Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 48: An Albert Fish Production

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Speaker 1 Hello

Speaker 1 and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia.

Speaker 1 Rewind.

Speaker 1 Every Wednesday, we recap our old episodes with all new commentary, updates, and insights. And today we're recapping episode 48, which we

Speaker 1 named

Speaker 1 an Albert Fish production. Sorry, that's

Speaker 1 to true crime enthusiasts. I know I almost did a spit take.
It's like that's the only, yeah, no one else cares, but true crime enthusiasts. It's horrible and hilarious.

Speaker 1 You get that Stephen J. Cannell typewriter.
He throws the piece of paper in here, but it's Albert Fish. This episode came out on December 21st, 2016.

Speaker 1 And that means it was conceived on March 29th, 2016. You do the math.
Our podcast,

Speaker 1 do they go for nine months or do we like alien egg? It's human baby. Podcasts are human baby length of fertilization.
I disagree.

Speaker 1 I'm an earther or whatever. What do I call it? You're a flat.
I'm a flat fertilizationer. Yeah.
Anyway, let's listen to the intro of episode 48.

Speaker 1 What's wrong?

Speaker 1 Nothing. It just feels like it's been a long time.
It does. Oh, it has.
It has been? Yeah. Are we recording? Yes.
Good. Good, because we need to get this figured out.
It has been.

Speaker 1 I guess we, I guess almost two weeks. Is that right? Since like apartment recording.
Yeah, because we did our Bell House show last week. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was a fun, that was different. That was nuts.
That was nuts. That was a break from reality.

Speaker 1 It was super fun. We love you, Jamie Lee.
Jamie Lee's book's coming out. That's right.
Thanks for being here. Ridiculous is coming out.
I think I called it Weddalish. Wed Alicious, you did.

Speaker 1 With the absolute confidence. That's all that matters is when you say stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
They should change the title right now. That's exactly.
Well, they might have to. Right.

Speaker 1 Hi, this is My Favorite Murder. It's a podcast starring Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgareth.
Our sound technician is a man named

Speaker 1 Stephen Ray Morris. And his mustache.
And

Speaker 1 this is day 403 of Stephen's mustache. We've been counting.
He's doing it. He's going to grow it all the way around his mouth,

Speaker 1 I think. That's my personal.
I thought you were going to say his head. That would be funny if we just tie it in the back.
Oh, my God. Why is that not a thing?

Speaker 1 Mustache fucking. Sounds like a nightmare.
Yeah. You have to do it now, Stephen.
Stephen? You have to. Only for you, Karen.
Oh, Stephen. Speaking of only for us, Stephen brought us.

Speaker 1 Okay, Stephen is like, does everything for us? Does everything. He's so fucking sweet and wonderful.
And also thinks about things like much more than we do.

Speaker 1 Because we don't know, because we didn't know this was going to be a thing. Right.
So, but he did. He did.
And he was prepared for it. He prints things out for us.
He put our plans.

Speaker 1 But also, he brings us presents. He brought us this.

Speaker 1 It was a holiday present. Holidays.

Speaker 1 Non-denominational holiday presents at each seat on the couch. I know.
So we decided we're going to open them on the air with you guys.

Speaker 1 I know what this is going to be. Oh, my God, Stephen.
It sounds amazing. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Is this fuck?

Speaker 1 He got us serial killer baseball cards. Holy shit, Stevens.
Truth crime, G-Men, mass murderers, serial killers, and gangsters. And they're like, they're like baseball card packets.

Speaker 1 Ooh, you've got to do it. Stephen, I'm going to fucking have a seizure right now.
This is really good. Are these like old? Yeah, like these are like hard to find.
Yeah, they're from like the 90s.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 see,

Speaker 1 I'm like, I see people post these on the fucking Facebook page. I'm like, I've had these since the 90s and everyone's like, fuck you.

Speaker 1 And you got like five packs of them for both of us. This is really good.

Speaker 1 Is there gum in there? I wouldn't eat it if there was. I'm going to, and then I'll sue you if anything happens.
And this is now. There's a secondary.
There's another bigger one.

Speaker 1 Because he's a classy man that gives you a small gift with this bigger gift underneath it. Oh my god, oh my god, what is it? It's his memoir of what assholes we are.

Speaker 1 What'd you get? Let's see. It's the book.
It's a vintage book. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 This is the book of Vicki Morgan and Alfred Bloomingdale and the affair that shook the highest levels of government and society. Oh my god.
It's a British one, right?

Speaker 1 It was the woman in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 1 D.C. Dominatrix and there was sex skin.
The cover of that book is fucking, I want that on a shirt. Wait, this is a culture.
This one in like the 80s? This one is by Larry

Speaker 1 Honor.

Speaker 1 It's called Cults That Killed, Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime. Yes.
Stephen, these are good books.

Speaker 1 I thought for a second, I thought this book was about

Speaker 1 somebody that was in the Bengals. Because that was totally the same.
This was written in 1988. I'm so fucking like at the height of the satanic panic.
This is so good, Stephen.

Speaker 1 I call it the satanic panic.

Speaker 1 Stephen, we got you a bottle of single malt sky. We got you this old old wrapping paper.
Oh my god, Steven, I'm sweating because I'm so happy. That's really good.
I can't wait to open it.

Speaker 1 I don't think I should open these. You give and you give.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I like them.
Steven. You should open one.
Open one of the packages. Good idea.
I'm doing it. Let's do it.
Good idea.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Also, when we talked about the plan was that we were going to open these on the air, then, Steven, would you say it would be good for? Oh, ASMR.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 What'd you get? What'd you get? Read a couple.

Speaker 1 I got got the Hall Mills case, which on September 16th, 1922, a couple walking down a country lane near New Brunswick, New Jersey found two bodies lying under a crab apple tree.

Speaker 1 It was Reverend Edward Hall, 41, and Mrs. Eleanor Mills, 32, a member of his church choir.
He had been, both had been shot. Her throat had been cut.
Oh, wait, I've heard this story.

Speaker 1 This is, we're only picking our murders from these decks. Oh, my God.
That's just shuffled enough in Jesus this week. It's weird they're only from the 90s and before.
Our work has been done.

Speaker 1 Okay, mine. I have one, Clifford Olson, who looks like a real fucking piece of work.
Look at him.

Speaker 1 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 Okay. That's a good dramatic painting.
Let's see here. So, November 1980, a 12-year-old British Columbia girl disappeared.
Her mutilated body was found a month later.

Speaker 1 In 81, a 13-year-old girl vanished, followed by a 16-year-old boy a week later. The boy was found dead, his skull crushed.

Speaker 1 In May, a 16-year-old girl disappeared, and then in June, a 13-year-old girl, and then in July, Jesus, I'm doing him for my next number murder.

Speaker 1 No spoilers. No, yeah.

Speaker 1 Are you reading till the end? Fuck, that's good. These, Stephen, I'm these are amazing cases.
These are like treasures that I will treasure forever and ever. And we're going to start trading them.

Speaker 1 I've never, I've never heard of half of these people. Jack the stripper.
I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 Jackie Stripper.

Speaker 1 Uh, in 59, 8. I'm going to, I'm going to rephrase this.
Go ahead. A sex worker.
Nice. Was strangled and clad only in her slip, was found near their Thames.
Thames thing? Thames. Thames? Oh, shit.

Speaker 1 It's one of those ones. The only reason I'm not.
It's not. It's one of those famous ones that I've been to.

Speaker 1 And I should fucking know. Thames? She was found.
Shit happened.

Speaker 1 Look, Sonny Bean. Remember, I did that one.

Speaker 1 This is the, I am honestly like glowing right now. This is best Christmas ever, Steve.
This is the best Hanukkah ever, Steve. Richard Cottingham.
Wait a second. I'm Jewish.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Richard Cottingham is the one I just did on the last episode. You just did him and you.
And then he walks through the door.

Speaker 1 You got out of jail already.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, you did. I'm going to open all of these.
This painting makes him look way better than he actually looks in real life. What if we have a whole okay?

Speaker 1 What if the next mini sound is just us opening these and reading them to each other? That's a great idea. Let's absolutely do that for real.
Because these are amazing cases. Dude, it's happening.

Speaker 1 And also, look at how hot this guy is. Who's that? That's his story.
I don't know. He's kind of like Mick Jaggery, but younger.
Tune in to the next minisode. Yeah.
So the minister will find out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Holy shit. That's exciting.
Oh, my God. Steven.
You're a fucking angel.

Speaker 1 What, Steven? What? Oh, I was going to say they were very controversial at the time because they were like, people were obsessed with them.

Speaker 1 I remember.

Speaker 1 Remember, they had those

Speaker 1 playing cards of cold cases that they would give to inmates

Speaker 1 in prison so that they would be playing with these cards and they'd be like, fuck me. And they'd read about the victim and be like, this fucking dude I was in prison with has admitted to this.

Speaker 1 And I think there were not a lot, but a couple cases that got solved because of that. That's a brilliant idea.
Isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I do remember, though, when these came out, it was like, How dare you was the kind of overall

Speaker 1 it was like so sick with like similar to our podcast.

Speaker 1 We are the how dare you podcast of today,

Speaker 1 but for different reasons.

Speaker 1 And our podcast comes with a stick of shitty gum.

Speaker 1 That's right. Our podcast, listening to it, is the same thing as eating old, powdery, pink,

Speaker 1 flaky,

Speaker 1 hard to chew of baseball card gum. Remember when you would just like eat it out of not spite, but just like, I bought this.
Yeah. It's hard.
It's a bad pack. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Vince buys the wrestling ones a lot, like the old school wrestling ones too. And yeah, I think he burns the gum.
Uh-huh. Burns it? I don't know.
Smokes it. What if he just was like addicted to

Speaker 1 vintage gum?

Speaker 1 The fumes of vintage gum. That sounds like the new, like, what, like, what parents get told, like, their junior high kids are into now.

Speaker 1 You see old gum in your kids' room on the next 2020. They're smoking it.

Speaker 1 I would just like to say, really quick, that at that show, we had so many great people.

Speaker 1 It was crazy. And we got to say hi to so many awesome listeners, which was really fun.
It is. And

Speaker 1 Bellhouse, we have to give a. Yes.
They stayed late to let us

Speaker 1 talk to all the people who stuck around. And they were really cool at like moving the line along.
They didn't have to do that. They were

Speaker 1 great. The whole staff was amazing.
The whole staff was great. Thank you, Andrew, for booking us.
This was our little our own booking long ago where we thought this would be fun. And

Speaker 1 we were right. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I would just like to say,

Speaker 1 thanks to my friend Carrie who came to see me and he literally yelled hey over like five people and then walked away because he didn't want to have to wait in line.

Speaker 1 Oh, I met him. He was nice.
Yes. And same with my friend Cullen who apparently just sent me a message saying, yeah, I wasn't going to wait around.

Speaker 1 And then my friend David Knowles, who you did meet, who I've known since we were 12 years old. We met in sixth grade.
I went to the freshman winter formal with him.

Speaker 1 He waited in line and he was the second to last person in line. And when the like third to last person walked away, I go, The fuck are you?

Speaker 1 I'm gonna see you after. It was like he waited.

Speaker 1 He probably thought everyone knew you. Yes.
I was like, these are children's friends. We're trying to say hi in an organized way.
It was so nice.

