'll look it up but uh yes I'll get a tattoo with you
00:16:30
together yes okay can I want to get mine all across my one haunch just my whole hip front
00:16:37
I think I'm going to get mine like, what's this called? Under my armpit, side of my body, ribs.
00:16:45
I love it. And then I'm going to get an SSD GM and this chick who does calligraphy really well, who I'll shout out when I get the tattoo.
00:16:52
I'm going to have, I'm having her design something. Maybe I'll get it on my neck.
00:16:57
Are you serious? No. My, um, I used to know a guy that used to call neck tattoos job stoppers.
00:17:04
Yeah, they have hand tattoos. But I don't think that's true anymore. Because how many chefs do you see with neck tattoos?
00:17:12
Podcasters. I mean, people who are tatted up are like, yeah, fuck you. I run my entire company.
00:17:17
I have a face tattoo. Deal with it. And I make more money than you and your dad combined.
00:17:22
I'm my own boss. Too bad. Your dad needs... Okay. Do you know my dad is driving Lyft now?
00:17:28
And he said, I keep wondering if one of these young girls who get in my car are murderinos.
00:17:33
That sounded like he was going to kill them at first, didn't it? Yeah, he has to be careful with how he brings that up.
00:17:39
Yeah, so if you see Marty picking up on Lyft. Marty. Marty. I think that's all for you.
00:17:46
Let me see. I think it's Stephen has. I was going to say. Oh, yeah. Stephen's got a corner.
00:17:50
There a little fun thing for us based on last week story on your story Karen I know it July right now but I think it never too early for us All right What is it The Andy Williams Christmas special Holy shit Oh my
00:18:05
Claudine Lange's first husband. And this was the one that, like, was it that it was, this is the highest ranking television show before he got knocked out by some Super Bowls?
00:18:16
Yes. Yeah, yeah. This is the classics. This is when we spend a weekend watching this.
00:18:25
Yeah. That is amazing. Do we save it for Christmas? No. Okay. A July Christmas special event.
00:18:32
Yeah. Thank you so much. Wait, someone sent it to us or did you get it? No, I got it.
00:18:35
Yeah. Oh, Stephen. Really good gift giving. You're now invited to watch it with us.
00:18:41
Yeah, you just qualified. I'm the only one that didn't bring presents for everybody.
00:18:44
Well, I didn't fucking buy these. Oh, you didn't? No. Oh, fuck you then. she sent them to us
00:18:50
on her own accord oh I thought you'd like oh no no no a friend of Vince's does this thing
00:18:56
so she sent us these lovely things so nice yeah oh god I'm glad I clarified that
00:18:59
because I didn't want to take responsibility for her okay good yeah okay I'm guilty
00:19:03
no I wouldn't buy us anything ever we have everything we need ever we have a sink
00:19:08
whole house we have a cat podcast what more do we need oh yeah that's all we need
00:19:14
you know we are blessed truly blessed Truly, truly, truly. Okay, it's me this week, right?
00:19:20
Yeah. Yes. I knew. Now you know. Stephen's not fucking paying attention. I was trying to look up who went first.
00:19:27
Oh, I definitely went first. Yeah. Yes. Because now we're all back. We're all like, we're all on it again.
00:19:33
What's a bummer, though, and I think that we have this often, is that mine is a real
00:19:37
bummer at the end. And I hate closing with a real bummer. Yeah, but. Then we have something positive.
00:19:43
That's why we have a positive. That's why we turn it hard. We take a hard left into positive land.
00:19:47
Yeah, people don't like when murder podcasts are a real bummer. They don't? No, they do.
00:19:51
Yeah, that's the whole point. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. It's 2026, and if you have an alternative career like food photography or professional mixtape making or witchcraft, you're going to need an online presence.
00:20:05
Whatever your thing is, Squarespace helps you build a website that's as unique as you are.
00:20:09
Squarespace provides you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place.
00:20:14
From consultations to events and experiences, you can showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business.
00:20:22
Get paid on time with professional invoices and online payments. Plus, streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.
00:20:29
With Squarespace's collection of cutting-edge design tools, anyone can build a beautiful, professional online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business.
00:20:37
Head to squarespace.com slash murder for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code MURDER to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
00:20:45
Goodbye. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
00:20:53
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense, rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust.
00:21:03
Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach.
00:21:09
Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle. Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability.
00:21:17
And Hyundai continues doing it every day. From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game,
00:21:23
the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA.
00:21:29
Goodbye. If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook or just want help figuring out what to listen to next,
00:21:36
there's a podcast you should know about. It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn.
00:21:42
Each episode takes a closer look at some of the most talked about new audiobooks on Audible,
00:21:46
spanning a wide range of genres from sci-fi and literary fiction to rom-coms, thrillers, and comedy.
00:21:51
Cal is joined by guests who dig into what these stories are about, what makes them stand out as audiobooks, and why they're connecting with listeners right now.
00:21:58
If you're looking for your next listen, this is a great place to start. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, on the iHeartRadio app,
00:22:05
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. Okay. Mine is, it's hard sometimes, as we've talked about, for me to get my homework done.
00:22:23
No, it's, yeah. And especially when I will work on something for a while, and then if I have a friend who
00:22:29
goes, have you ever heard of this one? I will switch immediately and go do my friend.
00:22:34
I switch, I switch, you know, you're halfway done. It's not like you're just reading about it.
00:22:38
No, I switch all the time. Yeah. And, and so many of these stories, because, you know, you guys are just as into true crime,
00:22:46
if not more than either of us. So oftentimes you feel like I'm only telling a third of this story.
00:22:52
I know there's so much more. I should have read an entire book about this, whatever.
00:22:56
That's what other people do. So sometimes I'll bail just because I know a story has much more to it.
00:23:02
And I should invest more time. You're not going to do it justice. Right, exactly.
00:23:05
Someone else already has. But this one was so juicy and I loved it so much. My friend Bridger is the one who told me about it.
00:23:14
He's hilarious. He's very famous on Twitter and he's a great writer. And he grew up in Utah.
00:23:23
So he was like, have you ever heard of this one? And I had never heard anything about it.
00:23:29
Turns out there's a forensic files. There's lots of stuff. There's an amazing book.
00:23:34
But anyway, I'll just give you, I'll give you what I know. So we're at Salt Lake City.
00:23:41
Okay. What's this? Is it called anything? I'm not going to call it anything because I usually do that and then I end up giving
00:23:47
it away. Yes. I totally understand. Okay. So we're in Salt Lake City the morning of October 15th, 1985.
00:23:53
Okay. A man named Steve Christensen, who is a businessman, a husband, a father of four, and a bishop
00:24:00
Mormon church. He arrives at his office on the sixth floor of the judge building in downtown
00:24:04
Salt Lake City. One time I did a story and it was that horrible one about the woman throwing her
00:24:10
kids off the top of the hotel. In Utah. In Salt Lake City even. Right. And in that, I threw out
00:24:17
the random idea that it was a very, because, you know, all of Utah, I assume is very Mormon,
00:24:26
that Salt Lake City would be a conservative town. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong about that.
00:24:31
I would like to say now, I now know because of making that mistake, that actually Salt Lake City is the liberal part of Utah,
00:24:40
and it's a college town, and it's the hip place, and it's probably best case scenario.
00:24:44
And if you're looking for, I don't know, a great shirt or really cool flats, I don't know.
00:24:51
um so steve christensen gets to his office he sees a brown wrapped box shaped package in front
00:25:00
of his office door and his name's written on top of it he picks it up and it immediately
00:25:05
immediately explodes oh fuck here i thought it was something else and this is fucking
00:25:10
let's do this yeah so it was a pipe bomb um steve is killed um the department of alcohol
00:25:19
tobacco and fire yeah it's it was a pipe bomb that was made with um concrete nails were inside
00:25:26
and concrete nails are the nails you use to pound in they're not made of concrete you're they're the
00:25:31
really strong industrial size nails that you pound into concrete so the person that made this pipe
00:25:36
bomb wanted the person who picked it up to be killed wow what a bummer yeah um so the atf uh
00:25:44
officers arrive, they begin to piece the bomb back together to figure out that it's a pipe bomb.
