Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 44: Live from the Chicago Podcast Festival

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Goodbye.

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Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Hello.

Speaker 1 And welcome. to Rewind with Karen and Georgia.
It's Wednesday. It can only mean one thing.

Speaker 1 It means that we're trapped on your phone and we're forced to recap our old episodes with all new commentary, updates, and insights. And today we are recapping episode 44.

Speaker 1 It's named live from the Chicago Podcast Festival, and it is a major page in our scrapbook of life. It is an epic episode.
Epic episode? I mean.

Speaker 1 I feel like I can remember every moment of that day leading up to that show and after. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We should post the video that Brandy Posey took from the audience of when we came out on stage and are stunned by the amount of people and the noise, which I could feel in my fucking toes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, let's get into it.

Speaker 1 The Chicago Pophouse Festival ended in 2019 and their website is now defunct, but we had a great time. And this episode came out on November 23rd.

Speaker 1 That was the day President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 21 people. We did not make the cut.
It could have been a clean 23 on the 23rd, but forget it. Let's listen, anyways.

Speaker 1 Let's listen anyways to the intro of episode 44.

Speaker 1 What's up, Murderinos?

Speaker 1 Oh, you're so pretty. I can't fucking see you, but you're pretty.

Speaker 1 I don't have a huge speech for this one because we're going to keep it pretty simple. When we decided we were going to do the Chicago Podcast Festival, this was a show that was very high on our lists.

Speaker 1 We asked, they said yes. Please welcome to the stage Georgia hard star, Karen Kilgareth, with my favorite motor!

Speaker 1 Come on!

Speaker 1 Come on!

Speaker 1 Damn it! You are so drunk!

Speaker 1 I am. Are you? No.

Speaker 1 A little bit.

Speaker 1 Hi, Chicago.

Speaker 1 Uh-oh.

Speaker 1 Okay, see you later.

Speaker 1 It's just going to be me, a one-woman show tonight.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is crazy. Hi, you guys.

Speaker 1 We're very happy to be here. Here we are.

Speaker 1 Anyone not know whose voice was who, and it's freaking out right now because we thought it was the other?

Speaker 1 I'm the one who says fuck a lot.

Speaker 1 I'm the one that says, Look, you know, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 I didn't know I did that until

Speaker 1 you told me.

Speaker 1 Now I'm going to think about it all the time.

Speaker 1 This is fucking nuts up.

Speaker 1 Exciting.

Speaker 1 Very exciting.

Speaker 1 The cool thing is that at some point I'm going to jump into this orchestra pit. It's true.

Speaker 1 That's what we decided beforehand.

Speaker 1 We drew straws. We drew straws.
Karen is. And I was like, I'm going to do the pit jump.

Speaker 1 There's no orchestra. She's just going to.

Speaker 1 Oh, there's no bottom. There's no bottom.

Speaker 1 Just push you.

Speaker 1 Can I do a model walk to show off my dress and relax?

Speaker 1 I got this dress today at Chicago Michigan Avenue Nordstrom. I thought you were going to say.

Speaker 1 I thought she was going to say, can I do a monologue?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 could I do one dramatic and one comedic monologue? Go ahead.

Speaker 1 A short dance. Okay, go.
Wait, hold this.

Speaker 1 You guys, I just wish Karen wasn't so shy.

Speaker 1 Pockets are

Speaker 1 the greatest.

Speaker 1 People love pockets, right?

Speaker 1 It's not just me.

Speaker 1 And I said that I texted you that my outfit was, I was going to cosplay Nancy St. Stacy.
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 1 Did you recognize Nancy St. Stacey? But I was going to wear like 80s heels and I fucking, I just wanted to.
Here, take a walk. It'll feel good.

Speaker 1 It started off sad and it ended up then. Yes.

Speaker 1 Should we

Speaker 1 sit and talk? Yeah, because this is weird. This is so weird.

Speaker 1 All right, well, let's not, should we not with the.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we shouldn't use these. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Except you're gonna.

Speaker 1 Although.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, no, no. You're right, you're right.

Speaker 1 Let's do this. When we tell the stories, we will.
It's just kind of slimming when you have it in front of you.

Speaker 1 Bisex draws the eye upward.

Speaker 1 Why didn't we ask for a couch?

Speaker 1 I need kick pants. What the fuck?

Speaker 1 Is this a small top stool?

Speaker 1 I said, give her the one that's wobbly. Oh.
She'll look so small. No, I'm fine.
We'll be fine. I'm fine.
Do you want to sit on the ground? Yeah, I'll sit cross-legged on the ground. You could.

Speaker 1 I don't know what we're going to.

Speaker 1 What were other people doing up here?

Speaker 1 Perching like a lady.

Speaker 1 Not interested.

Speaker 1 Let's see. Do you have any, we should do some business, right? Like some.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 1 No more shouting out, or I'll have to come out there.

Speaker 1 But Corrections Corner is at our family, isn't a thing out here.

Speaker 1 Corrections Corner is our drunk families

Speaker 1 up in a box somewhere. Mommy.
Judging us.

Speaker 1 You're on my mommy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Clap for the family. You're on my mommy.
If you have things written, Karen, you're going to fuck it. Here's my corrections corner.
It's fine. It'll be funny when I fall.

Speaker 1 It always is. My corrections corner, and this one is one of my favorites of all time.

Speaker 1 Last week we were talking about, I think we were probably reading a hometown, and someone mentioned, I read the name Vincent Lee, and they were saying, like, oh, that's a fucked up murder.

Speaker 1 And I was like, ooh, I got to look that up. They were both like, I don't know who that is.
I know. And Dennis.

Speaker 1 So many, so many people wanted to let me know how I did know what it was because I'd actually reported on it myself on my own podcast. Yep.
Who would have fucking bunked?

Speaker 1 I mean I don't remember their names or whatever.

Speaker 1 I remember the machete.

Speaker 1 We don't remember killers. We remember

Speaker 1 feelings, things, and qualities.

Speaker 1 Also, I would like to say, people that catch up, people that are behind a little bit. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I fucking now know that Manitoba is not a city. All right.
I know now. You don't have to stop fucking telling me.

Speaker 1 She gets it it's funny the like corrections we get where we're like yeah we know uh yeah yeah i know i've known that for like two weeks we're bitch you guys know that we're total bitches right like

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 daddy

Speaker 1 peg danny

Speaker 1 that was my mom

Speaker 1 love you

Speaker 1 she's a very tall woman

Speaker 1 um oh also

Speaker 1 stephen ray morris could not be here tonight Stevie, our audio engineer, but his sister is here. His sister.

Speaker 1 Even better. Sister Ray Morris.
Stephanie Ray Morris. And she has no, she's never listened to the podcast and doesn't know that he's like Stephen.
And I want us all to give her.

Speaker 1 She thinks it's let her know.

Speaker 1 I believe. I think she thinks this is a Christian podcast, right?

Speaker 1 So this is going to be fun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Elvis, his mom, is here. Really? No, but I'll give it that name.
I don't want that to happen. Like an old cat would come walking down.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Half an ear, bitten off.

Speaker 1 I just don't know what to do.

Speaker 1 Do you want to get a chair? Should we get a chair chair?

Speaker 1 No, I'm going to beat this. I'm going to beat this stool.

Speaker 1 Don't even, don't bring it over.

Speaker 1 Don't do it.

Speaker 1 Well, so this is, oh, so this is the My Favorite Murder podcast in case anyone didn't anyone know that

Speaker 1 Thank you for screaming so much. That's Karen and that's Georgia.
Yeah

Speaker 1 I like that we're doing it now as if we do that at the top of every show We we honestly treat every show like we've never done podcasting before like it's like it surprises us every single week.

Speaker 1 Oh, we should introduce this. Yeah, if someone just fucking stumbled upon this like they're changing the radio stations and all that.
Yeah, one is that exactly. It's 1961.
These girls are cursing

Speaker 1 what is big

Speaker 1 uh do you have any questions or shout outs or anything you need to talk about no i'm petrified right now oh okay who would no this is great no uh no i mean puff man everything's the best right now

Speaker 1 right right now yeah yeah what was the last one we did uh oh yeah okay but the rest what are you talking about the last episode we did

Speaker 1 remember at all

Speaker 1 was it vincent lee i don't know

Speaker 1 well here we are, face to face.

Speaker 1 A couple of

Speaker 1 two people who didn't do their book report who are like, anyway,

Speaker 1 what I love about books is the paper inside.

Speaker 1 The problem is, you're not going to know all the like three hours of shit that's edited out of the podcast. Yeah.
That's not true. We just let everything go in.

Speaker 1 Clearly, we let it all go in. Let it go in.

Speaker 1 Should we talk about

Speaker 1 murders? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You guys, like, it's pretty, who's a murderino, like, for real?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 that's called pandering. Now we're pandering.
I don't think it's our thing, though. I'm sitting on it with my butt.

Speaker 1 Okay, Karen, we're back. I just checked.
Manitoba is still not a city. Damn it.
These are the mistakes that, like, you just say it casually

Speaker 1 on a recording nine years previous, and it just never goes away. It's always a mistake.
Can we talk about a serious thing real quick? Because there's something I remember from that.

Speaker 1 That was like our first real live show in a way that wasn't like, yes.

Speaker 1 We go on stage and you start showing off your dress. And then I go,

Speaker 1 something, I say something like, oh, it's too bad she's not shy. And you later asked me, you said to me,

Speaker 1 Can we not make comments like that that are like undercutting each other? And I remember that so specifically because it was like, I hadn't even realized that that's what it was.

Speaker 1 That's what I was doing.

Speaker 1 It's just like how I had been on stage before in the past. And I just, yeah, it really set a precedent, I think, for like, we don't tease, we build each other up in a way.

Speaker 1 Which, you know, it's not like I haven't teased you before, but I think it's that thing of like, first of all, it was all like brand new, this idea of what we were doing and how we were doing it and doing it together, where it's like, we have to real real quick become like this vaudeville duo.

Speaker 1 And the way I was taught, and I've said a bunch of these things to you, but it's like there are ways that you can tell the audience, like, we are all united.

Speaker 1 And when you do that, they go along with you and they kind of like stay in line. But if there's breakdown, then the breakdown starts like everywhere.
So it's like,

Speaker 1 who are we against? Who are we rooting for? Exactly.

