Episode 295

Speaker 2 It's time to head back to school and forward to your future with Carrington College.

Speaker 1 For over 55 years, we've helped train the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Speaker 6 Apply now to get hands-on training from teachers with real-world experience.

Speaker 7 In as few as nine months, you could start making a difference in healthcare.

Speaker 8 Classes start soon in Pleasant Hill, San Leandro, and San Jose.

Speaker 5 Visit Carrington.edu to see what's next for you. Visit Carrington.edu slash SCI for information on program outcomes.

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Speaker 10 Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 10 Well,

Speaker 11 it's crazy, I know, right? That's what I'm saying, man. It's just,

Speaker 11 it's kind of spooky stuff.

Speaker 10 It is spooky stuff, isn't it?

Speaker 10 We like spooky stuff around here, don't we?

Speaker 10 Sass holes.

Speaker 10 Hello! Happy Thursday. Welcome to your favorite podcast, Sword and Scale.

Speaker 10 Season 12, episode 295. A show that reveals that the Wars Monsters are real.

Speaker 10 Well, if you haven't checked out Sword and Scale TV, you know, I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 10 We got one out right now that's pretty intense. And

Speaker 10 you might want to take a look if you're interested in the true crime genre, because these things are...

Speaker 10 Whew, it takes a lot out of me to make one of these episodes. It really does.
I mean,

Speaker 11 wow.

Speaker 10 So when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business. Yikes.
There's nothing small about a small business. You're working all of the time.

Speaker 10 Thankfully, though, I have a partner with all the tools that I need to be successful. You may have heard of them.
Their name is Shopify.

Speaker 10 Shopify's point-of-sale system is a unified command center for your retail business. It brings together in-store and online operations across up to a thousand thousand locations.

Speaker 10 Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient. Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up in store.

Speaker 10 All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want. And staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

Speaker 10 And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive.

Speaker 10 With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first-party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge. In fact, it's proven.

Speaker 10 Based on a report from EY, businesses on Shopify POS see real results, like 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed.

Speaker 10 So if you have a retail or online business, then I'll tell you what, Shopify is a fantastic partner to have on your side. Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify.

Speaker 10 Sign up for your $1 a month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash sword and scale. All one word.
Just go to shopify.com slash sword and scale and sign up. You'll thank me later.
You will.

Speaker 10 Shopify.com slash sword and scale.

Speaker 10 Imagine you're 23, living in a small town in godforsaken Ohio. Life here isn't exactly exciting, so you chase excitement wherever you can.
Parties, festivals, raves. Do they still do raves?

Speaker 10 New faces and old acquaintances. Some days days you barely know half the people you're with.
You smoke of course.

Speaker 10 You dance, you draw, and for a few hours you let the music drown everything out. You're a free spirit.

Speaker 10 But eventually the music fades, the lights go off and you're back in your bedroom, feeling that ache of deep loneliness that you just can't shake.

Speaker 10 Your room is a mess, littered with sketches, collages, and little scraps of ideas that don't quite come together. You feel like an artist, but you live like a homeless person.

Speaker 10 The faint scent of weed lingers in the air, mingling with the smell of incense. Probably a few hints of patchouli as well.
Gail, your gecko, is asleep in her tank.

Speaker 10 You write little reminders to love yourself and keep going. I mean, somebody has to, even when you feel like you don't matter, which is becoming a more frequent occurrence.

Speaker 10 You scrawl big letters into a bullet journal, filling page after page after page.

Speaker 12 Anyone that wants to date me wants to hurt themselves.

Speaker 10 This

Speaker 10 is just how things are. You try not to think about it.
But it's there. This feeling that you're not worthy of happiness or love.

Speaker 10 That somehow everyone you meet will leave you in the end.

Speaker 10 Weird. I thought I was the only one who felt that.
It starts in January. One cold night, you're mindlessly scrolling, checking messages.
You're used to chatting with people you know.

Speaker 10 Random party friends, the guy from last week's smoke session, etc.

Speaker 10 But then a message comes in from someone new. A guy named Kun

Speaker 10 Joe.

Speaker 10 Who the hell is Kun Jo?

Speaker 10 You don't know him, but you're curious. So you accept his Facebook friend request and start chatting.
At first, there's nothing out of the ordinary.

Speaker 10 You're used to people hitting you up out of nowhere like this, so you don't think much of it. A few days later, after some casual banter with this guy, he sends you another message.

Speaker 10 This one makes your heart skip a beat.

Speaker 11 Just want to show you it's not that hard to find someone unless they don't want to be found. I worry about my my privacy as well.
My social and personal info is on my license.

Speaker 11 That's why I don't share, because you could show that to anyone.

Speaker 10 And if I'm not sleeping with you, it's hard to trust you.

Speaker 10 After this message is a screenshot of your address,

Speaker 10 this person

Speaker 10 knows exactly where you live.

Speaker 11 Just saying, if anyone goes missing, it's not hard to find. LOL.

Speaker 10 What does that mean? That's what you're thinking, at least. A few days go by and more messages come through.

Speaker 11 I can't stop. You seem like the type that likes to be choked, force-fed, and held down.

Speaker 10 Your stomach turns. He's included a photo.
It's a collage of your own selfies overlaid with a sea of penises. Does this person know that you like to do collages?

Speaker 10 Is this their twisted way of turning something you enjoy into something

Speaker 10 disturbing?

Speaker 10 The next message isn't from Kunjou.

Speaker 10 It's from a random text-me number.

Speaker 11 I will never get you. Was it real?

Speaker 10 Who could be doing this? And why?

Speaker 10 Could it be someone you knew at another time in your life? Could it be someone you've never met?

Speaker 10 They're obviously dedicated to the con because the creepy messages don't let up. It's April now and you're sitting at your dining room table with a big poster board laid out in front of you.

Speaker 10 As you meticulously glue and place each new image, you get another message. It's the same text-me number,

Speaker 10 but this time, they've sent something new.

Speaker 10 Something much scarier. You don't want to look, but you can't help yourself, can you?

Speaker 10 The video opens and your heart sinks. It's you right there, sitting at your dining room table.

Speaker 10 The camera is low, like the voyeur was crouched just outside the patio furniture, filming you through the window.

Speaker 10 You feel your heart pounding in your throat as you replay the video, again

Speaker 10 and again.

Speaker 10 You look at the angle and the way the camera dips slightly as if the person holding it was crouching.

Speaker 10 They were there.

Speaker 10 Right there. Only feet away from you.
And you never even knew it. That's it.
This isn't someone just being weird. This is dangerous.
This is someone making unwanted contact.

Speaker 10 You close the tab and click the phone icon, frantically punching in 911.

Speaker 10 You tell them everything. the messages, the video, how it feels like you're being hunted.
They listen and you file a report, but it doesn't make you feel much better, does it?

Speaker 10 So you grab your journal and you start writing.

Speaker 12 Why can't I stop the thoughts in my head?

Speaker 11 I don't want to look.

Speaker 12 I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe.
I don't feel safe. No one loves me.

Speaker 10 These are the words of 23-year-old Ellie Wyke.

Speaker 12 Don't ignore your gut or red flags. You can sense evil.
Stay in tune with your senses.

Speaker 10 She wrote it, but it wasn't enough. She still felt the weight of the anonymous voyeur pressing down on her every day.

Speaker 12 There is no comfort. There is no safety.
Only acid in my rein.

Speaker 11 The world will go on without me.

Speaker 12 I don't matter, but sadly, I do exist.

Speaker 10 For Ellie, the fear wasn't just in the messages or the video. It was in everything.

Speaker 10 the way she thought about herself. She felt like no one could help.
She felt completely alone. And the truth was,

Speaker 10 she was alone.

Speaker 10 No one was taking her seriously.

Speaker 10 The cop who filed the official statement was supposed to be in charge of Ellie's case, but he failed to log important evidence, and the whole thing was on a path to nowhere.

Speaker 10 Some cops are better than others, I guess. In the middle of this, Ellie was still looking for connection.
Something to hold on to in the chaos. She was talking to a lot of people.

Speaker 10 Some of them were guys she liked, but nothing was panning out the way she'd hoped. That's when Nate Peters texted her.
Nate Peters wasn't a close friend, but they'd hung out before.

Speaker 10 They'd smoked together, they'd gone to a few of the same parties.

Speaker 10 He was familiar, and in this moment, familiar felt safe.

Speaker 11 Hey, stranger.

Speaker 12 Who this?

Speaker 11 Nate, how's it going? New number, my bad. Nate, who?