00:25:52
And that was activated by a mercury switch that would go off when the package was picked up and
00:25:58
tilted one way or the other. So the minute the mercury like shifts. Exactly. It's in a little
00:26:04
glass circuit. And if it is laying on one side of this little glass thing, and then when you pick it
00:26:10
up, if you put it in, chip it one way or the other, the circuit connects and that's when the
00:26:15
bomb explodes. Wow. So they know from a bomb like that, that the person, that the bomber dropped that
00:26:23
box off because they would have to make sure it stays exactly the way it is. And they couldn't
00:26:27
mail it. Yeah. You can't just give it to somebody else. Okay. So, um, also inside the bomb were
00:26:36
Tandy brand batteries, which is, as many RC enthusiasts know, Tandy is the Radio Shack
00:26:44
brand of batteries. Really? Uh-huh. So they start going around to the local Radio Shacks trying to find out who's bought batteries
00:26:53
there, you know, the past week or whatever. They also find out that Steve Christensen had recently worked at a financial company
00:27:03
called CFS, which after doing huge business in the 70s and the early 80s had started losing
00:27:10
money and was in serious trouble. So this is the part that I actually found really interesting
00:27:14
because so the 80s were like a time of big money. That's when everybody pretended to be rich and
00:27:20
preppies and, you know, it was a very eyes odd Coke time. Yeah. And apparently Salt Lake City
00:27:28
in that time was a hotbed for financial fraud. Really? Yeah. So what people would do, con men
00:27:34
would go to Salt Lake City and they would kind of like get, get into the Mormon church. They would
00:27:40
either pretend they were Mormons or they would befriend higher ups in the Mormon church. Um,
00:27:46
and then when they would do business, they would like say they were in securities or
00:27:50
whatever stocks bond. They like, I got a ground floor fucking thing to get in on.
00:27:55
Exactly. And then the elders or whoever in the church would be like, oh, this guy is trustworthy. And so then all the parishioners or Mormons, I'm not sure what you call the general word for it, but all the people in that church would then trust that person and buy into whatever thing that that person was bringing to the table, whether it was high finance or also very popular pyramid scheme, vitamin sales got to be very popular.
00:28:23
What the fuck? Back then. Yeah. So it was kind of an, there was lots of Amway, low grade Amway kind of bullshit going on.
00:28:31
Did they get the vitamins? Did they ever get the vitamins? Did they ever get the vitamins they needed? I don't know. But it was a, it was a kind of thing, they call it affinity fraud. And it happens in lots of different, different kinds of religions.
00:28:47
This is why my money is under my bed. Right? And trust no one? Yeah. But it's the assumption that, quote, unquote, one of your own is going to look out for your best interest as opposed to an outsider.
00:29:01
Oh, I don't trust anyone. Do you? No, I'm scared of all money. My fucking cousin isn't financial whatever the fuck, and I'm scared.
00:29:09
Sorry, Mitch. Well, because it's so – anyone can tell you anything, and if you don't know exactly what's going on, it's 100% pure trust.
00:29:19
Yeah, and if people are that into money, like, they're into money and they want it.
00:29:23
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, so it's the same thing Bernie Madoff did to, he got $20 billion, as you well know, watching that documentary, from wealthy Jewish people.
00:29:34
A guy named Alan Stanford did it to Southern Baptists. Wow. He had a $7 billion empire that fell.
00:29:42
There was even a con man named Monroe L. Beachy who became trusted within the Amish community.
00:29:50
And he went to prison for orchestrating a scheme that defrauded 2 investors many of them his friends and neighbors What a dick So it just a very common practice of like this idea that your religion would stand for your good morals
00:30:07
and that therefore the business is trustworthy. It's almost worse con than just, you know, clients because, yeah, these people are trusting because they,
00:30:18
because if you're in their religion, it's because you believe the same things they do.
00:30:21
You have the same morals. they're going right on the inside they're not just standing out and
00:30:27
rolling the dice that maybe you'll believe them and maybe not, they're asking you
00:30:31
they're playing on your ultimate faith which is very ugly and in the Mormon religion
00:30:39
it was the kind of thing where I believe I know lots of Mormons I grew up with Mormons
00:30:47
one of my good friends that I used to work with, Betsy, is a Mormon And, you know, it's it's a very moralistic.
00:30:57
The life they live is really the whole idea of it is that you live this life based on your faith.
00:31:03
So it's like my friend just said it the other day. He's like Mormons really walk the walk.
00:31:08
Yeah. So it's not just and I mean, maybe I'm only saying this because of all those like design websites that you see these days.
00:31:15
And when you trace them back, it's like a young Mormon family. But it's like the most beautiful, you know, table setting.
00:31:22
Yeah. And the cutest design. And it's like, here's a great thing for your baby. I've heard so many bloggers, like famous bloggers or like the big ones that have beautiful websites are Mormon for some reason.
00:31:32
Because it's kind of like it's the whole idea of like home building and like putting the best into your home.
00:31:38
Right. And being ambitious and always having something. Anyways. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are insane generalizations.
00:31:45
Obviously, we're not speaking for every single person that's in the religion, but there is just there's something to that.
00:31:50
There's something to that where there's a there is a there seems to be an innocence that that in the 70s and 80s con men were like, oh, we can exploit this this community, this sense of community that they have.
00:32:05
OK, two hours after Steve Christensen's attack, there's another bombing at the home of Gary and Kathy Sheets.
00:32:14
Gary Sheets was Steve Christensen's boss at CFS, and his wife Kathy was the one who picked up the package.
00:32:21
It exploded in her hands, and she was killed. Oh, my God. I never heard of this.
00:32:25
I know. So now the police are thinking that these bombings are related to the failed CFS business dealings,
00:32:34
and so it could be retaliation from an old employee or even the mafia. Oh, my God.
00:32:39
police talked to the Sheetz 13-year-old next-door neighbor who saw a tan minivan
00:32:46
pull into the Sheetz driveway the night before around midnight and thought it was suspicious.
00:32:51
But all he saw was the car. He didn't see anybody get in or out. But then they also talked to a jeweler who worked on the fifth floor of the judge building,
00:33:01
one floor below Steve Christensen's office. His name is Bruce Passy. And he tells the police
00:33:06
that the morning, the morning of the bombing, um, he got into the elevator with his father
00:33:12
and there was a man standing in the elevator wearing a letterman jacket, but with no letter
00:33:16
on it. And he was holding a brown, like paper wrapped box that said to Steve Christensen on the
00:33:24
top of it. Oh shit. And so he, um, Bruce Passy describes this man to the police, um, saying he's a white
00:33:33
male, five foot eight, medium brown hair. The next day, there's a third bombing. This time,
00:33:40
it's inside a car and the victim is seriously injured, but he's not killed. It's 30 year old
00:33:46
Mark Hoffman. He is rushed to the hospital where he's in critical condition, but he ends up being
00:33:54
able to tell the police that he'd opened his car door and the package was sitting on the driver's
00:33:59
with the action of opening the door, it fell off and exploded. Oh, good. So he didn't get the full impact.
00:34:05
Right. But he had a fingertip blown off. He had a huge wound in his knee where parts of the explosives went into his kneecap,
00:34:16
like his knee area. So he was pretty badly injured. But immediately the police are suspicious because if he had his fingers blown off,
00:34:26
that means that the box was in his hands. not on the seat and then tumbling to the ground.
00:34:33
Also, with the direction, the guy in Forensic Files explains it really well, but it's basically the way they know bombs explode and the directions they go.
00:34:43
If the thing was in his knee, then he could not have been standing outside of the car.
00:34:48
He must have been inside of the car leaning over. And so they basically reconstruct it.
00:34:53
I want to watch that. I'm trying a picture in my head. And basically they with the trajectory of the stuff that flew out of the bomb, which hit him, they realize he must have been leaning over the center console, holding the box and basically inside the car.
00:35:10
So his story. Why would you lie about that? Why wouldn't you just tell him exactly?
00:35:14
I love when cops figure that out, like this person killed themselves. And it's like, no, the trajectory like yours last week, the trajectory shows that that person couldn't have killed themselves.
