Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 61: Live at The Neptune

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Hello

and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia.

It's Wednesday and that means we're recapping our old shows with all new commentary, updates, and insights.

Today we're looking back on episode number 61, which we named Live at the Neptune.

That's right, this is a Seattle live show and the episode came out on March 23rd, 2017.

So let's listen to the intro of episode 61.

Hey!

Guys,

Seattle.

Hi.

Hi, Seattle.

Are these microphones on?

Can we?

No?

Can you hear us?

Me, me, me, me, me.

Me, yeah.

What's up, Seattle?

Now I'm scared.

Who's that empty row?

Who said the fucking empty row?

Lights up.

I want all those names.

What'd you say, dead bodies?

The fucking reserve family is a real bunch of dicks, that's for sure.

Crazy.

Whose family is that?

I don't know.

It's Jim and Dawn of Neptune, and they always get 15 seats at every show that they do.

Oh my god, it's so good to be here with you guys.

This is so exciting.

This is the very last night of our weekend tour, first tour ever.

Yes.

And we're here.

We're wrapping it down with Seattle.

Yeah.

Thank God.

Best for last.

And just in time, because we thought it would be a good idea to wear the same dresses

for the whole leg of the Western tour.

So.

You wouldn't cheer for it if you could smell it.

These, I love them.

They're going straight into the hotel room trash when I get home.

Yeah.

I mean.

It's all filth now.

It's all ruined.

This feels like a dress.

When I first put it on the first night, I was like, I'm a gorgeous princess.

And tonight I'm like, I feel like Harold's mother from Harold and Maude.

It feels like gross polyester.

But

pockets.

Find me.

Find me.

Find my light.

Find me.

Follow me.

No.

Come on.

Do this with me, like, guys.

They won't participate.

You won't do it.

Refuses.

Refuses to work.

There it is.

There he is.

There it is.

And

oh.

She was just going to keep going.

There's someone up there that's so mad right now.

I'm going to have this in the fucking sewing.

Yeah, we should wear different dresses every night now.

How about pants and old shirts?

Let's just wear whatever we want.

I'm not sure.

The dress thing may have been sarcastic at first, and then now we have to weirdly commit to it.

Like, it's our tour, and we have to be fancy in theaters.

And it's like, well, you're not.

Yeah.

Look at you guys.

Yeah.

You know what?

We just, the night that we did Seattle, we fucking decided to wear whatever the fuck we wanted.

I'm going to start.

God damn it.

Feel that guy.

Feel that freedom.

Feel it.

I'm so relieved.

I'm never wearing a bra again.

Fucking just can't.

And I think I'm like past the point of not being able to wear a bra anymore.

But I don't care.

How long did that take you?

I just made it.

I came home one day and Vince Vince was like, oh, where were you?

Were you out?

And I was your own people?

And I was like, he's like, I can see through your shirt.

Fuck them.

Like, I don't care.

But I just fucking can't do it.

I mean, it's just, I should take it off.

Anyways, hi.

Hi.

Yeah, you just went down into a hole there.

Goodbye.

I should, but I shouldn't.

Has anyone ever thrown their bra into the audience and not the audience throwing their bra onto the stage?

Maybe.

I bet they have.

She wants a $14 Target bra.

Yeah.

That smells.

So, Karen, you talk about it.

I also, you can tell it's the end of the tour because my fingernails look like the ones Katherine Martin saw in Buffalo Bill's Well.

Can you see them?

Good fucking skin.

I don't know what I've been doing, but literally it's like, I look like I've been trying to climb my way out of a murderer's basement.

That was a great reference.

Like I really dig the.

You just did.

Yeah, it's what I do for a living.

Thank you.

So, you texted me when we got to our hotel, and you were like, and I was like, this hotel.

And you were like, I think it used to be a hospital.

And I thought you were joking.

And then I checked into my room and I think it used to be a hospital.

It used to be a hospital, everybody.

It smells a little bit like

haunted bleach.

And I'm like,

yeah.

There's a, in the bathroom, the bathroom door has one of those like what's like the ship windows Yes, that's round and I think it's for like to make sure your patient isn't like sneaking drugs.

Yeah, so like the nurse can look in and come on.

Are you okay?

Don't shif yourself with that soap.

It's not allowed.

It's very rehabby.

It's rehabby.

This is Diet Coke.

It's rehabby.

There's also

kind of a feel to it.

I was sitting in there typing, as we like to do before shows.

and

for a while so that the lights kind of went dark and I hadn't turned any lights on and then in the hallway a child screamed and I almost I was like

because it doesn't

there's no carpeting.

No, I heard clonking upstairs and I was like that'd be funny if it was a ghost.

Yeah.

But it's just there's no carpeting.

But did you see there's a giant pillow on the bed that says, sleep with me?

And I'm like, oh, that's my sleep podcast I listen to.

So maybe they're fans of that podcast.

The insomniacs here know what I'm talking about.

What?

What?

Just the idea that your hotel would be like, I think I know what podcast she likes.

Sewing a pillow.

When did you make that reservation?

Three days ago?

Yeah.

Sewing, sewing all night.

Thanks staying there again.

I mean, we've been given weirder gifts.

Am I wrong?

So this is my favorite murder.

Hi, everybody.

Thanks for being here.

No!

You're freaking me!

Oh, you're into it now.

Now you like doing light stuff.

Okay.

Good to know.

That's so scary.

Like, we can't really see anyone, which is good because this is scary.

And it feels like when, like, when

large Marge makes her face all scary.

It's like when the lights...

Or no, when he has to, like.

It's just one lady with a huge face in the middle.

It's like, oh, fuck.

I don't want to see that.

I want to pretend that this is not real.

It's fun.

It's totally fun.

We're in a fight, ladies and gentlemen.

We're in a fight.

When we were upstairs, there's a record player, and I put on the record that was there, which was like a K-Tel, I think it was called like Emotions or something.

And there were all these songs from the 80s that were like every song from my junior high dance.

And so I was kind of getting like an acid stomach.

And

Georgia was like doing something else.

Like it seemed like she wasn't paying attention at all.

And then all of a sudden there was a song on and it was Sticks.

It was a Stick song.

I can't remember what it was.

And all of a sudden, Georgia snaps up and goes, what is this?

She doesn't even have a good voice.

It was so bad.

She sucked.

It made me feel like I was in a grocery store, like a sad grocery store.

Sorry, Sticks fans.

Just a ballad where I sing like this.

That's all it was in the 80s.

That's all we had.

No.

I don't.

I don't need that.

We wanted more.

We had Color Me Bad, just low dance too.

Oh.

That's how old I am.

Oh.

Yeah.

I was blackout drunk for Color Me Bad.

It's probably up here a couple times.

Yeah, it was fun.

Oh, this is the other, I didn't start out on the store wearing these shoes with a dress.

That probably wouldn't be be my first choice, but I was like, fuck it, I can't do it anymore.

Yeah.

I had, like, huge heels for a while.

You had heels on.

What?

Like that, man.

For who?

Fuck that.

What am I doing?

No offense.

What else?

We did a Vancouver show last night, which was, I think, one guy.

Oh, that's right.

There's a wagon train that came down from Vancouver that's at this show now.

I think they're over there.

Guess what?

So at the end of the show, we were like going to have some of these to release and stuff, the live shows, and then they were like, that didn't work.

We didn't get the recording.

So that was an exclusive show.

So we're going to, maybe tonight, you guys, things will happen, and this will be an exclusive show, too.

But

yeah, they came to us after, and they're like, it just didn't record.

And we're just like,

well, it is a podcast.

So.

So.

We'll just tell everybody about it.

Yeah.

So if you get a call, we're going to be like episode 58.

Here's basically how it went.

It was so good.

So I go.

Best show.

And then George is like.

And then I'm like,

say, Canadian name wrong.

Oh my God, we were hilarious last night.

Oh my God.

Best we've ever been on our show.

It was fucking incredible.

The best we've ever been.

Death, jokes, everything you like.