Speaker 1 They have tapped into this podcast because you and I, the way you and I talk to each other. And then it's that kind of thing where it's like, it's easy.
I do it too.

Speaker 1 I wasn't saying like, this is what you do. And I never do it.
It's like, this is a trap that it's easy to fall into in comedy. Well, I had, you know, in past duos and past relationships had been

Speaker 1 in that place where it was like, there's only room for one person to shine. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so you need to play the, you know, doormat almost. And that was the way it was.

Speaker 1 And so being able to learn how to do it better and different was really like valuable for me in my day-to-day life itself. So that was really, really cool.

Speaker 1 And I think I'm glad we figured it out the first time and then just went for it. Well, yeah, I am too.
And I think those live shows, every single time we did them.

Speaker 1 And I remember one time you said to me where it was like, I would be like telling you something. You're like, yeah, but this isn't TV.
This is this whole new thing. And it's like, yep, you're right.

Speaker 1 Like we can't just take exactly what we know and slam it onto other things.

Speaker 1 And when something is that new and that, like, kind of intimidating, it's easy to be like, it has to be my way or it has to be the thing I'm most comfortable with.

Speaker 1 And instead, it's like, sorry, we have to do improv right now and do a scary thing, which is not know and do it anyway. Cause there's no rules.

Speaker 1 There's no like live, there, especially then was no live podcast, live comedy, true crime podcast rules

Speaker 1 to live by. But now it's what we got.
Yeah. We got a couple of those going.

Speaker 1 it was like the thing of like don't ask the front row a question because they'll they'll yell at us for the rest of the show whereas stuff like that we were like but i wanted to know what was in their hand i'm like of course yes

Speaker 1 you know we're like they'll tell me how to pronounce that city if i just ask one of them like no no no you have to do it in a controlled way where it's like it's just you maureen you're the only one answering this question and here's another thing we learned that i learned because You, I think later said we discussed it.

Speaker 1 I do not remember this at all. This is like the first and only time I went to a live show in a city and was like, I'm just going to do any story.
Like now, I didn't think to do a story in Illinois.

Speaker 1 It didn't even cross my mind. So now when we tour, we do the story that takes place, you know, in and around where we're doing it as close as possible because there's so many fucking stories now.

Speaker 1 It's impossible to

Speaker 1 get as close as we want. But so I come in here with this story,

Speaker 1 not thinking like, you should do a Chicago story. It's a great story.
I just noticed that. It's it takes place in motherfucking Texas.
So yeah. Yeah.
Let's get into it.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is how you learn like the old stand-up adages like local jokes get local work. You just, this is it.
You're just like, they want to tell them about themselves. It's about them.

Speaker 1 That's what they want. However, we wouldn't have the beautiful wonderfulness that is sweet honesty without this.
That's true. Oh, there was no mistakes made.
There was no mistakes made here.

Speaker 1 And we can tell, you can tell when the jokes are flowing and it all goes so well. Also,

Speaker 1 this is our first live podcast and it goes this way.

Speaker 1 Like that audience, that feeling and that audience, it was, I was finally convinced, even though you had been showing me real good data for a full year. And I finally was like, oh, this is something.

Speaker 1 It actually. My mom was in the audience and my mom and stepdad.
And it was just a little bit of a shit. And my sister and Adrian and Audrey and Brandy, all the lady to girls were there.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Women, ladies. It was very cool.
And then again,

Speaker 1 My Favorite Murder fully apologizes to the Athenium theater staff from that night, who we made stay at their job like four hours longer than they expected to, because I invited everyone to say hi to us in the lobby like a fucking asshole.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about it at the end because that was pretty epic, too. So, okay, let's get into George's story.
This is the Fort Worth 3 kidnapping.

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Goodbye. Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Are you going to go first? I am first this time. Awesome.
I'm going to put my hands in my pockets and put my microphone over here.

Speaker 1 Would you mind putting your hands in your pocket, Karen, as I tell you?

Speaker 1 I swore I was going to belch, and it's about to happen.

Speaker 1 She's going to do some Robert Durst belches for us.

Speaker 1 Oh, that was a good one.

Speaker 1 Was that really a kid? Yeah, that was me. That sounded like a fucking horse.
I swear to God.

Speaker 1 I thought you were doing a joke burp sound from a lady. That was unbelievable.
I had a soda pop. If they want to pay us, I'll say which one it is.

Speaker 1 But I will not shit, girl. Otherwise, we don't do branding.
Otherwise, Dr. Pepper.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Ready?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Are you ready? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now I'm just, now that's too much pressure. All right.

Speaker 1 Okay, so December 23rd, Super Nair Christmas in 1974.

Speaker 1 A great year for collars and cords. There you go.
Bring us back, Karen, to a time. 1974 where the air was filled with lead pollution and everybody had a mustache, even girls.
Yeah, you were supposed.

Speaker 1 You were supposed to beat your children. Yes, you were required.
You had to sign a paper when you left the hospital with the baby that said, I promise to hit this child in the face every day.

Speaker 1 And I'll let anyone hit them too. Yeah.
It's strangers, people on the street. They probably deserve it.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so three ladies: Renee Wilson, she's 14, Rachel Trelica, who's 17, and Julianne Mosley, who's nine, go on a shopping trip for Christmas presents. Can't be good.
Nope.

Speaker 1 No, they're refine. Let's talk about

Speaker 1 Ted Bundy.

Speaker 1 Anyway, Vlad the Impaler.

Speaker 1 So these three girls, they go to a upscale mall, the Seminary South Shopping Center. This girl knows it.
I hear someone fucking whispering.

Speaker 1 In Fort Worth, Texas. Oh.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Have you been?

Speaker 1 I just thought I should make a noise. Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 they were supposed to be home by 4 p.m.

Speaker 1 Guess what, Karen? Didn't show up. They didn't show up.
They didn't show up. So Renee and Rachel, the older girls, were old friends.
Renee asked Rachel to come with her shopping.

Speaker 1 And then Renee's boyfriend was going to come, but he went to a friend's house. So his little sister, Julie, begs to come.
So they bring her boyfriend's little sister along. So it's the three of them.

Speaker 1 They get to the mall.

Speaker 1 Rachel parks her car at the top of the fucking

Speaker 1 car park, Ozmobile,

Speaker 1 and they go shopping. People see them because, and this needs to be our new shirt.
She's wearing a shirt that says, Sweet honesty. What?

Speaker 1 That's 1974 for you. What the fuck?

Speaker 1 What stoner put that thing together? Sweet. And you know, it was like crazy cursive with the Y on the honesty.
And then like three loop-de-loos. Glitter like all around.
Just on the tits. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No bra.

Speaker 1 No bra. No bra.

Speaker 1 Didn't have to.

Speaker 1 70s chits, Mike. That's a thing.
Yeah. For sure.
They were real low.

Speaker 1 So a ton of people see them at the mall, people, because people see her shirt, whatever the fuck.

Speaker 1 And then that evening,

Speaker 1 families get worried as they do. They go out looking for the girl and they find her car where she parked it on the roof of this mall area.

Speaker 1 And in the car, the car is locked and inside are the presents.

Speaker 1 So at some point, they went to the car, put the presents in there, locked the car, and then what? Right?

Speaker 1 Yes. I don't know.

Speaker 1 You have to tell me. So they're freaking out.
The next day, a letter comes in the mail, and it goes to Rachel's husband's house. Now, Rachel, who was 17 and married.
What, what? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait, is that sweet honesty? That's the other one, even. A 14-year-old is wearing a sweet honesty shirt.
Fuck.

Speaker 1 Don't let your babies grow up to be sweet honesties.

Speaker 1 For real.

Speaker 1 She's married

Speaker 1 to this dude. All right.
This dude, her husband, was dating her older sister beforehand.

Speaker 1 Look, it happens. Yes.

Speaker 1 Guilty.

Speaker 1 They break up.

Speaker 1 Her little sister and her boyfriend get married. And then the sister's living with them at the time.
What? No.

Speaker 1 Like, we all know where this is. Like, we know.
Wait, is that? Are you just talking out an episode of Game of Thrones and saying, saying it happened in Fort Worth? Never seen it. No, this is Dallas.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about Dallas.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right? Okay. But no.

Speaker 1 Letter comes in the mail. Why is he checking his fucking mail the day after his wife gets fucking kidnapped? You think he should have avoided that mailbox? I mean, why are you checking it?

Speaker 1 He loves mail.

Speaker 1 It's the only thing that made him feel better.

Speaker 1 Fucking catalogs, postcards. Fair enough.

Speaker 1 Well, he goes to his mailbox and he finds a letter from her, supposedly, from Rachel, says, I know I'm going to catch it, which is like the cutest phrase I've ever heard in my life.

Speaker 1 Like, catch some shit. I know I'm going to catch it.

Speaker 1 I know I'm going to catch it. I'm going to know I'm going to catch it.

Speaker 1 But we just had to get away.

Speaker 1 We're going to Houston. See you in about a week.
The cars in Sears upper lot. Love Rachel.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. I write.
I know. So, like, he gets that letter.
Her name is kind of misspelled. His name is

Speaker 1 seriously.

Speaker 1 Her first name is misspelled. Yeah, a little bit misspelled.
No, it has.

Speaker 1 Look, I've done that so many times where it's like, K-A-W-I-I-Wan to make fun of that, but recently my manager emailed me and was like, hey, your name's spelled wrong and you're real.

Speaker 1 And I was like, what are you talking about? And I looked at it and it said G-E-O-R-I-G-A.

Speaker 1 I fucking spelled my own goddamn name wrong. It was like

Speaker 1 Giorga. Joega.
It's like, it's not. And it spent like three years, and I didn't notice it.

Speaker 1 So, fair enough. Once you change it, you're going to get so many jobs.

Speaker 1 People have been like, I want to hire her for the million-dollar thing. I can't find her.
Her name's spelled wrong.

Speaker 1 There goes a million dollars.

Speaker 1 Oh, it does happen. This isn't crazy.
It happens. Let's be fair.

Speaker 1 Okay, so her husband was married to the Beagle Rah. Family thinks that the letter, they're like, that's not her handwriting.
And she spelled her fucking name wrong.

Speaker 1 And in addition, to back that up.

Speaker 1 So the stamp had been stamped, you know, like... cleared at the thing.
At the post office.

Speaker 1 That morning.