00:35:24
And that's the relatively new forensic part. That's like what Forensic Files is all celebrating.
00:35:30
Because it's like you would never have known that until Forensics comes in and is like, hold up.
00:35:36
So the police search Mark Hoffman's house. And they find a Letterman jacket just like the one that Bruce Passy said the guy in the elevator was wearing.
00:35:46
And they also see that he has a tan minivan. Oh, shit. And there gunpowder that they find traces of around his house that match the brand used in all three bombings Well there you go So Mark Hoffman maintains his innocence says he the victim and he demands to take a lie detector test
00:36:07
And he does. They give him a lie detector test, and he passes with flying colors.
00:36:11
Oh, shit. Yeah. So the police start looking into who this guy really is. So Mark Hoffman was born in Salt Lake City on December 7, 1954,
00:36:21
raised in a strict Mormon household. He was a mediocre student. But later he was tested to have an IQ of 169.
00:36:29
Wow. Which is insanely high. That's one point over mine. I feel like in stories I've read, people who are like mad geniuses are usually in like the mid 130s to 140s.
00:36:43
I was going to say that. Like, I feel like very, very, very fucking smart is like 130.
00:36:48
I think so. But like then genius is like 160 something. Maybe. I like us trying to guess what genius IQ of the dumbest way.
00:37:00
Well, I know when my brother was a kid with fucking attention issues, they tested him and he had like one very high up there because it's like, well, he's just fucking bored.
00:37:10
Yes. So, yeah. And I never I was not that smart and I was never bored. No, I was always bored.
00:37:16
You're like, this is fascinating. I was just bored. Not smart and bored. um okay so he collected coins as a teenager and um when he was when he was young uh and that's a
00:37:33
weird cut and paste he collected coins as a teenager and uh at some point he forged a rare
00:37:38
mint mark on a dime that was verified by an organization of coin collectors to be genuine
00:37:45
and when he was a kid he tricked the shit out of fucking professional coin people exactly he got
00:37:50
he got the uh taste early of like you know it's impressive i think so too just don't kill people
00:37:56
next i mean so in seven in 1973 he volunteered um to spend two years and as an lds missionary
00:38:03
when he came back from his mission which was in england he enrolled as a pre-med major at utah
00:38:10
state university um he married dora lee old in 1979 they eventually have four children together
00:38:16
and she filed for divorce in 1987. So in 1980, Hoffman claims to have found a 17th century King James Bible
00:38:29
with a document inside that he claimed to be the transcript that Joseph Smith, who was the founder of the Latter-day Saints Church,
00:38:41
he had a scribe named Martin Harris and was supposed to be a transcript that Martin Harris brought to a Columbia classics professor in 1828
00:38:52
that was originally copied by Joseph Smith from the Golden Plates, from which he translated the Book of Mormon.
00:39:02
So I'm going to say this probably incorrectly, but the general idea of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
00:39:10
is Joseph Smith found golden tablets that he dug up. And from those tablets, he wrote down the tenets of the religion.
00:39:21
And an angel appeared to him as he dug up those tablets to help him. So basically, he presents this document.
00:39:33
They freak out because they're like, they had never, it's a historical document from their church they'd never seen before.
00:39:38
And the church ends up buying it from Hoffman for $20,000. So this not only sets him financially, but it also sets his reputation as a historical documents dealer.
00:39:53
I wonder where he said he found it. Inside a King James Bible. So he was already trying to become a historical book dealer.
00:40:06
So one of the book. OK, that makes sense. It was a really old. It was a 17th century King James Bible. So then it was like inside that.
00:40:14
So basically, he then starts for the next several years selling forged, quote unquote, lost LDS documents to the church.
00:40:28
the most notorious of which was the Salamander Letter in 1984. So he basically starts forging pieces of historical text
00:40:40
and bringing them to the church as a church member himself, going, I found this, I found this.
00:40:47
Now the church is, part of it is like a little bit like, oh yeah, we need to be owning these papers.
00:40:54
And sometimes he would donate them and sometimes they would buy them from him. But essentially, it was it was text that they that was relevant to them knowing about their own religion and the founder of their own religion.
00:41:07
So the one that is the most infamous is the Salamander Letter, which basically said that when Joseph Smith dug up those tablets, it wasn't an angel that appeared to him, but a white salamander.
00:41:22
that so that was such a change of the historical record and they had never heard that before?
00:41:32
They'd never heard it before, it was super freaky and it was kind of like they didn't know
00:41:36
if they should announce it, it put them in a really weird position because suddenly it's
00:41:40
a very non-religious sounding and almost like a magical witchy sounding version of
00:41:46
the story of how their church is founded Right um that what sound salamander is kind of like not as cool as a snake is it a snake no uh well but snakes are in the in like christian religion are evil evil Right So there just something weird about it an albino salamander as opposed to an angel
00:42:08
Man, I think you could have done better. Well. A bear. An albino bear. A blue bear.
00:42:14
A blue bear. Well, it turned out he was actually forging all of these documents.
00:42:21
and he had lost his faith when he was a teenager. Like he went on his mission basically because he felt a lot of pressure from his family
00:42:29
because he was raised in such a strict Mormon household. But he was trying to embarrass the church.
00:42:38
So he was writing these documents and changing these stories and basically adding in little inconsistencies and mistakes
00:42:48
so that the church would kind of be scrambling and not knowing what their official approach should be.
00:42:54
And he was like a master forger because he had already sold. Let's see this. Here's the list.
00:43:04
He'd forged unpublished poems by Emily Dickinson. Come on now. Signatures of Mark Twain.
00:43:11
A full handwritten letter supposedly written by Betsy Ross. No. He tricked the Library of Congress.
00:43:19
He tricked Sotheby's. Wow. He sold signatures by George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Boone, John Brown, Andrew Jackson.
00:43:28
Wow. Nathan Hale, John Hancocks, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, John Milton.
00:43:34
Wow, this guy is so lucky. He just finds all this shit. Yeah. And makes a shit ton of money off of it.
00:43:40
there was somebody named Button Gwinnett whose signature was the rarest and therefore the most valuable of any
00:43:48
signer of the Declaration of Independence. A guy named Button signed the Declaration of Independence? Or a girl.
00:43:54
Oh, sure. No way. But little Button Gwinnett got up there. He also said he claimed to have discovered
00:44:04
a famous document called the Oath of the Free Man, which is believed to be or some say the precursor to the Declaration of Independence.
00:44:14
It's from the 1600s, and it was worth over a million dollars. Oh, my God. But they never knew it existed until he came along.
00:44:22
They knew it existed, but there were no copies of it in America. So he had claimed he found one, and he was trying to sell that,
00:44:33
but it was the sale of that was kind of held up because um they were questioning its authenticity
00:44:40
finally someone's like you know what we should do well in this it's funny because i think in the
00:44:45
forensic files they start talking about how they because it's within the church and the way he did
00:44:51
it he he was a master manipulator he was super smart um so he knew how to do it where they would
00:44:57
not, they didn't question the documents because of who he was and what he had already sold.
00:45:03
So it was like, well, if he sold something to the Library of Congress and Sotheby's and
00:45:07
all these places. What are we going to, we're going to question him? Yeah. This guy's an expert and he's a Mormon.
00:45:12
So get him all the way in on the inside. But he also would buy really expensive things.
00:45:18
So he was always broke, even though he would make big money on selling these forgeries,
00:45:22
He would then buy like rare books and he was buying things so that he could then forge other things later.
00:45:29
I mean, it's very complicated. And there's a there's a book called The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrell. And that is it tells the story of Mark Hoffman, but specifically from the view of him pretending to have discovered poems by Emily Dickinson.
00:45:49
And the public library in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is where she was from, collects money to buy these heretofore unpublished lost Emily Dickinson poems that were fake.
00:46:04
Yeah. So he's he's like a he he was like one of the greatest forgers or the most infamous forgers anyone had ever seen.
00:46:15
Working it. He's doing it. So essentially what happened was he was trying to sell some new set of documents to the church.
00:46:25
Steve Christensen knew a little bit about antiquities and old documents. And so he was questioning.