Puns, terrible puns.

Don't be fun.

Stevens, like, like, you know, talking about Steven all the time.

We yelled at Steven.

Yelled at Steven a lot.

Did you see?

He's magical.

A bunch of people on Instagram, I wrote a thing about that it didn't record and everyone was like, Stephen, you had one job.

Like over and over and over again.

He wasn't even there.

He wasn't even there.

He was fourth.

He was innocently sitting in Los Angeles stroking his own mustache.

And he's like, I'm sure he was like, did I do something wrong?

I guess, you know what?

I probably did.

I should have.

I probably did.

I'm really sorry.

Sweet little Seven.

I love cats.

My name's Steve.

God bless his soul.

Yeah.

That's a great description of him.

Yeah.

Oh, the reserved are finally.

Mr.

and Mrs.

Reserved are finally here.

So.

Can we get those?

Real quick.

Just real quick.

It's my cousin Danny.

Oh, my God.

come on oh my god

uh oh

come on Danny

you think

guys

Georgia you think you're better than us hi good how are you nice to meet you it's my cousin Danny Brown he's the youngest of all the cousins

well Chris is the youngest right Chris is the youngest

oh no

here's one

You know, called, said, hey, I'm going to be in Seattle this weekend, too.

Can I come to your show?

And I said,

be on time.

Wait, will you really quickly tell the story?

So I don't know if any of you, you probably aren't, but if there are any San Francisco Giants fans in the audience, couple,

then there's problems.

I know.

Here's that.

So there's, oh, good.

So

do you want to tell that story of when

you

got to be famous for 15 minutes?

Do you want me to do it for you and you can just chime in?

You do tell a better story than I do.

Well,

that was part of the genetics.

I got all those?

Yeah, all of them.

So Danny looks like Buster Posey, who is the catcher for the San Francisco Giants, quite a bit.

To the point where, right,

a man in the front said, yeah, you do.

So now we know it's true.

So Danny worked in at,

it wasn't Candlestick, was it?

It was ATT Park.

He worked at the park.

Then one day he was leaving, and some little kids walked up and they were like, oh my God, Buster Posey, can we get an autograph?

And he's like, I'm not Buster Posey.

And then more people came up and asked.

So he just started signing autographs.

I love it.

Ruin rookie cards.

Some guy, like in 50 years, goes to like, he's been saving it for his children for retirement, and he goes to bring it and cash it in.

And they're like, this is a fucking forge, dude.

They don't believe you.

Zero value.

Way to go.

The economy collapsed.

He's like, don't worry about it.

You have got this thing.

Grandpa has got you.

All right, you can go.

You don't have to stay there.

You're done roasting me.

Danny Brown, ladies and gentlemen.

Good job.

I mean, my show.

No, you're fine.

You're fine.

We'll talk about it at Christmas.

I'm so glad that was your cousin.

That cousin got better.

That was great.

It was just a person that I would have yelled at him anyway.

It's what I do.

It's my passion.

You.

You wear it well.

Thanks.

Like this dress.

Like this goddamn dress.

Should we talk about murder?

Should we talk about some murders?

Do you want to do that?

I wonder if one guy's like, oh, I didn't know that's what they were.

I don't really, I'm not really into that.

No, thank you, actually.

Like, why would anyone want to talk about murder?

Keep talking about your clogs.

That's what we really,

I really love.

Clog cast.

Clog cast.

No.

Dan Sco presents the clog cast.

Do not steal that.

No.

It's copywritten.

Our lawyer's in the reserve section.

That's right.

He's writing everything down.

He'll be here in 45 minutes.

Okay, we're back.

The end of the first tour.

My God.

To announce that that tour was ending when actually it went on for four years straight is

so hilarious.

We're so naive.

Do you have a specific?

I don't remember that specifically.

I do remember the last show we did in Austin at the end of a tour, and I sat in a bathtub with a bag bag of Bucky's beaver nuggets.

And so, I don't think anything can beat that ending of a tour.

I mean, that is a classic.

I don't remember the feeling of the tour ending.

I just,

first of all, I remember that theater because it was white with red seats.

Like, it was, and it felt like the lights were up the whole show.

And I think we did two shows in one night.

Oh, I think you're right.

If I'm not mistaken.

So, it was like in the first meet and greet, one of the people that came to say hi to us was like, are you doing different stories in the second show?

And we were like, no.

And they were like, oh.

And then they literally basically told us how disappointed they were because they bought tickets for both, but now they're just going to see the same thing twice.

And then after that, we never repeated stories.

Was that the one?

Okay.

Cause I do.

I remember the disappointment from that, but I don't remember which exact city it was.

But I'll never forget that feeling.

That was a real like, oh yeah.

Good point.

Like I didn't ever contemplate anybody buying tickets to both shows.

Totally.

Even if they're not the same night, like, even if they're days apart, it's like, you're not going to go to more than one.

This shit?

Yeah.

But you should.

Hey, guess what?

We're having a take.

But actually.

This is just to tell you that we learned our lesson.

And every single show on our tour this year in the fall of 2025 coming right up is a different story.

for both of us.

And neither of us know.

We don't know each other's stories.

No repeats.

That's right.

We won't repeat any phrases.

You won't hear anything you've ever heard before it literally every single word will be new no we won't say the word the

no watch this yeah it'll be incredible this was actually i do remember because meet and greets i think you and i liked the idea of like how cool that would be but we didn't know what we were signing up for so we were definitely scared of what we were like what could this be

Do you remember this one where the guy

came and he was in a wheelchair, but his feet were wrapped.

So it looked like he had just injured himself.

Yeah.

He rolled up.

I go, what did you do?

Yes.

Yes.

I was going to say, what did you say?

Because I remember you saying something.

Oh my God.

And now I don't know.

That's a person that could be differently abled and like in that chair all the time.

I have no idea who that person was.

But I felt this kind of like, as we said hi to people over and over again, a hundred times, I felt myself turn into this like phony who was like, what are you doing?

And then I did it so inappropriately.

And this guy, he didn't miss a trip.

He didn't even notice.

He was just like, I need to ask you a question.

It was as if I didn't say anything.

I was like, thank God.

Because it looked like, yeah, it looked like he had like recently injured his legs.

Yes.

And so,

but we don't fucking know.

Like, you don't say that.

You don't,

the second it was out of my mouth, I was just like, is this all over now?

You wanted to just ruin everything.

You wanted to say something.

You want to say something new and special to every single person, which is why it's a very like challenging experience.

Right.

But maybe, yeah, but you don't have to because they want to say something to you.

Not exactly.

We learn that.

It's the rule of all of life, which is you actually don't have to do anything.

You just like the people who really have the secret to life are the people who can be quiet.

Oof.

But I mean, I've never in my life.

What a skill to learn.

How?

I don't know.

To not have the pressure of feeling like you absolutely have to

like participate and or lead.

Lead.

And yeah.

I just heard you say

we're doing it now to each other.

Yeah.

Like letting go that I have to lead every conversation.

In a way that's like, it's up to me because everyone's going to be upset with me if I don't or everyone's going to be uncomfortable with me if I don't.

Like learn, I'm going to learn that lesson for the rest of my life, but practicing it is like such a nice piece of self-care that I have like really enjoyed the past couple of years.

Maybe, but I'll just, for the sake of argument, devil's advocate and say when you and I first met, when we went to Joe DeRosa's Thanksgiving dinner, the reason I liked you so much is because you were doing that and it was hilarious.

So you were like, remember, you were like, we're not just going to sit here in silence.

Okay, say the weirdest thing.

And you were like doing exactly that in this way that actually was helping a kind of like almost borderline, somber living room.

It almost felt like kids trying to have an adult party and everyone felt very, everyone felt almost nervous about it.

So you were, you were breaking it up on purpose.

I think, yeah, maybe I was doing it right.

I was in the right then doing it.

A bunch of male comedians who like don't share feelings and like can't, and none of us are with our families and shit like that on Thanksgiving.

Yeah.

