Best of the Program | Guest: Marion Smith | 10/31/19

Well, welcome to Halloween.

Blah, blah, blah.

Yes, the bloodsuckers are back, and they're all in Congress voting for impeachment.

Today's podcast covers that and so much more for Halloween.

Here it is.

You're listening to

the best of the Blend Beck program.

Just reading some of the tweets and email came in after the special last night ugh nice job Glenn always sowing more division and hate I can hardly stand to be around some old people anymore because they don't believe in science economics basic decency due to your garbage

Or this one this is vile Glenn attacking a private citizen to hold water for criminals your logic is broken in general.

You're so bad for America.

You spread so much disinformation as any bad actor.

The media is responsible for Trump trying to bribe Ukraine.

Really, Glenn?

The problem is, you can't defend what Trump did.

And when you can't defend, you deflect with whatabout-isms and conspiracy theories.

So it seems to have gotten through.

It seems to have gotten through the message.

And that's the problem.

And I want to talk to you about something else.

We have Marion Smith on, the executive director of Victims of Communism.

They have just put out their fourth annual report on U.S.

attitudes towards socialism.

And I want to go through some of these things because there is no way that America survives if we don't turn the tide on this.

Marion, welcome to the program.

How are you?

I'm great.

Thanks for having me on.

So I'm looking through, and I saw some of these reported, but looking through the real key takeaways from your study, capitalism still favored

more favorably than any other economic system.

It's steady at 61%

from last year.

However, the favorability of capitalism is lower amongst Generation Z and millennials, around 50%.

Communism is viewed favorably by

more than one in three millennials, up eight points.

15% of millennials think the world would be better off if the Soviet Union still existed.

72% of Americans incorrectly say that communism has killed less than 100 million people in the past 100 years.

A majority of Americans age 35 and under trust themselves more than the community or the government.

That doesn't make sense with the rest, does it, Marion?

Well, it would seem that the basic instinct that you would trust yourself, obviously, to look after your interest as opposed to the government.

It sounds like that's a pretty sound statistic there.

But you're right, it doesn't quite jive with the other findings of this poll.

The one in three millennials having a favorable attitudes towards communism, that's a real jump from last year and, of course, very concerning.

But I think

very concerning as well.

When asked

about voting, 70% of millennials said that they would be likely or extremely likely to vote for a socialist.

And the number of extremely likelies

doubled from last year.

And

the other finding I think is significant to help explain all this is that 66% of Americans cannot accurately define Marxism, socialism, or communism.

And so they don't think of it as the public ownership of the means of production.

They don't think of it as the collectivist system that it actually is intellectually and historically.

Instead, they've been led to believe, like individuals such as Bernie Sanders,

various academics that have presented socialism as more or less the kind of high-tech welfare states of Scandinavia.

Whereas you know as well as I do, those are not socialist systems.

Those are market economies, democracies that

for many years tried to deliver a high-tax welfare state.

And in recent years, have actually pulled back on that and implemented more free enterprise policies.

So I think it's false advertising in America's political discourse, at least since 2016.

Okay, so tell me this, though.

Now, that kind of explains socialism because

it's become popular and people think that it's Sweden.

But how do you explain up eight points points from 2018?

36% of millennials say communism is good.

Right, it's concerning.

And,

you know, Glenn, we're seeing groups around the country organized

and funded and active at the local level

calling themselves Marxist.

Some of them saying they subscribe to Maoist ideology.

Oh my gosh.

There's a group called the Workers' Education Society that became very active in St.

Louis a few years ago and successfully got some of their members elected to senior posts locally and in some of the top posts of the Democratic Party there.

And we had, you know, patriotic Americans, Democrats, in St.

Louis, which is overwhelmingly a Democratic town, and they contacted us, alarmed at this development.

And in response, we we went down on fact-finding missions.

And

this month, we actually opened a local victims of communism commission there in St.

Louis to combat some of these efforts.

We have billboards up in the city.

We've organized various events for the local community.

And so, you know, I have to say that what's reflected in this poll in terms of the normalizing of very violent ideologies such as communism in this case, that's reflected on the streets of American cities.

So help me out with this, Marion.

I know that you guys,

you do studies like this.

You're constantly watching for communism and these and socialism and these kinds of movements that spring up and kill hundreds of millions of people.

And I know that you keep the records.