00:46:33
He was like, I heard this guy is being questioned about the oath of the freemen.
00:46:38
They're not even sure. Like he's under investigation. We need to look closer at these papers.
00:46:43
Calling them out. Yeah. So what he did was he plants a bomb at Steve Christensen's office to kill him.
00:46:50
Then he planted the other one at Gary Sheets house to make it look like it had something to do with CFS instead of anything to do with him.
00:46:57
Shit, that's fucking tricky. Yeah. I mean, this guy is, you know, tricky. He's a trickster.
00:47:05
He was eventually arrested in January of 1986, charged with a total of 27 counts.
00:47:11
Oh. including murder, forgery, possession of an unregistered machine gun, and...
00:47:16
Jesus Christ! Yeah. That's a... Literally, Jesus Christ. And a salamander. So he...
00:47:25
Albino salamander. Albino. You can't forget the albino part. I mean, all of their beliefs for hundreds of years are one thing,
00:47:32
and then he gives them paper that's like, it turns out an albino salamander had a say.
00:47:36
They're like, you know, an angel sounds cooler, so we're just going to stick with that.
00:47:39
They're like, now we need to have a really big meeting. And what if we have to start fucking praying to an albino salamander?
00:47:45
I mean, would that ever even have been a choice? No. They say also... So he had like 600 forgeries that got sold and are in the market where they're still finding them today.
00:47:57
Yeah, I was going to ask. Yeah. So they're... Apparently, and he wrote a letter from jail explaining which things that he did were forgeries, because some things, obviously, when he started out, he kind of, there were valid ones.
00:48:09
But they're saying that there's some Daniel Boone signatures out there that are fake, because there were hardly any in the first place.
00:48:24
But then Mark Hoffman comes along, and suddenly there's four that are in the marketplace, which brings the value down.
00:48:30
And it turns out, you know, three of them aren't real. Do you think that his forgeries are now worth money, a lot of money?
00:48:38
To Murderino types? Yeah. Or like, is there a forger's museum? I'd go to that. I would too. I mean, I think overall, the historical signatures are going to be worth the most.
00:48:50
Of course. Because they're like the, you know. But I feel like there's got to be like the Smithsonian or some kind of thing that's just like, you know, it's history.
00:48:59
Look at this rat bastard in that department. Look what happened. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's funny that he did it so much.
00:49:08
And when you see the paper, like he would bake the paper in the oven. Yeah, I was going to ask.
00:49:11
Like the lighters. Yeah, exactly. Like, come on. Like an old Western. Yeah. All that.
00:49:17
They found all this, you know, they found ink that he specifically mixed to match.
00:49:23
But then when the guy who finally started investigating it forensically, he was like, the new ones all glow blue underneath a microscope because they're new.
00:49:35
And so he was just really easily able to, once they knew, start investigating all of them and just be like, none of this is real.
00:49:42
Yeah. Sorry, this letter from Betsy Ross. That's crazy. I bet he'd be good at the lettering challenge.
00:49:48
He might be. He's got to have good handwriting. He would add in, he'd be like, I believe that this is a real, I don't know where I was going, but anyhow, he initially maintained his innocence, but at a preliminary hearing, the prosecutors showed so much evidence of his forgeries and his debts and all of the evidence linking him to the bombs that instead of risking the death penalty, he pled guilty to two counts of second degree murder.
00:50:20
account of theft by deception for the salamander letter, and account of fraud for the sale of the McClellan collection,
00:50:29
which was that last collection he was trying to sell when Steve Christensen stepped in.
00:50:34
He confessed all of his forgeries in open court. In January 1988, he was sentenced to five years to life in prison.
00:50:43
He's spending life in prison. Five years? Wow. And he's still there. and we can...
00:50:49
Still there. Wow. Yep. That's Mark Hoffman, everybody. At first, I thought you were going
00:50:55
towards the Ted Kaczynski route when I heard about a bomb. But that's fucking crazy.
00:51:00
I've never heard about that. Oh, to be killed by a bomb. Do you ever open envelopes
00:51:04
and you're like, I don't know what this is going to be? Yes. Well, that's my moth's thing.
00:51:09
I never think it's a bomb, though. Or a mom. Just a mom coming to tell me to sweep up the kitchen.
00:51:17
Honey, do those dishes. Oh, what is that fear? They're just sitting there. You let them soak for too long.
00:51:22
Yeah. You can't just let things soak in cold water, Karen. It's true. But also this was the 80s when like this was back when you could walk into an office building with a plain package.
00:51:32
I feel like, you know, as worrisome as it all sounds, we don't live in that world anymore.
00:51:37
It's like that was definitely a very pre 9-11 era. Yeah. Except I. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe not.
00:51:47
You know what I mean? Well, I'm scared. I know, I know. You can be. Wow, that's fucked up.
00:51:55
Good job. Thank you. Thanks and good job. Thank you. I don't know. Thank you. Okay.
00:52:02
While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
00:52:08
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense,
00:52:15
rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either.
00:52:22
Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
00:52:28
Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day.
00:52:34
From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game, the future isn't some far-off concept.
00:52:40
It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.
00:52:46
If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook or just want help figuring out what to listen to next, there's a podcast you should know about.
00:52:52
It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn. Each episode takes a closer look at some of the most talked about new audiobooks on Audible, spanning a wide range of genres from sci-fi and literary fiction to rom-coms, thrillers, and comedy.
00:53:06
Cal is joined by guests who dig into what these stories are about, what makes them stand out as audiobooks, and why they're connecting with listeners right now.
00:53:13
If you're looking for your next listen, this is a great place to start. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeart Radio app,
00:53:21
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. Summer clothes should feel easy and still look polished.
00:53:28
Low maintenance, high reward. That's how we live our lives. For summer clothes you will actually wear, there's Quince.
00:53:33
Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and toffs with style starting at $32.
00:53:40
Their denim is soft and easy to wear, and their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights.
00:53:46
Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories.
00:53:51
So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it not just clothing Quince has become a destination for elevated essentials across the home kitchen bedding and beyond making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life I am a fan of Quince Yeah Karen wardrobe is Quince
00:54:08
I'm a lazy basics person, and the things that I get from them, I always go, oh yeah,
00:54:14
now I'm wearing these. They work, they're cute, they're stylish. And they're classy. Like it doesn't look lazy, it looks classy.
00:54:21
And it's so affordable. Yeah. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash MFM for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.
00:54:30
Now available in Canada, too. That's quince.com slash MFM for free shipping and 365 day returns.
00:54:37
Quince.com slash MFM. Goodbye. I'm glad we were talking about the 80s and you explained kind of like the money stuff,
00:54:45
because mine takes place in the 80s, too, and has a lot to do with class wars and all this stuff.
00:54:52
Maybe, should I not tell you the name of it? Whatever you think. Because I think you'll know immediately about it.
00:54:57
Okay. All right. I'm going to, yeah, I'm not going to tell you. Okay. All right.
00:55:02
So New York, late 80s. It's insane. Jim Dwyer of the New York Times calls it completely schizophrenic.
00:55:10
You've got one side where there's just insane wealth from Wall Street. Everyone's getting fucking rich and doing coke and having eyes odds and such.
00:55:17
Like we said, the financial industry is booming. after a long period of stagnation.
00:55:23
And it got so bad, like in the 70s and I think early 80s, that the city of New York was going to file for bankruptcy.
00:55:31
Do you remember that? I didn't know that about New York City. The city was going to file for bankruptcy.
00:55:38
But I mean, it really was so bad in the 70s and like the late 70s. The Carter administration, where it was just like a recession.
00:55:47
Huge recession. Like we've talked about before, gas lines. You couldn't get gas on certain days. I mean, the whole country was going through this, but New York City, because they had so much violence and that sort of thing, I feel like it was a lot worse.
00:56:03
And in fact, so during the financial crisis of the 70s, a ton of neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, the homeowners and the landlords were lighting the apartment buildings on fire and burning them to the ground just to collect insurance money.
00:56:18
So all these people had nowhere to live and they left them like that. So there are these, you know, looks like how you see, how you saw Detroit for a little while.