Speaker 1 We got, we again got a lot of fucking amazing presents. I got some of, I just keep getting the best cat toys.
Yeah. Ever.

Speaker 1 Like, that's the whole, that's my scheme for this podcast is to get free cat toys. We got a lot.

Speaker 1 Cat toys and

Speaker 1 what was in that other bag? In in a bigger bag. Makeup.
Yes. Oh, that makeup.

Speaker 1 I also want to, so we need to, if you go to our Instagram, it's my favorite murderer. I post a lot of like the photos and stuff of what people gave us and shout outs and shit.

Speaker 1 One thing we got that I just need to fucking, I got in the mail and started opening it. And I was like, can't open this? I'm going to cry without Karen.

Speaker 1 So this person, this, this girl named Molly, has this website called theurbansmith.com and she makes this like incredible jewelry and metalworking and like these gorgeous things and she made us these necklaces that are so beautiful and delicate that they stay sexy on them yeah they're

Speaker 1 beautiful our twins these necklaces and then she made me these two little charms that look like if um elvis or mimi ever let me in my fucking life put a

Speaker 1 um collar on them without murdering me that would you put these on it and it's just these little beautiful

Speaker 1 um monogram things that say elvis and mimi that i'm gonna wear as a necklace like they're so beautiful yeah they're really nice so the urban smith I just wanted to give a shout out to whoever gave us the ColourPop lippy sticks.

Speaker 1 Yeah. ColourPop brand.
We got eyeshadow and we got lipstick. But this lippy sticks, ColourPop lippy sticks in the color poison.

Speaker 1 I think they wrote and said, I hope this is a color that you can use because I've talked so much about

Speaker 1 lipstick.

Speaker 1 It's so perfect because it's a really good color, but it also stays on. It's like a stain.
God bless America. And we're not, and we don't.
So, yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah.
And so we always will.

Speaker 1 On my favorite murder Facebook page, there were two meetups that I got to look at this morning: one from Portland, Oregon, one from Austin.

Speaker 1 And they were so cute. And the thing that kills me is how much crafting people put in.

Speaker 1 They do, I mean, is that the one that did the serial killer drawings?

Speaker 1 That was... I'm going to have to look which one did the drawing.
That's not the one. I have it on the piece of paper.
That's all right.

Speaker 1 I wrote it on this piece of paper right here. Portland did the drawings.
Oh, Portland. They did like coloring books.
Coloring books of serial killers. Serial killers.
I love it.

Speaker 1 And on the Austin meetup, they had all kinds of craps, but my favorite was they had name tags that said, my favorite murder is. And then they wrote who their favorite murderer is on the bottom.

Speaker 1 So one lady is like smiling, but it just says Albert Fish.

Speaker 1 I love the idea that he's your favorite. That's such a great idea because then you could come up to someone and be like, oh my God.
I know a lot about that one too. And then you have to talk about it.

Speaker 1 Like, and then it's not awkward at parties. That's the whole point.

Speaker 1 dude everyone's doing it dude um i get i think that's all of our business oh um live show shit there's some drama going on we're not going to talk about it we're going to say that we have no control over yeah tickets none or shows or scalving places yeah i mean we're really excited they know that we're gonna there's gonna be more if we're not going to your city it's because we're saving it we're saving the best for last that's right

Speaker 1 it's because we don't choose where to go that's right i'm not gonna say the one state I refuse to go to. I wouldn't.
I'm not going to. Please don't.
That's great. You'll know when we've gone to 50.

Speaker 1 50? 50. How many are there? Are there 52? No, that's cards in a deck.

Speaker 1 It's cards in a murder deck.

Speaker 1 Let's get back to the cards. What do you want to talk about? I guess, I think I just had an idea.
Let's hear it. What about merch of baseball hats with just...
Baseball hats. With just

Speaker 1 a single face of a murderer on it. Like a drawing or like a fucking sketch? I think it would have to be a drawing.
Drawing.

Speaker 1 Don't nobody steal this. I swear to fucking God.

Speaker 1 If I see this on fucking Etsy,

Speaker 1 this means we have tonight, Sunday, we have until Thursday to fucking make this goddamn heaven. Stephen, mute it.
Stephen, Stephen. Solan, get on this, please.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't you wear just

Speaker 1 hats a great idea? Because, right? A black hat and then just Albert Fish's face on it. What if it was what I'm talking about? Oh my God.

Speaker 1 What if it was one of those beanies that you pull over your face and it has the eye in the mouth?

Speaker 1 Those are called balaclava. It's just said, My favorite murderer is, and you just pull it, and it's just like a thing.
Now, two things. This is

Speaker 1 intellectual copyright property.

Speaker 1 We own this. Own it.
And we can prove it in a court of law. Don't you steal the balaclava idea.
We'll come. What's it called? Balaclava, the thing that you pull over that like bank robbers use.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that's what it was called. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We will come to every 50 fucking state and fucking track you down. Except for the one.
Except for the one that I refuse to go to. It's Maine.
Just kidding. It's not.
It's not.

Speaker 1 It's no way, man. They got fucking lobsters.
Anyone has lobsters. I actually love Maine and I've wanted to go there since I was a kid because I used to read these books called Meg.

Speaker 1 I think it was called Meg of Maine.

Speaker 1 We're going. I think that was what it was called.
I would go to fucking Maine so hard. Yeah.
Let's just add a weird tour. Let's have a weird tour.
Called just like... We do what we want.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we do what we want. There's not enough people to fill whatever fucking banks are.
No one's interested. Nobody cares.
They don't fucking like you.

Speaker 1 They're just trying to get to make a fucking living. We're going to go to Maine.
We're going to go to Oneida, New York. We're going to go to Montreal where they don't like anything.

Speaker 1 We're going to go to Wayne. Irvine, California, which is the worst thing that ever happened in my fucking life.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't it be amazing to go to Irvine and not sell any tickets? Oh my God, amazing. Just be like, it's just all, you know, every girl who made fun of me in elementary school gets in for free.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they get a front

Speaker 1 scene.

Speaker 1 They

Speaker 1 text and talk to each other. That'd be, God, this is turning into like an Albert Brooks movie.
We, an Albert Fish movie.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. An Albert Fish Productions.

Speaker 1 That's the best name for a production company. And it's just a cartoon of him with all those pins inside of him.
Oh, my God. He's so gross.
All right. Do we have to do the murder fun? This is so fun.

Speaker 1 There are those who say we do have to do it.

Speaker 1 Last

Speaker 1 time

Speaker 1 you went first. Okay.

Speaker 1 You pointed at me and then moved your finger towards your side. Because I was just kind of ready to go with whatever you said.
I do love that in the live episode

Speaker 1 at the venue. We were like, how to ask the audience, who went first last time? And a bunch of people are like,

Speaker 1 Georgia, like they knew. I know.
That's so sweet. It's

Speaker 1 because they know we don't know anything.

Speaker 1 That was so fun. And the craziest thing to me is someone who wasn't there said, at one hour and 15 minutes in, did I hear Guy Brenham laugh? Oh, we got like seven of those.
That's

Speaker 1 that's amazing. And then you did.
Because there's people who are Guy Branham, who is our friend, and he's also a co-host of Pop Rocket, which is a very popular podcast.

Speaker 1 But also, he's a well-known comedian, and he has the most distinctive laugh that makes you want to start laughing. Yeah.
It's amazing. He's so nice.
Like,

Speaker 1 this is how low it is in LA, but he remembered my name when he met after he met me. And Vince is the same way too, where it's like, he didn't have to remember our name.

Speaker 1 Like, that's how low it is, where it's like, you remembered my name. He's so nice.
You're just looking for some decency. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He, he read how to do things with friends and, and then remember them. He wrote that.
He read that book. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. I just coughed and burped at the same time, but I just want to say,

Speaker 1 I want to delay this one more minute. Class A.
Because I have defiance disorder.

Speaker 1 Is that a thing? Yeah. I have it too.
And then I don't know what it is. It's just just that you can't do what people want you to do.
Oh my God. I fucking have that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It makes sense with both of us. It does.

Speaker 1 I'm learning a lot from you, though. I have it very bad.
I'm learning that it's okay from you. It is.
I mean, it's fine because everybody has something.

Speaker 1 I once had a fucking soccer coach when I was like in junior high hold his fist up to my face and say, you need to stop fucking being defiant. And I was like, fuck you.
Did you walk away? Yeah.

Speaker 1 The hell yeah, girl. That's right.

Speaker 1 He's probably fucking.

Speaker 1 I was just going to say, that's the show I'm working on right now is Guy Branham's show. Yeah.
That's the

Speaker 1 I don't have to be secret about it because I'm happy that Guy Branham gets to have a show and it's going to be on True TV in like probably spring called Talk Show the Game Show.

Speaker 1 It's going to be awesome.

Speaker 1 That reminds me of from Bojack Horseman of what was it like celebrities. Do they know anything? What do they know? Let's find out.

Speaker 1 That's Guy Branham deserves the show so much. So much.
That guy is.

Speaker 1 He's a fucking lawyer. Literally.
What? Yes, he has a law degree. Shut the fuck up.
Yeah, yeah. He's smarter than everybody.
Jesus.

Speaker 1 National fucking treasure. And murder time.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're back. I owe Jamie Lee a huge apology for calling her book, which is called Wediculous.
Wedalicious.

Speaker 1 Is it? It's Wediculous. That's the real name.
That's the real name. I kept calling it, and it still looks like that to me, Wedalicious, alicious

Speaker 1 right they're both they both work

Speaker 1 maybe if the book was about wedding cakes right wedalicious

Speaker 1 is like a different person than james you know than the person who would write widiculous so yeah it's a totally different vibe and it's bad marketing

Speaker 1 so there's that and i apologize i do like though that you stated fuck writing a book which then future you it's like you could feel it coming oh Oh, someone's gonna make me, someone's gonna make me.

Speaker 1 No, I fucking, I don't know why I would say that because that was like my dream my whole life, but it's just so daunting. I had to be forced to write it for sure, yeah, even though I wanted to do it.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that's how writing is. It is, that's how anything is, that's how everything is.
Oh, you want that? Work hard. No,

Speaker 1 no,

Speaker 1 now you ruined it. How about you hand it to me for once?

Speaker 1 Are you listening to me? I can't tell. I don't want to.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're going to now go into George's story from this episode. It's about the starved Rock State Park murders.

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Speaker 1 So remember we were talking about national parks and how everyone gets murdered in them constantly. It's like, what the fuck? I have one for you today

Speaker 1 that I never heard about. And then I, you know, okay, I looked it up.
Okay, here's the name of the fucking state park. It's called Starved Rock State Park.
So immediately you're like, oh, shit.

Speaker 1 Can I guess where it is? Yeah. Wyoming, Illinois.

Speaker 1 It sounds, but, you know, they're probably real close to each other. Thank you.

Speaker 1 They're probably close. Did you see the meme someone made?

Speaker 1 It's a photo of what like Wyoming and it says over the top. And whatever state is next to Wyoming It's just what you said.

Speaker 1 I can't pretend. I cannot pretend.
Listen, we're so smart in certain things. Oh, and so dumb in most things.

Speaker 1 And yet defiant as fuck. So that's why, fuck you.
That's why we're still not starting this

Speaker 1 murder TV show. God damn it.