Speaker 11 Peters.

Speaker 11 Do you know a lot of Nate's? LOL?

Speaker 12 Yes, actually. Hoping it was you, though.

Speaker 10 For Ellie, these conversations were a small escape. Over the next few weeks, they kept in touch, and by late July, they were making plans to meet up and rekindle their friendship.

Speaker 11 What you doing later?

Speaker 12 Like what time later?

Speaker 11 I have no clue. Probably late, so I shouldn't even ask.

Speaker 12 Yeah, if my mom's home, I wouldn't want you to come over.

Speaker 10 In the early morning of July 28th, 2018, when they both knew Ellie's mom wouldn't be around, Nate suggested they hang out. Ellie agreed.

Speaker 11 I'm not bringing my phone. Is it cool if I just knock?

Speaker 12 Ring the doorbell a few times all at once.

Speaker 11 See you soon.

Speaker 10 Ellie left her house that night, unaware that everything was about to change. The streets were dark and empty, just like her life had felt for the last few months.
It was late, and she was tired.

Speaker 10 Tired of being scared and tired of feeling alone. There, in the stillness of the air, she convinced herself that this was just another hangout.
That Nate was just a friend.

Speaker 10 The alarm bells in her head fell silent. She didn't know at the time that sometimes the familiar can hide the greatest danger.

Speaker 10 Sometimes trusting the wrong person

Speaker 10 can be a fatal mistake.

Speaker 10 So, when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business. Yikes.
There's nothing small about a small business. You're working all of the time.

Speaker 10 Thankfully, though, I have a partner with all the tools that I need to be successful. You may have heard of them.
Their name is Shopify.

Speaker 10 Shopify's point-of-sale system is a unified command center for your retail business. It brings together in-store and online operations across up to a thousand locations.

Speaker 10 Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient. Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up in store.

Speaker 10 All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want. And staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

Speaker 10 And let's face it, acquiring new new customers is expensive.

Speaker 10 With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first-party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge. In fact, it's proven.

Speaker 10 Based on a report from EY, businesses on Shopify POS see real results, like 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed.

Speaker 10 So if you have a retail or online business, then I'll tell you what, Shopify is a fantastic partner to have on your side. Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify.

Speaker 10 Sign up for your $1 a month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash sword and scale. All one word.
Just go to shopify.com slash swordandscale and sign up. You'll thank me later.
You will.

Speaker 10 shopify.com slash sword and scale.

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Speaker 1 It's time to head back to school and forward to your future with Carrington College. For over 55 years, we've helped train the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Speaker 6 Apply now to get hands-on training from teachers with real-world experience.

Speaker 7 And as few as nine months, you could start making a difference in healthcare.

Speaker 8 Classes start soon in Pleasant Hill, San Leandro, and San Jose.

Speaker 5 Visit Carrington.edu to see what's next for you. Visit carrington.edu/slash SCI for information on program outcomes.

Speaker 10 At just 23 years old, Ellie Weike was a free-spirited soul trying to navigate the loneliness and uncertainty of young adulthood in West Chester, Ohio. You know, the entertainment hub of the U.S.

Speaker 10 Just kidding. Don't ever go to Ohio.
It sucks. Anywho, Ellie longed for connection, filling her days with art, journaling, and fleeting friendships.

Speaker 10 But beneath her vibrant exterior was a growing sense of fear. For months, Ellie had been targeted by an anonymous stalker.
Unsettling messages had escalated to invasive, voyeuristic videos.

Speaker 10 Her world, once chaotic but manageable, was becoming dangerous. Despite making a report to the police, Ellie's cries for help went unanswered.

Speaker 10 Her journal entries reveal the depth of her fear and isolation.

Speaker 10 Still, Ellie tried to move forward, clinging to hope that familiarity could bring comfort. When an old friend, Nate Peters, reached out, Ellie hoped hoped she'd find that comfort.

Speaker 10 On July 28th, 2018, the two made plans to meet up. After sending the text messages that arranged their meeting, Ellie was never heard from again.
At first, her absence didn't raise alarms.

Speaker 10 It wasn't unusual for her to disappear for a day or two. She was, after all, a so-called free spirit and had a tendency to drift between friend groups.

Speaker 10 But when Ellie's mom returned home on August 1st after spending a few days with her boyfriend, she couldn't reach her daughter. The house was eerily quiet.

Speaker 10 Ellie's car had not moved, and she wasn't answering the phone. That's when her mom made a call to the Westchester Police.
The investigation began slowly.

Speaker 10 Ellie's lifestyle made it hard to pin down where she might have gone. And at first, the police treated her disappearance like a young adult who'd simply walked away.

Speaker 10 Apparently, none of the detectives working the case thought to connect the stalking report to her disappearance.

Speaker 10 But Ellie's friends reminded them, offering up text messages where Ellie had told them each separately about her stalker.

Speaker 12 To one friend, she said, That person started sending me texts again.

Speaker 10 And she sent this to someone else.

Speaker 12 Did I tell you someone's been stalking me? Like they've been taking videos looking inside my house, watching me, and then sending them to me.

Speaker 12 I can't afford to move right now, and I'm probably going to delete my Facebook. I'm also buying a taser soon.
My problem is the person stalking me is anonymous, so I decid how much danger I'm in.

Speaker 10 Police began poring through Ellie's phone records, and buried within them was a name. And now we're going to play a little game called, Am I Smarter Than the Average Sasshole?

Speaker 10 Can you guess what name it was? I mean, we've only mentioned one, and it wasn't Leroy Jenkins. It was Nate Peters.

Speaker 10 Nate had been in contact with Ellie just hours before she vanished. Naturally, he was the best place to start.

Speaker 11 You go by Nate, by the way. Yeah.

Speaker 11 How'd you meet her? Everybody seems to meet this girl at concerts, or camping.

Speaker 11 No, um, so because she was friends with Zach, um, I was over hanging out with Zach, and I guess she had some like mental breakdown at the time.

Speaker 11 We've hung out like a total of maybe three times and then uh like outside of the Zach situation. But even then it was only maybe for an hour or so.
Okay. I knew she had

Speaker 11 like bipolar or other mental issues and stuff so she was prescribed to pills and things but that's about that's about all I know. Like I said we weren't like we weren't really close or anything.

Speaker 11 So what do you think about all this?

Speaker 11 I have no idea what's going on.

Speaker 11 I hope she's okay.

Speaker 11 I haven't seen her in gosh

Speaker 11 six, seven months, something like that. Okay.
When's the last time you talked to her? Probably about the last time I saw her. When's When's the last time you had phone conversations with her?

Speaker 11 Probably longer than that.

Speaker 11 She'll call me, but I usually text. Okay.
When's the last time you texted with her? Oh, I attempted to call her

Speaker 11 as soon as I found out, but she was missing

Speaker 11 past that. What day was that? The second? Okay.

Speaker 11 I think, yeah. Like, as soon as I found out, I was like, oh shit.
My phone doesn't have anything past March on it.

Speaker 10 So it's been, you know, minimum six months since I've actually talked to her though nate was adamant about this the text messages suggested otherwise so detectives pressed him it made sense that he'd use a texting app to make these final plans if nate was the reason for ellie's disappearance uh have you ever used texting app

Speaker 11 again you're not in any trouble

Speaker 11 yeah here's what you gotta remember yeah okay

Speaker 11 I'm looking for this girl. Yeah, okay.
Everyone's looking for this girl. Right.
You're looking for this girl. I'm looking for this girl.

Speaker 11 You You also got to remember that we do investigations before we're done talking to people. Sure.

Speaker 11 So some of these questions I'm asking you, I kind of know the answers to. Yeah.
And I'm kind of trying to see if you're going to be honest with me or not. Sure.
Okay. So

Speaker 11 would it surprise you if I told you that you were using a text app at some point to communicate with her?

Speaker 11 Kick? I don't know if I know. Maybe text now.
Do you have two F text now?

Speaker 11 I know you have to. Text me, any of that.

Speaker 11 So you had no plans to meet up with her over the weekend before she went missing.

Speaker 11 Okay. What I'm dealing with is I'm dealing with a lot of social media and a lot of apps that hides who people are

Speaker 11 with me.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I'm not quite sure that some of the stuff you're telling me is completely accurate at this point. I think you've had more contact with her text-wise,

Speaker 11 but

Speaker 11 I don't know that for a fact.

Speaker 10 As the interview went on, detectives noticed that Nate seemed to be trying to steer the conversation.