00:56:26
Just, you know, it's insane. Sorry, there's a movie. Now I can't remember what it's called.
00:56:34
And Albert Finney is in it. And they have, it's basically like, it's basically a kind of a werewolf in New York City movie.
00:56:42
but there's parts of it where I think it's the Bronx where it's just people, maybe like kids, whatever, playing in like their vacant lawns
00:56:50
filled with just burned out debris. Wolfen? Wolfen. That's exactly right. It's kind of a kooky, supposed to be scary, goofy movie,
00:56:59
but you can see all that where it's like now New York City is pristine and amazing.
00:57:04
And of course, like the real estate is like. Once Giuliani took over and made it fucking Disneyland.
00:57:08
But there's also photo, not that I think that it's better when I was dangerous, But there's photographs you can go. There's a couple of great photo slideshows of New York in the 70s and 80s.
00:57:18
And I mean, just the subways alone are terrifying. And yeah, they had kids playing on like mattresses and vacant burned out.
00:57:26
It's just it's crazy. It's crazy. And especially I think younger people who never saw that should go and look those photos because you'd be you'd be very surprised.
00:57:34
Yeah. That's where all that punk rock came from. Yeah. So it was mostly in black and Latino neighborhoods that this burning down was doing.
00:57:42
Let's see. So both unemployment rates and crime rates were at an all time high. And because of the bankruptcy coming up, police and firefighters had been laid off.
00:57:53
Municipal services were cut, including sanitation and after school programs were totally cut.
00:57:59
So these kids who had working parents had nowhere to go after school. So they were, you know, on their own in this insane city.
00:58:04
and during this time Son of Sam was on the loose. So people were fucking terrified of that as well.
00:58:12
And then there was the blackout of 79 and there's a fucking great American experience
00:58:18
called The Blackout and everyone should watch it. It's so good and it shows what it was like at that time.
00:58:24
And after that there were these crazy fires and looting and it never really got cleaned up.
00:58:29
So you have abandoned buildings, you have all this stuff. So then in the early 80s
00:58:34
Wall Street suddenly boomed, created crazy wealth for people. I mean, the wealth they had compared
00:58:40
to what normal people had even was insane. And then the other side of the city is experiencing
00:58:46
crazy poverty, the crack epidemic starts, crazy violence that's fed by an understaffed, a lot of
00:58:52
times racist and corrupt police department that is, you know, horrible. And there's class tensions
00:58:57
and racial unrest. In about 84, crack came to New York and that just increased the crime.
00:59:05
The crack wars came. So also giving really young kids access to a lot of money and weapons.
00:59:10
So you just have these young kids and teenagers, you know, with, yeah, all hell rakes loose.
00:59:18
That was like the way to get a job. Yeah. And to get out of the hood. Totally. Basically.
00:59:23
And for some of them, it was the only way. Yeah. I always, there's an amazing movie
00:59:28
called Fresh. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. I've never seen it. It's really good.
00:59:33
We'll do a double feature with this other movie. With the Andy Williams Christmas special.
00:59:38
It's such, it's about a black kid who's trying to figure out a way to get out of the bad neighborhood
00:59:45
and the bad situation he's in. And it is so brilliantly written and brilliantly shot
00:59:50
and it's, it's one of my favorite movies. I definitely want to watch that. Yeah.
00:59:54
We need a fucking I need and I sure other people want It just a lineup of movies you suggest Because it never me I think I suggest documentaries like Ken Burns
01:00:05
And you're like, here's this movie that'll change your life. And I'm like, I've never seen it.
01:00:09
So we're going to need someone to make a list of those movies. We're going to need someone with a mustache to write that down.
01:00:15
If only we had... Oh, shit. I owe you money. I owe you a paycheck. I forgot. I didn't forget.
01:00:22
Oh, Steven. I'm sorry. So crack came, hell breaks loose. All right. On a typical day in 1989, which is where the story takes place, New Yorkers reported one
01:00:32
day, nine rapes, five murders, 255 robberies, and 194 aggravated assaults. Shit.
01:00:41
And that's later in the 80s. 89. God. Yeah. Okay. So the people who are experiencing this, of course, are the poor working class families,
01:00:53
Um, they're falling through the cracks, brown and Latino, black and Latino communities in
01:00:59
mostly Bedford Stuy in Brooklyn, Harlem, Brownsville, East New York. These neighborhoods are experiencing all of this.
01:01:07
And then you have the Upper East Side of fucking rich as shit, people. All right.
01:01:11
For example, and then I'll get on to the story. In 1984, Bernard gets, he was a 37 year old Queens native, white dude, nerdy white dude.
01:01:19
he's on the subway and he starts getting, uh, accosted by four young black men. They tried to
01:01:27
mug him and he takes out a gun and shoots all four of them. They all survived, but he became
01:01:34
known as a fucking subway vigilante. People celebrated him. Uh, and he was ultimately found
01:01:41
not guilty on all charges except for possession of an illegal firearm and sentenced to one year
01:01:46
prison for shooting for people. Yes. Um, so, all right. So that's also, sorry, but that's also
01:01:53
the time that they started doing guardian angels where they were, it was almost like people didn't
01:01:59
believe anyone was going to help them with crime. Uh, and like the Bernard gets thing was such a
01:02:05
racially kind of motivated situation, but also it was just the, these everybody, it's the irony
01:02:13
of like what you just said was the people that were in the worst neighborhoods, which were
01:02:19
demographically minorities and people of color, were actually getting the worst of this crime.
01:02:25
But then it's like the white vigilante that starts shooting everybody. Right. You know what I mean?
01:02:30
It's not like, yeah, you don't go to these neighborhoods and every, you know, there's
01:02:32
work. These are working class people. I mean, they're working their asses off and they're not going to be able to move into
01:02:37
other neighborhoods. There's so much racism. There's kind of this race war between white people and people of color.
01:02:43
But it's, you know, it's not everyone who's there being affected more so. Right.
01:02:49
By this. So, OK, so we'll get into this. Let's get into the Central Park Five and the East Side RIPPUS.
01:02:55
Oh, shit, dude. Yeah. All right. I'm going there. You sound all right, like you're not.
01:03:00
No, I mean, this is just one of the heaviest. The thing that I remember most about this case is how.
01:03:07
Go, you know what? Go ahead. Tell me. No, no, no. It's just it was such a big deal.
01:03:11
And this was like when I was in high school. Yeah, I didn't know. I was maybe 10. So I didn't. My mom kept that away from me. So you'll have to jump in at any time. Yeah. Tell me stuff. Yeah. All right. The night of Wednesday, April 19th, 1989, around 9 p.m., approximately 30, 30, God, I'm burping. Sorry. 30 teenagers who lived in East Harlem went into the northmost part of Central Park and they proceeded to commit several attacks, assaults and robberies. Can you imagine 30 teenagers?
01:03:40
I don't care what what fucking nationality or color they are I would run no teenagers are bad
01:03:48
teenagers are horrible also two teenagers are fine 30 teenagers the volume alone
01:03:55
I don't care if they're girls I fucking run I think girls are worse here's the thing though
01:04:02
do we know for a fact that they were committing those crimes or was that like a fact
01:04:08
Well, I can. Yeah, I have a list of great, great crimes they were actually committing.
01:04:13
So I don't. Yeah, it's hard because you want to see every everyone is innocent, but they, you know, and it was 30.
01:04:18
So who knows how many of them are actually doing it. Right. So they attacked several bicyclists through rocks at a cab and attacked a man who was who they assaulted, robbed and left unconscious.
01:04:28
A school teacher out for a run was severely beaten. They attacked another jogger, hitting him in the back of the head with a pipe and a stick.
01:04:34
and they beat two men unconscious, hitting them with a metal pipe, stones and punches and kicking
01:04:39
them in the head. Wow. So they definitely there was a group of these 30 kids. And they were
01:04:43
basically kind of wilding throughout the park. Well, that's the word that was created later.