Speaker 1 So someone sent that thing the night before or on the 24th of when it showed up which I'm like if you're just if you just kidnap three people randomly You're not gonna bother to let the family know no you kidnap and you get straight to that correspondence

Speaker 1 Yeah like that's to that's to throw people off Yeah, that's not like a serial killer who's like grabbing three people and doesn't give a shit, right?

Speaker 1 No, that's like an anal retentive serial killer That's like a leave us alone for a minute, right? Serial killer. You mean can I have some privacy while I'm I write my letter? You have some privacy?

Speaker 1 Well, like.

Speaker 1 To sit at my secretary's desk and just write out with a feather pen. Like right after I kidnapped them, though.
You know what I mean? It's weird. I get it.
All right. So.

Speaker 1 So people saw them that day because clearly she had a sweet honesty shirt on and like, how you gonna miss that one? A 14-year-old and that sounds like a stripper name.

Speaker 1 Nothing, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with strippers. It's just a name.
Just a name that's quite, it's sweet and awesome. So a woman,

Speaker 1 a woman tells a store clerk that she saw some men hustle the girls into a pickup truck, but police never located that witness. Another says that the girls had been spotted in a security patrol car.

Speaker 1 So in 1981, which was, let's do math, was just like so many years later. Six.
Six. Plus one is seven.
Six years later. Seven.
Seven years later.

Speaker 1 A man randomly comes around and he's like, hey,

Speaker 1 I saw a man forcing them into a van that day. You fucking dick.

Speaker 1 What the were you? Where were you? Oh, in 81, I just like popped into my head that these fucking girls were being forced into a van. He had so much stuff on his mind.

Speaker 1 Christmas. There was tons of littering back then.
But the guy in the van told him, he goes, hey, it's a family dispute. Don't worry about it.
And that's why he never told it till he was 81. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, can you eat? I can't even. Well, because, you know, it was like back then, if your family was fighting about something, you could throw them in a van forcibly at the mall.
True.

Speaker 1 It was done. How many people out here have like seen that and just never told anyone about it? It was a family dispute.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Your family's psychopaths. Anything.
I will call the police just if I see a van.

Speaker 1 I don't give a fuck.

Speaker 1 I don't care. I'd be like, it's clearly a bread truck.
I don't care.

Speaker 1 Call 911. Karen does citizens' arrests all over Tortwood.
All the time.

Speaker 1 I won't even believe her now.

Speaker 1 Her brother says, Rachel's brother says that there's been sightings all over the Fort Worth area. You know, it's one of those like, they were white slaves.
Like, people keep saying that.

Speaker 1 Some of the sightings were what happened?

Speaker 1 Someone doesn't like that. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit. Someone's mad about something we said?

Speaker 1 Okay, and they hired a private detective to look for it. He committed suicide in 1979.
When your fucking private detective commits suicide,

Speaker 1 like, come on. You're like, no, we're the ones that are mourning.
Yeah. And he was like, he had a will that said, like, destroy my records when I die.
They destroy the records.

Speaker 1 Commit suicide, then fucking. destroyed records.
They're like, you know what? We're just going to sweep all this under the rug. We think that's the way we're going to handle all this.

Speaker 1 And you know what we're going to do?

Speaker 1 We're going to be of the 80s.

Speaker 1 Okay, so these fucking chicks are never found. So wait, sorry, now we're in the 80s?

Speaker 1 We're that far ahead? No.

Speaker 1 79 that happened. I just, I said the 80s as like a thing.
Sorry, sir.

Speaker 1 It just seemed, I'm not questioning you. Yes, you are.
It's our first fight here in Chicago.

Speaker 1 It's the place to do it. Okay, so they were never found.
Spoiler alert, I'm sorry, that sucks. It blows.
But there's two suspects that I find very interesting. So Mike DeBardellenben.

Speaker 1 Read that.

Speaker 1 Read that. Hold on, let me get my readers.

Speaker 1 Mike DeBardell.

Speaker 1 What'd I say?

Speaker 1 It really is what it says.

Speaker 1 That wasn't just you.

Speaker 1 That was a copy and paste. No, no, no, no.
That was a copy and paste.

Speaker 1 So this dude gets arrested for passing counterfeit bills, and then the cops found evidence of sex crimes, including him taking photos of him raping and murdering humans.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Thank you.
Oh, you didn't know? That's what the whole fucking podcast is about. Someone's like, wait, what?

Speaker 1 I thought you were going to talk out the story of the Wizard of Oz. No, it's all this bad.

Speaker 1 The FBI profilers think that when the face is seen in the photo,

Speaker 1 he kills them. When the face isn't seen, he allows them to live.
I'm just like, come on, you fucking dick.

Speaker 1 Okay, so here's the tie-in is that he's a convicted kidnapper, rapist, counterfeiter, and suspected serial killer, was the habit of passing counterfeit bills in shopping malls.

Speaker 1 He was operating around Texas around that time and was known to impersonate security guards and other positions of authority.

Speaker 1 Remember that chick was like, I saw a security guard driving them in his van, right?

Speaker 1 Because, like, who, what girl back then isn't going to like go with, oh my God, my bell chicken, go with a security guard. Do it into the microphone next time.

Speaker 1 We accept you. My mom is here.
Oh, that's right. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 This is what you raised.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, okay, so a guy comes over and he's like, she's like, yeah, he's awesome.

Speaker 1 That's good podcasting right there. That's the kind of shit you can't see when you're listening.
Yeah, Said,

Speaker 1 she's like the David Blaine of paper.

Speaker 1 Okay, so like back then, a guy's like, I saw you shoplifting.

Speaker 1 I'm a security guard. And you're like, no, I didn't.
And he's like, come with me. You know, you make someone come with him.

Speaker 1 You go. It's like he has a blue shirt on with a belt.
And then you're like, oh, I guess you're in charge.

Speaker 1 I guess I have to fucking do whatever you say. There's no stranger danger.
There's don't fucking fucking talk back to authority. That's what that was back then.
Yes. So you just get in the car.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Sweet honesty. Sweet honesty.
She didn't understand.

Speaker 1 It's actually, you should sweet kick him in the dick. That's what I should have said.

Speaker 1 You guys, pepper spray first and fucking apologize later.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 These days, George's favorite thing to say is, should I pepper spray that guy? It's my, it makes me laugh so hard.

Speaker 1 I can't remember where we were, but you were just like, do I need to pepper spray this guy? It's like, please don't. Not right now.
Why not?

Speaker 1 Just spray it around like room freshener. In your mouth, beyond the

Speaker 1 banana.

Speaker 1 Uh-uh. Let's do this.

Speaker 1 Okay, so he's known to impersonate serial

Speaker 1 security guards, not serial killers. Another position of authority.
He lived within a half mile of Rachel, one of the girls who disappeared at the time of the disappearance.

Speaker 1 And then I wrecked, fucked up. He earned the respect of the FBI profilers because he never gave himself away in unguarded moments, no, nor bragged about his exploits.

Speaker 1 So the fucking FBI was like, good on him, but he never told anyone. There was like a healthy respect for the enemy.

Speaker 1 Because usually they brag.

Speaker 1 I don't respect them for not getting it out of this dude. If their fucking killer is smarter, are we going to, should I not talk shit about the FBI? I do.

Speaker 1 It's a sensitive time.

Speaker 1 Do it, someone yelled. You fucking do it.

Speaker 1 Listen, love those guys. I'm just saying this dude was a serial killer.
We're going to do a show at the FBI at Quantico

Speaker 1 next month. The murder of our government.
You guys.

Speaker 1 Okay, the other dude, who I think is just the fucking dude,

Speaker 1 Lloyd Welch, he's a drifter and a hitchhiker. Lord? Lloyd.
Oh, sorry. That would be cool, though.
He's like a lord. Lord Welch.

Speaker 1 But in Texas. Lord of the bad manners.

Speaker 1 The bad manners.

Speaker 1 That's what gets cut out usually.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 He's recently been charged around that. Oh, so recently around now, he's been charged with the murder of the Lion sisters.
There's two girls. You're shaking your head.
I can see it.

Speaker 1 Catherine, who is 10, and Sheila, who was 12, disappears from a Maryland mall in 1975. Okay, exact same, M-O.
M-O.

Speaker 1 At the time of his arrest.

Speaker 1 At the time of his arrest, he's serving a lengthy prison sentence in Delaware for child sexual abuse. So he's a real fun guy.

Speaker 1 Like a prize. Yeah.
Mom is proud. Good stuff.
So in December 2014, here's another fucking asshole. Welch's cousin tells detectives that he had helped Welch so that they never found the Lion sisters.

Speaker 1 They were like, you know, these girls got kidnapped from a mall. Never found them.
In 2014, Welch's cousin is like, well, one time I helped him with two heavy duffel bags in 1975. Dude, it gets worse.

Speaker 1 They met at a property in Virginia. He said he helped to remove two Army-style duffel bags from Welch's vehicle.
Each bag weighed about 60 or 70 pounds and smelled like death.

Speaker 1 What the fuck? It was probably camping equipment. It gets musty.
You know how when your cousins ask you to help you burn or bury something and and you're like, I'm just not asking questions.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, we're all cousins. We have to be at Thanksgiving together.
Just be chill. It'll be so awkward if I'm like, what's in these? And you're like, I don't want to tell you.

Speaker 1 Come on, don't unzip that.

Speaker 1 It's my murder duffel.

Speaker 1 He tells in 2014.

Speaker 1 And then, oh, and he said further, the bags were covered in red stains.

Speaker 1 It's probably Kool-Aid.

Speaker 1 Was he blind and deaf?

Speaker 1 And then in 2014, he came to

Speaker 1 Snap back miraculously.

Speaker 1 And, okay, so Lloyd Welch happens to be,

Speaker 1 he happens to work at the time. He's like a drifter, but he worked for a traveling carnival company.
Guess where they set up all the time in the 70s? Inside a duffel bag?

Speaker 1 No. Where? In malls.

Speaker 1 And he was in Austin, Texas, until around 75. These carnivals set up in malls from the mid-70s to 97.
I'm just trying to picture a mall carnival, and it's like

Speaker 1 bumming me out so bad.

Speaker 1 You know how your parents always were, like, they were always like, those rides are going to kill you. They also didn't say, those ride people are going to kill you.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Basically, everything over there is going to kill you. Yeah.
Everything your mom, like, your parents told you to worry about, and you were like, you're being annoying. And no, they'll kill you.