But the other thing is I can't eat in silence.

So I have to ask questions the whole time I'm eating because if someone doesn't speak, I'm, I can't just sit there and masticate.

Yes.

You know, so that means something, something is terribly wrong if there's, if they're silent.

Yeah.

It's same with like when you come from like a loud, talkative family, which is all, I mean, every single person in my family is like, can you stop talking so I can talk?

And

to then interact, like where you're the only one with a quiet family, it's one of the most upsetting things.

I've had it happen a couple of times where you just feel like the way you interact is wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Which is like basic like human experience interaction is being in the world.

Yeah.

And you're doing it wrong and you're fucking it up.

Speaking of which,

this is such an early show of like before we were learning lessons, both good and bad.

And I think at this Seattle show, we realized if there are heavy hitters out there to cover, we should do it.

Because I was

at the theater, the way that audience reacted when I said what my story was was crazy.

Yeah.

I do wonder though, like, should we, I mean, we've done all the heavy hitters, but like, if we're ever going to do a heavy hitter again live, the other person shouldn't tell the story.

You know what I mean?

Like you, the whole thing should have been you doing Ted Bundy.

Oh, because you were just chiming in on what you knew too?

No, because you didn't have enough time to cover such a big story.

It's the same thing with Jack the Ripper Ripper when you did that.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's like we could have devoted the entire show to that.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, but then we would have gotten heckled for changing.

People want to go and see you play the hits.

It's like Hotel California or else.

I'll still talk over Hotel California

and ask people questions.

What do you like about Hotel California?

Yeah.

I don't know, but we did it.

And actually this episode itself, like these two stories, I think are just like

really, I think, close to us and close to our hearts.

Yeah, it's for sure.

It's a good example.

And I'm glad we're fucking coming back to it.

Yeah, me too.

Also, I do remember that hotel like it was yesterday.

I don't.

Oh, it was because that, well, first of all, would it help you if I told you that the decor was as if a college boy wanted to do a tropical theme in his bedroom.

So there was like yellow paint, fake plants, I think, and like the weirdest bathroom.

No.

And it was just around the corner from the theater.

Okay.

I know.

I don't, I don't know how you remember anything from 2017.

Trauma.

It just gets locked in there.

I just let it go.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

I don't remember yesterday.

Well, do you remember having that see-through shirt on?

No, but that could be one of many.

I

really

abhor bras.

And so sometimes, you know, that gets me into trouble but yeah i'm still working it out i still don't know i still don't have like my bra that i love yeah it's still i like the idea that we're like on stage talking about like that we're sick of the

because we wore the same dress that was like our show dress for the tour that's right that's so gross did we wear the same dress the whole tour or just the weekend i mean i think i did because i was like i don't have time to shop and it's like it was that lance end dress with the pockets that i love that was just like

it's comfortable, whatever.

But I just think it's funny that I, it was just like, well, here's my tour dress that I can machine wash and then bring to the next.

It's great that you cleaned it.

I don't think I would have.

Right.

Sweat is sweat.

But, you know, I think, I don't think it's a bad idea now that I'm shopping for this tour and it's just these like,

it's just been dress after dress.

Yeah.

One dress.

It sounds like a great idea.

One dress does solve a lot of problems.

It's just kind of like, look for us here.

It's like we're the flight attendants that are just like a little kerchief.

One dress to rule them all.

Should we get into it?

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, also, just should we RIP to that last show that was so good that we'll never have again, the Vancouver.

Oh, man.

Which one was that?

Did you do the feet that kept washing up and shoes?

Yep.

I

somehow fucking remember that.

And I think that's the one where I stood up and gave a very short book report about Vancouver because we kept fucking up cities and Canada stuff and provinces so much.

I was late because I was sick, right?

Maybe.

I think I was sick.

All right.

Oh, but you know what?

There's a very good chance I'm blending because we've been to a lot of these cities multiple times.

Toronto.

I don't know.

It could have been Toronto, but I also remember Stephen was at one of those.

So he wasn't there when it was the last recording.

And he took a lot of shit for the last recording and he wasn't there.

Nothing to do with it.

Oh, Stephen.

Oh, sorry.

The moment of my cousin danny being the one that's late at the reserved seats that we're bitching about i mean so kill gareth you couldn't have written that better

just like let's shit on these people danny what are you doing

okay now let's get into george's story about the murder of me zapata

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I think, what, do you want to go first?

Do you want me to go first?

Well, I went first last night.

Okay, then I'm going to go first.

Yeah.

We're off.

We're off a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Someone, um, someone gave us, uh, while they were at the show, they gave us a little rock and it says K on one side and G on the other.

And they said you can just flip it whenever you want to know who's going to go first.

And it was like, pretty brilliant, I thought.

They could have done that on a quarter.

Yeah.

Now we have to carry around a big rock.

So thank you.

It's pretty.

It's like.

Thanks.

Yeah.

It's a

good-sized rock.

Okay.

This one.

Okay.

This is what.

I said this to my therapist

last week in therapy because I'm bad at this.

I might cry.

Just won't let room.

During this murder?

If you do, will you walk upstage and like really, I mean downstage and really like give it to the people?

Look up to the

could we get a pin spot if she starts crying?

I know I'm bugging you, but I didn't know that what that was.

Yeah, all right, because I saw a documentary about this.

Like this is probably one of my like really young murders.

You know, like young is in like early teenage.

I know who it is.

I know, you know.

I saw a documentary about it.

It fucking ruined me.

It made me feel so awful.

It's always stuck with me, partly because for 10 years it was a cold case, which you know I'm obsessed with.

And so it's one of those like big things that have no answers and you always, you know, think about it and imagine what could happen.

And then when you find out it gets solved, it's just so pointless and empty.

It doesn't feel better, you know?

So this is the story of Mia Zapata.

Yeah.

Seattle's second.

Yeah, I might cry.

Okay.

So Mia Zapata is born in August of 1965.

She's raised in Louisville, Kentucky.

And she was always obsessed with music.

She learned to play the guitar and piano at nine years old.

She would listen to punk and jazz and everything in between.

She just was obsessed with music.

And she had a voice like a jazz singer.

It was like Janice Joplin's voice.

It was amazing.

And then in 1984, she goes away to college in Yellow Springs, Ohio to study liberal arts.

And there, in 1986, she meets three friends and they start a band.

It's Steve Moriarty, Matt

Dresner, and Joe Spleene.

They formed the punk band, The Gits.

Yes.

And so Matt, who was the member of the Gits, said that I went to many shows where afterwards people didn't even know I was on stage because their eyes were so transfixed on Mia because she just had this

amazing stage presence.

He said she was like a blues singer fronting a punk band.

And then in 1988, they recorded their and were self-released their unofficial debut album called Private Lubs.

Lubs, Lubs.

What the fuck?

I wish this was champagne, and it's not.

And then

in 1989, the band relocates to Seattle.

Here you are.

Because there's this huge music scene that you guys have all heard of all the time, and it's just kind of getting big.

Did you guys know that you had a music scene?

Did you know that people like music and they came here to make it?

Who knew?

I thought it was just LA.

So

Mia gets a job at a local trashy dive bar, which I bet is a fucking classy cocktail bar with $14 drinks at this point, right?

Local trashy dive bar.

It was down the street from a mental hospital, which she loves.

Which is our hotel.

Dude.

Dude, it's true.

I believe it.

I'm not kidding.

I'm going to look it up on my own.

I fucking think you're right.

Mia is described as someone who commanded respect and interest immediately.

And she and the band members move into an abandoned house they called the Rat House in Capitol Hill District, where the band rehearsed and lived.

And

they earn a huge following in the local scene.

They have met a lot of friends and they kind of just like mesh right into the local punk scene

in the community.

And

let's see.

So Mia is described as funny and kind.

She loved meeting new people.

She would help friends recover from drug addiction.

She took in homeless acquaintances.

And she helped a lot of people through various crises.

She was a really open and kind person.

Everyone said she was really funny and always joking and shy, but a really good friend.