Speaker 1 Okay, Star Rock State Park. It's a state park.
It's 100 miles outside of Chicago.

Speaker 1 The reason it's named this.

Speaker 1 Okay, so it's a rock fortress on the Illinois River. A band of, and I'm going to say this wrong and sound like such a fucking asshole,

Speaker 1 Illiniwick Indians lived there originally in the 17th, and then in the 17th century, they're besieged by a bunch of fucking assholes. They like kind of lock them in.

Speaker 1 And so the people who didn't die by trying to escape, the Indians were died. from starving.
So fuck. Yeah, dude.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So on March 14th, 1960, these three suburban housewives who are from a little bit outside of this area,

Speaker 1 they're in Riverside.

Speaker 1 Three suburban housewives go to Starved Rock State Park for a long weekend. They're all just like, let's get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 1 One of the women had like convalesced her husband through a heart attack. They needed to get the fuck out of town.
They wanted to go and enjoy the area's hiking trails. It's apparently gorgeous.

Speaker 1 They're staying at the Starved Rock

Speaker 1 Lodge. Excuse me, like burped.

Speaker 1 So, this is Lillian Edding, Mildred Lindquest, they're both 50, and Frances Murphy, who's 47. The young one.

Speaker 1 They're wives of business executives, they're mothers of grown children, and they're prominent in their town for civic involvement.

Speaker 1 And they're friends through the Riverside Presbyterian Church. So they're good fucking women, you know? They're like, we deserve, like, this is this is their,

Speaker 1 what's it called? When they, yeah. Girls' weekend.
Yes. I just had that feeling, um,

Speaker 1 right as you finish that last sentence that they're all gonna die. Well, yeah.
It was the, and you know what that feeling feels like to me when I remember what we're doing.

Speaker 1 It feels like when the dentist puts the lead blanket over you and you get your x-rays taken. Yeah.
So then it's just like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And you're like, this lead thing isn't going to do anything too. It's like that lead thing where they're like, this is probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But anyway.
yeah that's it this is the lead blanket of sadness yeah

Speaker 1 they check into the lodge they put their luggage in their rooms and then they have lunch at the lodge's like beautiful restaurant and then they're like we're gonna go for a hike like post-lunch hike

Speaker 1 okay well that evening Lillian's husband uh is supposed to hear from his wife And so he doesn't and he calls the staff and the staff is like, well no, we saw them, but they're not in the room right now.

Speaker 1 They'll call you tomorrow. The next day he calls again and the staff again says like, oh, no, you know, we saw them at lunch and they're here.
They're just probably out.

Speaker 1 And then the next day there's a snow, a crazy fucking snowstorm. And so this dude, Lillian's husband named George, is like, go into my fucking wife's room and see if she's there.
They check the rooms.

Speaker 1 Their luggage is all packed. Their car is still in the same place.
Like they clearly hadn't been there in two days.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 George calls law enforcement and volunteers come out and they start a search party. And at the time, this local newspaper reporter hears about it.

Speaker 1 He fucking skedaddles over there and he drives into the park and he comes across some kids near a ravine who are shouting.

Speaker 1 And it turns out this like local camp had been hiking and these like teenage boys found bodies on one of the nearby trails, which is like, dude, you poor kids.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 what's found? And the fucking newspaper guy goes up there, scoop of the fucking century, and it was called the crime of the century for a while.

Speaker 1 He finds the mutilated bodies of Lillian, Mildred, and Francis. They're laying side by side, partially covered with snow.

Speaker 1 They're on their backs under the ledge of a small cave, and their lower clothing had been torn away, and their legs were spread apart, which we know is a fucking sadistic as fuck way to leave someone.

Speaker 1 They had all been beaten viciously

Speaker 1 on their heads and two were tied together with with heavy twine. They are covered in blood and their legs were blackened with bruises.
Poor fucking things.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 because this had happened two days earlier and then there was a snowstorm, there were several inches of snow covering the whole area, which means all this fucking evidence they could have had was lost.

Speaker 1 But they did some digging and they found a ton of blood beneath the snow and they found a frozen tree limb that was streaked with blood and they thought that was their murder weapon.

Speaker 1 And then also a trail of blood led from a different area into where the women's body were found, so they thought that the bodies had been dragged and positioned under the sledge.

Speaker 1 The coroner said the women had

Speaker 1 obviously been, quote, molested, but they couldn't they couldn't find any evidence of rape because it had been so long and it had been snowing.

Speaker 1 Let's see. And it seems that the time of death was pretty shortly after they had left the lodge after lunch.

Speaker 1 And there was no motive for the murders because the women had left all their money and jewelry in their room.

Speaker 1 And so maybe the killer got mad when he found out that there was nothing on them. But the strap to the camera, they brought a camera and binoculars, and the strap to the camera was broken.

Speaker 1 And there were photos of them, like sightseeing on the camera, which you can see online. Oh, so the strap was broken, but the camera is still there.
Yes. Okay.
So it wasn't robbery. No, yeah.

Speaker 1 Or maybe it was attempted and the women fought back, something.

Speaker 1 So there were no suspects for eight months. And so the county state attorney, whose name was Harold,

Speaker 1 no, Harland Warren, Harland, that's a fucking amazing name. Uses his own money and purchases

Speaker 1 a microscope and begins like doing this crazy study of all the evidence. Sorry, I missed what year this was.
Oh, 1960. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 He buys his own microscope. And also everyone's name is something that's old-fashioned.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 it's like these are all older people in 1960 so y'all know they're all like you know from the 30s or whatever exactly um okay so he buys his own microscope he begins um studying the uh evidence and he's like the twine is gonna fucking tell me something where is this twine from and um

Speaker 1 He finds that there's two kinds of twine, a 20-ply cord and a 12-ply cord.

Speaker 1 And he starts at the first place he can think of, which is at the lodge. And he brings it to the manager, the cord, and he's like, does this look familiar to you?

Speaker 1 And it turns out the manager is like, I think those were from the restaurant. And they go back into the fucking area where the food is kept in the fucking pantry.
And there's the fucking twine.

Speaker 1 Same fucking twine. So they don't have to go far to find whoever did this.
They do not.

Speaker 1 So they had originally, Warren had originally thought that the killer either worked at or had access to the lodge, but all the lodge employees had been given polygraph tests and they all passed.

Speaker 1 But he calls them back for another round of testing. And that is when a former dishwasher named Chester Otto Wager was brought in.

Speaker 1 Like that name combination. Because he has a middle name.
Well, yeah, they always name the middle name. Chester.
Chester's not a good name.

Speaker 1 It's not a good name. W-E-G-E-R.
Wager. Chester Wager.
You don't name your child in a name that has the same two letters at the end on both names. Chester Wager.
Oh, is that a thing?

Speaker 1 It's my personal thing. I see that.
No, I get that. I've never thought about that.

Speaker 1 So he's a former park employee and he had quit recently, like over the summer, to go paint houses with his father.

Speaker 1 But while he was working there, he served meals to the police and reporters while they were like looking up for evidence and shit.

Speaker 1 So they give him a lie detector test and the tester who's like this really, they brought in like a really good tester.

Speaker 1 They said his face turned white after, during the testing. Chester walks away and the tester said, that's your man.
Ooh.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So Weger is 21.
He's a small man. He has a wife and two young children.

Speaker 1 He had resigned that summer and lodge employees reported seeing scratches on his face, but he had passed several lie detector tests already.

Speaker 1 I mean, because ultimately we know that lie detector tests really, they're 50-50. Right.
They're only right half the time. Yeah.
Now we know this.

Speaker 1 And there's a reason they're inadmissible in court is because they're

Speaker 1 not.

Speaker 1 They're based on your heart rate. And if you are like a sociopath or something, you won't have a reaction to, you won't be nervous to tell a lie.
You won't care.

Speaker 1 And if you truly believe what you thought you saw. So like if it's a witness who's like, I fucking saw a man in a red jacket.
I know I did.

Speaker 1 And if they believe that, they're going to not have been being deceitful, even if it's not true. They won't have the physical reaction.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think someday that, I think someday witness testimony is going to be just like lie detector tests where it's like, this is inadmissible because everyone's a little bit wrong. Reliable.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We're all a little wrong. I think that's actually a good thing to remember.
Yeah. Because I always think I remember things always and I'm positive, positive.
Yeah. And then I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 Well, it's the same thing of like how people say like there's three sides to every story, your side, their side, and the truth.

Speaker 1 And it's like, you know, the argument that you and I got into sounds this way from me and sounds that way from you.

Speaker 1 And you have to be like, well, somewhere in the middle is really what happened and you can't you have to know that you don't know yeah the other person's

Speaker 1 this is a psychology podcast

Speaker 1 it's true though they're so smart i know like how do we even not about states about feelings

Speaker 1 pardon me

Speaker 1 i just thought it'd be perfect i was gonna make that one quiet but i figured i'm putting my jacket back you're cold

Speaker 1 it's so loud i know this is on a blanket is not good for audio steven Have a blanket. There's a blanket right there.
I barely

Speaker 1 move. I peed on it once.
Please. Are you cold? Yes.
Karen, behind you is a thermostat. Please turn that heat on right there.

Speaker 1 That thing that looks like a fire hazard from the 1950s. Yeah.
Click that little thing up. This is worth it.

Speaker 1 Kaboom. Click that up.
No, no, no, to the left. The little switch.
Yeah, up.

Speaker 1 There we go. See the fire and the wall right there?

Speaker 1 It's, I need to move. This is an old.
this is serial. The night my favorite murder got lit on fire.
All right. Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay. Do-do-do-do.
So they're like, it's totally him. And then he was like, hey,

Speaker 1 I have, I just happen to have this buckskin jacket.

Speaker 1 And I want to admit that it's covered in, quote, dark stains. And it later turned out to be human blood.
on this jacket.

Speaker 1 He was just bringing this up. Yeah, I don't know if that's totally, you know, what, how it happened, but somehow they found a buckskin jacket that was covered in dark stains.

Speaker 1 That happened to be human blood. But in 1960, it could not be typed or matched to a specific victim, which is like, come on, you guys, get it to fuckinggether.
They're like, we can't. It's only 1960.

Speaker 1 It's just bloodstains at this point. We just want to go to the moon.

Speaker 1 That's all we care about.

Speaker 1 They heard the same movies, which is actually similar.

Speaker 1 Our parents failed us. So

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 1 does further polygraph tests. Again, he's fucked and he fails them all.

Speaker 1 So the investigators begin checking into similar cases in the area and they come across a reported rape and robbery that had taken place a mile from Starved Rock in 1959, the year before.

Speaker 1 A 17-year-old girl had been sexually assaulted and she had been

Speaker 1 bound with twine

Speaker 1 similarly to the Starved Rock women. Okay.

Speaker 1 And then I, you know, in all my like weird digging of like old articles and shit, the one place I found in one place this information.

Speaker 1 Um that the attack had been reported by two teenagers, a boy and a girl. The boy said they had been robbed while the girl was sexually assaulted.

Speaker 1 They told the cops about it and the officers didn't believe their story. And they sent the couple away with a cursory investigation saying that they thought the story was made up.

Speaker 1 That they were robbed? That they were robbed and she was fucking sexually assaulted. They were like, you little lying 17-year-olds, get the fuck out of here.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, why would you fucking make that up?