Speaker 1 You're dead on. Yeah.
Dead on. It's so annoying when your parents are right yeah

Speaker 1 uh so in 20 in july 2015 Welch is indicted charged with the girl's murder his uncle is a person of interest yeah

Speaker 1 the devil bad guy yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Speaker 1 okay so here's another thing so he's in malls blah blah blah blah his longtime girlfriend at the time dated for over 10 years

Speaker 1 We're always on the road together, et cetera, et cetera. She was a security guard at a mall.
Oh, like for the real deal? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Borrowed her outfit. What's up?

Speaker 1 Stole those kids. You know,

Speaker 1 oh, and then in 2001,

Speaker 1 a former Sears security guard and Fort Worth police officer gives a chilling account.

Speaker 1 He says that he witnessed girls climb into a pickup truck of a young mall security guard and that they appear to go with him willingly.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 that's just fucked. Yeah.
Never found. Never found in the other two girls that were murdered.
That was never prosecuted. But do we know that the husband and sister weren't involved?

Speaker 1 The brother thinks that the sister was involved. I'd like to bring all of Texas up on charges for this story.

Speaker 1 No one's innocent in this, it seems like. He wouldn't be wrong.
But also, it's so wait.

Speaker 1 Somebody had, the girlfriend was a real security guard, so they could have have been borrowing badges and shit and stuff to make it look real. Totally.
Or maybe she was complicit? Complicit.

Speaker 1 Maybe she was complicit and fucking was like, get in my car, girls. And they got in her car.
You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, so don't go to the mall. Don't talk to security guards.
Don't wear your sweet honesty shirt. No sweet honesty anymore.
Stop it. Don't do it.

Speaker 1 I have to say, those cold cases drive me crazy. I know why there's no one.
I know, I know. That's your favorite.
There's just no.

Speaker 1 We should set up like a red phone on stage in case somebody finds out and it comes through.

Speaker 1 Ring through and be like, Lloyd Welch. Oh, my God.
Oh, good, you guys. And then, and then, like, the balloons drop and confetti comes through.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And we all dance and dance.

Speaker 1 Well, good one. That was a good one.
Thank you. Clap for George's.

Speaker 1 Where are you going?

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Oh, I thought thought you were leaving. I was just giving you your time in the spotlight.
Daniel.

Speaker 1 Okay, we are back. Georgia, do you have updates for this case? I have a couple of updates.
One really important thing we need to talk about is that Sweet Honesty t-shirt. We had no idea what it was.

Speaker 1 I'll never forget that now, though, because I have.

Speaker 1 Sweet Honesty merch in my house now that listeners have given us. So Sweet Honesty was an Avon perfume available from 1974 to 78.

Speaker 1 It was advertised as the innocence fragrance of first love to like tweens, I think.

Speaker 1 So that's why she had that shirt on. I have multiple bottles that have been gifted to me of Sweet Honesty.
It stinks so bad, but it is so cool.

Speaker 1 And I just love that we have a connection now to a vintage Avon perfume.

Speaker 1 I mean, and people having those memories, because it's the kind of thing where like growing up at a certain amount of time, your mom had this one product where you're like, oh my God, that triggers all these things.

Speaker 1 Gina Tay, for sure. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 The first time I splashed Gina Tay on my legs, it burned so bad. I was like, what is happening?

Speaker 1 What was the perfume? I used to have my mom, when we'd spend every other weekend at my dad's house, you know, and I'd bring my pillow with me and I'd have my mom spray. She had, it was Giorgio.

Speaker 1 She wore Giorgio perfume and yellow ones.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. And I made her spray it on my pillow because I missed her so much.
So I could smell it while I was trying to fall asleep in my dad's apartment on a cot, on an army cot.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Dan. Sorry, Dan.
Okay, back to the story though. This one is like just has always stuck with me, obviously.
You know, it's a cold case and those are near and dear to my heart.

Speaker 1 It's been 50 years since Rachel, Renee, and Julie went missing, and the case remains unsolved.

Speaker 1 Their families have continued the search and received many leads over the years, but nothing's panned out.

Speaker 1 In 2023, a woman came forward to Rachel's younger brother and claimed that her dad forced her to write that original letter after they went missing.

Speaker 1 And she believed he was responsible, her dad was responsible, but nothing came of it. And the brother was like, I hear stories like this all the time.

Speaker 1 And Julie's brother, Terry Mosley, told Fox 7 that he believes that, quote, the only way the case will be solved is if the person that did it comes forward and can prove they did it.

Speaker 1 Unless something like that happens, I don't think it'll ever be solved. Yeah.
But I want to recommend a book. So one of the suspects in the case is Lloyd Welch.

Speaker 1 And I actually not that long ago read a book about him because he was suspected and I think eventually tried for another missing girls case.

Speaker 1 It's called The Last Stone, a Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation by Mark Bowden. And it's an excellent true crime read.
I highly recommend it.

Speaker 1 And I think this guy is a really good suspect for this case. Wow.

Speaker 1 He's an awful human being. The idea that he got tried for a different, similar crime.
Yeah. Two girls missing from a mall.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just, yeah. Horrifying.
All right. Well, my Fort Worth, Texas disappointment, location disappointment

Speaker 1 was luckily, I think, turned around because when you announced that you're going to do this Chicago area story, the crowd fucking lost it. Right.

Speaker 1 Let's get into Karen's story about none other than John Wayne Gacy.

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Speaker 1 She's unable to write and is a ghost of her former self. But Aggie finds an unlikely subject for a new book when the house next door is bought by Niall Jarvis, played by Matthew Reese.

Speaker 1 Niall is a famed real estate mogul who was once the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance.

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Speaker 1 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast and Me now playing only on Netflix.
You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

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Goodbye.

Speaker 1 I hate this fucking stool.

Speaker 1 Can we say that about your stool?

Speaker 1 Stand and deliver. I'm just standing.
Stand and deliver.

Speaker 1 Well, I did a very pandery thing, and I picked a Chicago murderer.

Speaker 1 You think you're better than me? What's that? I said, you think you're better than me? That's right.

Speaker 1 But also, because there were so many choices.

Speaker 1 A lot of people love to talk about how like the Pacific Northwest, oh, you have so many murders in San Francisco. Hello, Chicago.
You guys want to kill everybody.

Speaker 1 Chicago just doesn't brag about it. That's right.

Speaker 1 They're just low-key. Yeah.
Like, yeah, well. They're just like, yeah, let's go have a beer.
I don't need to talk about that.

Speaker 1 How are you doing? More importantly,

Speaker 1 we don't need to talk about the torso murders. How are you doing? Eyeball killer.
No, that's not here. No, it's Cleveland.
Anyway.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there was a lot.

Speaker 1 Lippy.

Speaker 1 There was a lot of choices to choose from. And there were a lot of favorites, but I actually had to go with this.

Speaker 1 Is my original the reason I got into reading serial killer books and watching true crime shows? Fucking John Wayne Gates.

Speaker 1 and I know this because she accidentally told me in the hotel it slipped out in the hotel room what what was the context of that you were talking about how the the the hotel concierge was like you had to print out your notes

Speaker 1 and she was like if you like John Wayne Gacy you'll love this tour and and I was like oh fuck yeah

Speaker 1 that's all I said nothing there was nothing so I don't know the details yeah but I'm about to hear them you're about to hear them And you may have heard me say this before, but the first thing I ever saw about John Wayne Gacy, because if you know, he buried the bodies of teenage boys that he murdered inside his house.

Speaker 1 And when the police arrested him finally, and

Speaker 1 he was able to draw a diagram of his house, and he knew where every single boy was in the house. And there were 27 of them.
I bet the FBI didn't respect him after that.

Speaker 1 They were like, oh, look at Braggy Braggerstein over there.

Speaker 1 Take it easy.

Speaker 1 So I saw

Speaker 1 when I was like probably 12, I opened a book.

Speaker 1 Good age.

Speaker 1 It's a perfect age for true crime.

Speaker 1 Opened a book, and they had drawn, based on the diagram that John Wayne Gacy had drawn, they had, because they just used like long rectangles to show where the bodies were.

Speaker 1 And some artist had basically drawn body shapes. Like it almost looked like a chalk outline, but like body shapes in a house diagram.

Speaker 1 So that's, I like, was, oh, childhood, and you know, Johnny loves Chachi and fucking

Speaker 1 this and that. And I look down at this thing, and I'm like, why are those boys floating in those boxes?

Speaker 1 And then I read underneath it, and it's like,

Speaker 1 you know, 27 bodies were buried inside this house. And I was just like,

Speaker 1 okay, now I know that

Speaker 1 and now I must know more

Speaker 1 and I won't stop adding that to Charlotte's web and all the shit you already know

Speaker 1 some pig

Speaker 1 so let's talk about

Speaker 1 Fucking good old John.

Speaker 1 Also, the middle name Wayne

Speaker 1 is very common in serial killer world, which I think is kind of great that he

Speaker 1 got in there. I don't know, but he, they named him John Wayne Gacy because his mom loved John Wayne, the actor.
Red flag.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 Not a good sign

Speaker 1 that she loved film.

Speaker 1 So, John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, 1942, at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.
Anyone? Edgewater? Anyone else?

Speaker 1 You guys work there?

Speaker 1 Were you also born there with him?

Speaker 1 He was the second of three children. He had an older sister and a younger sister.
And his father was a machinist who had been in World War I,

Speaker 1 and he was a very bad alcoholic. So

Speaker 1 the story was that his dad would come home from work and he would go down into the basement and drink brandy, which sounds classy.

Speaker 1 But they would have, they would, the mom would make dinner and then they will all sit at the dinner table and wait for him to come upstairs and see how he felt.

Speaker 1 Well, I bet when he came up, he was real happy and everyone was like, we can finally tell Brandy. Brandy.

Speaker 1 Well, no. Oh, God.
Instead, normally he would come up drunk and very angry and he would beat them with a strap for dinner. So.

Speaker 1 I'm good tonight on strap. I'm so full of strap from last night, Dad.

Speaker 1 You can give it to her now if you want. She's real hungry for strap

Speaker 1 and part of what they say they think what fueled his rage is that John was basically a mama's boy and he liked that you know the father was into fishing and hunting and man man man and John liked to cook and he liked to be in the kitchen with his mom.