Speaker 10 It seemed like he wanted to shift the blame onto someone else.

Speaker 11 These text apps, if you will, yeah, they give you a number. So when we see them, they start popping up as numbers.
Okay.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 What do you think happened to her? Well, I mean, you know her better than I do.

Speaker 11 No, honestly, I tell you the truth, I have no idea. You know,

Speaker 11 I don't know if she wanted to just pack up and run away or if she got to say anything like that to you.

Speaker 11 Like I said, I hadn't talked to her since before March. You guys ever more than friends?

Speaker 11 You never slept with her? Because, I mean, there's nothing wrong with her. Yeah, no, no.

Speaker 11 There's a lot of indications that she was free with herself, which is fine. Nuggets, nuggets.
That's what I've heard. But,

Speaker 11 no, because she had also

Speaker 11 talked to me about how she'd been raped and stuff. Okay.
So I wanted to at least be that sort of guy that would not press that sort of guy who raped her, if you will.

Speaker 11 The only person that I know was a guy named Michael Strauss.

Speaker 11 But that was like years and years ago. And, you know, I haven't seen him in even longer than that.
Okay. So did she have any concerns about him hanging around here recently? Not that I know of.
Okay.

Speaker 11 You know, it kind of concerns me because she had told me that he had done that to her. And then she had mentioned she had family members that had done that to her.
And then

Speaker 11 like one of her ex-boyfriends, she said had done it to her.

Speaker 11 And it's one of those, it seems like, you know, at what point do you say, is this person actually crying wolf, or is they instead of just like an anomalous person that constantly just gets raped?

Speaker 10 So, this Michael Strauss guy was the next person to be hunted down.

Speaker 10 But in the meantime, the police planned to take Nate's phone in for evaluation. The next time they saw him, they had a search warrant in hand.

Speaker 11 We get lied to all the time.

Speaker 11 We definitely know quite a bit about the iOS system as well. And we have resources to show us that if an app's been been deleted or not, we have resources to show us deleted information from a phone.

Speaker 11 But is there any way we could we could arrange a time

Speaker 11 today

Speaker 11 to download certain information off of your phone within this time frame

Speaker 11 to verify that what you're telling us is true? Is that something that you would be that you would even consider?

Speaker 11 Sure. No, I understand.
I understand. And

Speaker 11 that's well within your right. And I respect you for knowing your your rights.

Speaker 11 What I would have to tell you, though, is

Speaker 11 that

Speaker 11 I do have a warrant to take your phone, but I've been totally upfront with you. I'm not lying to you.
The reason that I gave you

Speaker 11 is totally honest.

Speaker 11 Someone is trying to use, what I believe, someone is trying to use a number associated with you, or at least linked to you, to show that you had contact with Ellie much more recent than you're telling us.

Speaker 10 Someone is trying to use a number associated with you?

Speaker 10 Why is this cop trying to give away their game plan? Why is he acting like the suspect's defense attorney?

Speaker 10 I mean, I'm all for citizens having rights, but do we really need to handhold and spoon feed suspects? Their only possible defense strategy? It's almost like he's saying, hey, dummy.

Speaker 10 Say that you didn't have your phone on you. Say you gave it to a buddy or something.

Speaker 10 Despite these detectives seemingly really wanting to give the suspect some helpful legal tips during the interrogation, their actual job now required them to gather information on this new lead, Michael Strauss.

Speaker 10 To better understand him, they reached out to someone who had known Michael for years,

Speaker 10 his neighbor.

Speaker 11 I'm a BCI agent. Nice to meet you.
I just wonder if I can sit down with you and ask you some questions. Yeah, you do a Tracy or Michael?

Speaker 11 I really can't say.

Speaker 11 Not Tristan.

Speaker 11 There we go. So

Speaker 11 do you know, are you friends with anybody that lives over there? Yeah.

Speaker 11 They're like family to me. With all of them?

Speaker 11 Trissing and Noah.

Speaker 11 Not Michael. Yeah, so I'm not really asking about them.
Okay. Oh, yeah.
I'm asking about Michael.

Speaker 10 This kid, also, in his early 20s, had grown up next to the Strauss family. for over 15 years and was close friends with Michael's brother.
But Michael? Not so much.

Speaker 11 Those two are like my best friends. And I mean, I know Michael.
Has Michael been with her the whole time? Pretty much.

Speaker 11 He lived in California, I think, for like three months.

Speaker 11 And that was recently. Okay.

Speaker 11 When did he come back, do you know?

Speaker 11 Like a month or two ago within the like yeah.

Speaker 11 Have you ever seen who drives which car? Like which cars does Michael drive specifically that I'm interested in that?

Speaker 11 I don't think he has a car or he probably yeah, he probably doesn't have a dialed license if I had to guess. I mean, what do you know about him from me now?

Speaker 11 You're smiling.

Speaker 11 He's an interesting character.

Speaker 11 There's a lot about him.

Speaker 11 The stuff in his room is kind of weird. Like, I guess he, like, doesn't like the government and stuff like that.
He used to have, like, in his basement, like, a flag that said Marines.

Speaker 11 And then, like, he wrote, like, lies on it.

Speaker 11 And then, like, one that said, like, U.S. Army, and it said, like, deception or something.
Okay.

Speaker 11 Stuff like that.

Speaker 10 What the neighbor says next would become crucial information for detectives once they had Michael Strauss in an interrogation room.

Speaker 11 Like in high school he played football, but he seemed a lot more, I guess, normal in high school. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I mean,

Speaker 11 I guess he's not that crazy, but

Speaker 11 what do you know? What about most people think he is? What about him? That's crazy. The stuff that he wears, the music that he listens to,

Speaker 11 stuff like that. What's he doing for a living, you know?

Speaker 11 I don't think he's had a job in a while, but he always has some story that we know isn't true about some job that he's doing or something. But he actually, it's hard to tell.

Speaker 11 It's hard to tell the truth from the non-truth because he actually,

Speaker 11 when he went to California, I know he did something there. Like, man, you wouldn't believe the amount of stories this guy says.
Like,

Speaker 11 at one point, he said he was going there to roll blunts for Snoop Dogg.

Speaker 11 He said, like,

Speaker 11 he said he's going to be an actor. He said he's going to be a film director, tattoo artist.
Because, like, Tristan and Noah, they think it's funny.

Speaker 11 And especially Noah will, like, tell me everything he says just because he thinks it's funny. Like, tell me his stories and stuff.
Like, famous people that he's met that we know he hasn't met

Speaker 11 all the time. Does he seem to believe it? Like, he travels, like, yeah, he does.
He seems to believe his own mind, yeah.

Speaker 11 And he gets really, really defensive if, like, somebody calls him out for lying, like,

Speaker 11 more so than most people would, I think.

Speaker 11 But, I mean. They're just hard to believe.
I mean, you probably know about, like, the flashing incident that he had a few years ago. Right.
Yeah, I do. And how'd you find out about it? Actually, uh,

Speaker 11 there's a video of it on the internet. Um,

Speaker 11 that

Speaker 11 all you gotta do is type in his name, and it pops right up.

Speaker 10 This, um,

Speaker 10 flashing incident wasn't just a strange rumor. It was a documented crime.
Michael Strauss had been convicted of jerking off in a grocery store parking lot, an act that landed him a year of probation.

Speaker 10 To Michael's neighbor, it was just another odd chapter in his long history of strange behavior. But for detectives, it was something they'd tuck away in the back of their minds.

Speaker 10 And yet, despite his oddities, oddities, Michael could come across as completely ordinary, at least on the surface.

Speaker 11 Does he ever say anything weird about women or... They're like when you're talking to him,

Speaker 11 he seems pretty normal when you're talking to him other than just the crazy stories.

Speaker 10 When the time came to bring Michael in for questioning, they already knew what to expect. A man who couldn't resist spinning stories.

Speaker 10 Pretty quickly, though, detectives realized that Michael's neighbor had not been exaggerating.

Speaker 11 You said you were doing some work. Yeah, filmmaker.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I've been doing that.

Speaker 11 Five years, six years. I was producing, and now I'm kind of like directing and making my own stuff and everything.
I travel a lot. It's fun.

Speaker 11 You know, I've been living in Cali for a while, and then I just move back, visit my family, and all that kind of stuff. And then I go back there in like a month.

Speaker 10 The plan was just to let Michael talk.

Speaker 10 Detectives wanted to get to know this strange

Speaker 10 guy

Speaker 10 with long dreadlocks piled on top of his head.