Speaker 1 Let's get attention. Yeah.
I mean, that's what that, that's what they used to say, stuff like that back then, right? Yeah. So maybe they had should have paid attention to that.

Speaker 1 Anyways, so the vict the female victim has brought a stack of mug shots. She's sorting through them.
And when she sees the photo of Chester, she starts to scream,

Speaker 1 which is so chilling. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So they get an arrest warrant for him on the rape because they can't prove the murders yet. So they get him off the streets.

Speaker 1 And then they have him in custody. They start questioning him about the rape.
And then they press him about the murders. And they

Speaker 1 keep him in

Speaker 1 the interrogation room for hours. At 2 a.m., he finally

Speaker 1 asks to see his family. And

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 1 confesses.

Speaker 1 But before that, he's like, really quick, though, again, I have a buckskin jacket.

Speaker 1 I just wanted you guys to know.

Speaker 1 It's the blood from the buck that was fucking killed for this jacket. I'm just going to bring this up real quick because I want, it's a pretty cool jacket.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I just want you guys to admire my jacket. Okay, anyway, no, I'll go back to my confession.

Speaker 1 So he confesses, he says

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 he got scared. He tried to grab the women's pocketbooks and they fought him and he hit them.

Speaker 1 And the pocket book turned out to be the camera that was around her neck. He thought it was like a pocketbook.
So he gives them that

Speaker 1 interesting detail. Then

Speaker 1 he says,

Speaker 1 they were like, why did you drag the women into this ledge, into this like cave? And he says it's because

Speaker 1 he had spotted a small airplane flying low over the park and he. was afraid it was a state police plane.
So he moved the body so that they could not be seen.

Speaker 1 And he had said it was a red and white plane. So a few days later,

Speaker 1 the cops and the detectives go to the airplane base and look at the logbooks and there's a fucking plane flying over that fucking park at the exact moment that was red and white. Whoa.

Speaker 1 So that's some shit that only he could have known. Yes.
Right. And he told on himself.
He fucking, he confessed. Yeah.
He confessed. He confessed.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 But then right after his first meeting with his court-appointed attorney, he changes the story and says that he was innocent of all charges, that the investigators had coerced him into confessing and that they fucking held a gun to his head and made him sign every single one of the

Speaker 1 papers. I mean, I can see that too.
I mean, back then.

Speaker 1 He said, I know, he was so scared that he signed the papers away, saying they had fed him the information about the airplane, and he wasn't even in the park at the time of the killings.

Speaker 1 He later said, the police at the park saw me every day and I passed every test they gave me.

Speaker 1 But the months went by and they wanted a conviction, so they beat me into signing it I wasn't even I wasn't ever at the park when it happened I was done wrong

Speaker 1 except for when you raped that girl that time just yeah okay but yeah yes however okay so he's brought to trial in 1961 they seek the death penalty a year later they the jury finds him guilty for one of the murders they only tried him for which is weird um maybe they thought they couldn't get him on all three well it's all the same evidence you know what i mean And then they ended up like not bringing him up on charges for the rape, too.

Speaker 1 So like this poor girl who was like, you first thought I was fucking lying and now you're not even gonna fucking try him for this shit. Wow.
Poor fucking girl.

Speaker 1 But but if he goes down for those at least something on the other ones, then he's in jail forever. Maybe they they're they had to convince them.
Okay, but here's the problem with that. Uh-oh.

Speaker 1 So he's sentenced to a term of life in prison.

Speaker 1 And then the jurors get dismissed and the and the reporters ask them if they knew that a life sentence in Illinois meant that Wager would be eligible for parole in a few years. And it turns out that

Speaker 1 the normal life sentence for murder in Illinois was 10 years at the time.

Speaker 1 What? Yeah. I don't know if it still is.
It might still be. No.
And jurors were like, wait, what the fuck? They were like, we would have fucking sent him away.

Speaker 1 Wait, that's like saying everyone that's going to jail is 70 or something. That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 A life sentence is

Speaker 1 the hardest quotes that have ever been quoted. Life sentence is such bullshit.
It makes you feel and think a certain thing. It's not fucking true.
Seven fucking years. It's like

Speaker 1 you're eligible for parole immediately and you just keep fucking. It's not a thing.

Speaker 1 A life sentence is not a thing? A life sentence is not a thing. You are full of shit.
I am not.

Speaker 1 Life sentence is like, is, is a, is a.

Speaker 1 wait, can I just remind you that lawyers listen to this? Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. I just.

Speaker 1 Would you want me to text Guy right now? Text guy. Okay.

Speaker 1 The idea of a life sentence.

Speaker 1 Wait, this is my favorite. We're going to

Speaker 1 make you.

Speaker 1 We're going outside the podcast. It's like

Speaker 1 we're doing an outside line. A life sentence.
I want to call a friend.

Speaker 1 A lawyer. I'm doing it.
A life sentence means life sentence, but in actuality, in a majority of states, it really just is,

Speaker 1 it's a sentence, but it's not an actual,

Speaker 1 what's the word? It's not going to give you 50 to 75 years like it would take up a person's life. Exactly.
You're not actually going to be in prison for your life.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Both of you on your phones now. I just want to fucking point out.

Speaker 1 No, I'm just texting. I'm texting the outside.
Can I ask you a question?

Speaker 1 We're just going to see if guys even available. Steven, what did you find?

Speaker 1 I found that it was much more complicated than I thought it was. What does it say? I thought life imprisonment was life.

Speaker 1 and no the first thing was on a message board it just said that's a really good question what is life imprisonment in illinois and oh you didn't get an answer yeah i didn't get an answer read the whole thing right now

Speaker 1 it just says that okay well we know that it changes state to state right yes so i also but this is illinois specific right so so i mean the jurors were upset like do you know that life imprisonment um

Speaker 1 a life sentence in illinois means that he'd be eligible for parole in a few years so that's the thing You get life in prison and then you're fucking eligible for parole. And

Speaker 1 in this case, in Illinois, get parole after 10 years.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. So that's right.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, is that what you're about to tell me? He got parole? No. Oh.

Speaker 1 No. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Blah, body, blah. So they said they would have given the electric chair.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit. Blah blah blah.
So,

Speaker 1 okay, let's see.

Speaker 1 The whole prosecution was based on his confession, which predated Miranda warnings that are required today.

Speaker 1 Wow. I didn't realize Miranda warnings were that recent.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They're based on a guy named Miranda.

Speaker 1 Like how John Wayne's real name is Priscilla. Is it?

Speaker 1 No, it isn't. Yeah.
Or Miriam. That's my middle name.
It's a girl named. What? Really?

Speaker 1 It's Jewish.

Speaker 1 Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so then at some point,

Speaker 1 so he, from the moment he was in prison, is saying he's fucking innocent. And

Speaker 1 that some woman had a deathbed confession that was never like corroborated. Corroborated? Corroborated.

Speaker 1 He's maintained his innocence. He's 77 and he is the third longest held inmate in a state prison, having served a life sentence since 1961.
He's been requesting parole since 1972.

Speaker 1 It's 14 times that he's been up for parole. Wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he's always always saying, and if he said that he did it, he probably would have been paroled because part of getting paroled is accepting responsibility for your crime. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he fucking refuses to do it.

Speaker 1 DNA tests were requested, but so there was a fucking hair found in the victim's fists and the bloodstains on the coat. They were requested testing in 2004, but the...

Speaker 1 the items had not been properly preserved and thus no longer had held evidentiary value, which seems like bullshit, right? Like you can fucking find it in there somewhere.

Speaker 1 Well, but it sounds like what they're saying is like instead of putting it in a Ziploc bag, they put it in one of those sandwich bags that folds over at the top, where it's like, those don't work for sandwiches.

Speaker 1 Why are they going to work for evidence? Well, I looked this case up on Facebook to see if anyone was like talking about it as their hometown murder.

Speaker 1 And one guy whose name I fucking can't remember was like,

Speaker 1 this is my hometown murder. And these items, the jacket and the fucking branch that had been used to kill them, were brought to schools to show children.
No. Yeah.
And so, and like...

Speaker 1 The buckskin jacket comes back. Yeah.
Like the guy was like, the guy worked for the Innocent Project, Innocence Project.

Speaker 1 And he was like, the reason these fucking things couldn't be tested is because one of the fucking investigators had like one of the pieces of evidence on his wall as like a trophy.

Speaker 1 And these got brought, like the guy was like, my mom remembers these being brought into school and you could like touch them and. Fucking learn about the murder.

Speaker 1 You could get as many little kid fingerprints on there as you possibly can. It's pretty smart if that's a fucking tactic.

Speaker 1 yeah because this was back when yeah yeah no one knew so it was so recent he well

Speaker 1 as

Speaker 1 less than a month ago he was up for parole again jesus how old is this mother 77. He was up for parole again and he got denied.

Speaker 1 And one of the only living jurors left, Nancy Porter, who's 92, said that

Speaker 1 she now finds the confession implausible because she thought that Wager, who was unarmed, who was only five foot eight, could have been overpowered by the three women, which I think is such bullshit.

Speaker 1 That's not how fucking crimes work. Like, you intimidate these three,

Speaker 1 you know, quiet women who go along with what you're telling them to do and intimidate them. Like, it doesn't matter how big you are.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 That's like acting like every crime situation is the same. And this person is a criminal.
He could have lured them to a spot, cracked one of them on the head, scared the shit out of the other two.

Speaker 1 Like, who's the one who's not going to be able to do that? He tied two of them together. So you're overpowering two of them.
The other woman's not going to leave.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's not like they're going to fucking ninja him, like, you know, overpower him.

Speaker 1 And that's the same thing with the Richard Speck case, where he went into, they couldn't understand how he, right?

Speaker 1 There was so many women in this room, and he, he kept them all in that room and then took them out one by one and murdered them and then nobody. And it's like, because it's a psychological thing.

Speaker 1 He scared the shit out of them. He scared them and he kept saying, probably, if you go along with what I'm trying to do, I'll let you go.
I'll let you go.

Speaker 1 And so the, you know, especially back then when you got to be fucking polite to everyone,

Speaker 1 you go along with it hoping

Speaker 1 you just want this situation to end. Yeah.
I mean, that, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.
Okay. So silver lining.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the crime lab is now one of the finest in the state because of the shoddy work from the Starbrock case.

Speaker 1 And someone said the state crime lab was less equipped than a high school chemistry lab at the time. And this is from Steve Stout, who wrote a book called The Starbrock Murders.

Speaker 1 This crime is more important than most because it changed the system of criminal investigation in Illinois. And then I went on Reddit, and there was a guy who said,

Speaker 1 there was a guy named a woman named Bedpan 3.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 Like, she, I don't know what's going on with her. You know, she's a woman.
Because she says, my, well, maybe not. She says, my husband, and I fucking assumed.
Oh, right, right.

Speaker 1 Like, I mean, not trying to. Come on, everybody.

Speaker 1 She says there's a huge announcement.

Speaker 1 Like, there was a bedpan, a bedpan one, and a bedpan two already taken. The other two, no.
This is the third best bedpan. Yeah.
This is a huge number.

Speaker 1 There's a huge number of people from this town in my surrounding area that think

Speaker 1 he was a scapegoat. Her ex's husband's grandfather was a judge during the time, though not during this trial, and told me that there was no way in hell he did the crime.

Speaker 1 The bodies, from what I remember reading, had animal/slash dog bites that were just left unexplained.