So during the 90s, the buzz begins to surround the Gits, and they release a bunch of singles on local independent record labels.

They're known for their powerful driving music, you know, like punk, with these amazing lyrical, uh, poetic lyrics.

Lyrical, poetic lyrics.

And then in 92,

they release their official debut album, Frenching the Bully, and they, their reputation gets even bigger in the Seattle scene.

And they begin to work on their second album called Enter the Conquering Chicken, which is titled after Mia's chicken tattoo, which represents her childhood nickname, Chicken Legs, which is adorable.

93 Atlantic Records offers a single to the get or offers to sign the gets, and they set up a national tour.

And Mia was never really into the idea of getting really famous, and all she said she wanted to do was get a cabin in the woods, an old Jeep, and

a sheepdog to write shotgun.

Did it sound like I was going to say, and a shotgun?

To shoot sheepdogs.

Everybody has a dream.

You get to have whatever you want as your dream.

Spreading false rumors.

I know, that's not right.

That's my favorite murder.

That's not right.

No.

So just days before the tour is about to start on July 7th, 1993, Mia leaves one of her regular hangs, the Comet Tavern in Capitol Hill,

which we're all going to meet at afterwards.

She's looking for her boyfriend, but couldn't find him, and then goes to visit a friend named Tracy.

And Tracy says that that night she was really agitated and distracted.

And Tracy urged her to stay the night at her house, but Mia said she would just take a cab home.

She wanted to leave.

I think she was upset with her boyfriend because he wasn't around.

And this is the last time that Mia is seen alive.

She, they think she walked a few blocks in the direction of her place or went a different way, just kind of liked to wander the city.

And

either way,

an employee at the comet remembers her wearing her headset as she left.

So it's thought that she was listening to music in her Walkman and so wasn't kind of paying attention to her surroundings and not listening and didn't hear.

I mean, not that she would have fucking been able to do anything anyways.

Like if she hears someone, she can, you know, whatever.

Okay.

And then at 320, a sex worker discovers Mia's body in the hundred on the 100 block of 24th Avenue South, which is in the central district district of Seattle, and it's kind of known as a seedy neighborhood at the time.

And she's found in the street on her back with her arms outstretched and her legs straight and crossed.

And she had been beaten and strangled with the cord of her sweatshirt, which was a Gitz sweatshirt, which is like makes that, and then I'm gonna cry.

And she had been raped, although the police kept that part out from the public for years.

I'm not sure why.

Then...

Oh, my God, Karen.

You just can't turn that page.

I can't.

I don't want to.

We just have to stop the show.

Okay, so it's thought that she encounters her attacker around 2:15 in the morning and that she'd been killed somewhere else and then

transported to the location where her body is found.

And it's about two miles from the studio where her body was found, where she had been.

And it's on a dead-end street, and the cops don't think she had been murdered where she was found.

They thought that someone brought her to the location after she was dead.

And

there's many theories of what could have happened.

She told her friends she was taking a cab home, so they thought that maybe one of the drivers had picked her up that night.

And so they looked into all of them to see if anyone had picked her up, and nobody had.

And then a man had heard a horrifying scream, he said, when he was at home near the reservoir, which ended up being three miles from where she was found.

And so they thought maybe she could have walked towards the reservoir that way, which is where they heard the scream.

And he like ran outside.

He heard this scream and it was so awful that he ran outside.

The only person that was ever seriously questioned as a suspect was Mia's boyfriend.

And they were in the process of breaking up and he was described even by his friends as scary.

Yeah.

But he passes two lie detector tests and gives hair and blood samples.

He shows up for every appointment.

He's super cooperative and he has a solid alibi.

So he's cleared, and then the police have no suspects to question at that point.

They didn't have a crime scene or witnesses, and so the case went cold.

And after her murder, Seattle's music community, including Nirvana and Joan Jett, helped raise $70,000 to hire a private investigator for three years

via benefit concerts.

So yeah, it's pretty fucking rad.

So meanwhile, police think that Mia had been killed by a random killer.

Some people think that, and many people in the punk rock community thought that she had been killed by someone that she knows.

And I remember believing that for so long after I had heard about it.

And some people thought that whoever killed her hadn't been acting alone because she was posed in this Christ-like pose, that someone had carried her feet and someone had carried her arms and then left her there.

And then also, people thought it might be a serial killer because of the ritualistic pose.

And also, a cup from her bra was missing.

So they thought maybe that the serial killer had taken it as a souvenir.

The private investigator funds end up drying up with no major breaks in the case.

And the investigator, the private investigator, Lee Heron, she just continues to investigate on her own because she's obsessed with it, which is pretty fucking cool.

Then in 98, after five years of investigation,

Seattle police say that they're no closer to solving the case than they were right after the murder.

And for 10 years, there's this crazy suspicion and accusation and fear throughout this whole Seattle community.

Everyone is just wondering who this can be and if it's going to happen again, because

there's no rhyme or reason.

Then 10 years later, in 2003, the Seattle police test DNA against the national database, which they had tried in 2001 and had no results.

But this time there's a match.

A man who had recently been forced to submit DNA in the database when he was arrested in Florida for burglary and domestic abuse in 2002 is matched to the DNA found at the scene, specifically the saliva from the bite marks on Mia's chest.

Which, thank God, they fucking collected that in like 93, you know.

Jesus Mezquia, he's 48,

he's a Cuban native who lives in Florida Keys.

He didn't know Mia at all, but he lived just three blocks from where her body had been found.

Mezquia is this huge hulking man.

I mean if you see video of him he's a giant.

And he has a history of violence and sexual assault against women.

He was a drifter in the 90s and he spent time in Seattle where there was a report of indecent exposure filed against him and it had happened near the Comet Theater within weeks of when Mia's

had been killed.

But there was no known links to the two of them.

So it was just a random attack, which is fucking crazy.

He never testified in his own defense and still maintains his fucking innocence.

And the theory is that he saw her leave the bar and followed her before he attacked her and

drags her into his car, assaults her in the back seat.

He's convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 37 years initially, which doesn't seem like enough, right?

And he appeals, and then he's sentenced to 36 years instead.

Which is like, okay,

what the fuck?

Like,

I just don't even, I am sorry.

And he's been in prison since 2003, still alive.

And

this is, her dad said,

you don't realize what forever is.

You drive your daughter to school, tell your wife, have a good day, I'll see you later.

But you assume you'll be together at the end of the day.

But then something happens, and forever is forever.

It doesn't matter what you do, how you do it, how I pray, how I wish, nothing on earth is going to bring Mia back.

That's that.

That's awful.

It is.

I know.

I mean, I remember seeing that one.

I think there's a forensic files of it.

I just remember seeing it because every forensic files, that old guy narrator, it was always like, he's these random people, and suddenly he's talking about like the punk scene in Seattle.

Hearing that guy talk about it.

I don't know.

It was, it was, it was like bone-chilling.

We're just like, fuck, this is really a real thing that happened.

It's not like something that happens to someone in, you know, Idaho.

It's like...

Something you can't connect with.

Sorry, I don't know.

That's not, that wasn't a judgment.

I was just trying to pick a random state.

Something we have not like, you know, someone's mom, like a mom, I can't identify with that, except I have a mom, but I'm not one.

But yeah, it was like

they showed footage on the forensic files of like the punk show and it was like, oh, I've fucking been to those things.

Well I fucking walked drunk away from a 1,000 bar.

So it's just that chilling feeling of like, fuck.

Alone with headphones in.

Jesus.

Yeah, it's so that's really sad.

Well, bye.

Take it away, Karen.

Okay, we're back.

Do we have updates on this case?

We do.

More than 30 years after her death, Mia Zapata's art and music continued to make a mark on the punk rock scene, influencing both old and new generations of fans, of course.

In 2024, the Gits drummer Steve Moriarty published Mia Zapata and the Gits, a story of art, rock, and revolution.

He felt it was important to paint a picture of Zapata in a way that hadn't been done before to reclaim the narrative about her.

short but incredible life.