01:04:47
OK. Yes. So a chase ensued by the police. And at 1015, a handful of the kids are taken into
01:04:53
custody, including Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana. And they're both 14 years old. So these
01:04:59
are young kids and they're charged with, quote, mischief. So cut to 130 in the morning,
01:05:03
passerbys discovered the unconscious body of Trisha Miley in a shallow ravine in a wooded area
01:05:11
of the park wearing only her bra. Trisha had gone for a run on her usual path in Central Park before
01:05:17
9 a.m. I mean sorry 9 p.m. that evening when her and then when her almost lifeless body was found
01:05:24
about four hours later she had been knocked down dragged or chased 300 feet and violently assaulted.
01:05:30
She was stabbed five times, raped, sodomized, and beaten almost to death. The first policeman who saw her said, she was beaten as badly as anybody I've ever seen.
01:05:42
Meanwhile, back at the police station, the kids were about to be released from custody when a police officer was told about Trisha being found.
01:05:52
And then what followed was hours of intense interrogation using tactics to get them to wear them down And as now we know that how you get a confession whether it legitimate or not Exhaust them They get no food no drink no sleep for
01:06:09
almost two days it takes. And they're repeatedly told that they could go home once they confessed.
01:06:15
And then eventually after like two days, the boys turn against each other. They tell them,
01:06:20
they admit just to, you know, go home. And these are 14, 15 year old children that that aren't bad
01:06:28
kids. They so there's this documentary by Ken Burns and his and his daughter. And it's this
01:06:34
incredible documentary that I definitely think everyone should watch called the Central Park
01:06:40
Five. And they talk about the kids backgrounds and they're all good kids from good homes. None
01:06:45
of them had ever, ever been arrested or taken in before. You know, they were little league
01:06:51
baseball players. These were not bad children. Yeah. So they also when there's a group of 30.
01:06:57
Yeah. How do they know who threw what rock, who threw like what basically it's the slowest kids
01:07:03
get arrested. Yeah. Go ahead. The thing is later, none of the people who had been attacked that
01:07:09
night, aside from Tricia, were able to identify any of the boys who got who were brought in.
01:07:15
for this attack. So they probably didn't have anything to do with it. Otherwise,
01:07:19
they would have been identified. Yeah. So they implicate each other in the assault. The boys
01:07:27
begin to confess after two days. I already said that. So in their written statements and videotaped
01:07:32
confessions, each confessed to being an accomplice to the rape, although not participating in the
01:07:37
rape itself. And they start telling details of what happened and how. And then they implicate
01:07:43
three other boys in the attack and they're picked up for questioning. Anton McRae, who's 15,
01:07:48
Yusuf Salam, who's 15, and Corey Wise, who's 16. And they ultimately all confess, except for Yusuf
01:07:57
Salam, along with, and then along with the other two boys, the five of them are arrested and charged
01:08:02
with the attack. The media fucking loses its shit, which is such a big part of the story,
01:08:08
And probably how you heard about all of this is it was huge news. And the story kind of confirmed, you know, the white New Yorkers image of what's wrong with the city and confirms their racial prejudices.
01:08:23
The boys, when they confessed, were calling it that they were wilding, which is a phrase that became huge and everyone used it.
01:08:31
And it was kind of this reference to them all being these untamed, you know, children running amok.
01:08:38
They formed, quote, a wolf pack, which is also was what they made up. So sorry, those were the boys words.
01:08:45
Yeah. Like that's what they were telling the police. Wilding. Yes, they called it wilding, which they made up.
01:08:52
And then the underage suspects names were printed, despite the fact that the names of criminal suspects under the age of 16 are supposed to be withheld from the media and the public.
01:09:01
They also print the names, photos, and addresses of the juvenile suspects before any of them had been formally arraigned or indicted.
01:09:12
Wow. Yeah. Who did it? What was it that? I just think that at that point it was so many of them.
01:09:19
But it's basically the New York Daily News or the New York Post or one of those.
01:09:22
It's the tabloid. Yeah, the tabloid. Seeds. Seeds? Seedy. None of them were arrested. And they retracted their statement within weeks, claiming that they had been intimidated, lied to and coerced into making false confessions.
01:09:39
And the confessions themselves were videotaped after they had been interrogated and confessed and written statements.
01:09:45
That part wasn't taped at all. So they had no way to to show that they were being fed information and coerced.
01:09:53
So they only taped the part where they said I did it or someone else did it. They only taped the part after all this when they had their stories down.
01:10:01
Okay. And they knew the details they were supposed to be talking about. Didn't tape any of the part where they make them tell the story 500 times.
01:10:06
Right. Or, you know, you've seen these things where they say, is that what happened?
01:10:09
That's not what happened. Right. Tell me the truth. And they kind of feed it in this really creepy way.
01:10:14
They lead them into the correct story. Right. And who knows if they even do it. Do the cops do it on purpose?
01:10:20
Do you think the detectives, I just don't think they even know for the most part.
01:10:24
It seems like for a long time it was just the way things were done until people, lawyers and whoever, you know, rights activists came back and were just like, you can't tell them how it went.
01:10:37
And then when they repeat that back to you is because they want a sip of water or they want to go home, use it against them.
01:10:44
Well, it's the whole thing, too, of like that shouldn't be in the confession videotape should not be admissible in court because there's no background.
01:10:51
Right. Okay. It's like apropos of nothing. essentially. Yeah. Okay. So meanwhile, Trisha's injuries are so bad that she's given last rights,
01:10:59
like they think she's going to die. But after being comatose for 12 days, she survives and was
01:11:06
eventually able to talk, read and walk. But she had no memory of the night of the assaults
01:11:12
whatsoever. So now the trial. So usually, the homicide detective, usually they look in,
01:11:21
OK, instead of the homicide unit getting put on the case because they thought she was going to die.
01:11:27
Linda Fairstein of the sex head of the sex crimes unit and her prosecutor, Elizabeth Letterer, were put on the case.
01:11:34
And for some fucking reason, they're part of the police investigation from day one.
01:11:39
So they're helping investigate this case, thinking that these five kids did it and building the case around that.
01:11:46
So they get to analyze the crime scene. And they get to do all of these things that clearly are going to lead the case for the prosecutors.
01:11:55
But they were supposed to be the defense? No, they're the prosecutor. Right. They're the sex crimes unit and their prosecutors, and they are investigating a case from the minute it happened.
01:12:06
OK. And that's not normal? No, because this way they can skew the results in the direction they want, which is immediately for these five boys.
01:12:15
OK. So they're, you know, usually the prosecutors and the defense team and the attorneys wouldn't get the information till after the whole investigation has been completed by the detectives or the sex crimes unit, which is this woman who allowed her prosecutor to be in.
01:12:29
Oh, I see. Okay. Got it. That make sense? Yes. Okay. So the boys are brought to trial. 16 year old Corey Wise is being tried as an adult for some reason because he's 16. And the newspapers are going nuts. The case of a white woman being attacked by a rowdy group of black teens stirring up the racism in the city, which kind of was this underlying thing that no one was talking about. But finally, they had something to point at.
01:12:54
It was the equal opposite of the Bernie Getz situation. It was basically, yeah, that's kind of retribution, the idea of retribution.
01:13:06
Yeah. And piling it all very conveniently on these five boys. Yeah. So, for example, the night of the Central Park rake, a woman in Bedford, Stuy, was raped and thrown off a building.
01:13:20
Never fucking talked about in the media. And that same week that this happened, 28 rapes were reported.
01:13:26
But those were not being reported by the media. But the black community even turned against the boys as well, some of them, because they were having their own run-ins with the black youths who insulted and intimidated those people in their own neighborhood.
01:13:41
And they felt that they were giving the whole community a reputation as, you know, drug dealers and felons.
01:13:46
Right. So even the black community was fucking pissed about them. Oh, and good old Trump puts out a full page ad in four newspapers calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York.
01:13:59
Even though the death penalty wasn't even on the table for this. He just. And at the time he was a slumlord.
01:14:07
A very wealthy one. A very wealthy slumlord. A very wealthy businessman. Yeah. Who made money off of basically being a slumlord.
01:14:15
Yeah. Oh, and casinos. Yes. Okay. OK, and then the City Sun newspaper and the Amsterdam News used a victim's name in their paper, despite the media policy of not publicly identifying victims of sex crimes.