Speaker 1 He liked planting flowers in the garden. things that in like the late 40s apparently brought deep shame upon you and your ancestors and were unacceptable.
It made you drink brandy and beat children.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that was like the norm back then, though, you know. Yeah, I think it is.
It's like everybody has to fit into their box. And if you don't, I'm going to punch you in the face, even though you're eight.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 And then I wrote down there: toxic masculinity ruins the party again.

Speaker 1 Can't wait to see that meme.

Speaker 1 Then, Then when

Speaker 1 John was nine, he was molested by a family friend. And then when he was 11, he was hit in the head

Speaker 1 with a baseball bat?

Speaker 1 What? With a swing.

Speaker 1 With a swing. Exactly like Richard Ramirez.
With a swing.

Speaker 1 You know, films. Like, he got to nine.
He was so fucking close to like not getting molested.

Speaker 1 Like, you're so close. And then some fucking shitty neighbor, like your dad's fucking workfriend

Speaker 1 comes along um so close to getting and then a fucking swing yeah were they in that swing they had a metal back then like they probably were made out of like seven pounds of metal like this will really center this swing nicely yeah and it's lead so if you lick it you're gonna die

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 so but he also had a bad heart So he was prone to fainting spells, which didn't help with the whole also gardening and cooking thing.

Speaker 1 He's just like taking five every once in a while.

Speaker 1 Type of stuff.

Speaker 1 And the,

Speaker 1 so we just thought, wait, he's all fucked up.

Speaker 1 Then to add to the household tension, John had a secret fetish. for women's underwear.

Speaker 1 So he would steal his mother's silk panties and put them, hold on, in a bag

Speaker 1 and in a brown bag in the back of the closet. And he would,

Speaker 1 that was his like panty stash, mommy's panty stash. Like said he just stashed them?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I mean, who am I to say that he masturbated all over them?

Speaker 1 That's what I was looking for. That's hearsay.
Yes. Because I have a fetish for panties.
I buy a bunch of them and I wear them as underwear. Not the same.
You know, Victoria's. Whatever the fuck.

Speaker 1 You buy a bunch of them and then stick them in a brown bag and tuck them into the back of your hand. No, I don't do it.
I don't do that. And then I kill people.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he told one of his friends that he

Speaker 1 had them. He showed them to a friend of his and then said he wanted he wished he could know what he looked like as a woman.
Oh,

Speaker 1 never trust anyone. So then his sister found that brown bag in the closet and she told the mom.
And the mom was like, oh, Johnny's always had a fetish for panties.

Speaker 1 So So she was quite progressive, actually.

Speaker 1 Just very nice to hear, but not helpful in any way.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 okay, so when he, so he had a hard time in school, he wasn't popular. He fainted a lot.

Speaker 1 He was always thinking about those underwear.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 when he was nine, he never graduated from high school. He went to four different high schools around the greater metropolitan area.

Speaker 1 and then he never graduated and when he was 19 he just left town he moved to Las Vegas without telling his family sounds like what you're supposed to do yeah when you live in the Midwest that's right bye

Speaker 1 no I mean like get out of your small town I don't mean not you guys they just all come rushing to the yeah

Speaker 1 don't worry they'll fall into the orchestra pit we're totally safe

Speaker 1 so here's the thing so he gets a job in Las Vegas And like I was thinking about this, like the first job you get out of high school is usually based on the thing you kind of like the most or the thing that you're into.

Speaker 1 So like I worked at a yogurt shop because I fucking love eating so much. I worked at a bakery.
Did you?

Speaker 1 And well, John became a janitor at a mortuary.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because it was his passion. Oh, dude.
The dead.

Speaker 1 And he actually later admitted to the police that when he worked there one night,

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 1 got into a coffin with the body of a dead boy and fondled it.

Speaker 1 It gets so much worse.

Speaker 1 There's 47 pages right here.

Speaker 1 A lot of this is my poetry I'm going to read later.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 His parents actually hire a private investigator to find him. And they find him in Vegas.
My parents wouldn't be laughing.

Speaker 1 They'd be like, well, good luck. I mean, if you've got to be in Vegas fondling dead bodies, then live your dreams.

Speaker 1 He came back to Chicago and he went to business college. And it turned out he was a born salesman because he is a psychopath.

Speaker 1 Right? We're learning as we talk on this podcast all about terminology and what it actually means as opposed to what I think it means and say it means to a whole shitload of people.

Speaker 1 And then people, we didn't know, we're learning that people believe us when we say shit. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Yeah. So I think we've taught like

Speaker 1 psychosis. I've mixed up psychosis and psychopath.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I had the thing where I told people that 25% of the population were sociopaths.

Speaker 1 People did not know that. And then in corrections corner, she said that it was only one quarter.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I was like, okay.
I didn't fucking question. Everything's fine.

Speaker 1 You know anyone can do a podcast, right? Anyone. Yeah, anyone gets

Speaker 1 anyone. It's true.
So, but for this, I looked it up because clearly we know that these major players are usually psychopaths. And their thing is that they're very ambitious.

Speaker 1 It's like they just want to get ahead. They're very, very charming, which apparently John Wayne Gacy was very charming and like had the gift of gab.

Speaker 1 He's really, he's very, you know, like he just made people feel very comfortable. And then he had an insatiable sexual appetite.
So he was kind of always doing things so that he could.

Speaker 1 That all sounds so like time consuming. You know?

Speaker 1 Like, it makes me want to take a nap. Yeah, he had to, he had to like take vitamins and just really like make sure you got enough water and stuff.
You know what's great is taking a nap with a cat.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know, you don't need to be super sexual or talky or fucking cool. You can just relax.
You just go to sleep. Yeah.
Well, not John, as far as I know. I mean, good for him.

Speaker 1 What if he was like a crazy cat lady? He's like, oh my God, I have like 12 cats. I love it.

Speaker 1 He worked at the Nunn Bush Shoe Company here in Chicago. Anyone?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Oh, Karen.

Speaker 1 Shut it down. Stephen, can we edit that out?

Speaker 1 Stephen, can we turn that part up?

Speaker 1 Where no one supported me?

Speaker 1 He was very good at it, and he ended up getting transferred to Springfield, Illinois. Oh, big time.
Right? Are you representing from Springfield?

Speaker 1 No, yay!

Speaker 1 Well, then, what the fuck are you doing?

Speaker 1 I was fucking right.

Speaker 1 And he joined a group called the JCs.

Speaker 1 You can cheer for it. Now I just don't believe that you actually joined the game.
The John Gacy's?

Speaker 1 They're all John Gacy's no the JCs

Speaker 1 that's JG's

Speaker 1 sorry

Speaker 1 mom this is your fault

Speaker 1 Jesus the JCs from what I can gather which there is almost no information I think they might be the Illuminati because

Speaker 1 It just is a website, a weird blue website that's like, we're a nonprofit organization. Help the city.
And it's like, what, but why? And based on who? And like, there's no answers.

Speaker 1 Just young people in jackets that are like, the JC's.

Speaker 1 So he was in the JCs and he made a lot of like contacts and like, you know, I guess made friends or whatever. Very active.
And that's when you hear about John Wayne Gacy that he was like,

Speaker 1 you know, he lived this crazy double life because he was all successful and you know was in parades and shit. Well, I think it was like it was based in the JCs.
That's how it started. And

Speaker 1 he was

Speaker 1 so on in February 1964, he meets a shy bookkeeper,

Speaker 1 and a year later, he marries her. And she has a very wealthy family, it turns out.

Speaker 1 It's an incredibly beneficial marriage to him. I want to say a shy bookkeeper as to what bookkeepers are usually like, which is fucking mad.
I kind of know.

Speaker 1 A lot of theater students become bookkeepers.

Speaker 1 And then. So she's wealthy.
Yeah. And so he's like, that's so weird.
I'm in love with you.

Speaker 1 What a great coincidence.

Speaker 1 So later that year, so they get married in,

Speaker 1 oh no, sorry, they meet in February of 64. They get married soon after.
And then later that year, oh, this is

Speaker 1 mathematically impossible. Shit.

Speaker 1 Later, it's, I have later that same year while his wife is in the hospital giving birth to their first child, but I'm pretty sure no.

Speaker 1 Well, he could have knocked her up before. Oh, girl.

Speaker 1 John, you dog.

Speaker 1 Basically, she gets pregnant with their first child. She's in the hospital giving birth.
You know, back then, I was like, men didn't have to be in the delivery room.

Speaker 1 They weren't, you know, they were smoking as yards. Women didn't even have to be there.
They just like knocked you the fuck out. That's right.
You're like,

Speaker 1 let me know when the baby comes. Well, he actually was at a bar around the corner with one of his co-workers, so he ended up fucking that night while his wife was giving birth.

Speaker 1 Wakes up in the apartment the next day, gets dressed, goes to the hospital, and holds his newborn son.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so this is the beginning of his double life. And

Speaker 1 then in 1966, his father-in-law says, if you move to Waterloo, Iowa, I will...

Speaker 1 I will kill you from the audience.

Speaker 1 She's just scared because she was thinking about something that happened earlier. There was a spider.
There was a spider on her. See, there's a spider.

Speaker 1 The father-in-law says, if you move to Waterloo, Iowa, you can have three Kentucky fried chicken restaurants. Oh, my God.
Am I right? With the fucking Waterloo chicken? I would do that.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he goes there to manage.

Speaker 1 He's 24.

Speaker 1 Holy shit. And the funniest thing is when you watch these, I mean, there's a million,

Speaker 1 what do you call it, documentaries about him. He always looks 53.
Yeah. Like from

Speaker 1 fucking jump, when there's pictures of him as a boy, you're like, is that the oldest boy in America? He's just...

Speaker 1 At the Kentucky Fried Chickens,

Speaker 1 they say he's like a good manager and he does very well in the job, but he makes his employees call him the Colonel.

Speaker 1 What a fucking nerd. Can you believe?

Speaker 1 If I was standing there with my dumb apron on, like working Kentucky Fried Chicken, he's like, I'm your new manager, but you got to call me the the colonel.

Speaker 1 I'd be like, see you fucking later, Colonel. I don't work here anymore.
But you know, he thinks it's like fun. I'm like, you can call me this, but every time you don't, he's like, call me the colonel.