Her killer died in Pierce County, Washington in a hospital in 2021.

This story is so,

it's so weird to read that 30 years later because I first heard about this story when I was like really young.

And so to now be so much older than she, and so she had been older than me.

And I always like thought of her as this like amazing.

woman to look up to.

And now reading that, I'm so much older than she was.

Yeah.

And that just is a little like mind-boggling to me because I always, you know, she just seemed like someone who I would have looked up to.

So now to be so much older than she ever got to be is really, yeah.

You're just like she was a baby.

Yeah, it's devastating.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, let's keep going and get into your story.

I fucking remember when you said it and they lost their fucking minds.

So crazy.

This is Karen's story about Ted Bundy.

Hey, Oakland, California.

My favorite murder is back back on tour.

Join us at the Paramount Theater on Thursday, October 2nd.

Don't wait, the Friday, October 3rd show is already sold out.

Head to myfavoritemurder.com to buy tickets and your VIP package while supplies last.

Bye-bye.

Just like great shoes, great books take you places.

Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

I'm Danielle Robet, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off.

Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile.

Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Visit apple.co forward slash Reese Apple Books to find out more.

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And I really set you up for failure, didn't I?

Nope.

You want to know why?

Why?

Because I'm doing Ted Bundy.

I mean,

right?

Like, that's.

Come on.

This is how we do it.

Fucking dropping it and picking it back up.

Fucking.

Like, what is this?

Here's something meaningful.

Now here's a super monster.

Right.

Here's your hometown super monster.

Congratulations.

Way to go.

I'm not going to cry on this one.

No, no, no.

Well,

but I am glad you did that.

I think that that means a lot.

Those two that's nice.

Yeah, this is a nice little

pairing.

What are we talking about?

What is this?

This isn't a fucking cheese and charcuterie place.

Dude, here's the funny thing.

When I was looking up this stuff,

someone, he, on one page, they said, Ted Bundy,

sometimes known as the co-ed killer, sometimes known as the angel of decay.

What?

That sounds like a dentist, like the one I never saw happen.

A goth dentist?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What if there's a dentist serial killer?

Then that's what that is.

I mean, they're already so horrible.

I mean.

I've never heard Ted Bundy called the Angel of Decay.

It's never happened.

I feel like that was like a weird URL link and they just went to someone's weird poetry page.

It's like, no, that's not.

Don't click on that.

But as probably many of you have already known and have already read, one of my favorite crime writers is Anne Ruhl.

And, right?

She's just like, she's the fucking Stephen King of true crime.

It's crazy.

She churned it out for years and years.

God bless her soul.

And her story, I wish I, if this, if I had all the time in the world and I could really fucking, here's what I would do.

Let's tear it up.

I would now clear the stage.

I would put on an Ann Rule costume and I would do a one-woman show

called The Stranger Beside Me.

Yeah.

I'd fucking sit in the audience and yell shit at you.

You'd be like, fuck you.

No.

I'd be yelling our quotes at us real loud.

That would, because her story, so if you don't know, Ann Ruhl was a crime writer who in the 70s had been a cop and had become like a crime beat reporter

among other things.

I think she still worked in the police department also in some other ways, but she also volunteered at a suicide prevention hotline and that is where she met the amazing mr.

Ted Bundy.

She worked side by side with him on the night shift at a suicide hotline.

And she he was a close friend and she used to like to say if she was 10 years younger or her daughters were 15 years older, she thought he was the perfect man.

This is why you never let your mom set you up with anything.

Your mom.

Get next time she tries.

Say, guess what, mom?

Yeah.

Don't pull that ann roll shit on me, mom.

Eric from your office could be a serial killer.

Also, I just love, this is my favorite kind.

My favorite kind is the ones who like wear like fair aisle sweaters and like, hey, I'd love to treat you to a bottle of Chiblis or whatever, where you're like, I never saw it coming.

I never, and that he is so that way that even this woman who

like herself had studied psychology,

had been a cop, all these things, did not see it, didn't see it over and over again, even when the like, the evidence was piling up in front of her face, she'd still be like, it can't be him.

It's, that's crazy.

It isn't him.

I just can't imagine.

I mean, I guess today is different these days, but fucking fuck.

But I think it's also,

you know, it's also a tribute to his insane, like,

you know, whatever he was.

I like to say, my favorite one to say is psychopath.

Yeah.

But who really knows what that means?

Not me.

Get offended.

Some get offended.

Some just want me to be accurate.

I think he was a sexual sadist psychopath.

Yeah.

I think so.

I think he enjoy he really got off too on manipulate.

Like that was part of his enjoyment is

just living in plain sight.

And manipulating people and he was really quite something.

All right, let's talk about that.

Let's do it.

So

So

his mother, Louise Cowell,

this is how he started life.

His mother got pregnant out of wedlock.

So he was raised to believe that his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister.

That's fine.

It's fine.

George Clooney, fuck, it didn't turn him into a serial killer.

Is it George Clooney?

No, who is it?

Who is it?

He was fucking naming people.

Rumors.

I'm spreading it.

It did not affect Brad Pitt one bit.

What's the problem?

With someone, I swear.

Someone's yelling at me.

Some famous person?

Yes.

Someone tell me.

Bobby Flay?

Oh.

George Clooney, someone else.

Jack Nicholson.

Jack Nicholson.

Thank you.

Yes.

Jerry.

Is that right?

Yes.

Are you just picking one?

I swear to God.

That's what I meant.

Okay.

Same fucking thing.

Those two.

He did fine with it.

Exactly.

He's a psychopath, bro.

Although the shining.

All right.

There were also rumors that his grandfather, who he was raised to believe was his father, was actually his father.

But that's just gossip.

Stop gossiping about Ted Bunny.

Oh my God.

So,

he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma in 1965.

Really?

Yes.

He won a scholarship to the University of Puget Sound.

After two semesters, he transferred to the University of Washington.

A bunch of fucking educated listeners in this audience.

They love school.

How about, and then they didn't go to college.

Woo!

Then they went for a year and a half, stopped going to class, then just thought they could hide the report card.

Yeah!

And then just signed up for class so they could get their mom's health insurance.

Yeah!

All right, sorry, I'm interrupting you.

Okay.

After two semesters, he transferred to the University of Washington and there he meets Stephanie Brooks, which is a pseudonym.

I didn't know that for a long time.

Makes me really mad.

I always thought her name was Stephanie Brooks.

That's a pseudonym.

Stephanie was a beautiful girl from a wealthy California family.

They dated for a year.

Ted is way more into her than she is into him.

And eventually she graduates, she moves back home to her parents' house in California, and she breaks up with him and she tells him in upon breaking up with him that he's immature and he lacks ambition

and I'm sure that that went over well with Ted he's like

thank you Stephanie

I appreciate your candor

and I'll take it into consideration

So then in 1969, right after that happens, he decides he's going to go back to his birthplace, Burlington, Vermont, visit his family.

That's where he finds out he's illegitimate.

Oh,

but

anyway, here's some maple syrup.

So he comes on back to Seattle.

He comes back from that trip, really knuckles down, and becomes a big Republican.

Why is that the weirdest?

That's like the weirdest twist for me.

Yeah.

Oh.

Isn't isn't that a fun twist?

Huh.

He was like, I know what's going to impress Stephanie.

I'm going to get into politics.

Watch this.

Watch me wear a red and white striped tie, Stephanie.

God damn it.

So

he runs the Seattle campaign office for Nelson Rockefeller's presidential run.

Who?

I know.

He did a great job.

So then he returns to the University of Washington.

He becomes a psychology major and an honor student.

And he meets a woman named Liz Kendall, who then becomes his girlfriend.

He graduates from UW in 1972 with a degree in psychology.

And that summer, he goes on a business trip to California and he meets up with Stephanie Brooks just to say hi.

Hey, what's going on?

I just want to check in, see how you are.

Catch up.

What have you been up to down here?

What?

This time, oh, I wrote this time as a motivated Republican psychology grad student with some amazing sweaters.