01:14:31
Yeah. So they gave out her name, even though they weren't supposed to. And they said it's because, well, if other people are willing to put out the boys' names, then she should have her name out, too, which is like so fucked up.
01:14:41
Well, that doesn't. No. That's not a one to one. Nope. Thing at all. It is not. But it sounds like this was the Wild West, essentially.
01:14:49
Yeah. This sounds like the worst. 89, man. The 80s. Just this like, yeah, Wild West.
01:14:57
So the analysis was done on the DNA that was collected at the crime scene, and it didn't match a single one of the suspects.
01:15:03
They also didn't have any hair, any evidence. And the crime scene looked like, it didn't look like five people could have been attacking someone.
01:15:12
It looked like a single person was attacking someone. And there was like this small little path that was walked up and taken Trisha away from the main road.
01:15:23
But there wasn't, you know, beat up dirt or anything like that. So it was like she was down in a ravine and there was like one track down to her body and back up.
01:15:31
Yes. Not like five people walked down. Right. And when the boys got in there, they didn't have any mud or dirt on them.
01:15:38
And the other thing is, if she were fighting back, which they said, the cops said that she put up a hell of a fight,
01:15:43
They would all have scratches and crazy things on them. One kid had, one of them had a scratch on his eye, but that's it.
01:15:52
So the DNA collected. And so when the DNA was collected and didn't match, the prosecutors just said that they must have been, there must have been a sixth one of them then that the DNA matches and still brought them to trial.
01:16:06
With a case that was almost entirely based on the confession, circumstantial. So, okay.
01:16:14
So the four boys, Kevin, Yusuf, Anton, and Raymond are convicted of rape, assault, robbery, and riot in the attacks.
01:16:25
They were 15 years old and 14. So they got maximum sentence for juveniles, which is five to 10.
01:16:31
But Corey Wise is 16 and tried to lose adult. So he gets five to 15 in fucking Rikers.
01:16:37
which is like a hardcore prison and going in as a rapist, especially against a white woman where there's a lot of Aryan people in the prison is ugly.
01:16:47
All right. Well, the summer that the attack on Tricia occurred, there's a serial rapist terrorizing the Upper East Side called the East Side Rapist.
01:16:57
Okay. I just got a weird chill. Did you remember this? No, I've never heard of this before.
01:17:02
Yeah. So you know that story, but you don't know the end of it. I know that story very well.
01:17:07
All I know is that the mentality at the time was they caught some. This was the mentality.
01:17:14
They caught some of them and they're going to jail like like good. And everyone.
01:17:18
Yeah. Everyone rejoiced. Everyone was was was absolutely. And I feel like in general, unquestionably swallowing the story that was being fed.
01:17:28
Yeah. Everyone I mean they wanted it to be solved And it was a perfect backdrop and proof of what was going on and what they been saying was going on and what they were mad about and something to say
01:17:40
this is why I feel this way about, you know, this is why my racism is justified.
01:17:46
Exactly right. And, and to say, as if this is the only, these are the only, um, people that are,
01:17:53
uh, breaking the law in New York city that this, and that to me is the, that's the thing I feel like all the way up to, and obviously passed until very recently,
01:18:04
but like around the OJ trial where it's this idea of you don't just get to say who is,
01:18:11
who is innocent and who's guilty, but like, you don't just get to pull people through the,
01:18:15
the legal system and just be like, there, the problem is solved. Because if you have,
01:18:20
if it's a setup, which many of them have been, you still have somebody that's guilty out there
01:18:25
doing it. Totally. And who knows what color that person is. But you've now not solved the problem,
01:18:33
ruined people's lives, supported racial stereotypes, not told an accurate story.
01:18:39
So but this is how the story ended in 2002. Okay. So the summer that the attack happened,
01:18:45
a serial rapist named the East Side Rapist is fucking terrorizing everyone. August 5th, 1989,
01:18:52
17 year old matias reyes is caught after raping uh another victim he's the east side rapist east up
01:19:00
the east side rapist um he so the the woman who was raped noted to detectives that she saw fresh
01:19:07
fresh stitches on his chin and it was right after the attack on trisha so he ultimately
01:19:14
confessed to one murder five rapes two attempted rapes and the rape and murder the murder was uh
01:19:21
Lord, Lordis Gonzalez. And she was pregnant and her three children heard through the bedroom.
01:19:30
So, so August 5th, you've got this guy getting caught for rape and saying that he murdered
01:19:39
people. And then on April and in April, a couple of months before that, this rape of Trisha happened,
01:19:47
this attack. Let's see. So after being in prison, he's in prison for more than a decade for the murder.
01:19:55
In 2002, he finds God, Reyes finds God, comes forward and says that he is the attacker of Trisha.
01:20:03
He did it. So he then goes on to detail how he followed, raped, brutally beat her, and then details that the five, the Central Park five, never got right.
01:20:17
They never even had similar stories of what happened. They were all different. And he just tells exactly how it really went.
01:20:22
From where he threw the socks to where he threw the keys and why. Because he was mad that she wouldn't give him her address so he could break into her house.
01:20:31
So he threw the keys and they had always wondered what the deal with the keys were,
01:20:35
exactly what she was wearing, that she had a Walkman that was stolen. And they weren't sure if there was a Walkman involved.
01:20:43
All her friends said she always ran with a Walkman. And he said it too. Yeah. Which it wasn't even at the scene.
01:20:50
And so the fact that he knew about it meant, you know, he was there. He definitely fucking did it.
01:20:55
Yeah. And the DNA is then tested and it's his DNA. Oh, man. Yeah. So let's see. The detective who gave him, who gave the statement, who he took the statement said,
01:21:11
Matias Reyes is one of the top five lunatics he's interviewed in more than 20 years investigating homicides.
01:21:17
The five boys had already been released from prison. They're adults now. But they were struggling because they were now sex offenders on the sex offenders registry. And Raymond Santana was still in jail because he had a drug charge he took to selling drugs because he couldn't get a job with a sex offender as a sex offender.
01:21:38
Yeah. But his sentencing because of that drug charge, because of his prior convictions was longer.
01:21:45
So he was still in prison based on his prior conviction. So he's released. And then in 2002, Manhattan, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau threw out the convictions in the Central Park Jogger case.
01:21:58
The five are exonerated. And in 2014, New York City paid them forty one million dollars as a settlement.
01:22:05
Really? Yeah. Are you crying? Yeah. Yeah. 41 million. That's like we fucked up so hard. Yeah. So the prosecutors, the woman who was the prosecutor, the sex offender unit head, refuses to admit that they were wrong.
01:22:26
She's now a teacher at some big college and they're like starting a petition to get her kicked out because she uses this case as one of the highlights of her career.
01:22:37
Oh, no. Yeah, so she can't say it's true. She says maybe there were six of them.
01:22:42
Still sticks to that story. And doesn't acknowledge the hard evidence of the lunatic rapist?
01:22:50
No. Who admitted he did it? Why would you admit you did something? And did it alone.
01:22:55
And then actually have the hard evidence and know the details? I mean, that's very difficult to deny.
01:23:02
Right. Yes. And then so the police detectives a lot of them won admit that they were wrong And of course Trump refuses to admit He says look at the confession So he still stuck on this confession which as we know now so many confessions are coerced easily
01:23:20
Right. Especially out of children. Totally. As for the victim. So Trisha had five months of rehabilitation.
01:23:32
she returned and then she returned to running in Central Park. In 95, she ran the New York City Marathon.
01:23:41
And in 2003, so she had been anonymous up until then. And in 2003, she comes out and publishes a memoir called
01:23:52
I Am the Central Park Jogger. I remember that. Yeah. I don't know. I want to know what she thinks about all of the, you know,
01:24:01
thinking that these five boys were her attackers for so long and then having to switch her brain completely.
01:24:06
It's just so scary, and I feel so much for her just based on that. And then she began a career as an inspirational speaker.
01:24:16
She works with victims of sexual assault and brain injury in the Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Group.
01:24:23
So that's the Central Park Five and the East Side Rapist. Wow. Huge. I know. That's such a huge story.