Speaker 1 I said, call me the colonel.

Speaker 1 And she comes home from a hard day of work and she's like, my 24-year-old fucking boss, I'm 53. I just spit.

Speaker 1 Keeps telling me to call him the fucking colonel. He also loves boys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so... He quickly becomes a well-liked member of the community.
That's what he does, what he's good at. He joins the JCs in Waterloo.
They're everywhere. Now you're going to see them everywhere.

Speaker 1 It eventually turns into Scientology.

Speaker 1 And they said he became the most valuable member of the JCs because he got put in charge. He's

Speaker 1 the chairman of the membership drive. And what he would do to get people to join the JCs would have them meet in a motel room and show stag movies and bring prostitutes and have orgies.

Speaker 1 That sounds amazing. And then people would be like, sure, I'll join the fucking JCs.
Let's do this. Yeah, like, what did it take to become the most valuable member back then?

Speaker 1 Just like some money for prostitutes. Oh, fucking sex workers.
Sorry. Back then, I think they were prostitutes.

Speaker 1 So, historical.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 oh, then his sister in one of these documentaries talks about she finds out when they go visit them one time that him and his wife swap

Speaker 1 partners. Like that, they're that they're what is that called? So, swingers or swingers, like Vince Vaughn and his wife, we don't even know what that means.

Speaker 1 And we're like, kind of proud of it. He tells his sister when they're visiting.
I was like, Yeah, we're gonna go to this party tonight, but we might go home with other people. It's like, okay,

Speaker 1 you know, you're both gross, right?

Speaker 1 You know, I know about the underwear and the bag, right? Yeah,

Speaker 1 and then he's voted the JC's man of the year. So, call me Colonel.

Speaker 1 So then,

Speaker 1 when he's in Waterloo, he ends up, his wife goes out of town, he invites the 15-year-old son of a fellow JC and a state senator over to the house to watch a stag film and get drunk, and he molests this boy.

Speaker 1 No shit. And

Speaker 1 then he told him, you can't tell on me because I have ties to the mafia in Chicago. Here's 50 bucks.
Keep your mouth shut. And it works for a little while.

Speaker 1 It works for long enough so that he molests a second boy.

Speaker 1 And then finally, one boy breaks, and then the other one does, and he gets

Speaker 1 arrested and he gets sent to prison

Speaker 1 for 10 years.

Speaker 1 The prison psychiatrist recommends that he not be released ever as he was a sexual sadist and could never be rehabilitated.

Speaker 1 But he was so well-behaved that he served 18 months.

Speaker 1 Yay!

Speaker 1 Fucking fuck, man.

Speaker 1 His wife divorces him. She's like,

Speaker 1 the swinging thing was one thing, but what the fuck? So he goes back to Chicago. While he's in jail, his father dies, has a heart attack and dies.

Speaker 1 And he's convinced it's because of what he did, which is probably true.

Speaker 1 So he

Speaker 1 goes and moves in. His mother helps him buy a house and they move in together.
And he's like trying to, you know, make good on all of his bad behavior.

Speaker 1 Good luck with that. So they buy a house at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in the Norwood Wood Park.
Anyone live there at that house?

Speaker 1 But for real, though, you can't cheer if you don't actually live there.

Speaker 1 And we're all going there right now.

Speaker 1 And then in June of 1971, he starts his infamous contracting company, business, I should say, called PDM, which stands for painting, decorating, and maintenance. What does it really stand for?

Speaker 1 Pedophile. Penis.

Speaker 1 Karen. Just, it stands for penis, but he put DM after it just

Speaker 1 to throw people off.

Speaker 1 And here's the thing.

Speaker 1 He basically only hires... teenage boys to work for him.
Red flag. And when, I mean, really, and when anybody asks him about it, he's like, they're more reliable than grown men.

Speaker 1 Teenage boys in the 70s. All right.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 There's like literal movies made about teenage boys in the 70s. Being unreliable.
Being unreliable.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so in January of 1972, when he is 29,

Speaker 1 61,

Speaker 1 he picks up.

Speaker 1 He's single now, so he doesn't have to, no one's checking on him. I don't don't think his mother's really paying attention.

Speaker 1 So one night he goes to the Greyhound bus station and he picks up a teenage runaway named Tim McCoy.

Speaker 1 And he takes him back to his house where they party, they have sex.

Speaker 1 They believe that part was consensual, but then Gacy grabs a kitchen knife and stabs him to death. So this is his first kill.
And

Speaker 1 he is also the first body that's buried in the crawl space.

Speaker 1 And because he was a runaway, no one ever knew the boy was missing, so the cops were never alerted.

Speaker 1 Poor baby.

Speaker 1 So then.

Speaker 1 Well, the next line is, then he remarries a woman named Carol.

Speaker 1 It's very easy for him to date for some reason. It's so funny how much more these people have their shit together than you and I.

Speaker 1 You mean me. You're married.
Carol, I mean I. No, I heard.
I heard what you're saying. I'm married by the string of my teeth.
What did I say?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 it was a friend of his sister's from high school. And the sister, again, in a documentary, is like, I mean, I didn't really see, you know, them together, but, you know, they seem happy.

Speaker 1 So, and it's just like, oh, all right. So basically, he's just using her as body armor and then just like going about his day.
So in 1975.

Speaker 1 is when he starts dressing up infamously as Pogo the Clown. Now, everybody's seen the pictures, but if you haven't, if you're from Norway or whatever.

Speaker 1 Has anyone?

Speaker 1 Wow!

Speaker 1 They don't do that.

Speaker 1 He dressed up as a clown, but he did the makeup. There's like a rule in clown makeup where everything has to be rounded.

Speaker 1 Everything's circular and rounded and like fun because you're staring into the face of children. And Pogo the Clown.
And you know what?

Speaker 1 They like round shit. They love round shit.

Speaker 1 Donuts and cookies and fucking clown eyes.

Speaker 1 But John Wayne Gacy's clown makeup is pointy, pointy, pointy. It's the scariest thing.
It's truly like a clown night. Illuminati, Illuminati, right? Fucking death track.

Speaker 1 Light swastika on the forehead. So bad.
Okay, so in 76, after three years of marriage, his wife leaves him.

Speaker 1 Just because. You know, she just didn't feel like it anymore.
I'm just not feeling it. So there's this story, and this guy, this guy, Tony Antonucci, tells the story on one of the documentaries.

Speaker 1 He was 16 at the time. He was working at the contracting company.
John Wayne Gacy invites him over because this was the thing.

Speaker 1 It would be like, Come my house and let's smoke a joint and we'll have a couple drinks and we'll hang out. And then when the teenage boys would get there, he would be.

Speaker 1 So this guy was a high school wrestler. So John Wayne Gacy's like, oh, come on, Mr.
Wrestler, show me your wrestling moves. And the guy's like, okay.
That's such a thing. Yes.

Speaker 1 It's a a real thing. All of that.
It's a real thing. Yeah, because then you're high and then you're like, well, I'm not going to say no to my boss who wants me to wrestle with him.

Speaker 1 And then suddenly you're.

Speaker 1 You can, though. Just know that.
Guys.

Speaker 1 You can literally just put the joint down and be like, I'll see you tomorrow.

Speaker 1 You don't need to drink with older people.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Anyone, my parents are older than me, and I drink with them. It's fine.
Something about, you know, something is, there's something deep in there. There's something in there.

Speaker 1 It's just, no, we're going to dig around it. Just deal with it.
For sure.

Speaker 1 you don't need to drink with older people

Speaker 1 the age power spray everyone

Speaker 1 so basically he challenges him to a wrestling match and

Speaker 1 when uh they're while they're wrestling he throws a handcuff on one of tony's wrists and he tries to get the other wrist handcuff

Speaker 1 and he's fighting him and fighting him and then he thinks he gets him so uh Gacy leaves the room.

Speaker 1 And then Tony, what had happened is like he fought him so much that the handcuff was only clicked to like the first thing. So he was able to pull his hand out of the handcuff.

Speaker 1 But then when Gacy walked back in the room, he kept his hand back behind his back so it still looked like he was handcuffed. And so when Gacy came over to him, he fucking took him down.

Speaker 1 He did like a wrestling move, took him down to the ground. Hell yeah.
And Gacy goes, Oh, you passed the test.

Speaker 1 So then Tony's like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 And then he just kept working for him. Oh.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I wanted that to end better.

Speaker 1 I mean, he was alive to tell the story. So that's good.
That's true. But it was that thing where he was like, you know, it's your boss.
And you just, you want, it was a good job.

Speaker 1 They were probably making, you know, a good amount of money for it.

Speaker 1 And it's such a weird story that there's no way they would explain it to someone and sound like now you'd be like, this thing happened. And that would be a...
classic assault.

Speaker 1 But then it was just like, he's just goofing around. Yeah.

Speaker 1 you know we got high in that thing where your boss wrestles you and

Speaker 1 handcuffs you didn't you work at the gap that happened to you once at the gap right yes it happens all the time it's normal um all right so basically

Speaker 1 this is this is his it turns out that this becomes Gacy's MO. It's either the handcuff trick or the magic rope trick.

Speaker 1 The magic rope trick was he would say, oh, I'm going to show you this magic rope trick. And it was all around the fact that he was Pogo the clown.
So he'd like, like, I'm a clown. I have these tricks.

Speaker 1 I'm going to show you the tricks. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 So, it's such a nightmare. You're like, kind of high, like, okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like, even just the clown stuff, I'd be like, I'm sorry, I just had an emergency call.
I have to leave. Like, they didn't have phones back then, right? That's right.
They couldn't.

Speaker 1 They just had to sit there in their downed vests being like, cool, man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The fucking rope trick, the magic rope trick is they stand there and he goes, so this is what I do. And then he would just throw a rope around their neck and fucking strangle them to death.

Speaker 1 That was the magic magic rope trick. So it was quick and bad.
Oh gosh. So

Speaker 1 the problem was that he hired these boys and a lot of them are written off as runaways when they would disappear.

Speaker 1 And oftentimes it would come to him. So they'd be like, oh, he worked for you.
Have you seen him lately? And Tony Antonucci tells in one of those stories, he said he was supposed to meet

Speaker 1 this boy, John Zick,

Speaker 1 and John Zick never showed up for the job they were supposed to go do together. And then Gacy came up and goes, he called me and he said that he went to

Speaker 1 Cabo San Lucas. Yep.
Yeah. Because that's where you go when you're a teenager.
When you're a teenager. By yourself.
I'm just going to go. I'm going to quick seize.