So they get, they actually get back together.

He gets back together with her and they date for a year.

His poor real girlfriend at home is like, he said he was just going to have fucking margaritas with her.

Neither of them knew about each other.

Yeah.

So he gets back together with Stephanie Brooks, dates her very seriously for a year, is very romantic, is very lovely.

At the end of the year, he proposes marriage.

She says yes, and two weeks later, he breaks up with her and will not return her calls.

Whoa.

So what did he that was a he fucking vengeance dated propose to her?

If he wasn't Ted Bundy, I'd be like, fuck yeah, you did.

No.

Really shines a light on that behavior, doesn't it?

That's very, very destructive behavior.

Very vicious,

cruel behavior.

I do like it, though.

I don't know about it.

I mean, that's.

I can think of like four different people.

It would have been amazing to do that to.

You make them re-fall in love with you, and then you're like, um, later days.

Go fuck yourself.

Peace out to you and your family.

Remember when I was wearing this outfit?

Remember this outfit?

Yeah.

Okay.

So

then

Stephanie's devastated.

This is what I wrote, and it's tasteless.

Stephanie's devastated.

And as she weeps, her long brunette hair covers her face evenly on both sides.

That's right, because it's parted down the middle.

Remember that.

Remember that for later.

Is that where it's start?

Nope, I'm not.

Right, forgot.

Freeze that.

Make it just paint a picture in your mind.

You're going to want to look back at it later.

Post it.

Posted it.

Post it.

Because almost immediately after all of those events, Ted's murderous rampage begins.

And when I say murderous rampage, I'm talking about like five pages of 11-point font rampage shit.

So let's blaze through this.

Get comfy, everyone.

Shortly after midnight on January 5th, 1974, Ted Bundy breaks into the basement apartment of 18-year-old Joni Lenz, also a pseudonym, and bludgeons her with a metal rod from her own bedframe, sexually assaults her with a speculum, and leaves her for dead.

She is found by her roommates the next day in a pool of blood in a coma, and she survives, but has permanent brain damage.

One month later, Ted Bundy breaks into the room of UW student and his cousin's roommate, Linda Ann Healy.

He knocks her unconscious, dresses her in jeans and a t-shirt, wraps her in a sheet, and carries her away.

That's on February 1st.

Now, female co-eds start disappearing at the rate of one a month.

They're all young and slender with long brown hair parted down the middle.

In March, Donna Gail Manson.

What did you say?

I remember that now.

Yeah.

You remember from it was like only three paragraphs.

I remember

in March, Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year-old student at Evergreen College in Olympia, is kidnapped and murdered.

Don't be fucking cheering that.

It's a wonderful arts college actually where you get to give yourself your own grades.

It's real like fucking a lot of this and a lot of this.

Yes, mom.

Yes, no, I am learning a ton.

Thank you.

Thanks for the health insurance.

Thanks for calling during my acid trip.

Anyhow.

In April, Susan Rancourt disappears from the campus of Central Washington State College in Ellensburg.

The same same night, right?

The same night, another female student reports being approached by a man in a cast asking for help, carrying a stack of books to his Volkswagen Beetle.

Here we go.

Right?

Two other co-eds tell the same story from three nights earlier.

In May, Kathy Parks disappears from Oregon State campus in Corvallis.

It's really weird.

I feel like we should be omitting the college names.

Poor Oregon State.

They're just like, we've got to represent.

And they know it's coming.

There's like four sad people up there.

We love the middle of Oregon, too.

On June 1st, Brenda Ball leaves the Flame Tavern in Burian and is never seen again.

Burian.

Burian?

Borian?

Who cares?

I mean,

seriously.

Seriously.

The fact that you knew the geography of where the middle of Oregon was, I was impressed.

So,

fine.

By Lian?

10 days later, in the early morning hours of June 11th, UW student George Ann Hawkins is last seen leaving her boyfriend's dorm to take the short walk back down the alley to her sorority house.

They say it was 50 yards from his door to her door, but she never arrives.

Witnesses tell the police they see a man in a leg cast struggling to carry a briefcase the night before.

One student reports the man asked her to help him carry the briefcase back to his Volkswagen Beetle.

No.

If a man ever asks you to help him carry a briefcase,

we've talked about this.

Women and children,

if men ask you for directions, children, children,

there's not, they don't want adults don't need your help, children.

Nope.

And men who can't carry their own suitcases don't get to have, I mean, briefcases, don't get to have briefcases.

Yep.

That's just part of it.

It's a good rule.

If you've injured your arm, then you don't get to carry a briefcase.

Sorry, important businessman.

Put a backpack on.

Take a break.

This brings us to July 17th, 1974.

This is the part where when I was reading A Stranger Beside Me, I couldn't stop reading this chapter over and over because it's so fucking fucked up.

So, Lakes

Sammamish.

Sammamish.

I mean,

they should spell it phonetically on Wikipedia if they want podcasters to announce it correctly.

Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah.

You guys are

fucking easily impressed.

I mean,

fuck it.

What a job we have.

I mean,

it's ridiculous.

This is like

reverse kindergarten, basically.

This is like a spelling bee, but like, you just can't lose.

Everyone wins, everyone gets a ribbon.

That's right.

I'm into it.

It's finally.

Okay.

So

at lake, oh shit, I forgot already.

Samamish?

Samamish!

It's a beautiful holiday weekend

and tons of people are there.

You know, when it's sunny up here, you guys go bat shit.

It's like all of a sudden, everybody's wearing the smallest bathing suit they can find, like fucking standing around at a man-made lake.

So this, there's actually pictures online.

You can look this up.

It's so packed on this day.

There's like, there's just people standing like shoulder to shoulder it's unbelievable and that day two women janice ott and denise naslin both disappear without a trace in the middle of the day

so eight witnesses tell police they saw a handsome young man named ted what he's used he doesn't use a pseudonym um

with his arm in a sling and he and five of them were women who he asked for help unloading his sailboat from his volkswagen

so one woman actually went with him, and as she's walking up to the Volkswagen, she's like, there ain't no sailboat over here.

And she was all buying.

Good for her.

Three witnesses said that they saw Janice Ott speaking to that same man and they saw her leave with him.

And then four hours later, Naslin disappears.

Wow, he came back.

He fucking killed Janice Ott

up in like the hills about a mile away.

Oh my god, and then came back to get another woman.

He is in a full-on fucking psychotic frenzy, yeah.

But meanwhile, all like he's they said the witnesses describe him as having kind of a clipped, slightly British accent.

So, can you imagine?

He's like, fucking, he's like a werewolf rampaging, and then he like wipes it all off and turns around.

He's like, Hello, do you mind?

I've got a sailboat over here.

I can't,

I can't get it off my...

Gone.

I was a theater manager.

Okay.

So the police distribute flyers.

Also, there's two comparative pictures.

The next weekend at that lake,

nobody's there.

Nobody's there.

That's hilarious.

Bikini's away.

Yeah, that's right.

So the police distribute flyers.

They hold a press conference describing the man witnessed.

Ted Bundy's girlfriend, his psychology professor,

and his suicide prevention co-worker and crime writer, Anne Ruhl, all call the police and give his name.

No.

Yes.

And Ann Ruhl, in the book, she likes talks about it where she calls and says, This is crazy.

And I mean, it's probably not him, but the thing is that he does have a gold Volkswagen.

Jesus.

His name is Ted.

Oh, my God.

And

he has no sailboat.

It can't be denied.

His total lack of boating.

Oh, okay.

So, oh, because they also gave his physical description.

So basically, it's just staring all of them in the face.

And they're like, I don't, I mean, could it be?

No.

But it also must be really weird because she talks about it in the book that he was so empathetic and he would talk to people.

He would talk people off,

killing themselves for hours.

He would stay on the phone.

He was so empathetic.

Like, he had the most amazing mask that he would wear.

He was living the ultimate double life.

It's fucking nuts.