01:24:30
Did I tackle that okay? Did I give it justice? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I mean, this is, I feel like, especially in this day and age, it's so difficult to talk.
01:24:44
The first thing I thought of while we were talking about this is, I remember one time, a long time ago, we were talking about something.
01:24:50
And the way we intimated it, it made it sound like what we were saying is all people of color live in the ghetto.
01:24:57
Right. And we got a lot of people who wanted to talk to us about that, where that is in no way what me meant, but it was like the wording of how it sounded.
01:25:05
And so I would just point that out that, you know, like this isn't the assumption that because you are of color, you live in the worst part of the Bronx.
01:25:14
And it doesn't mean that because you're of color, you go wilding. Like none of what we're talking about is to say every single person was living only this one way in New York in that time.
01:25:27
I'm sure there was tons of, you know, upwardly mobile black people and people, Hispanic people and people of color that lived on the Upper West Side.
01:25:35
Yeah. So it's not it's not that. But I think that the law, the lines are absolutely drawn because back then the white like it was basically white men ran most media.
01:25:46
Yeah. And white men were the cops usually for the majority, I would say. And so that was the that was the story that we were always given.
01:25:54
And that was the story people were reacting to. And that's what we're talking about.
01:26:00
Well, it's just so hard because with this podcast, I don't want to do the thing that so many people talk about is that blonde, white women, that's all the stories we cover, which I don't think we do.
01:26:11
But, you know, I want to give I want to tell them the stories because I want to represent as many people as we can and as many victims as we can, which I totally think these boys are victims in this story.
01:26:25
But, you know, it's hard as a white woman. I want I try to empathize, but I'll never I know I'll never understand completely what's going on.
01:26:34
So, you know, like the Mike Trice Richardson case, I just really wanted to to. Yeah, I just want to make sure that we're covering them.
01:26:41
but I know it's never going to be perfect. Definitely. So it's a bit of a risk to even
01:26:47
talk about them because everything is very loaded these days. And I think people, it makes people
01:26:52
feel better. If you make, if you misspeak about something, it makes people feel better to tell
01:26:59
you how wrong you are. It makes, it makes it feel like that's, that's making a difference,
01:27:04
which it definitely is. I mean, in some ways, but, but I guess our hesitation is when you put
01:27:12
stuff like that out there, it's easy to say something incorrectly or sound insensitive or
01:27:17
make it sound like you're making a generalization. Right. I don't want to do that. I tried very hard
01:27:23
not to. Um, but please email us. We're always open to, you know, hear your story or have your
01:27:31
corrections and they know that I know. I mean, Jesus, that's the one thing we do get, I think.
01:27:37
But I think what's better than not not covering it because it's too loaded is just not talking
01:27:42
about it at all. And so I think that's important as well to talk about it. Yes. Yes. Especially
01:27:50
for people who have a podcast, you know, who are talking specifically about murder and podcasts
01:27:54
and podcasts. It's like we can't just cover the easy ones. Well, and also the ones that have been
01:28:01
covered because you're exactly right. That's the thing of it's the blonde cheerleader. When the
01:28:06
blonde cheerleader goes missing, everybody freaks out because the society that's built up around us
01:28:12
is basically said, well, that's what makes the money. That's what sells the newspapers.
01:28:16
There's a lot of like very convenient rationale that goes into why we talk about some murders and
01:28:23
crimes and why we don't talk about others. I think that example of like a woman who was raped and
01:28:27
thrown off a building on the very same night. And no one has heard of that story. I think that's very
01:28:34
kind of symbolic And I think it that thing of like it just good It good to start trying to open your eyes I think it a hard thing for some people to do There some people that will never be able to do it But if you can try I think it important
01:28:49
I think it is going to help. Our society needs this kind of help very badly. Definitely.
01:28:56
To come together and to be like, I get it. Nobody's, you know, horror is worse than another person's horror.
01:29:04
And then for you and I to kind of open the conversation up because we're two white women and that we're trying to understand what's going on in other people's worlds.
01:29:23
And I'll take that out. That sucked. No, I had it and then it was gone. Okay. All right.
01:29:30
So something positive. Yes. That's how we end this. so everyone doesn't get bummed.
01:29:35
Do you want to go first? No, you go first. The good thing that happened to me, I said I went last week to a new psychiatrist.
01:29:43
The fucking change in medication is already working. Oh, really? It just makes me so hopeful when I wake up in the morning
01:29:50
and I'm not exhausted all day, and I'm sleeping at night without any pills. It just makes me really hopeful.
01:29:59
Oh, good. I had two days of not exhaustion, and I was just so happy about it. That's great.
01:30:05
Yeah. What's yours? My friend, I have a friend, my friend Kevin Farzad has a band called Sure Sure
01:30:13
and they have new music coming out. They're truly one of my favorite bands. It's like the kind of music you can put on.
01:30:20
Like I just feel so stressed out lately and I think a lot of people have been. It's the kind of music that's like super catchy and great
01:30:30
but it's not like invasive. I can't explain it. It's just very good. I totally recommend it.
01:30:35
I think they're coming out with a new album soon. But I will be retweeting their music.
01:30:41
I'm just a big believer in Sure Sure, the band. I love it. So I think everyone should listen to them.
01:30:46
That's a good one. Yeah. Music is such an important part of, you know. The human existence.
01:30:52
The human experience. The human experience. And life and happiness. Well, thank you guys for listening.
01:30:59
Where is Elvis? thank you guys for listening we've done it again oh oh i forgot to mention also we have new merch
01:31:06
i totally forgot about that we have a fuck we have a here's the thing fuck everyone shirt and
01:31:10
it's got an adorable little drawing of terry joe dupero i believe is how her last name is uh
01:31:18
pronounced she's the 12 year old girl that got stuck on a raft after the captain of her family's
01:31:25
boat murdered her whole family and the boat sank. It's in like episode 18 or 28. I think.
01:31:32
And our friend Kat Solon on her own accord just drew the based on the photo of her in this little
01:31:40
raft before she got saved. And we were like, after that episode, we were like, everything's the worst
01:31:47
and everything sucks. So we were like, here's the thing, fuck everyone. But she's totally a survivor.
01:31:51
So go buy those shirts. Those are on myfavoritemurdershirts.com And there's like mugs and hats and things.
01:32:01
Yeah, it's good stuff. Alright, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Bye! Elvis? Elvis?
01:32:10
You want cookie? Elvis? Want cookie? Come here. Elvis? Want cookie? Come here. There he comes.
01:32:24
I should have videoed that. Want a cookie? Vacation planning should feel like a breeze,
01:32:30
not a deep dive into countless travel sites searching for the best deal. With Cheap Caribbean's Budget Beach Finder,
01:32:35
you can search every destination and every date all in one search. You'll save time and money with the Budget Beach Finder.
01:32:42
Say goodbye to endless scrolling and tab hopping and hello to Budget Beach Bliss at your fingertips.
01:32:47
Go to CheapCaribbean.com to try out the budget beach finder and see just how stress-free vacation planning should be.
01:32:53
Goodbye. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
01:33:00
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Because next doesn't wait for an invitation.
01:33:05
And Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
01:33:12
And by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day because the future isn't some far off concept.
01:33:20
It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.
01:33:25
Clothes shopping, not as easy or fun as it sounds. You just want to feel confident in your clothes.
01:33:31
You can spend hours scrolling, zooming in, reading reviews, only to end up with a cart full of nothing that feels or fits right and a bunch of returns to do.
01:33:39
Stitch Fix makes it so much easier. A personal stylist sends pieces that match your size, style, and everything's in your budget.
01:33:46
No guesswork, no stress, and your guaranteed compliments. Here's how Stitch Fix works.
01:33:50
Take a quick style quiz, share your size, style, and budget, and get matched with a real human stylist who gets your vibe.
01:33:57
It's no risk, all style. Get a personalized fix box straight to your door and try it all on in the comfort of your home.
01:34:03
Shipping and returns are always free and there's no subscription required. Plus, get a free try-on for your first fix.
01:34:09
Get started today at stitchfix.com slash murder to get $20 off your first order.
01:34:14
That's stitchfix.com slash murder. Goodbye.