Speaker 1 I just need to go down to the Mexican Riviera for a while. Yeah.
I'm going to go. I just need to take it easy.
Goodbye. So,

Speaker 1 man.

Speaker 1 So at this point, oh, and also around this time, Gacy also put red lights in his car and would, when he would see a target, he would pull them over and say that he was an undercover cop and that he was,

Speaker 1 had to bring them in, he would handcuff them, and then he would have them. Never pull your car over when you're getting followed by a cop.

Speaker 1 Tell them I said that.

Speaker 1 And when the cop comes to your window, you should pepper spray him in his car.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Which is also the thing the Hillside Stranglers did. They posed as cops and pulled women over and would be like, You have a bunch of tickets, get into our car.

Speaker 1 Which is why you actually, I mean, I'm not fucking bullshitting now. You do want to pull over in a well-populated area.

Speaker 1 You don't want to, if someone cop is stopping you on a fucking deserted road, you're fucking getting off on the next stop in Park King and the McDonald's. You know what you're doing?

Speaker 1 You're high-speed chasing it.

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 1 To evolve. Tell them your mother sent you.
Karen and Georgia.

Speaker 1 So around this time,

Speaker 1 at this point, he's been getting away with murder for six years. Jesus.
at the end of 1977 he'd killed 19 boys

Speaker 1 and by 1978 he was committing a murder every two to three weeks holy shit

Speaker 1 your town

Speaker 1 i can't even vacuum every two to three weeks

Speaker 1 There's so much dog hair on all my clothes at all the time. Me too.
The only reason we don't have it is because we packed these. I bought this here.

Speaker 1 All right. So his last victim, this was in December 1978, and it was 15-year-old Robert Peiste, and he worked part-time at a drugstore in Des Plains.

Speaker 1 Des Plains.

Speaker 1 Des Plains? Des Plains?

Speaker 1 Des Plains?

Speaker 1 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 So his mom,

Speaker 1 Robert Peeste's mom is in the parking lot to pick him up when his shift is over, but he goes, hold on a second. I met this guy who has a better job for me, and it's a really good paying job.

Speaker 1 I'll be right back. And he never comes back.
They go out into the parking lot after 15 minutes, and he's nowhere to be seen. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 And this is where, if you've ever seen, there's a movie where Brian Denny, he plays John Wayne Gacy, and you have to see it. It's so crazy.
Because he was crazy drunk and on pills.

Speaker 1 So by this point, he's been doing it and getting away with it for so long. He's like sloppy as hell.
He thinks no one's ever going to catch him. And he's just really sloppy.

Speaker 1 So the people in this drugstore knew who John Wayne Gacy was. The The guy who always offers kids jobs.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Pogo the Clown's here again.

Speaker 1 It's that guy who wears a sweet honesty t-shirt.

Speaker 1 I brought it back around.

Speaker 1 It's called a bring it back around. Thank you.

Speaker 1 So, anyway, they file a missing person's report. He is not a runaway.
They can't blame it on any of that shit.

Speaker 1 This boy was an Eagle Scout,

Speaker 1 a loving family. So

Speaker 1 the cops, they trace it back to Gacy. The The cops go to his house to question him at 3.30 in the morning when they finally trace it back.
And he's super pissy. He's like really bitchy to the cops.

Speaker 1 I would be. Oh, no, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 They go to his house like at night, normal time, and he's really bitchy. He's like, I will come down to the station.
I'll come down to talk to you.

Speaker 1 He shows up at 3:30 in the morning at the police station covered in mud.

Speaker 1 So they're like, Could you take a seat in here, please?

Speaker 1 We just had a couple questions to ask you.

Speaker 1 What the fuck?

Speaker 1 And they finally do a background check and see that he was convicted for sodomy in Iowa. And they're finally like, I think we've got this, the guy.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, but can I just say that sodomy is a bullshit charge that they, because they didn't give him the,

Speaker 1 you guys,

Speaker 1 never mind.

Speaker 1 It's just a thing where they like didn't want to charge him with child molestation or give him a real fucking charge.

Speaker 1 They gave him 18 months because they gave him sodomy instead, which like, anyone could get sodomy.

Speaker 1 That's not what I mean.

Speaker 1 That's right. That's right.

Speaker 1 And if you're not comfortable with that, maybe it's your problem.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 They detain him at the police station.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know what to say.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 They detain him at the police station.

Speaker 1 They go and search Gacy's home, and they find a trapdoor that leads down to the crawl space.

Speaker 1 And then a cop crawls down into the crawl space, and they're like, there sure is a lot of lime down here.

Speaker 1 And they just come back up. They didn't find anything.
They came. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Someone said no. No, there's more on this paper, I swear to God.
So, what they do find is a bunch of jewelry that does not belong to him.

Speaker 1 And one of the the things that they found was a class ring with the initials J-C inside it. And they trace that ring back to John Zick.
His last name is spelled so insanely.

Speaker 1 It's CZYSZK or something like that. I just wrote it Z-I-C-K because I couldn't deal.

Speaker 1 But they basically see they trace the ring, they get John's name, they go to the Zick home, and they say the mother tells them he's been missing since January 20th 1977 and they're like ding ding ding here we go this is our guy um

Speaker 1 so then they start they stake him out and they have to get they have to get a search warrant for his house uh so while they're waiting they put the surveillance team on his house and gacy is doing things like leading them on long uh medium speed chases till dawn or like he doesn't even know anyone's following him no no no he does he's doing it on purpose or he's like buying them dinner Like

Speaker 1 they're out there, you know, like trying to order food or whatever. And then he just picks up the tab.
Like he's fucking around like he's, there's, he can't ever get caught.

Speaker 1 But they get a second search warrant. And

Speaker 1 that's when, oh no, sorry, he invited them in for a fish dinner.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 while the two cops were inside, one of them said, could I use your restroom? And when the cop goes into the restroom, he,

Speaker 1 they said it was around Christmas time, so the heater was on and the cop walked into the bathroom I keep saying restroom but it's a home

Speaker 1 he goes into the bathroom and smells death and he's like

Speaker 1 this

Speaker 1 what did you hear that what I just heard a ghost

Speaker 1 He like the heater came the heating vent came on that's when we found out Karen was crazy out of her mind totally insane

Speaker 1 The heater vent came on, the air came out, and it was the smell of death. And he knew that this was, they had to search this house, basically.
Oh, my God. So

Speaker 1 essentially, blip, bloop, bleep.

Speaker 1 Sorry. Oh, how they finally got him was he had driven to a gas station and like dropped off a bag of pot to somebody.

Speaker 1 So they got him on this really dumb charge, but they were able to hold him at the police station. They got the second warrant.
They go into the house, they go into the crawl space.

Speaker 1 And after 15 minutes, because they just didn't take enough time the first time. After 15 minutes, they're like, we have three bodies down here.
And then it's on like Donkey Kong.

Speaker 1 And eventually they find

Speaker 1 in that crawl space

Speaker 1 27 bodies of young men and boys.

Speaker 1 I feel so bad for those cops that had to do all that shit up. It's so,

Speaker 1 even just the old footage is so upsetting looking. It's in it.
It's, yeah you have to look at it was his mom just playing solitaire the whole time or something uh she no she died at some point

Speaker 1 she's like what's that johnny i didn't hear you come in no i don't want to do the handcuff trick again i don't want to

Speaker 1 you know you did that to me i felt

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 so there's 27 bodies in the house and then he admits that there are also six he dumped in the river and that's when he was covered in mud mud at the police station.

Speaker 1 He had just dumped Robert Peeste's body. He basically dumped it and went straight to the police station.
Jesus.

Speaker 1 He stands trial in February of 1980. He never shows an ounce of remorse.

Speaker 1 They put the victim's family members and friends on the stand so everybody sees all of these boys and all their family and all the people that were affected.

Speaker 1 And in three hours, the jury finds him guilty on all counts. He's sentenced to death.
And after 14 years of appeals, he's put to to death on May 10th, 1994. His last words were, kiss my ass.
Oh.

Speaker 1 He's a good guy. And his last meal was Kentucky fried chicken.
That's right.

Speaker 1 That's cool. I mean, no, that's awful.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I kind of like it.
I know.

Speaker 1 And then they destroyed that house, which I, when I first saw the footage of that, they like pulled the whole fucking thing down. And then I was like, that's a bit dramatic.

Speaker 1 And then I was like, what am I talking about? Like,

Speaker 1 what real estate could sell, real estate agent could sell that fucking house? I like that killing 27 people isn't dramatic, but them tearing the house down. Tearing the house down.

Speaker 1 I was like, stop it, you guys. You're being nuts.

Speaker 1 You're being,

Speaker 1 what's the word? Dramatic. Yes.

Speaker 1 And that's Sean Wayne Gacy. Good job, Chicago.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Great.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're back. Karen, any other info from this excellent story? Let's see.

Speaker 1 John Wayne Gacy's attorney, a man named Sam Amirante, said that working with him inspired him to write legislation requiring police to immediately begin searches for missing children rather than waiting 72 hours.

Speaker 1 Amazing. That has since evolved into what we now commonly know as the Amber Alert.
Can you imagine?

Speaker 1 It was called the child abduction emergency alert, like as if there there wouldn't have been an emergency. Right.
A child abduction and the emergency isn't just a given. That's not the assumption.

Speaker 1 Well, look, it was a time where it was so common to just be like, oh, your child rode away on a bike for a while. They'll be back.
It's like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 1 So that is really nice. Also, it's a very fun and funny thing.
You know, when I said. Toxic masculinity ruins the party again in this.
Oh, was that when you said it? This is the one I said it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Epic.

Speaker 1 And it was like, I'd seen people talking about toxic masculinity on twitter a lot but when people like afterwards there were people i would imagine some sort of kind of incelly energy type people who were very upset about it where it's like masculinity is not this is good masculinity or whatever it's that whole thing it's like excuse me i was talking about john wayne gacy's alcoholic abusive father so if you're gonna defend that guy then you there's something wrong with your brain that is fully qualifies as toxic masculinity right and the word toxic is there so you don't have to then argue that not all masculinity is toxic because we really just said the specific kind of masculinity we're talking about.