Okay, so

Ted Bundy killed both of those women within hours of each other, and both of those murders were so brutal that when their skeletal remains were found a mile from that lake, there were only bone fragments left.

And And up there with them, when they found those skeletal remains, they also found the remains of George Ann Hawkins.

And then just east of there on Taylor Mountain in 1975, the partial skeletal remains of the rest of the missing women were found: Linda Healy, Susan Rancourt, Kathy Parks, and Brenda Ball.

And Bundy claimed that Donna Manson was also buried there, but no remains of her have ever been found.

So he basically had these two dumping grounds and he used to go visit them.

I don't know how he fucking found the time, but it was like among all the other bullshit that he was doing, then he would drive up into the mountains and then just sit there with his victims' bodies.

All right.

Then he decides to go to law school.

Oh my God.

Because

he's going to teach that ex-girlfriend a thing or two.

So he moves to Salt Lake City.

Really?

That can't, that was not sincere.

All right, I'll try to go through these fast because this, it's just so much.

October 2nd, Nancy Wilcox disappears from Halliday, Utah.

She was last seen riding in a Volkswagen.

A little over two weeks later, 17-year-old Melissa Smith is abducted, raped, sodomized, and strangled in Midvale, and her body is found nine days later.

She's the daughter of the police chief.

Then, 17-year-old Laura Laura Amy disappears after leaving a Halloween party in Lehigh.

And a month later, hikers find her naked, beaten, strangled body on the banks of a river in American Fort Canyon.

On November 8th, Carol DeRanche is leaving Fashion Place Mall in Murray when an officer, Roseland, approaches her to tell her that her car has been broken into and that she needs to come with him to file a report.

So she goes to the car, she sees nothing's missing, but he tells her she has to come to the station anyway.

No, no, no, no.

And then they get into his Volkswagen.

You know.

He didn't have a police car?

The car that cops drive all the time.

Gold Volkswagens.

Oh, man.

Fucking.

On the way, he suddenly pulls over really fast and tries to throw handcuffs on her.

But in the frenzy and she starts fighting him off, he puts both handcuffs on one wrist.

And then as he does that, he picks up a crowbar whoa and tries to hit her over the head with it.

But she catches it midair because her other arm is free.

Then she opens the car door and rolls out onto the highway and escapes from fucking Ted Bundy.

Yes!

Carol!

Get it, girl!

Fuck yes, Carol!

Fuck girl!

I mean,

okay, yes.

All right.

I just was going to say, it probably ruined going to the mall for a long time.

All right.

That night at Viewmont High School in Bountiful, the drama club is putting on a play.

This ties back in.

I just wanted to talk about theater arts for a second.

So both teachers and students report seeing a man who approaches them to tell them that their cars have been broken into.

Some say they see him lurking in the back of the auditorium where the play is being held.

And Debbie Kent, a 17-year-old high school student, leaves the play at intermission to go pick up her brother and is never seen again.

Later, the investigators find a small key in that parking lot that fits the pair of handcuffs that were taken off Carol Durant.

Oh my God.

Okay.

So now I've interjected a story I found on Reddit.

Maybe a bad idea, but it possibly could be true, maybe 30%.

So this story is a guy that says his friend's parents met in their teens at the end of their first date.

His friend's dad suggested that they go for a midnight hike up in Provo Canyon.

He apparently knew the place since he had done a fair amount of rock climbing in the area.

So the two drove up to the mouth of the canyon, started hiking under the light of the stars since it was a new moon.

I'm just hoping to get late at that point.

Nobody fucking hikes at night.

I know.

But they can't, it's their son, son, so they can't have to tell him a different story.

Oh, yeah.

They're like, son, we loved hiking in the 70s.

Oh, we'd hike and hike all night.

Right.

At some point, the dad starts getting a bad feeling since the pathway ahead, which was going to pass under some trees, was going to be very dark.

So he ignores the feeling and presses on.

You got to ignore those feelings.

You got to.

In later retelling of the story, his mom would say that she felt the same bad feeling,

but that she didn't know

the trail like he did, so she just trusted that he knew what he was doing.

A minute later, the dad felt that feeling even stronger, ignored it again.

They walked a bit of the way into the trees when his foot hit something soft in the middle of the path.

Under the trees, though, it was too dark to see just what the soft thing was.

The feeling came back stronger than ever, and instead of finding out what his foot hit, they both agreed to run away.

No.

Years later, after being married for some time, congratulations to them.

They were watching an interview with the serial killer, Ted Bundy, in response to a question asking him to describe the time he felt closest to being caught.

He explained about the night that he lured a girl into Provo Canyon, had just killed her when he heard some people coming up the trail, and that he hid in the trees

only to watch some guy walk right into the body and, for some reason, just turn around and walk.

Oh

man.

And this is why you always bring a flashlight when you're fucking hiking at night.

Yes, yes, no, yes.

No, that's exactly right.

That's exactly right.

Also, somebody could have just watched interviews of Ted Bundy retro-engineered that entire story and be lying on Reddit.

We don't know.

We don't know.

There's just no way to tell.

There's no way to tell.

Okay, so now

Ted ventures into Colorado.

He's taken it to a different state.

So Karen Campbell disappears from the Wildwood Inn in Snowmass, where she was vacationing with her fiancé and children.

She disappeared between the elevators and the front room of her door, a span of 50 feet.

Vale ski instructor Julie Cunningham disappears in March of 1975.

Denise Ulverson in April in Grand Junction.

In May, Lynette Culver disappears in Idaho from the grounds of her junior high school.

In June, Susan Curtis disappears in Utah.

None of these bodies have ever been found.

Back in Washington, Ted Bundy's name had made it onto four different

suspect lists for four different reasons, and he was finally

in the top 25 list of people to be investigated

when a call came in from Utah.

Sorry, I just started thinking of other stuff.

What am I going to do tomorrow?

Okay, so here's what happened.

Back in Utah, Ted had failed to stop for a routine traffic violation.

Man, those routine traffic violations will always get you.

They will get you.

I think from what I remember in the book, but I'm not positive, he was driving by a house.

He was basically casing a house, and a cop was like, what are you doing?

You're being a creep.

Yeah.

And then when he went to pull him over, he wouldn't pull over.

And so he finally, he got him, like, got him out of the car.

And then when he searched his car, he found a crowbar, a ski mask, handcuffs, trash bags, and an ice pick.

You know, car stuff.

So Detective Jerry Thompson connected the Volkswagen to Carol Duranche's kidnapping case, and they get a warrant to search Ted's apartment where they find a brochure for the Wildwood Inn.

And when they put him in a lineup, Carol Duranch comes in, and as as well as several of the bountiful high school play witnesses, and they all pick him out as Officer Rosalind.

Whoa.

So, this is his first conviction, I know, only four more hours.

I was typing this, I'm like, maybe I bail before he ever goes to jail?

And we just like,

what perk do I leave him?

There's no, you have to tell the whole thing.

So, basically, here's what happens: he's tried and convicted of the kidnapping case.

He's sentenced to 15 years.

And when they were taking him to trial during the recesses,

the officers, he was so charming and chatty and cool and chill that the officers started letting him use the law library during the recesses of his own trial.

You know, just to be cool.

So on June 7th, one day while he's in the law library, he sees his chance and he jumps out a second story window.

Goodbye.

When he lands, he breaks his ankle and then he runs for it.

And he he escapes into the mountains and he survives for six days.

He had found, he walked until he found a cabin.

He rested for a little while.

At one point,

an armed citizen who was up there specifically to search for escapee Ted Bundy comes upon him and Ted talks his way out of it and just continues on his way.

He was a slick, slightly British-accented motherfucker, this guy.

That's like, that's, yes.

He must have had great eyes or something what was it about ted good hairline yeah just a strong fucking hairline jesus what the shit kind of like come came down a little bit of a v but not like a vampire v yeah framed his face just framed it up nice yeah

some curls nice 70s uh

sideburns yeah just a nice thick sideburn hair but not threatening no no no no no and like not unkempt no no all right you could he brushed his hair 500 times every morning.