Speaker 10 They wanted to make a false connection, making him feel like he could trust them. You can't.
You can't, by the way. You can't trust cops.

Speaker 10 This was the same approach they took with everyone they interviewed in this case. If they scared anyone away, they could lose a potential lead, and Ellie may never be found.

Speaker 10 I wake up and I draw every day.

Speaker 11 Sure,

Speaker 11 even if it's the littlest thing, I always say, don't have no zero days. Always be doing something.

Speaker 11 What'd you draw?

Speaker 11 Guitar player. Dimebag.
That's one of my favorite guitar players. Panther.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 11 he died in front of me when I was 14 years old.

Speaker 11 I was there when he got shot on stage.

Speaker 10 All right. All right.
Do you guys believe that?

Speaker 10 Me neither.

Speaker 11 Currently, you are okay? Like, yeah, so we'll kind of explain everything that's going on. You're about to talk to two of the lowest key people

Speaker 11 who you talk to,

Speaker 11 which is Tony.

Speaker 11 We both work in the detective section.

Speaker 11 And we've got this case of Ellie White, who's missing us.

Speaker 11 And they came to my house already about it. Yeah, like I told the detectives that came to my house, it's like, I haven't seen this girl.

Speaker 11 I haven't talked to her in about five years, four or five years. Right.
What we do when we gather, we get names and we start comparing those, we start looking into things.

Speaker 11 And a couple things they broke down,

Speaker 11 I don't really understand. I don't really think it was that good of an interview

Speaker 11 with me or with Finn in general.

Speaker 11 So trust me,

Speaker 11 this is the first of many we're going to do. Okay, so

Speaker 11 you got your own place out there? Yeah, I'm staying with my girl that I'm taking. Oh, cool, cool, cool.
So what kind of movies are you into? I mean, what kinds? I like horror movies, but I like,

Speaker 11 I don't know if that always makes people, I don't know if that makes it judgmental or not, but like fan people think horror movies, and I did a documentary, so what I'm doing.

Speaker 11 now is that is that is that

Speaker 11 more so your thing but like what would you like it but i don't want to be like pigeonholed to just do that to us oh absolutely you know so like i'll i have a few ideas and do that and so is it like crazy like crazy horror stuff like i like psychological stuff i don't like like the excessive like goofy you know slasher type thing

Speaker 11 you're not a saw kind of guy saw's cool like i said i know a couple of uh berg mark berg is the producer so he started a saw franchise and he would help work with me and all that kind of stuff i'm trying not to name drop or anything no i like him

Speaker 11 i know that guy So do you travel with, I mean, not always. How do you have like, do you, does that cost, do you fly out there? Yeah, usually.
Okay. Yeah.
So I mean, doesn't that, that was cost?

Speaker 11 Would you got a package? Oh, do you just say package? Check it out. I made pretty good money lately.
I've been actually made more money last year than I've made in my entire life. Oh, cool.

Speaker 11 So, yeah, like I said, I'm finally getting reward from all the hard work.

Speaker 10 BCI, or Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, sat with Michael for hours. This was no junior varsity interrogation.

Speaker 10 These guys knew what they were doing as they took their time to build a rapport with him. This was a psychological chess match, and the detectives were the only ones who could see the board.

Speaker 11 Well, Paparazzi is annoying. That's one thing.
Like, you just, you know, being a celebrity, you're just being like trying to go to a restaurant or something. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And then there's Paparazzi, hanging out, like, dude, can we get by? You know, like, yeah,

Speaker 11 I guess it's illegal, but I don't know.

Speaker 11 You've never been intrigued to do that, that type of thing. No, because I don't really glorify celebrities.

Speaker 11 I don't really think it's that important.

Speaker 11 I think it's harassment.

Speaker 11 You know what I mean? Like, you're following people around. There's been car accidents.
Like, you know.

Speaker 10 So, according to Michael, following someone around with a camera is harassment.

Speaker 10 Got it. I wonder how Scarlett Johansson feels about that.

Speaker 11 Well, it's too, it's sometimes it's like, well, when you're behind the camera, too. You're probably looking at it.
You look at things.

Speaker 11 So I see my mind works with like, I just, yeah, I look at everything like a big canvas, you know, so yeah, I don't look at every little individual. Right.

Speaker 11 So, I mean, everything that, and I don't mean to totally get on topic, I just think is so interesting. Sometimes that, but when you look at things, it's almost like you're,

Speaker 11 I don't know, are you like mentally filming? So, like,

Speaker 11 it's a filter, you have like a filter. You just think like this would look good on camera, and then you just start imagining that that's what you're pretty much, I guess.
Yeah, you get it.

Speaker 11 Like, it's like you're like, oh, this is interesting.

Speaker 11 Like, you've something happened to you, and you're like, oh, that would be interesting to jot down, or that's an interesting visual, or you know what I mean?

Speaker 11 Especially photography, like you see things, like, okay, that's a good shot. You know, like, that's really all come down to.
So I love photography, and I have a camera.

Speaker 11 I can tell, like, you, like I said, you're nailing it. Like, you can get it.

Speaker 11 But I don't always carry my camera with, I don't always have my camera. You wish you had it.
You're like, I wish I took a seat.

Speaker 11 Yeah, well, sometimes there's something I know I want to take a picture of, so, you know, I'll snap it with my phone, and I might, like, geotag it to know where.

Speaker 11 See, I'm like a 21st century guy now, too. Yeah, you are.
You're more than a bit more.

Speaker 11 But you can mark it, and then you can come back and maybe try to compose the same sort of work.

Speaker 11 Well, that's when I really just do it in the moment. Like I said, like, just take it in the moment and be like, oh, there you go.
Yeah, but to do that,

Speaker 11 you'd have to have your stuff with you. Sure.
So I try to keep a camera on me at all times. Oh, really? Sorry? Yeah, something.
Like, I keep it on my, I carry, I wear a fanny pack sometimes.

Speaker 10 I always carry a camera. A seemingly innocent comment.

Speaker 10 But I'm sure by now you can see exactly what these detectives were doing. They weren't just making small talk.

Speaker 10 They were laying out the groundwork, connecting Michael's words to pieces of Ellie's case that we already know. The voyeuristic videos, the terrifying, intimate knowledge her stalker had of her life.

Speaker 10 But while suspicion mounted against Michael, there was still another loose end to tie up. Nate Peters.

Speaker 10 Detectives had taken his phone in for evaluation, and now they were ready to return it, having learned some surprising information.

Speaker 11 And then on, um, let's see, on May, on May 28th,

Speaker 11 she texts you and says something, uh, or excuse me, someone else is calling themselves Late Peters and is texting me. It's confusing, LOL.

Speaker 11 And then you reply with surprise. I think you say WTF.

Speaker 11 And then

Speaker 11 she responds that the subject is sending her solo reviews of another email asking if it's her, meaning asking if it's Ellie.

Speaker 11 So my question is, is that we know that not only did Ellie text you, but she also, I think, called you a few times.

Speaker 11 Was there any ever, was there a follow-up conversation or a follow-up phone call saying who that might have been?

Speaker 11 Trying

Speaker 11 purporting to be you. No, and I'll tell you, and I'm...
Do you remember that conversation, though? No, not at all.

Speaker 11 And I'll tell you, like, I, you know, scouts on or swear the last time I ever remember actually talking to her, yeah, you know, which is what surprised me if that was on my phone in the first place, because now I'm actually kind of blown away.

Speaker 11 Yeah, if you want to look at it, it's um,

Speaker 11 so if you go to your text messages from her,

Speaker 11 you have to scroll again, obviously, all the way back to 2017. But you'll oh, from okay, yeah, it's 2017

Speaker 11 when you guys were still kicking. I was gonna say, so that's probably why, and that's why it's kind of important because if someone's trying to be you all the way back to 2017,

Speaker 11 we want to know who it is. What the f? Crazy, I know, right? That's why I'm saying, man.

Speaker 11 It's kind of spooky stuff.

Speaker 10 Ah, now I get it. He's tricking him.

Speaker 10 Wait, he tricked me. I take it back.
This guy's really good.

Speaker 10 At this point, detectives were pretty certain Michael Strauss had been the one not only stalking Ellie using anonymous phone numbers, but also the one posing. as Nate Peters.

Speaker 10 So they start by explaining Ellie's story to Michael. They tell him about the night she received the creepy video of herself shot through the window.

Speaker 11 It was like a self-therapy thing. She would make collages, like cut pictures out of magazine.
I did that too.