Speaker 1 Theories include that a business owner who was from another nearby town who had a very, had very large, well-trained dogs was a possibility because he inexplicably immigrated back to his home country right after the murders, leaving his entire family behind.

Speaker 1 Another theory is that the women's wealthy Chicago businessmen's husbands paid someone to have them killed in the park for various nefarious reasons.

Speaker 1 The only real consensus is that pretty much no one at the time or years later believed it was Wager.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's the husband having them killed because the way they're mutilated and left with their legs open.

Speaker 1 And if he, if Weger was a rapist and was the rapist that raped that girl, it would be more in line with a person who has is a rapist, has issues.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and basically is escalating. I don't disagree with the fact that it sounds like if I didn't know any of the suspects, I would think it was at least two people.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but

Speaker 1 who knows?

Speaker 1 You crack somebody over the head with a stick when you're in your

Speaker 1 with your two friends. friends yeah somebody gets cracked over the head and then you're like and suddenly there's like some wild man that's like sit down and i have to tie you up and i mean

Speaker 1 it's over

Speaker 1 he probably did it

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 yeah he probably did it but the it is interesting that whole thing of like you can't really base it on what the polygraph says and you can't and you do have to be suspect now what we know these days of how police uh interrogations used to go um we've all seen seen LA Confidential.

Speaker 1 Um, it's a pity that DNA can't figure this one out. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's amazing. That's such a good story.
Yeah, Starve Rock Murders, and also such a creepy name. Starve Rock Murders? Oh, for sure.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 We're back. This is one of your stories that I think about all the time.
Do you?

Speaker 1 Yes, because it was so kind of like the pictures in my mind of what where they were when all this was happening so disturbing do you have updates yeah and just three innocent women you know going on a little fucking girls trip together yeah to nature like yeah which just i think this one a lot of people because the thing is a lot of people don't think that the person who was convicted chester wager did it and in fact in 2020 after 60 years in prison chester wager was granted parole and released from prison wow yeah so his lawyers continued to push for new proceedings because they want to prove his innocence of the murders because he's still claiming he was innocent and that the confession was coerced.

Speaker 1 So then, just this last May, May 2025, a mini trial was set and it introduced new evidence that was not available decades ago.

Speaker 1 And some of that evidence is really fascinating: a woman came forward and said that her grandfather, on his deathbed, so we have a deathbed confession, another one, that he was in the mob and he had people killed before.

Speaker 1 And that he said that he had one regret to his granddaughter he said that he knew that chester wieger was innocent and um she claims that her grandfather went on to confide in her that it was registered hits referring to the murders and asked her to help prove like on his deathbed help prove this man's innocence

Speaker 1 which is wild it's not enough it didn't sway

Speaker 1 the court that much because that's just kind of you know, it kind of

Speaker 1 one guy's story. Yeah.
And like, why would he tell his teenage daughter that and not other, you know, and not bring the police in or something like that. So that's just like a little interesting

Speaker 1 bit. But who would have contracted to have those women murdered? So the women's husbands were like wealthy businessmen.

Speaker 1 So to me, that's like a bigger difference than if they were just like working class people. It's like you could see a little bit of something nefarious going on, perhaps.
Yes. A message being sent.

Speaker 1 And the husbands also like had connections in, you know, with politicians and stuff like that. So who knows? It doesn't seem like a mafia hit type of murder, though.
You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, they don't do it like that. They don't not bring a fucking weapon to the place where they're going to kill people, you know? Yeah.
And I don't know.

Speaker 1 It just feels like a bad movie that the mafia would have to go out into like a park and

Speaker 1 out in nature like that.

Speaker 1 I don't think so. I don't either and like also they probably wouldn't have noticed someone was following them.
Why wouldn't they just kill one of the husbands or you know, it's just yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. Isn't that the thing with the mob they don't hit family members? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It doesn't sound very mob like to kill three innocent wives of yeah.

Speaker 1 They don't do women children. I really I thought we had a code of conduct here.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It sounds like a brutal kind of opportunity, like crime of opportunity.
So that doesn't mean that this guy did it, but that's what it sounds like. Yeah.
Okay. It's hard.

Speaker 1 It feels like deathbed confessions have more weight than just normal, right? Regular life confessions, which is like, what if they have dementia? What if they are?

Speaker 1 What if

Speaker 1 fucking morphine you're on when you're like on your deathbed?

Speaker 1 I cannot wait. I can't wait.
It's gonna be so they're gonna be like,

Speaker 1 we can't give her enough. She's

Speaker 1 she just asks for more. She just keeps hitting that button.
Bottomless pit.

Speaker 1 Oh, and there's also an HBO documentary about the starved rocked murders called the murders at starved rock that came out in, I think, 2021, and it tells the whole story. I highly recommend it.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, this is one story that you were like on in the beginning when it first started.
Like this was like one of your like I think that you like knew something was up. And so this is you.

Speaker 1 And we've talked about it already, but you are going to cover the story about Sherry Papini.

Speaker 1 This is when I wanted to be a breaking newscaster.

Speaker 1 Good luck.

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Speaker 1 So mine this week

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 worrisome

Speaker 1 because it's the case that I brought up the week before last and I didn't really know anything about it, but I just wanted to cite it to you. And it was the Sherry Papini case.
Yes.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's an amazing thing because I went into such a black hole on the internet today that I had that thing happen where I was reading. It was light outside when I was reading.

Speaker 1 And the next thing I knew, it was pitch black in my house.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you didn't get up to turning the lights on. Exactly.
And I hadn't really looked around so that when I looked up, it was like I was sitting in a pitch black room. It was kind of scary.

Speaker 1 That's a really depression, honestly. It's like one of my depression triggers.
Yes. That's where you jump where you let just the light fade away.
Yeah. I jumped up and turned a lamp on.

Speaker 1 I had dogs. It wasn't too bad.
I feel like if anyone had come, like looked in the window and seen what you were looking, like reading about, they'd be like, what the fuck? I'm not killing this girl.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she's crazy. She's going to kill me.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But here's the, because the reason that it...

Speaker 1 It was, you know, hours and hours of reading in all these different websites is because this case goes, has so many levels and it is crazy like when I first started talking to you about it I just wanted to kind of be like it's that crazy case and it's got some twists and turns but because I didn't really know specifics I kind of was like just gave up well I love that I really don't know I know that everyone's talking about it you mentioned it to me I love that you're filling me in on every like I have nothing I just want to fucking hear this I'm excited all right so I'll give you the I'll give you the overview okay but essentially what we're talking about here

Speaker 1 in one way and this is what people are being so careful about it because yeah there's no proof that it's anything but a woman who has been victimized and what i really like about that is that there are people who are being so fastidious as to make sure that no one is accusing a victim of a crime of doing anything um

Speaker 1 that being said

Speaker 1 there is insane amounts of evidence that something is wrong with this case. It's really suspicious.
It's very suspicious and it's not,

Speaker 1 it's just interesting.

Speaker 1 so i we will talk about facts and i'll just try to be very clear about what facts are as opposed to hearsay or anything and just try to remind you every seven minutes that we're talking about a victim and that this isn't you know in in nowhere are we trying to like give an opinion about this i just find this case to be incredibly fascinating okay so here's here's what we know um it's a woman named sherry papini who is a 34 year old married mother of two who lives in Reading, California, disappeared while she was jogging on November 2nd.

Speaker 1 And she reappeared three weeks later on the side of Highway 5 before dawn on Thanksgiving Day, 150 miles away from where she was taken. She was beaten.

Speaker 1 She was bloody, and her hands were chained behind her back. Fuck.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 She told police that she had been kidnapped by two Hispanic women in a van who tortured and starved her. No.
Okay, go on.

Speaker 1 So after she was found, her husband Keith gave interviews to both Good Morning America and 2020. Wait, okay.
Already questions.

Speaker 1 She said that the entirety of her captive, her being captured, was by two Hispanic women. Yes.
The entirety of it. Yep.

Speaker 1 Let's just go with the facts.

Speaker 1 On those interviews, Keith hit her husband, said his wife's captors, two Latina women, kept their faces covered, spoke Spanish the majority of the time.

Speaker 1 They beat her, they broke her nose, they cut her hair, they starved her.

Speaker 1 He claimed that Sherry had lost 15% of her body weight and that the captors, quote-unquote, branded her, which led to speculation that the kidnapping was part of a sex trafficking operation.

Speaker 1 So after she was found, a woman saw her again at 4 a.m. on the side of the road, called 911.
She gets taken to the hospital.

Speaker 1 And her injuries include bruises, a broken nose, burns, and starvation.

Speaker 1 But she was discharged several hours later.

Speaker 1 She tells police that she was held captive,

Speaker 1 and she describes the two Latinas as one being old, one being young. One had curly hair, one had straight hair, one had thin eyebrows, one had thick eyebrows.

Speaker 1 Once she was released from the hospital, she and her family left Redding, the town that she lives in,

Speaker 1 for an undisclosed location to avoid media attention.

Speaker 1 And Sherry herself has not been seen by the media since her disappearance. Shut up on Thanksgiving.
Yes, since, like, she's basically not been seen by the media at all.

Speaker 1 So they've seen the pictures of her, which are from her wedding day, which are seven years prior.

Speaker 1 So she hasn't given any interviews or hasn't been seen? No, just her husband. Wow.
So her husband went on a 2020 and Good Morning America, and he told the whole story for her.

Speaker 1 And which makes sense for a victim who is traumatized and needs to be away from everything. Makes perfect sense.
But did he need to do that? Well, true.

Speaker 1 Like if that's the case and she doesn't want to be and needs to be away from it. Well, they, and that's what they told people is basically.

Speaker 1 She got out of the hospital and then they left town and told everybody that they are doing it to avoid the media. And then he

Speaker 1 relatively soon after goes on both

Speaker 1 two

Speaker 1 major national television shows. Okay.
Do you want to? Okay. So I'm going to hold my comments.
All right. Yeah.
Like just

Speaker 1 accrue it and listen because it's interesting. Like remember

Speaker 1 there are actually websites that normally dive right into cases like this, the kind of Nancy Grace style cases, who will not entertain anything except for that Sherry Papini is a victim and anybody saying anything different, that's the like you can't talk about that, which is a stance.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's just like a way to do it. But of course, Reddit is not like that because Reddit entertains anything at all times and you can say what you want.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so there's Reddit is the place I found a lot of this information.

Speaker 1 The Shasta County Sheriff actually recently came out to say he believes Sherry Papini's story.

Speaker 1 But he said that in direct conflict with an earlier statement where the sheriff's office communications officer said they weren't ruling anything out.

Speaker 1 So no one knows if he said that to fix what somebody that was just basically answering the phone and talking to the Huffington Post said.

Speaker 1 or what.

Speaker 1 But there hasn't been much movement.

Speaker 1 The Shasta County,

Speaker 1 none of the police up there have been warning people. They haven't put out

Speaker 1 any kind of APB about these two Latina women. There haven't been warnings to other women about being careful or this is what you need to look for.
That says a lot.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 So basically we'll go over like this is the way

Speaker 1 the timeline problems, essentially. Okay.

Speaker 1 So the day that she went jogging, like the day that her husband, Keith, realized that she was missing, he was at work and he came home from work and she wasn't there and the kids weren't there.