Okay.

He's finally recaptured, brought back to jail, immediately starts working on a new escape plan.

He cuts a hole in the ceiling into the crawl space and then starts dieting.

He loses weight, loses weight, loses weight.

So finally

he oh, he finds out that they're going to move the venue of his next of the trial.

So he right now he is in the I think he's in evergreen

jail and it's super old-fashioned.

And so he's like, I got to do it now.

I can't wait anymore.

So he crawls up into this crawl space, crawls across, and basically goes into right above the jailer's apartment, which is another part of the jail, but it's like where the people work, where they actually lived in the jail.

He drops down into the jailer's linen closet.

And luckily, the jailer and his wife were at the movies that night.

So he just puts on some of that guy's clothes and fucking walks out the front door.

He hitchhikes to Vail, then he takes a bus to Denver, then he takes a plane to Chicago.

He eventually ends up in Tallahassee, Florida.

And this is the big fucking hideous finale that's so insane.

At 3 a.m.

on Sunday, January 15th, 1978, Ted Bundy crept into the unlocked back door of the Kyle Maya sorority house at Florida State University.

Thought about those plans.

Yeah, right.

And he bludgeoned and strangled

four sorority girls, each roommates.

So he went into the first room and killed Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman.

He beat Margaret to death and then he'd restrained Lisa, beat Margaret to death, then began to beat Lisa to death and brutally raped her and then murdered her.

Then, undetected, he snuck down the hallway and did the same thing in the next room to roommates Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner.

And then he just walked out of the house.

Yeah.

Then

he walked down the street.

Everyone in the audience is like, I don't like true crime anymore.

Then he walked down the street, he broke into a house, and he did the same thing to a girl named Cheryl Thomas, except she survived.

Yeah, he basically had already killed four women that night, and so he was getting a little tired.

And

she she was fighting him and then and then people came up from downstairs because they heard so much banging and he's basically like beating her with a big piece of wood

and they and he ran out so she ended up surviving

then on February 9th so like a month later he basically hides up in his weird apartment and he's basically super crazy and like at the end he probably knew he was at the end on February 9th in Lake City he abducted and raped a 12 year old girl named Kimberly Leach.

And then he stole another Volkswagen to drive across the state.

But in Pensacola, an officer noticed the stolen plates and pulled him over.

And he got out of the car and then immediately started fighting with the cop.

And the cop gets him down, cuffs him, gets him in the car, and Ted Bundy says to the cop, I wish you'd killed me.

Right?

So

he's charged for the Tallahassee and Lake City murders.

He stands trial in Miami for the Chiomaga murders.

And

there was a Chi Omega member named Nita Neary who saw him leave and went to court and identified him.

And that testimony, as well as the bite marks that he left on his victims, were the evidence that basically convicted him.

Now, everyone's heard of this, but like, of course, Ted Bundy being the asshole that he is, decided he was going to represent himself in a couple of these cases.

So in the Kimberly Leach case, he decided he would be the lawyer.

And at one point, he called former coworker Carol Boone to the stand.

And then in the middle of the court case, he proposed marriage to Carol Boone.

She said yes, everybody.

She said yes.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

Mike.

They actually had a conjugal visit, and he has a daughter.

That's not no.

The good news is he was convicted on all counts and he was sentenced to death.

And on January 24th of 1989, Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair in Florida.

Yeah.

He had confessed to 30 murders, but it is estimated that there's a chance that he is responsible for the death of over 100 women.

Whoa.

It's fucking crazy.

And

here's a slight upturn.

Not great, but whatever.

Oh, first of all, Ted Bundy claimed that porn is the reason that he became a serial killer.

I'm just saying, watch yourselves.

We know what you're up to.

Everybody's so cavalier about porn these days.

Well, it made Ted Bundy.

But from Death Row, when they were looking for the Green River killer,

Ted Bundy contacted Detective Dave Reichert.

This is some local shit, huh?

Yeah.

We hate Dave Riker, too.

We're arrested right outside the theater.

It was a setup.

They hated him first.

Anyhow, however you feel about him, Ted Bundy called him and said, I can help you catch the Green River Killer because I know how these motherfuckers think.

And then he did.

But

clearly, there's a problem with that.

I don't know.

I don't know what's going on.

I bet it has to to do with the Grand River killer.

Oh.

So's my mom.

So's everybody.

And I still hate her.

Now we move into the Trump portion of the show.

Wrong.

Oh, you.

Well, we'll cap it off with this.

Ann Rule had the best quote.

She said, people People like Ted can fool you completely.

I'd been a cop, I had all that psychology, but his mask was perfect.

I say that long acquaintance can help you.

I say that long acquaintance can help you know someone, but you can never really be sure.

Yeah, that's it.

That's Ted Bunny.

That's your guy.

Amazing.

Okay, we're back.

Do you have any updates about Ted Bundy?

Yeah,

there are some, not really about him.

But survivors Kathy Kleiner Rubin, Karen Chandler, Cheryl Thomas, and Carol Duranch have taken control of their narrative as survivors by telling not only their own story, but also by putting a spotlight on the women and girls who Ted Bundy killed.

They can be seen in various documentaries like Netflix's Conversations with the Killer, the Ted Bundy tapes.

And Kathy Kleiner actually went on to write a book called A Light in the Dark, Surviving More Than Ted Bundy.

Wow.

And that book is her way of helping end the glamorized portrayal of Bundy in the media, which is a very 90s, 80s, 90s thing when that trend of like John Wayne, Gacy, Ted Bundy.

as almost like anti-heroes came up.

Yeah, so gross.

Very gross.

And also just a really important, like the idea that these women got the chance to counter all of that.

Right.

Like the time finally came that they got their spotlight is great.

Yeah.

Also, there are still victims who are yet to be identified because Ted Bundy's heinous crimes, there were so many.

He was all over the place.

And there's cold cases out there that they think Ted Bundy could be responsible for.

That incredible book, Murderland, that we keep talking about by Caroline Fraser really centers around him as one of the main serial killers.

So it's the story you've heard, but in a totally different way.

It's very interesting.

Yeah.

So this episode was originally titled Live at the Neptune for reasons that we do not have to explain to you.

Well, we don't understand.

Do you?

But if we were naming it today based on something that was said, maybe we'd call it Harold's mother.

Sure.

On you.

Or we could name it Rumors I'm Spreading Him because Georgia says that after she falsely claims that george clooney was raised to believe his mom was his sister

just just like ted busting rosemary clooney like what that's his aunt you're still doing it after all these years

what the fuck are you sure yeah oh my god it's his aunt yeah who's not his mom for sure i i mean you know what If it all came back around to that actually his aunt is his mom.

And I knew.

Then I'll give it, I'll give it all over to you.

So also we could call it reverse kindergarten.

Yeah.

Because that's, that's basically what we're doing here on this podcast.

Yeah.

We do live shows.

That's right.

Well, that's it.

I mean, that's the fun, a live show rewind.

That's what we're hoping to do on our live tours is a show like that, I think, pretty much sums up.

It's also good to rewind these live shows so we remember our lines and what we're supposed to do when we go out there and what it's actually like and what to expect.

But also,

it's 2025.

We're in the midst of a fascist takeover.

How are these shows going to be different for us?

I'm so nervous about all of those things you just said.

Me too.

But thanks for being here with us then and now, guys.

We really appreciate you.

And at the time of this recording, there are a couple tickets left for these Seattle shows.

So if you want to be there with us, please go to myfavorite murder.com and get your tickets now.

All right.

Well, thanks for being here then and thanks for being here now.

Left, listen to us say goodbye from the Neptune Theater in Seattle.

I think that's it, you guys.

Yeah, that's everyone.

Thanks.

Thank you so much for coming out to the show.

Yeah, and thanks for being part of this.

That was super, super fun.

Yeah,

you guys are.

We love it here.

It was very cute.

Thank you for being here.

We're mad at you for yelling at us about Dave Riker, but we'll talk about it at a different time.

Stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.