Speaker 11 It's like an art, like an image. Well, I guess it is artsy, but it probably is some sort of therapy straight at me.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 the video's over.

Speaker 11 So we start looking around, we keep researching things, and

Speaker 11 I want you to hear this whole thing. I want you to hear this whole thing out.
So we have these text messages that included the video link and

Speaker 11 the number those came back to, but when we researched this number, we found that the most commonly called number was your mom.

Speaker 11 Okay. So we have the link from the video and your mom and there's some some number that's in common.
Okay.

Speaker 11 So she called my mom somebody whoever contacted her and I'm not saying Ellie did, but whoever contacted her also contacted your mom.

Speaker 10 Not looking good, Michael.

Speaker 10 Not looking good.

Speaker 11 So I don't know if someone's like creeping you or what. So we got...
That doesn't sound right.

Speaker 11 Hold this thing out. So I got this number.

Speaker 11 And I've seen it. So see this connection.
And the number,

Speaker 11 when they

Speaker 11 the number got researched and comes back to like Doom Studio or Doom Dread guy

Speaker 11 so now I'm wondering if someone's setting up a profile I don't know if someone's setting up a profile with you or say for dread that sounds like my email my old old email right that's what I'm that sounds like you're starting to get why you're here I have someone's posing as you okay hear this whole thing out yeah

Speaker 11 so

Speaker 11 I got this and I've got someone watching her backyard. So what am I looking at? I'm looking at maybe a trespassing.

Speaker 11 I'm looking at maybe a maybe a voyeurism. Stalking has to be a

Speaker 11 pattern of events to do that. So

Speaker 11 that's like, hey, I got robbed. Someone broke under my car.
That's not robbery. It's not really stalking.

Speaker 11 They're misdemeanor charges. It's not a big deal.

Speaker 11 I need to rule out without a doubt before I can really go any further. Because

Speaker 11 I need to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 11 I had people make a a fake Facebook with me one time that had all my pictures and stuff and my name and it wasn't my Facebook and I reported to Facebook and they got it taken down. Okay.

Speaker 11 So but that doesn't sound you need so you need to be engaged with me on this. Okay.
And you need to

Speaker 11 we need to I know you keep looking at the clock time.

Speaker 11 I can't worry about the time right now because this is I gotta get through this. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 Either someone extraordinarily dedicated to the ruse was creeping on Michael

Speaker 10 or you could live in reality and choose to believe that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one.

Speaker 10 Michael's life had become a shadow of Ellie's, spent watching, waiting, and anonymously weaving himself into her world.

Speaker 10 Michael Strauss had stalked her. Michael Strauss

Speaker 10 had planned this whole thing.

Speaker 11 We're just trying to clear stuff up.

Speaker 11 I can tell you on May 31st, if I had a timeline that said May 31st, and that number gets established, I know that a message got sent out to

Speaker 11 seven women that says, hey, stranger.

Speaker 11 And I know Ellie,

Speaker 11 I fish.

Speaker 11 Do you fish? Not really, no. Not really.
Ellie took the bait.

Speaker 11 Okay. Ellie took the bait.
The others, it might have been like, hey, what up? Whatever. I don't know.
It was Ellie took the bait. And yeah, I probably did do something like that.

Speaker 11 That's what I did.

Speaker 11 And I probably did, like I said, I messed around.

Speaker 11 I did mess with people. And the thing is, I don't have names to numbers.
And I messed with a bunch of numbers. And I prank called before.

Speaker 11 I don't do refrigerator running or whatever. I'm like, that is kind of funny.
It's just a classic.

Speaker 11 That is a classic. Yeah, you're good.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 11 that's not.

Speaker 11 Well, that's not, I'm not trying to like, that's not a, I'm not lying, but like, that's, I would never send a video right now.

Speaker 11 Okay, so tell me about, tell me about the sending out of the like the text blast, hey stranger. So were you, I mean you were casting that?

Speaker 11 I'm like, well it's when I'm in it's when I'm out in Cali or whatever, I text people and I just like, I'd be like, especially if they're old, I have like a whole stuff of old phone numbers I used to have or whatever, and I don't know it's from my old contact list.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 10 He has an excuse for everything, doesn't he?

Speaker 11 Dude, I'm not trying to say you're like a, you're the serial. And it's only an issue because she's missing right now, and that's the problem.
It becomes becomes an issue.

Speaker 11 So when you did that, and she kind of took the bait so to speak. Yeah.
Because

Speaker 11 I think we're both understanding that that was you doing that. So

Speaker 11 yeah, but it wasn't. It's really, really obvious it was you doing it.
I don't want to insult anybody's intelligence or whatever. But that's not like that.
But you weren't talking to her as you.

Speaker 11 No, I act like I was nobody or somebody. Well, you were.
You know what I mean? Or like I would like come up with a name and then I'd be like, oh yeah, that's her. Or like I'd be like, oh, it's Ben.

Speaker 11 Well,

Speaker 11 the name you came up with was Nate Peters. See, I don't even remember that.
Well, I'm telling you, okay. Okay, cool.
Okay.

Speaker 11 Here's the one thing going on in the room right now.

Speaker 11 You have absolutely 100% no reason to doubt what I'm saying. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 11 So I just wanted to throw that out there. I'm not the guy that, I'm not, I don't bluff and I don't bullshit because I don't want to teach you either.
I don't want to see that guy.

Speaker 11 So you were Nate Peters.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I think you know Nate Peters. And when you said, hey,

Speaker 11 well, you said, hey, stranger, she said, who is this? And you said, Nate. And she says, Nate who? And you said, LOL.

Speaker 11 What do you know a lot of Nate's? I'm Nate Peters. And she's like, oh, hey, what's up? Started a conversation.

Speaker 11 And then as that conversation progresses,

Speaker 11 that initial conversation,

Speaker 11 you ask her,

Speaker 11 I hear you're being... Watched.
Now we've established that this is you talking.

Speaker 11 So I don't know if you heard from someone. I don't know how that could happen.
I heard someone's watching you. And she says, so you know I'm talking about.

Speaker 11 I know what you mean. I know what you say.
She says,

Speaker 11 I heard someone's watching you. And she's like, hey, I don't want to talk.
Don't ruin this. That creeps me out.
And you're like, okay, because, so now we've established that you.

Speaker 11 As those conversations are going on, there's nothing, there's nothing inappropriate about them. There's nothing...

Speaker 11 Let's let's take this white elephant out of the room.

Speaker 11 Yeah, you weren't necessarily honest when we first started talking because you said you hadn't contacted her in five years, but I know you contacted her up all the way until July 29th.

Speaker 11 I guess, yeah, I've a contact her as myself, and it was a joke, and it looks bad. I get it.
Okay, so it looks horrible. We know we know

Speaker 11 we know it looks bad, we know it looks horrible, but we have to get by the optics of things. I've got a text number

Speaker 11 that

Speaker 11 is

Speaker 11 being used for this app, and it's contacting her posing as somebody else and I don't know how you got like have you ever called Nate I mean how Nate Peters

Speaker 11 I don't know I guess as someone

Speaker 11 the name that came to mind because

Speaker 11 that's like freaking the most random thing in the world I mean how I mean like why not freaking Kareem Abdul Jabbar I mean how would you even know like see here's what I was wondering

Speaker 11 did you ever think that the real Nate Peters would contact her like like at the same time you probably would?

Speaker 11 I mean, I don't know. I don't know.
That's fucking weird. Like, what the fuck?

Speaker 11 I guess you don't.

Speaker 11 It's, you probably, it's hard to see the humor in this, especially because this is a missing person's case. But, like,

Speaker 11 I know what you're talking about. It's like that crank yankers or whatever.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 I get it. I get it.
I get that. Okay.
I don't think the CEO. You don't think people are out to get me.
You think I'm like a conspiracy nut or something.

Speaker 11 Well, no, I don't want to come off like a big conspiracy nut.

Speaker 11 So I'm not, you know, but

Speaker 11 also coincidences are I don't.

Speaker 11 Sometimes you really got to beat me over the head with stuff to convince me and in this line of work Coincidences and just that conspiracy thing is is just it's just rare

Speaker 11 and if it happens once in a lifetime where someone goes out of their way to totally do something a little long range but I got this video that's a that's of you

Speaker 11 On my account. On your account.
My email has been used, my phone number's been used.

Speaker 11 All this stuff is doing towards your your phone number that's attached to the ip address that comes back to the wi-fi in your house you know i'm trying to show you that i don't know how this is being woven yeah there's a commonality between all of those things i said they're the way things are on paper they're the way things really are dude look if you stood in her backyard and if you stood in her backyard jerked off and filmed it what the fuck ever okay okay

Speaker 11 It's embarrassing. I get it.