Speaker 1 You don't need to caveat.

Speaker 1 But also, you're okay. It's okay.

Speaker 1 It's going to be okay. Is it? You're fine.
Go fucking lift some barbells and prove the positive masculinity is everywhere around us. Be the example.
everyone is looking for. Please.
Come on. Okay.

Speaker 1 Sorry. And then just, I have a minor correction for this.
I spelled out victim John Zick's name, talking about his initials on his class ring, but the spelling should have been S-Z-Y-K.

Speaker 1 I had a completely incorrect spelling. So my apologies to that.
And it's S-Z-Y-K. Got it.
Oh, and so this was our first like true live show, like large audience hometown.

Speaker 1 So here's the hometown that we got from Ashley at the live show.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we might need, we might have time for one hometown work.

Speaker 1 Is there a way to turn the lights on for one second? You have to jump over the orchestra pit, though, if you're going to say it, if you're going to do it.

Speaker 1 Does anyone have a hometown that's like really good though? If someone's pointing at you and they're okay.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.
How do we...

Speaker 1 This was, we should have thought this through. Can she walk over and around really quick? Yeah.

Speaker 1 No. They're like, we hate you.
There's someone standing over there. Someone must be in charge.

Speaker 1 Who's in charge that could help us? We're not. Does someone work here? Uh-oh.
Just kidding.

Speaker 1 Here she comes. What's her name?

Speaker 1 Ashley. Hi.

Speaker 1 You too. How's it going?

Speaker 1 Good. That's Georgia.

Speaker 1 Yeah?

Speaker 1 Just sit right here. Oh, we're happy to be here.
Sit here. No, sit on it.
Do it. Don't fall.
Yeah. Let's just see how you do.
It really is wobbly. It's fucked up right here.
Yeah, it's really wobbly.

Speaker 1 You sat on this for an hour? Yes. And it's slippery, too.
And I have these weird boots on. Yeah, that's impressive.

Speaker 1 Okay, what's your hometown? Where are you from?

Speaker 1 So I am from about an hour outside of the city, DeKal, Illinois. Anybody? And I am? Whoa.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there's a big college out there.

Speaker 1 I know him.

Speaker 1 Oh, I know. Me, don't you? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's another really good one.

Speaker 1 Tony Keller, if you ever get a chance to look that up. Oh, I thought you were talking about someone you went to school with.
Yeah, but it's.

Speaker 1 He's a murderer, I bet. So I'm not going to take full credit because this is actually my boyfriend's hometown murder.
He's a local in the area. We'll take it.

Speaker 1 And he told this story to me on one of our first dates, and I was really fascinated by it. That's a keeper.
I'm just going to

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 are you taking notes?

Speaker 1 So he lived in a really small town, actually, outside outside of DeKalb, a small farming town. And he worked in a gas station when he was in high school.

Speaker 1 And there was a guy who would come to the gas station every day. And every day he would buy a pack of cigarettes and a 30-rack of beer.
And he was approximately 300 pounds.

Speaker 1 So, you know, living the dream. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The town kind of noticed that he went missing. And they filed a missing person's report about a couple weeks after he went missing.

Speaker 1 He was a cook at this restaurant/slash motel that was, it's on Highway 47, if anybody knows of that.

Speaker 1 Badness, bad news. It's like in the middle of nowhere.
Motel on a highway nowhere. Yeah, so it was called the Bohemia.

Speaker 1 And the owner of the restaurant was a guy.

Speaker 1 He owned the restaurant and he hired this guy as a cook. And he also, the guy also lived in the motel.
So

Speaker 1 after a couple weeks, police are searching for this guy. Somebody calls in a tip and says, hey, I actually was helping my friend the other day.
He owns the Bohemia restaurant.

Speaker 1 He had some extra money laying around, so he decided he wanted to bury it in the cornfields. So he asked me if I'd come out and help dig some holes for him, which is totally logical.

Speaker 1 This guy's like, you know, I was thinking about it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, how many duffel bags were involved in?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 so, um, so he calls, so he tells the police where they buried it, or they buried the money, and uh, the police go out there, dig up the holes, and uh, spoiler, it was not money. No.
No.

Speaker 1 In the hole, they found two garbage bags. One was the head of this man, the cook, the 300-pound cook, and the other bag was his torso.
Ooh.

Speaker 1 So they did an autopsy. They found out,

Speaker 1 I mean, it's sad, obviously, he was murdered, but he was kind of on the verge of death. He actually, they ruled that it was a heart attack because his heart stopped.

Speaker 1 Because his head was removed.

Speaker 1 Probably.

Speaker 1 But actually that came up where they weren't almost going to press charges because it's technically that's all they had was the torso and the head.

Speaker 1 Watch the carbs, everybody. Yeah.
He also has cirrhosis of the liver and emphysema. Oh, I was going to say eczema, but my friend corrected me in the car and she's like, no, you didn't die from that.

Speaker 1 He probably had that too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So they end up pressing or indicting the owner of this restaurant, the Bohemia, and come to find out

Speaker 1 he was murdered in the kitchen where he was a cook. I hate the reason why he was murdered.
It was over a bad drug deal, which I'm just going to ignore now.

Speaker 1 But what happened after is just like amazing. So

Speaker 1 the thing was, is like, is he wanted, I guess he didn't come up with this plan right away because obviously he couldn't move the 300-pound man, decided to cut him up, didn't know what to do with him at first.

Speaker 1 The whole digging a hole in the cornfield didn't come to him. So he decided to store the body parts in the motel room fridges, the refrigerators.

Speaker 1 And they were able to collect evidence because there was his DNA in the fridge. The little ones? I mean, I don't know how big they were.

Speaker 1 Probably. It probably had like peanuts and candy, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then it's the dead body parts in bags.

Speaker 1 It tastes weird. Yeah.
That's so fast. So the guy was actually sentenced to 90 years in prison.
He is still alive. And I'm so sorry I forgot his name.
I don't. Oh, then you're fired.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Ollie.

Speaker 1 Ollie. That's amazing.
But one thing I will point out is his head and his torso were recovered, but his limbs, his arms, and legs were never found.

Speaker 1 So I don't know what time your flight leaves tomorrow. But if you guys want to go on a little excavation, I'd love to find some legs and arms.
Yeah, I think that'd be great. Limb City.

Speaker 1 Yay, thank you, Ashley. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 So good. Thank you.
Yes, that's how it's done. Yes,

Speaker 1 you all know how to do it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you guys so much for being here. You're all sweet baby angels.

Speaker 1 It means the world to us. This is crazy.
We've never done a crowd this big. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's really amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you know what?

Speaker 1 You guys stay sexy. And don't get murdered.

Speaker 1 We'll come and say hi to you guys.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, Ashley, I can't believe like how brave of her to come on that stage and then tell a killer hometown.
Like, that's how it's done. Ashley set the precedent in the very beginning.

Speaker 1 She really did. And thank you for knowing your job, Ashley.
Yeah. There's nothing we appreciate more.
She did a great job.

Speaker 1 Oh, and I guess because this is the first time I said the phrase toxic masculinity ruins the party again. And then it became a very classic t-shirt design, which actually a listener designed.
Right.

Speaker 1 That got set. That's one of the first pieces of art that got sent into us.
And we both loved it so much immediately. It was like, oh my God, this is amazing.
It was Kirsten Ben Como Cooper.

Speaker 1 I've met with her. We had lunch.
She's so

Speaker 1 good. She is so freaking cool.
Yeah. Yes.
I love that. So good.
So because of that, we're going to relaunch Toxic Masculinity Ruins the Party again with Kristen's art.

Speaker 1 And we're going to have it in a ladies' muscle t-shirt in white for the summer, summer, summer time and in a unisex t-shirt in evergreen. And so the pre-sale kicks off on May 7th.

Speaker 1 It's just going to be a quick sale, you guys. So if you're listening to this while it's coming out, go run over to exactlyrightstore.com.
Pre-sale is May 7th.

Speaker 1 It's going to run for a week only, only, and then it's wrapping up on May 13th. So make sure you grab this classic while you can.
Yes, please do. Wear it proudly.
Yes, it's a classic.

Speaker 1 So head to exactlywrightstore.com for the pre-sale and check it out.

Speaker 1 So to rename this episode, which of course live from the Chicago Podcast Festival is accurate, it is a really good name, but there are more to choose from.

Speaker 1 So if we're renaming it today based on the content of the episode, perhaps we would call it here's the thing,

Speaker 1 which obviously everyone everyone knows we say all the time. Yeah.
It just stops everybody to get them ready for the idea that's coming. Yeah, I'm about to have a moment.

Speaker 1 Take a moment and then have a moment. Here's the thing.
Here's the thing. There's also people love pockets, of course, because my dress had pockets.

Speaker 1 I'm so proud that our first kind of big theater live show, pockets were right up top. Pockets got a fucking huge round of applause.
It was very unexpected and exciting. So exciting.
Who knew?

Speaker 1 And then also,

Speaker 1 of course, you're all my mommy.

Speaker 1 You're all my mommy. So funny.
That is it. That's the one I picked.
Yeah, for sure. Oh, and then, yeah.

Speaker 1 So then after the show, we go backstage and you grab me and you go, we have to go say hi to them. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then you bring me out to the front lobby and there's just this crowd of people I had never seen, like a wall of people. They were all so friendly and lovely.

Speaker 1 And then one by one, we did a meet and greet. like on our own side.

Speaker 1 Took pictures. Took pictures, hugs.
Classic audience member. we don't know her name but that's the time where the girl ran up took a picture and then said my dad killed his business partner bye

Speaker 1 and ran away legend we talk about you all the time we do my mom sat in a chair and just watched the whole thing she was so proud so did my sister and adrian and audrey and my sister kept rolling her eyes like stop doing it was just like i was eight years old in her room trying to show off to get attention she's just like show off time stop it

Speaker 1 stop it it's like i won't stop it and we're not going to stop it for two and a half more hours. And we didn't and we never did.
And it's been nine and a half years, Laura. We won't stop.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, thanks, everybody.
That was fun. Yeah.
Thank you guys for listening and for everyone who came to the show and all of that. Yeah, stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 1 Claire Danes and Matthew Reese find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland. Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 1 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer. But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 1 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me, now playing only on Netflix.
You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

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