Speaker 1 And instead of calling her, he said he, because sometimes I think the reason is, I was confused by this, but basically that sometimes reception is bad up there, which makes sense because it's like way up north of Sacramento.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That he pinged her phone instead with Find My iPhone. Okay.

Speaker 1 So then he realizes where the phone is, and it's a mile away from their house, where kind of near where their mailbox is, which is, if you've grown up in the country, it's that thing where like your house is way up here on some weird long dusty road and your mailboxes are in a long line with a bunch of other people's mailboxes down the road.

Speaker 1 You go to your mailbox when you're driving up your driveway. Exactly right.
A mile seems far to me, but I don't know. Okay.

Speaker 1 And also, this is like, I was looking at a map of Reading, and there's nothing. I mean, yeah, also the group that neighborhoods

Speaker 1 put mailboxes together. It has nothing to do with where your house is, kind of, right? Exactly.
Yeah, because neighborhoods don't exist there.

Speaker 1 It's like all these houses just kind of like they're probably ranch-style houses spread out. Fuck that, man.
So, I want neighbors to hear me scream. Scary at night.
Yep.

Speaker 1 So he says he called his mother, and he,

Speaker 1 I can't remember, but basically, it's just this weird thing of why wouldn't you just call her phone? Yeah. And like, okay.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he basically he pings her phone, finds it,

Speaker 1 and it's at the corner of Sunrise Drive and Old Oregon Trail. And when he gets there, he immediately takes a picture of it.
It's sitting on her phone? Of her phone.

Speaker 1 It's sitting.

Speaker 1 It's sitting with. You're just going to keep saying that.
I know.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, you can't. But But I'm just saying there's a lot of that.

Speaker 1 There's headphones sitting on top of the phone. On top of them.

Speaker 1 Very neatly, it says. And he takes a picture of it.
So the police

Speaker 1 said that it looked staged. They commented on that early, that said it looked staged.
But he didn't touch the phone. He like, whatever.
And a lot of people.

Speaker 1 on these threads were talking about if your significant other was missing in a way that you really felt was real, you would grab that phone and start looking at what are the last calls,

Speaker 1 anything.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 So then he files a missing persons report and in all, in every way he talks about her, instead of saying kidnapped or missing, he keeps using the word taken,

Speaker 1 Liam Neeson style.

Speaker 1 Okay. So then they put up five days after she goes missing, they put up sherrypapini.com and it's a website.
Five days?

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 It's just a website about the whole case. Please help us find her.
She's missing with her picture and everything else, all the information, what she's wearing and the whole thing.

Speaker 1 And 10 days after that,

Speaker 1 this letter goes up on that website and it's from an anonymous donor. And it says that it says, like, I'm an anonymous donor.
I'm offering an undisclosed reward for Sherry's immediate release.

Speaker 1 My middle man is Cameron Gamble, who's an intern international negotiator

Speaker 1 who also happens to live in Reading.

Speaker 1 The fuck. Right.
So this is, I think this is the part. Now, separate from people saying, please protect a victim who has been victimized.
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 But this is the part where everyone's like, this thing stinks to high heaven.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 when you go on, there's a really great article that was on the Daily Beast called

Speaker 1 like things you should know about the shady private investigator involved in the Sherry Pohini case.

Speaker 1 And it's amazing because it's all about him and how like

Speaker 1 it's really, there's lots of great information. There's videos that he has on his website, Camerongamble.com.
Is he a creep?

Speaker 1 He's a guy that's trying, like he has

Speaker 1 his organization, it's supposedly a non-profit, profit organization called Project Taken.

Speaker 1 And it's about, dude, it's about warning women

Speaker 1 or like telling women what to do in case someone tries to kidnap them. What the fuck? So all of these things are like, just, they just are very suspect.

Speaker 1 It's just all very, a little bit like a movie and a little bit

Speaker 1 too, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 Too coincidental. Very coincidental.

Speaker 1 And also, in the best case scenario, what this person did in this anonymous donor that put this letter up on their website was basically trying to circumvent law enforcement and say, if you have her,

Speaker 1 I will give you money. Just bring her back.
You don't have no questions asked. Exactly.

Speaker 1 They don't use that phrase, but it's basically saying we don't have to deal with the police. Like, if you can have the money, just bring her back.

Speaker 1 Which pisses the police off so much because if that's actually the case, then other women are in danger and you have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1 Eliminated all the suspects because you're being a fucking asshole. Well, it just, it doesn't work that way.
It doesn't.

Speaker 1 And it's like somebody making up a new way to do it and then going like, I'm anonymous. I'm anonymous.
The amount of money is anonymous. Please use my middleman.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 None of those things, I think, really line up. And then it goes against law enforcement.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 after she's found and the family asks for privacy, several family members grant a Daily Mail interview, which is the British newspaper, I believe.

Speaker 1 And someone also sells a picture of her kids on Thanksgiving to the Daily Mail.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, her husband does. both interviews.
Do they know who sold it? Or is it like anonymous? They say family members. There's no one specifically named.

Speaker 1 In his 2020 interview, her husband Keith says

Speaker 1 her signature long blonde hair had been chopped off.

Speaker 1 But she was described as having long hair by the 911 caller. And a lot of people bring up, like, who has signature long blonde hair, signature as to, as compared to what? Like, dude.

Speaker 1 It's not, she's not like,

Speaker 1 you know, Gwyneth Paltrow or whatever.

Speaker 1 It's, she's a mom and even if it is it's like why didn't the caller describe her as having that and he said the exact this guy seems to pick up phrases that sound um

Speaker 1 coerced or not coerced uh like story rehearse rehearsed thank you but also just weird like it's that thing where people get a weird feeling and that's the thing that like i what we're now talking about that are in direct contention with each other is the weird feeling you have when you think someone's lying versus a victim trying to tell their story.

Speaker 1 And I'm not, everything I've heard doesn't,

Speaker 1 it's, it, it makes the husband sound suspicious, not her. Right.
It sounds like this fucking happened to her.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't think, like, nothing makes me think that this, that she isn't actually

Speaker 1 a legitimate victim.

Speaker 1 So basically when she, he gives these interviews, there's experts that are experts in like whatever, reaction or what, whatever, facial rec, facial reaction recognition or whatever, that say his crying is completely fake.

Speaker 1 Like he does these things where he bursts out into tears,

Speaker 1 but he

Speaker 1 makes the noises and his eyes get a little bit red, but there's no actual streaming tears.

Speaker 1 That whole fucking study is fascinating to me. I love that shit.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like micro expressions and stuff like that, like the way they know people are lying. Amazing.
It's pretty interesting.

Speaker 1 But I also think that that's interesting because that happens on TV shows a lot where people are supposed to be crying like in acting, but it's a really hard thing to do to fake cry it's really hard even if you mean it and want to do it so like you can but we're all used to it where it's like people like I just really you know you make the noise you can do the voice and everything but to get the stuff to come out of your eyes is really hard to do yeah but you can still see it like I have a really hard time crying and there's moments where I'm like it's okay to do this thing but you

Speaker 1 You're trying so hard not to, but you can hear it in the voice.

Speaker 1 Well, the key, the key of real crying, and I learned this in an acting class one time, tell me, is trying not to cry because that's the real thing people do.

Speaker 1 No one ever wants to really cry. Fuck.
So sitting and I don't know this man and who knows what's really happening. None of us know.
Again, I'm just going to keep saying it.

Speaker 1 None of us know what's really happening. But

Speaker 1 most of the time, if you're being interviewed and you're talking about something that happened to a person, and also he had already gotten his wife back home. Yeah.
So she hadn't died.

Speaker 1 And yes, she had been a victim of something terrible. terrible, but he was acting like he was sobbing, but he wasn't actually sobbing, which is just not a natural thing for people to do.

Speaker 1 Especially a man, I'm sorry to say.

Speaker 1 They have less permission to have emotions. You do a thing where you're like, sorry, give me one second, and you rein it back in, and then you continue to talk.
And it's like, just give me a moment.

Speaker 1 And you think that they're going to cut it out or something.

Speaker 1 We've all seen all of these shows a million times. All of these shows.
You know what it's, it's they talk and then their lip moves in a weird way and then the eyes go and the water is there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and their band breaks their voice breaks embarrassed about it and it's a very hard thing to fade they're trying to get a point across and they can't

Speaker 1 and guess what again all of this theory there okay

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 in his uh interview for 2020 he calls people who would doubt sherry's story subhuman okay um he doesn't call her attackers anything what

Speaker 1 yeah that's amazing but it's he also said, when he was on Good Morning America, he said, I understand people want the story, pictures, proof that this was not some sort of hoax, plan to get money or fabricate a race war.

Speaker 1 I do not see a purpose in addressing each preposterous lie. Yes.
You brought up race war. He initially.
He did. No, no, no.
This is him.

Speaker 1 And that's the thing that everybody was saying of just like, of all those other things. Yes, yes, yes.
We get it. You don't have to address every lie.
You're right. What? Wait.

Speaker 1 Why are we talking about a race war? What the fuck? On good morning, fucking America. They should have vetted the shit out of him.
So, okay.

Speaker 1 Now we're going back to this idea, which is a real fucking thing that happens in this country, sex trafficking. It's horrifying.
It really happens. Totally.
It's still kind of mysterious.

Speaker 1 Nobody really knows what it looks like, what it means. It's very like...

Speaker 1 Nobody knows who it happens to, and it happens to people that don't, that it's not why. It's not people.
visible, yeah, aren't visible.

Speaker 1 It's not, yeah, so we're all like, it never happens because it happens to people who are

Speaker 1 victims to begin with. Yes, that's right, runaway kids, yeah.
But the thing that it that's true is it usually happens to younger women.

Speaker 1 This woman is 30. Sorry, I said it.
Well, people to 30.

Speaker 1 People who won't miss the victims or won't be believed when they said that there's a victim or that there's it's a runaway, you know, people who are

Speaker 1 at risk. At risk, yeah.
And under

Speaker 1 something, something.

Speaker 1 So, but the other thing is,

Speaker 1 she, she, one of her injuries that was reported is that she was burned

Speaker 1 as if she, it liked, you know, because as if she was branded for this sex trafficking. But real sex trafficking is the branding is just a word that they use for they tattoo them.
Right.

Speaker 1 They don't brand them like cattle. Because they want them to, they want to sell these women.

Speaker 1 They don't want to ruin their.

Speaker 1 Okay. No, that's exactly what they're saying.
You know what I mean? Well, A, they don't want to ruin their bodies. They don't want to cut their long, beautiful blonde hair.

Speaker 1 That's a fucking selling point. Exactly.
They don't want to beat them up and break their nose. Those are all selling points.
Right.

Speaker 1 But also, the idea that someone wouldn't actually know the insider information, that tattoos are how you brand, not with a brand. Like quote branding.
It's like branding as a quote. Yes.

Speaker 1 What the fuck? So, so, so we're just adding up polls. We're just mentioning things or the reason people are suspicious.
Got it.

Speaker 1 So the other, now we turn to her social media. Okay.
Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Excited.

Speaker 1 She had a wedding blog on which she claimed that she had never lived with a man, but she actually had been married and was divorced in 2007. Shit.

Speaker 1 So people are citing this as just kind of times before. This isn't, she's been described as a super mom, as the best person in the world, as sweet, you know, all-American.