Speaker 11 I can't say I condone it. I'm not going to put it up on a billboard.
Whatever.

Speaker 11 It happened.

Speaker 11 And it's just so tightly linked to stuff. I don't want to run down that rabbit hole.
I don't think, here's what I don't think happened. I don't think someone decided, let's see, who am I going to...

Speaker 11 Micah Stress.

Speaker 11 I'll set up a number.

Speaker 11 I'll contact people. I'm going to get a video.
I'm going to somehow plant it in his.

Speaker 11 Yeah, but when you put that

Speaker 11 when

Speaker 11 you go to bake a cake

Speaker 11 and you got a list of 10 ingredients and you got eight of them, you don't get a cake.

Speaker 11 He comes out with some shit. You don't know what it is.
You missed an ingredient.

Speaker 11 If I were to take out one of these things,

Speaker 11 I think this all makes sense. But with all of these things together, man,

Speaker 11 it looks like a cake.

Speaker 10 As the hours dragged on, it became painfully clear. Coaxing Michael Strauss into a single, honest answer was like pulling teeth.

Speaker 10 Every lie they unraveled seemed to take an eternity, and they hadn't even broached the serious questions yet. The ones that could take this from an interrogation

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Speaker 10 Detectives had spent hours dancing around Michael Strauss's lies, lies, playing a slow game of psychological chess.

Speaker 10 Every question, every comment, every seemingly innocuous detail was meticulously designed to chip away at his defense.

Speaker 10 Despite the mounting suspicion, Ellie was still missing. For her friends and family, the clock was ticking.

Speaker 10 The groundwork had been laid in his interrogation, and now it was time to confront the truth head-on. Detectives started to introduce more and more of the damning evidence they had gathered.

Speaker 10 Ellie Weich went missing on July 29th, 2018, but her phone turned on for a brief moment on July 31st.

Speaker 10 It turned on just long enough to ping off a cell phone tower.

Speaker 11 If this is a cell phone tower, and the cell phone tower covers an area this big, and where this phone hit, I'm able to isolate that that phone hit in an area this big. Okay.
And your house is here.

Speaker 11 yeah that doesn't okay that doesn't make sense to me no so not being a believer in circum and coincidences

Speaker 11 with with everything I'm looking at I'm like the phone's there it could be or like she was driving so tell me how it could be tell me how it could be there she was on the road her car her car is her car has not moved her car is at the house I don't know then that's something that see that's why I don't know why that's the accusation that I don't not know it's not an accusation it's total fact and I'm not accusing

Speaker 11 her phone. No, I wouldn't have her phone.
I wouldn't turn it on. I wouldn't.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 And I'm not Scooby-Doo, but it's like, I just don't know what Metlinkids, you know, like was, I don't know who helped her get out. I don't know.
You know what I mean? Like, that's the thing.

Speaker 11 The stuff that I did a year ago or prior to that, the messages, yeah, that's one thing, but I don't know. But that's the stuff we have to get answers to and clear up.
And I have. Right.
And

Speaker 11 absolutely you have. Absolutely.
You have. So.

Speaker 11 That's so freaking embarrassing, but it's whatever. It's truth, and I'm glad.

Speaker 11 I'm glad you guys know.

Speaker 11 Well, it's like I'm glad you guys know, and knowing it's like

Speaker 11 talking on the phone is different than actually like, hey, let's go do this. Let's go run away together.
You know what I mean? Like, I would never run away with someone like her.

Speaker 11 I would never, you know, even hurt. I would never hurt anybody like her.
You know what I mean? So it's just like, that's... I don't know.
I don't know what else to tell you guys.

Speaker 11 But the fact of the matter is, someone out there knows.

Speaker 11 And what happens is, a lot of times when you have these conversations, real similar like the video thing, is someone knows something and they think, they think such worst case scenario

Speaker 11 all my like you probably thought if you said that you made that video that the next thing that was gonna happen was put your hands up on the fucking wall you're going to jail you're going to be on the news no not that level I just feel like you're making it seem like I knew more than I do and like I'm telling you right now but you did no I knew I'm saying but something happened in the past yeah the past yeah well but current day I don't like I said I don't know what to tell you right but the but we're calling the past July 20th.

Speaker 11 So it's not really like to me, that felt like a long time ago because I've been dealing with a lot of crap.

Speaker 11 You know, but like it's okay, but but it's not like we're talking like you know sure. And yeah, it seems like, yeah, it's too close.

Speaker 11 The timeline is too close for something like that for what I did and for what this happened.

Speaker 11 So that that's that's concerning to me. Okay.
You know,

Speaker 11 I totally understand.

Speaker 10 At this point, the conversation cools down, and the two detectives leave for a minute to grab some water.

Speaker 10 Michael is only alone for a short time, but as soon as the door closes, he's talking to himself.

Speaker 11 Stupid.

Speaker 11 Why am I so fucking stupid for that?

Speaker 11 Why did I do that?

Speaker 10 When the detective comes back into the room, they propose that Michael take a polygraph test. They're still very cautious with their wording, and they reassure him that he's not a suspect.

Speaker 10 They even tell him confidentially that they know he'll pass the test, reassuring him. They just need to clear him.
Get it out of the way, you know?

Speaker 10 Of course, They want to push this investigation as far as possible before he fully realizes he's in deep shit, and finally asks for a lawyer like he should have done to begin with.

Speaker 10 Kind of shocking he hasn't realized it yet, right?

Speaker 10 But like I always say, criminals are dumb. That's why they're criminals.

Speaker 11 I've got about three or four other things I want to talk to you about.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 by law, if I want to ask you those things, I have to feed you. And there's food coming.
I need to know more about your...

Speaker 11 where your room is in your house. is do you sleep in the basement or do you sleep in an upstairs bedroom

Speaker 11 okay so you have a bedroom so i have some people that were over at your house um

Speaker 11 it's just uh being thorough and um it wasn't clear what where your where your room is so searching my house i'm not i'm here i don't know that's that's why i got like computer guys walking around i don't know what they're doing

Speaker 11 um but there was some confusion as to because i think there's stuff's there and i don't want them to i don't want them to screw anything up or take something that belongs to somebody else or do whatever.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 we have some reason to believe that there's a white car involved and there's a white car at your residence grant that's not registered to you or whatever.

Speaker 11 But I think you've operated a white car before. And then when I look at it even deeper, I think, well yeah, you've operated a white car before

Speaker 11 and not all the time. As a matter of fact,

Speaker 11 not even a

Speaker 11 parents. Ask them.
Right.

Speaker 11 Not even a fraction of a percentage of the time

Speaker 11 you were in that car and you were

Speaker 11 videoing women.

Speaker 11 And this is, once again, it's weighed on paper. You're videotaping joggers.

Speaker 11 And then when we looked at the search history, there's a videotaping joggers.

Speaker 11 There's a search where you mentioned the woman's name in Mason, because it's probably on the police report and the answer was on the planet. But it was like, that was all research.

Speaker 10 How frustrating is this guy? These detectives are very, very patient. This is is insanity.

Speaker 11 Dude, I know, but you catch what I'm saying. I can't put that on the warrant.

Speaker 11 I'm just telling you, I'm just trying to spell out to you what it is, why we're doing it, because you want to know why we're at your parents' house.

Speaker 10 At this point, detectives think maybe he's got something to do with the other case, too.

Speaker 10 Back in January of the same year, a woman in Mason, Ohio, reported to police that a guy wearing a hoodie grabbed her from behind while she was jogging alone. She screamed and he let her go.

Speaker 10 Why would Michael be researching this specific case?

Speaker 11 So we got you in a white card, I got you doing the thing, and then we have the search history. And the search history, and this is where it all kind of circles back around.
It's, you know,

Speaker 11 Mason jogger, jogger, jogger attack,

Speaker 11 raping jogger, forcible rape, ambush rape, porno video. I'm not saying they're all related, but when it goes, I'm gonna get this straight.
I did not condone rape or anything. I'm not saying you do it.

Speaker 11 Paris sexual harassment or anything like that. Okay.
But it has her name, and then it's like jogger rape,

Speaker 11 ambush rape, women joggers, where do women jog in Westchester? Something else. And then a clown.
I don't think I ever searched where do women jog in Westchester.

Speaker 11 I'm sorry, that's not, that can't be a search. That is, I searched maybe like where to jog in Westchester.
Maybe jog. I maybe did search where do women jog in.