Speaker 1 There's this picture that's been painted of her by him in these interviews. And so people are just trying to cite other things that maybe would contradict that.

Speaker 1 Inconsistencies, exactly.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 one of them is that, that this very blatant lie that she was basically trying to make it seem like she'd never been married before. And it's like, well, why lie?

Speaker 1 It's not that that's a blight on your fucking personality that makes it that you should be kidnapped.

Speaker 1 That's okay. It's not the 1800s.
So you don't. But this is long before.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So it's kind of like saying, it's just kind of trying to show a thing that maybe this is a person who doesn't have a problem throwing up a lie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it could have been put up. Her or him.

Speaker 1 This is her. This was her wedding blog.
Okay.

Speaker 1 But then I will contradict that just in fairness to say Redding is a small town and there could be people that don't like her and are trying to defame her because she's in this spotlight and she is in a bad place.

Speaker 1 And you know what? I want to say, like, I was engaged before Vince and I got married. And at this point in my life, I'm like, he was really just a boyfriend.

Speaker 1 Like, it was, you know, like, you get married and you're like, this was stupid. We were young.
It's like, it wasn't a real marriage. And you say it wasn't because it doesn't fucking matter.
Sure.

Speaker 1 Does that make sense? Totally. Yeah.
Or you just, you get to write whatever you want on your wedding blog. There's plenty of ways to argue the other way for sure now

Speaker 1 there was a blog post written under her maiden name which is sherry graff

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 on a skinhead website in 2007

Speaker 1 and it was a story about her getting jumped by three

Speaker 1 Latino men and five Latina women and her fighting all of them off

Speaker 1 and the whole thing was kind of about why can't she be proud of being white?

Speaker 1 Oh, no. So this is where, now, here's the thing.
Her father says that someone else wrote it and is impo in it being an imposter and trying to make her look bad.

Speaker 1 But I feel like the second you start saying the word skinheads, and that is part of things. Now, this also is in this like northern central California,

Speaker 1 this is the area where stuff like this takes place. I mean,

Speaker 1 there probably is a big

Speaker 1 huge Latina community there. It's actually, Redding apparently is like 97% white.
Holy shit. So now, I read that though.

Speaker 1 I mean, that might not be exactly right because I read that on in all of these posts that I was reading. That might not be exact.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's definitely a big Latina community because it's most of these are farming communities.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I'm just saying what I'm reading. But this, now on Reddit, there are all these people who claim to be from Redding and who went to high school with her.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 So basically, I won't get into the, now I realize I probably shouldn't get into the details of these stories because this is straight up slander. This is gossip.

Speaker 1 There's no way to prove that people went to high school with her. There's no way to prove that she wrote that post, actually.

Speaker 1 I don't know if there's any way to prove that she wrote that post.

Speaker 1 they they can prove that someone with that name wrote that post at that time but they can't prove it was her right fingers on the keys right exactly all right but but however it it it ties these two stories together yes it just is uh yes exactly okay this this thing with the people that talk about her nobody is is being um malicious most of the people say this this doesn't seem right and here's what i know about this person but i hope we find out the truth.

Speaker 1 Nobody is on there, like

Speaker 1 in any way, but I mean, but also, that's a good way to try to seem trustworthy, is to not be malicious.

Speaker 1 But most of the people said that in high school, she needed to be the center of attention, and she would sometimes pretend to have heart problems if other people were getting too much attention.

Speaker 1 And so, one of the stories was they were camping, and a girl had

Speaker 1 hypothermia. She was stayed in the lake too and had hypothermia.
And as they were rushing her to the hospital, all of a sudden Sherry had heart palpitations. And now she had a problem too.

Speaker 1 It was like, there's a couple stories like that where it's like kind of comes out of the blue in a very convenient way. Okay.

Speaker 1 Again, unproven. Yeah.
Who knows who these people are that are writing this? It leads up to one that is a fact and one that is I that I'm kind of freaked out by. Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me.

Speaker 1 It's the disappearance of a girl named Tara Smith. On October 22nd, 1998, then 16-year-old Tara Smith, a high school student in Reading, California, left home to go jogging, only

Speaker 1 never to be seen again. Tara's father believes that a local man who was Tara's romantic interest may have been responsible for her disappearance.

Speaker 1 He said on the night of her disappearance, she had plans to meet with the then 29-year-old martial arts instructor, Troy Zink. Oh, no.
To end their relationship, he was married

Speaker 1 and had a child, if not two children.

Speaker 1 And he had also served a year in jail for rape. Oh, my God.
Please.

Speaker 1 Her father found an unmailed letter in her room after she disappeared that prompted his theories about Zink.

Speaker 1 In the letter, she tells him she knows she'd made a huge mistake. She never should have gotten involved with him.

Speaker 1 But this letter was never delivered. And rather than give him the letter, uh, we believe she wanted to confront him in person to break it off.

Speaker 1 Um, Zink told authorities that Tara had asked to meet him near her home, uh, and then when they met, demanded two thousand dollars from him. He refused, and she got angry.

Speaker 1 And then she asked him to drop her off at the corner of Old Alturis Road and Old Oregon Trail. No, eight miles from where Sherry Papini had been taken.
That's a lot of miles. That's a lot of miles.

Speaker 1 He said he then went to Hanglider Hill to pray. And he returned home at 11.30 p.m.

Speaker 1 Tara's father went to his house after Tara didn't return. Tara, not Tara.

Speaker 1 And Tara's father said, Zink is an avid four-wheeler guy. He knows the back roads.
He had five and a half hours to get rid of the evidence.

Speaker 1 He's been smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

Speaker 1 The police have not been able to move ahead with the case. It's heartbreaking and very frustrating.
The guy still lives in Reading.

Speaker 1 Almost 20 years have passed and he has gotten more comfortable, changed his name and thinks people have forgotten, but we haven't forgotten.

Speaker 1 And while he was missing

Speaker 1 While she while Sherry was missing, her husband Keith asked Tara Smith's father, Terry, for advice. Keith came to me and we spoke for about an hour.

Speaker 1 The father of the missing girl told the magazine, I just told him to stay strong for kids and not assume law enforcement has the answers and to push them.

Speaker 1 It was obvious Keith was torn up, and I believe he was confident he'd get his wife back. Tara Smith was a schoolmate of Sherry Papini.

Speaker 1 Wait, they went to school together? They went to high school together. The two girls? Yep.

Speaker 1 The girl that disappeared went to high school with Sherry Papini.

Speaker 1 Fuck,

Speaker 1 tell me more. That's it.
That's it? It's basically...

Speaker 1 It's basically that there's no conclusion to be drawn from it except for that it's an exact parallel of the same story. So we don't know where they are.

Speaker 1 Okay, but one could argue that

Speaker 1 I don't have any feelings

Speaker 1 against or for Sherry. I just think that the husband sounds suspicious as fuck.
I'm not vict. I I, I don't, I, it sounds like she was a fucking victim.

Speaker 1 But whether it's of

Speaker 1 the crime that she, that is claimed that she went through or this fucking husband who sounds like a piece of work, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think that this is one of those kinds of stories that anything could be possible. Like the thing everyone online keeps saying is it's a gone, a total gone girl situation.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And in that, I would say it's that you just don't, we just don't know.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, it's to me, it's what's interesting is law enforcement doesn't seem to be moving overtly forward with any kind of like

Speaker 1 with anything. Maybe they're, maybe they are, and they're just not being like, but they're vocal about it.

Speaker 1 The fact that they haven't warned the community to be on the lookout or to be careful or that this thing is happening.

Speaker 1 speaks volumes to me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, okay, so

Speaker 1 what was I going to say? Yeah, I I don't know. The whole thing is just like creepy.
It's super creepy. And there's a lot.
The thing that's interesting is there's a lot of stuff cropping up.

Speaker 1 Like when I lived in Petaluma, we would hear gossip all the time about

Speaker 1 Polyclass's family. Right.
And because it was, there was always someone that knew an insider that had something to tell you. Where it's like, oh, here's the gossip.
Here's the insider information.

Speaker 1 And that, it's like urban legends, where that kind of stuff, people like to talk about it, especially when you don't know what the answer is.

Speaker 1 Theorizing about this and trying to put it together is very satisfying. Here's my thing.
Okay, here's the major thing to me.

Speaker 1 The thing that sounds more likely is not two Hispanic women kidnapping a mother and wife off the fucking street and

Speaker 1 solely.

Speaker 1 They're just not doing that. What's the other? Well, because also the husband said that she said

Speaker 1 they had their faces covered. Right.
So how would you know they're Hispanic or have eyebrows that are a certain way?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, we don't know how they were covered, but why would you walk up to two people in a car with their faces covered?

Speaker 1 The Hispanic women, it just sounds, it's one of those things where it just sounds, it's so insulting to Hispanic women and I fucking don't see it.

Speaker 1 And then there's this man.

Speaker 1 It sounds so much more likely that the husband who is trying to get a lot of fucking attention and saying really fucking incriminating weird shit and hiring people who uh

Speaker 1 who skirt around law enforcement and has something to do with this is so much more likely than two fucking Hispanic women who have no fucking reason to kidnap this woman and didn't well that's no ransom right right they let her go there's no there's no point that's why everybody know feels like it stinks there's no point to it it's not like the the idea that they don't she's not saying where she was in the meantime there are no details about, there's absolutely no detail that she has given the police about where she was, what happened, what, like, they were saying, somebody was saying, what state was she in?

Speaker 1 Like, were her nails cut? Yeah. You know, what did her clothes look like? Were they the same clothes that she left in? Like, all of them.

Speaker 1 What almost sounds more likely to me is that these things happened to this woman, these exact things she's saying.

Speaker 1 It just was someone else, and they scared her into saying that it was two Hispanic women. I disagree because the list of injuries that she gives,

Speaker 1 no hospital would let you leave two hours after you arrive.

Speaker 1 It doesn't make sense because if you have burns, that means you might have infection. Yeah.
You have to get, if you've been starved, that means you are dehydrated.

Speaker 1 So they have to rehydrate you. They need to put antibiotics into you.
And also, you're in shock. You've just had this terrible thing happen.

Speaker 1 They're going to do a rape kit, which takes hours and hours. Right.
I mean, unless there's no word about that whatsoever. There's absolutely no word about that.

Speaker 1 But they're not going to, it's, it doesn't make sense that no hospital would let somebody just walk out like, look, I'm fine after the list of like how badly she was beaten and injured.

Speaker 1 The victim to me in this, and I, the thing I want to protect is that, is the two Hispanic women narrative. I just don't think that's fucking fair.

Speaker 1 Especially with the skin head tie, it pisses me off that she would, that, that that would be the narrative.

Speaker 1 And then I'll just remind that the skin head tie could be some weird red herring, just to say it. Who knows what that is? I mean, anyone can write her name, you know, who knows what that was.

Speaker 1 Fuck, man. It's, it's such a, but as you dig into the story, you know, it goes into like, um,

Speaker 1 when I was in that stuff where it's like, oh, people that went to high school with her said she was this, said she was that. But then I'm like, this is gossip.
This is all gossip.

Speaker 1 This is shitty gossip. What would people say about me if, you know, if it was me in the same situation? The shit that people say about us would be...

Speaker 1 It would be upsetting. But to come back around to the parallel story of a girl she went to high school with that actually did disappear.
And this is the other thing I will read that

Speaker 1 someone did say on Reddit that I actually really liked.

Speaker 1 Someone said, I actually work with human trafficking victims now, and it really pisses me off that the whole world is freaking out over this one woman.

Speaker 1 Yet there are thousands of girls that go missing and are sold into sex trafficking every year right here in the U.S. And they aren't even in the news.

Speaker 1 I really, really hope that they figure all this out and the truth comes out whatever it is.

Speaker 1 Fuck, man. A fucking man.

Speaker 1 I mean.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Shit.

Speaker 1 If it brings light to... the fact that sex trafficking actually does happen, that'll be great.

Speaker 1 But I feel like there's a lot of people who are like armchair detectives, like you and me, who see, who smell a rat and go, there's more to this story. And they're not talking.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, and also, oh, the last thing is they started to go fund me. Um,

Speaker 1 somebody else started to go fund me. And in seven days, they made $40,000.
For the family? Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Something fucking smells fishy. I mean, and it's in the, it's in his sister's name.
This This man, this, this dude.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm not even looking at her. This fucking dude.
Well,

Speaker 1 this dude is saying enough himself to be incriminated. Nothing to do with her.
She, she might have,

Speaker 1 she might have been a fucking pawn in his game.

Speaker 1 Or vice versa.

Speaker 1 Or a third choice that we don't know.

Speaker 1 It's just so fascinating because when these things get presented on the news, I think back to like, I saw this just briefly in passing. passing.
Yeah. And it was her blonde hair and big smile.

Speaker 1 And this mother is missing. And everybody's talking about it across the nation.

Speaker 1 And then it basically is like, okay,

Speaker 1 here's the story. And then the end.
And everyone's like, well, wait a second. Yeah.
We need to make sure that we fucking update as much as we get.

Speaker 1 As soon as we get information about this, we need to update it because this is one of those things that like you never hear about again. And it's like, oh, well, they all went to fucking prison.

Speaker 1 Also, the international

Speaker 1 kidnapping expert is that part in the middle. Oh, my God.
Someone said this on Reddit, but it's like,

Speaker 1 this is basically a Cohen Brothers movie. It's like these characters.
John Goodman. I mean, it doesn't, it's like somebody coming in and being like,

Speaker 1 I am on behalf of an anonymous donor.

Speaker 1 I am here to say you can come to me and you don't have to go to the cops, which the cops up there must have lost their fucking shit.

Speaker 1 I have a degree in international

Speaker 1 kidnapping

Speaker 1 things.

Speaker 1 I am, my major was Liam Neesoning.

Speaker 1 Karen, that's our new fucking title.

Speaker 1 Listen, if anyone gets kidnapped and you need someone to fucking intervene on your behalf, don't go to Georgia. No, no, no.
Come right here. Karen and Georgia, my favorite murderer.

Speaker 1 Like, we are on this with fucking wild speculation,

Speaker 1 personal experiences. There's going to be a lot of, we're mad at you for saying this, that, and the other thing.
But I thought you should

Speaker 1 this story, I think we've cleared it at every level, but this story is fascinating. You can't deny.
Amazing. There's something else going on.
It's fascinating. Motherfuckers.

Speaker 1 Everyone's a motherfucker. What is fucking wrong with people? Just like live your fucking life.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I'm really angry at people.

Speaker 1 It's just like, can we not have a fucking moment?

Speaker 1 Like, not being total pieces of shit. Can't it just be Christmas? Can't this be fucking seas candy and fucking

Speaker 1 true crime, fucking playing cards and Elvis and fucking meme? Like, can we please?

Speaker 1 Oh, I hate it. The answer that you get served up every week is no.
No. No.
Answer is nine. No.
No moments. Nine.

Speaker 1 Well, speaking of moments, anything that happened to you this week? Oh, shit.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck. I always forget.
I always forget. Okay.

Speaker 1 Really think it through. All right.
Well, I think every week it's going to be nephew for me because

Speaker 1 we had our family. I know, right? But I have a specific one.

Speaker 1 We had our family Hanukkah party last night, and my nephew, who's one, and my other nephew, who's six, we like, I like made them all play a game to get. We all played a game.

Speaker 1 And it was like, because I didn't want my six-year-old nephew to feel left out. And I want my one-year-old nephew to like have memories of my six-year-old nephew.

Speaker 1 And like, swipe, fucking auntie, fucking Georgia, like, totally killed it. What game? Just scare the baby.

Speaker 1 Did the baby like

Speaker 1 love to scare the baby? Yeah, of course. It was great.
It was great. That's good.
Yeah, it was just like made me, made my heart feel good. I had kind of a magical moment,

Speaker 1 which was I was turning to get onto the 101 freeway.

Speaker 1 And as I passed the mobile gas station,

Speaker 1 which is right on Coanga, there. Right there.
Yeah, I think it is.

Speaker 1 There were

Speaker 1 three men

Speaker 1 doing their nightly,

Speaker 1 what is it? Prayers.

Speaker 1 There were three men

Speaker 1 facing east. Oh my God.
And doing their nightly Islamic

Speaker 1 prayers. That's gorgeous.
And they were doing it because it was just basically the furthest corner away from the gas pumps that they could. And you have to be at the certain time.

Speaker 1 You have to stop wherever you are and do the prayers right and and it was it was the furthest corner and it was like kind of around the corner so it wasn't like people could see them or whatever but they were also doing it in front of the mobile symbol so it was lit up for me as I turned to look at it it was lit up in front of that symbol like a movie.

Speaker 1 It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 What a beautiful moment to remind you that there's more than just this traffic and this and driving and there is at that moment someone is having a spiritual connection with the universe that has nothing to do with your surroundings and their surroundings.

Speaker 1 They're taking some time out to do that, and also that this is fucking America. Yeah.
That that's what you're supposed to be able to see in America. Yep.
That's what you should want to see.

Speaker 1 And that's a great thing to see. And thank God we live in a city, Los Angeles, that doesn't interfere with that.
Yeah. That

Speaker 1 supports that and

Speaker 1 is open to it. Is that good with that? And it's fine with with that.
Yeah. Yeah.
I love it. I felt very grateful.
That's fucking gorgeous. Cool.
I played Scare the Baby.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, I'm scaring the shit out of my weird nephew.

Speaker 1 If you go to iTunes and you can

Speaker 1 rate, review, and subscribe us, and it's great. It helps us.
But fuck, man. Thank you guys.
Thanks, you guys. Itunes, my fave murder.
Instagram, my favorite, I don't know. Just thank you.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. Thanks to Stephen Ray Morris of the Percast for your audio engineer.
And good gifts. You guys are amazing.
Thank you for listening, Elvis.

Speaker 1 You want to. Wait.
You want to. Oh, wait.
Merry Christmas. And happy holidays.
Happy holidays. Elvis, you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 Want a cookie?

Speaker 1 All right. Stay sexy.
Don't get murdered. Bye.
Bye.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're back. I wonder if there are any updates, Karen.
It's nothing nothing but updates. This has been a breaking story for 15 years.
It's crazy. And I think it is really one of the last.

Speaker 1 I think it's the second to last

Speaker 1 white woman panic story. I mean, I shouldn't say last.
It's always the vibe. But that thing, the way it broke on the cover of People Magazine, when nothing was corroborated, nothing was factual.

Speaker 1 And they just ran with this disappearance story that turned out to be this fake.

Speaker 1 I just think it was kind of like the, it feels like one of the last gasps of that entire, God forbid, a blonde, anything bad happened to a blonde woman. Right.
Totally.

Speaker 1 So if you didn't know, spoiler alert, the whole Sherry Papini thing was fake. It took them about four years to crack this case after the disappearance and the return.

Speaker 1 And what they did was they found a DNA match, which basically made everything unravel.

Speaker 1 They found DNA on Sherry and they then matched it to her ex-boyfriend, James Reyes, who basically she had faked this entire thing for so she could run off and be with her ex-boyfriend in Costa Mesa.

Speaker 1 Let me tell you guys about Costa Mesa. It's like, it's, it's cool.
It used to be cool. It's not one of the ones that you would like run away for.
It's not a city you would run away from your life for.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you right now. And they keep in the documentary, like they show the outside of the apartment.
And it's like, you ran away for what? No? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 It's that kind of thing where like when Facebook first came back and everyone started talking to people from high school and it all got real kind of fraught. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 It has that vibe of like Sherry was way up in Reading and she was a mother and a wife and maybe not that much was going on.

Speaker 1 And then this guy rolls back into town and she's like, I'm giving it all up for Costa Mesa. It's the thing of like, be careful what you wish for, sort of.

Speaker 1 you know and also be careful who you accuse because of course the first thing she tells cops is it was two latina women one long hair one short hair one old old, one young, all that shit that sounds so fake.

Speaker 1 So anyway, Sherry Pepini was charged with making false statements to a federal law enforcement officer and engaging in mail fraud because she got $30,000 from the California Victims Compensation Board.

Speaker 1 So she was really in that storyline for a little while.

Speaker 1 She was... arrested for all of this.
And in September of 2022, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison for all of that.

Speaker 1 And she had to pay that that $300,000 in restitution for the government funds that they expended looking for her. Totally.
Shit, man.

Speaker 1 And then in April of 2022, her husband Keith filed for divorce and got full custody of their son and daughter. She has visitation rights.
She got out of prison in August of 2023.

Speaker 1 She's, I guess, on parole till 2026.

Speaker 1 And her husband Keith is in a Hulu documenteries called Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherry Peppini, where Keith gets to tell his side of the story. Oh, we watched it.
Did you?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. It was.
What did you think? It was,

Speaker 1 yeah, it was crazy. It was, we were both very, Pince and I were very much like, there was a lot of what the fucks

Speaker 1 being said. What the fuck? You know, like, but why would your brain go to that? conclusion then? Or why would you then do this next step?

Speaker 1 It like just boggles the mind in a way of like for people who aren't this way. Did they talk about the thing where she went to high school with a girl who disappeared?

Speaker 1 And there was like a lot of parallels to her story and the girl that actually disappeared. They do.
Yes. They totally, I forgot about it.
Yes, they totally talk about that, which is so weird. Evil.

Speaker 1 It's just kind of gross. Yeah.
So, but again, kind of that thing where it's like, it just is the perfect anxiety insider, where it's like, you're doing this on a national stage. Totally.

Speaker 1 You thought you were just doing a thing to get out of having an affair. Yeah.
No.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, we did it.
We've done it. And again, once again.
I mean, we can only say so much about our own episode, and it's other people's opinion that really matters. We just did it.
True.

Speaker 1 We've done it twice now. Like, I mean, we just keep doing it.
It's insane.

Speaker 1 So, if we want to rename this one, which we don't, because an Albert Fish production is the best name of all time, but if we did,

Speaker 1 we could possibly name it day 403, which is Stephen's mustache's age.

Speaker 1 Also, the How Dare You podcast, which was just something I said to Stephen, and I did say to Stephen all the time. I love that.
How dare you podcast is great. Defiance disorder, which you have.

Speaker 1 And then I think me saying I do too means I don't.

Speaker 1 I think if I actually had it, I would have said to you, I don't. You know what I mean? Because I'd be defying you, but I didn't.
Absolutely. I went along.
Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Totally. All right.
Well, thank you guys so much for listening. And stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.

Speaker 1 Goodbye. Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Elvis, do you want a cookie?

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