Speaker 11 Maybe you did, and I would never do that. That wouldn't be part of this.

Speaker 11 Maybe you look, maybe, maybe I read into that just seeing you.

Speaker 11 I swear that's something I know I would never Google. And that's the thing that's like when I did that research for the script it was after that because people said she was lying about being attacked

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 I didn't know if it was a rape or not so I searched if it was a rape or whatever where this all goes back around is I got I got the the videos in the in the white car and Mason of women joggers and I got the searches and and

Speaker 11 I was saying the searches are sequentially and they end up with a porn video and I didn't look at the video so I don't know what the video was of, and I don't really want to know right now.

Speaker 11 I watch a lot of, I watch a lot of types of porn. If that's the looking what I watch different, a lot of types of different porn.

Speaker 11 Like, I'm sorry, like, that's the conversation whenever I watch different types of, there's different types and genres of porn.

Speaker 10 Yeah, Michael, we already know your giant perf.

Speaker 10 The point they're trying to make is that you search for information on this local jogger attack, and then you opened up a new tab and started masturbating the porn immediately afterwards.

Speaker 10 You get it?

Speaker 11 Click on the full-body latex suit. It's for

Speaker 11 a script. It sounds like

Speaker 11 American Horse Star. Yeah.
It's like that.

Speaker 11 But it's like, yeah,

Speaker 11 it's one of the costumes I actually do in a short film. These searches, I will go don't get used against me because it's like that's

Speaker 11 well once again not to be explained yeah it's not it's all not not using against but when when the when the theme of those is the they're whether it's for research or personal whatever and they're they're sexual in nature that fits right back into the circle of there's a well that sounds like someone that would do this video that would do that and then if I want to say stock, terrorize, whatever, to send it to this person, thank God you didn't send the part where you're doing taking care of business because that would have been that would have sent her off the over-the-edge.

Speaker 11 Taking the video, going clipping it out, send it to her, asking about her what her reaction was to it, posing as somebody else while you're talking to her.

Speaker 11 And the first part of that conversation is about, hey, I heard you're being watched, so it's kind of bringing it back up, and it kind of stimulates. I was really going to stop the conversation there.

Speaker 11 That's when I was like, ah, whatever. It kind of stimulates that fear, and it's that whole thing that we have, we have this.

Speaker 11 so I had a I had a piece added to me

Speaker 11 and and I don't I don't I don't know where I don't know where it fits in what's the piece well

Speaker 11 they found her ID in your room

Speaker 11 so Micah

Speaker 11 her ID yeah

Speaker 11 her driver's license that was issued in July I would not know where that is that doesn't mean that can't be true You can't say that's true. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Yeah, we're not making none of it.

Speaker 11 They found her ID.

Speaker 11 they found a lock for hair

Speaker 11 Makes sense. It's in one of your art portfolio binders

Speaker 11 and I got a team of guys looking at stuff

Speaker 11 I know so here's where here's where I say this that's see that's that's it doesn't like it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense and I need to make sense of it.

Speaker 11 Why would she have why would I have her license on me?

Speaker 11 I can't even begin to guess why. There's a book on Ted Bundy and there's all kinds of stuff.
And then I've taken I've taken a lot of classes on it. I'm not a self-proclaimed

Speaker 11 behavioral analyst by any stretch. But I understand

Speaker 11 that people do stuff. And people do stuff for dumb reasons.

Speaker 11 And I'm a trained interviewer, and I'm a trained interrogator.

Speaker 11 So tell me what you think. Do you think I would do something like that? Do you think I'm a serial killer or a kidnapper or anything like that?

Speaker 11 I didn't start this yesterday. And there's a lot of things I hear and what I hear is you want me to explain why that driver's licensed and why that hair is in your house.

Speaker 11 You have no reason to you want me to explain why

Speaker 11 full well that

Speaker 11 I can't explain why it's there. It makes me sick.
And when you say there's only one reason.

Speaker 11 What's the one reason? Well, I mean the one reason is that someone put it there. Someone, not me, someone that accessed to the house.
It's not fucking mean. It's not yet.

Speaker 11 And like I said, I hate to say I'm always home, so I don't know how that would get. You know what I mean? Well,

Speaker 11 we got to get to the bottom of this. We've got to get to the bottom of this.

Speaker 11 You know, I don't want to get to a there's no bottom, it just keeps going. Well, the next thing you know, there's going to be like fingernails in my attic or something like that.

Speaker 11 And like, it just, like, it just doesn't sound fucking real.

Speaker 11 Well, I don't think we'll look for that, but I, you know, we're, we're, we've got to exit, and you know, we have, we have standards from her.

Speaker 11 Um,

Speaker 11 standards, maybe. Uh, so we have like known samples from her.
We have known samples of the hair.

Speaker 11 It's like putting myself on a chopping block. Like, oh, let me keep evidence of stuff around my house.
You asked me why.

Speaker 11 You asked me

Speaker 11 why keep it? And

Speaker 11 I guess

Speaker 11 if you're asking me hypothetically

Speaker 11 why would a person keep something like that,

Speaker 11 it would be a memento of what's happened. And one of the reasons I went through all that book is there's some dudes that do that.

Speaker 11 They keep driver's license, they keep an earring.

Speaker 10 Some of you think getting gaslit by your partner is a rough ride.

Speaker 10 Imagine being gaslit by a rapist murderer for 12 hours straight. Then tell me about defund the police and all that nonsense.

Speaker 11 She's been off the grid for 23, going on 24 days. I don't think, once again, I don't think it's a design good,

Speaker 11 but I don't think that's good at all. I don't think quantum lead to think that she's not alive i have never

Speaker 11 never have i ever heard of a situation where someone would have gone to such great pains to frame somebody other than

Speaker 11 tv

Speaker 11 ever or to the length of me doing something

Speaker 11 that's what i'm asking like would you ever think that i would or anybody would just out of the blue decide to be like oh i'm taking someone's license i'm taking this

Speaker 11 No,

Speaker 11 but to be fair,

Speaker 11 I would.

Speaker 11 There are people that have gone to great lengths

Speaker 11 to

Speaker 11 develop some sort of mental relationship with somebody that ends up resulting in somebody's death and they take a memento and they take a memento of it.

Speaker 11 Okay, so that's more believable.

Speaker 10 Along with her driver's license and a lock of Ellie's hair, detectives found a small pink stone. All this was inside a little tin deep inside of a crate in Michael's basement bedroom.

Speaker 10 His super secret stash where nobody will ever find it, you know?

Speaker 10 It was sandwiched between old art portfolios. Ooh, I guess the cops will never find it there, huh, Michael? What an idiot.

Speaker 10 As they looked over the case evidence, they noticed the same pink stone hanging around Ellie's neck and an old selfie. But they couldn't get him to admit to anything.

Speaker 10 Not wanting to scare him out of another interview, they took his phone for analysis, took his DNA, and told him that they talked to him again when he came to pick it up.

Speaker 10 When the next day came, a cruiser showed up to Michael's house and arrested him for stalking.

Speaker 11 Charges are being pressed against him. Okay, who said that? The black chicken cop, yeah, the cop that arrested him for building custody.
Yeah,

Speaker 11 him arrested for stalking. He doesn't have jurisdiction

Speaker 11 around anybody. Yeah, we'll

Speaker 11 sort of talk. You can pick and choose.
If there's something you don't want to talk about, you're like... Well, this is what it's

Speaker 11 changed. I've thought about a lot since we talked in the last 12 hours.

Speaker 11 And that's why it's like I spent this morning talking with my family

Speaker 11 and kissing them and showing how much I love them.

Speaker 11 And I promise emotional.

Speaker 11 Hey man, you're okay. But just think,

Speaker 11 I I want you to think about this.

Speaker 11 If we start going into something that you don't feel comfortable with, dude, I want your help. I don't want to make you upset.
No, I don't have a lot of things, but

Speaker 11 me being helped right now does not matter. It matters.
No, listen. Well, we're looking out for you, so it matters a great deal to us.
I appreciate that. And like I said, I know actors.

Speaker 11 I know when people come on and act. You seem very upset, man.
What's up? Like, my mom.

Speaker 11 I love my family.

Speaker 11 I get that.

Speaker 11 We know you do.

Speaker 10 Then Michael finally starts to open up. He explains that, get this, he makes porn movies in his free time.
And that Ellie apparently wanted to star in one of his porn films for payment.

Speaker 10 That's what he says they plan to do the night they met up.

Speaker 10 You know, the night that she thought she'd be hanging out with Nate Peters.

Speaker 11 That's why I said that night when I was texting her to come over,

Speaker 11 I did. What night are we talking about? Um,

Speaker 11 20 to 28th. 28th, 29th.
88th 29th.

Speaker 11 Saturday night, Sunday morning. I left my house.
I took my parents' car. I go and leave and get her in the car and I get in and go over there.
Okay. You just drive over to her house, Lyric? Okay.

Speaker 11 I didn't bring my phone or anything like that. I just brought my GoPro camera.
Okay.

Speaker 11 I knocked on the door.

Speaker 11 Were you going to make that video? Or were you going to like, hey, you want to make a video? I didn't even mention it to her at that point. Okay.

Speaker 11 And then I knocked on the door. She let me in.

Speaker 11 We went inside and we talked about it. I stopped.
She's like, I'm waiting for my friends to get here. I'm waiting for my friends to get here.
I'm like, okay.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I'm like, hey, you want to shoot this? You want to shoot something? I just showed her the camera. And she's like, how much? How much? I said, $1.30 and 8th a week.

Speaker 11 And she's like, give me a quarter, give me an eighth, and smoke a joint with me. And I said, I don't have a joint right now, but I'll give you a quarter.
And then she's like, okay.

Speaker 11 This is so messed up now.

Speaker 11 we and then she's like all right so we i'm like we should film it in your house and i took and we had the gopro camera and she like ran up the steps and i like the cameras chasing her up the steps pov and all that runs in her room

Speaker 11 and i jump on her bed and like i'm like i had like um

Speaker 11 handcuffs and I was like, oh my god, so you know, it's da-da-da-da. And I was like,

Speaker 11 it wasn't like playful because I was like, you know, you know, I was like yelling at her and stuff. And we were all, she was like, no, don't, don't, don't.
And there was nobody there.

Speaker 11 There was nobody home

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 so we do that and we have sex after what filming and then yeah she's like I said she's like struggling and it's like it's the you know like a strangle like all you know in the bag and all that kind of stuff

Speaker 11 do that she sits there for a little bit

Speaker 11 And she's like, and she's like crying. I'm like, are you okay? She's like, yeah, yeah, I just had a bad day.

Speaker 11 I've had a long day. And I miss my mom and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 11 Oh, she goes out of town with her boyfriend all the time and she talks about that and everything.

Speaker 11 And we've already talked about that. So she's repeating it.
And I guess she just goes on and on. And then we go outside on the porch, smoke again, and their friends are sitting in the car.

Speaker 11 They get out of the car. I'm like, come on.
They're like parked right three houses down from me. And they get everything.
She goes with them. And that's the last.
last freaking time I saw her.

Speaker 10 Even just as it felt like they'd get a confession from them, it was just another dead end again.

Speaker 10 Michael claimed that when the police first came to his house to ask about Ellie, he had destroyed the SD card holding their quote-unquote consensual sex tape, complete with handcuffs, strangling, and oh yeah, a bag over Ellie's head, according to Michael himself.

Speaker 11 All right, there's like a side side position, and we have sex on the side or whatever, and that's why I might hand around her throat.

Speaker 11 And so that's, and then like, that's when I cut them and yeah and it pretty much ends after that. Okay.
And she acts like she just she like falls asleep and I think she was falling asleep. Okay.
Oh,

Speaker 11 so is this is this like snuff torture porn? Kind of yeah. Okay, so did it end with you choking her? Okay, yeah.
And then that's

Speaker 11 like

Speaker 11 she's dead and that sentence at the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay. And like, that's what we always do.

Speaker 11 And I just like, or like, yeah, cover her head up and poke holes where her nose is and act like she's not alive anymore. It's really fucked up.
Okay, so I'm just trying to get. So

Speaker 11 do you put a bag overhead again towards the end?

Speaker 11 Oh, okay. She seconds she dies from being choked.

Speaker 10 He gets so close to telling the truth, but then it's almost like he's incapable. Like he's unable to see himself as what he really is.

Speaker 10 I wonder if that's contagious.

Speaker 10 He describes this snuff torture porn video that he planned to sell and the details of what he admits he did to Ellie, add to the case another dark coincidence, he says.

Speaker 10 After hours upon hours of painstaking interrogation, even without a full confession, Michael had revealed enough cracks in his story for detectives to piece together a detailed picture.

Speaker 10 August 24th, 2018, was the date of Michael's last BCI interrogation. And on the same day, Ellie's body was located in a ditch near the corner of a farming field.

Speaker 10 She was found within a quarter of a mile of Michael's house. Her shallow grave was concealed by shrubbery, with a barbed wire fence dividing it from the rest of the field.

Speaker 10 A square shovel was discovered nearby. Ellie's remains, mostly

Speaker 10 skeletonized, told a story that was heartbreaking and horrifying. Wrapped in a bed sheet and a purple blanket, her arms and legs were bound with duct tape, and a bag had been tied over her head.

Speaker 10 A cord was also entangled with her body. The coroner determined her cause of death to be asphyxiation.
So it's possible this was the murder weapon.

Speaker 10 Though Michael hadn't spelled it out, he'd said enough.

Speaker 10 Enough to lead detectives to Ellie and charge him with her murder.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, as law enforcement swarmed the field, gathering evidence and preparing for the removal of Ellie's body, a bright rainbow stretched across the sky above the crime scene. Everyone noticed it.

Speaker 10 People cried and took photos.

Speaker 10 29-year-old Michael Strauss eventually pleaded guilty to all his crimes.

Speaker 10 His sensing brought to light the horrific reality of her final moments, something that her family had not understood up until that point.

Speaker 10 During his sentencing, Strauss appeared in court with two black eyes, the work of his fellow inmates. The judge handed down a maximum sentence, 15 years to life for murder.

Speaker 10 plus an additional two and a half years for stalking and abuse of a corpse, with no possibility of parole for at least 17 and a half years.

Speaker 10 Strauss will spend the better part of his life behind bars. On the day Ellie's family laid her to rest, something remarkable happened.

Speaker 10 As mourners gathered at the church to say their final goodbyes, a bright neon rainbow stretched across the sky. It was just like the one that appeared the day her body was found.

Speaker 10 For Ellie's family and friends, these rainbows became a symbol of light, piercing through unimaginable darkness.

Speaker 10 Her mother described them as a sign, a reminder of Ellie's enduring presence, even in her absence. Ellie's story is one of loss, but

Speaker 10 also of resilience. In her journals, she wrote about her struggles, her fears, her dreams.
Though her life was cut tragically short, her words remain a testament to her spirit. Don't ignore your gut

Speaker 10 or red flags, she wrote.

Speaker 10 You can sense evil. Stay in tune with your senses.
It's a lesson for all of us to trust our instincts, to protect one another,

Speaker 10 and to remember, even in the shadows of the darkest storm, you may find

Speaker 10 a rainbow.

Speaker 10 Well, that's AI Mike signing off. Can you believe some idiots online think this is AI? They think I'm AI?

Speaker 10 Like,

Speaker 10 how fucking dumb do you have to be? AI would never be allowed to say all the shit I say.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 there's no shortage of stupid in the world, so there's that. Speaking of stupid, go check out our stupid merch at store.sorandscale.com.
And if you haven't signed up for Plus,

Speaker 10 well, it's how we pay for all this stuff.

Speaker 10 So if you like this stuff being around in the universe, then, you know, throw in a couple bucks and help support it. Otherwise, it may not be here tomorrow.

Speaker 10 We could make money like every other podcast, but we don't want to push shitty products on you via advertising that you probably shouldn't be buying anyway.

Speaker 10 So we have to do some filtering around here and that, you know, lowers our revenue and that makes it hard for us to pay our employees and our bills.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 This is an extra long guilt trip to tell you that if you've been enjoying Sword and Scale for the last X number of years for free, maybe throw in 10 bucks this month.

Speaker 11 You know?

Speaker 10 It's not a lot to ask. 10 bucks is not a lot to ask for years of entertainment.

Speaker 10 And then you can listen to all the back catalog and cancel at the end of the month like you always do anyway.

Speaker 10 All right. I guess that's my sales pitch.
I'm not really good at sales. I'm more a podcast guy.

Speaker 10 I'm moderately good at that.

Speaker 10 So,

Speaker 10 I guess I'm rambling at this point. So, if you want to support us, head on over to sortandscale.com, join Plus.
See you next week.

Speaker 11 Stay safe.

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