You are...

making sure that the voices of those who actually witnessed these things are recorded and kept.

But when you say somebody called your office, I didn't know.

What do you offer?

What else do you do

in communities?

Excuse my ignorance.

No, sure.

So, you know, we are trying to be true to our mission, which is to educate Americans about the ideology, the history, and the legacy of communism.

And our congressional mandate from 1993.

Even though we're a nonprofit, we do have that congressional mandate, you know, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It was a bipartisan issue that we should learn the lessons of the Cold War.

So that passed unanimously in Congress in 93.

But it's also to memorialize the victims.

But, you know, we couldn't take our mission seriously if we weren't active in trying to make sure that there are no more victims of communism.

Domestically, that means alerting the American public so that they understand what's happened in Venezuela recently.

And these failed ideologies of the last century, you know, have no place in American politics but it also means supporting giving a voice platform to dissidents in Venezuela in Cuba and Korea China so we're active on the Hong Kong

protest pro-democracy protests we're supporting Venezuelan dissidents

so we we we try to do everything we can to to make sure that this century doesn't

you know come to be defined by this struggle between communist imperialism and the free world that defines so much of the last century.

Aaron Powell, you know, Marion, when I saw the NFL and what they did in China, and I think this is going to happen with Google and Facebook, I think they're going to

be looked upon like IBM was

with the Nazis as collaborators.

Yeah, not NFL, NBA, and Nike.

do you think that we made progress at all there?

Were you optimistic at all when that happened with the NBA that people were standing up, at least some, and saying, hey, hey, hey, wait, that's not cool?

Absolutely.

I mean, Daryl Maury's tweet, I don't think he meant it this way, but it really was the tweet heard around the world.

And it,

you know,

sparked a series of events that made it clear to Americans who I don't think were paying attention

on this particular subject.

And

it seems that millions of Americans had the right response, which is absolutely not.

The Chinese Communist Party is not going to hijack the game of basketball and be a conduit to shut down Americans' free speech in the United States.

But

Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, and the leadership of the NBA, their immediate response was to come down on Daryl Morris like a ton of bricks.

And he deleted the tweet.

And,

you know, you had others like Steph Curry and Coach Kerr and others coming out and essentially parroting a propaganda line from Beijing.

And

as you are the keeper of history, or one of the keepers of history, you've seen this before, have you not?

I mean, doesn't this.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

This is what we would call useful idiots.

You have useful idiots, paid agents,

and

other sort of

roles within the free world

that helped, aided and abetted the Soviet Union

during the Cold War.

And that I think is surprising a lot of Americans now who are realizing just how many tentacles the Chinese Communist Party has in American society, media, sports, business, and politics.

And it is going to have to fall to the American people to rise up and say that we didn't establish and defend this free enterprise system, this republic,

with much blood and treasure so that our corrupt business elite could go and make deals with officials from the Chinese Communist Party and sell out American workers and the Chinese people.

You can follow Marion at VO Communism.

VO Communism, it's victimsofcommunism.org.

Marion, thank you so much for the information and all of the hard work.

And thank you for passing on that it was Democrats that actually called you guys into action in St.

Louis and said, you got to help us here because it's getting scary.

That's right.

It's good news.

You bet.

Marion Smith.

the best of the Glen Beck program.

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First responders in Ohio

got an early Halloween scare last night.

A girl 20

totals her car on the way home, totals her car.

As they are pulling up to the scene, the bloodied woman emerged from her car looking mangled and pale,

blood dripping all over her prom dress.

Police panicked.

She later said, waiting for my parents to come pick me up from the scene.

Two more policemen showed up.

By this time, I was out of the vehicle and making conversation with people.

The new officer says, I hate to interrupt, but

does anybody else here think she needs medical assistance?

She was driving home from a haunted house event when she came dressed to promote her new role in an upcoming theatrical adaptation of the 1976 film Carrie.

The,

you know, the end, she's drenched in pig blood.

Her vehicle had struck a deer and was totaled.

The very first responder was a gentleman that pulled over, just being a good Samaritan.

She said, I could tell that he was horrified,

but I forgot what I was wearing.

Next came the the police officers who were like, oh man, and kept asking over and over again if I needed medical assistance.

The second round of cops that came in,

you know, weren't in on the makeup.

And they said, are we just going to ignore that blood is dripping from all over and she needs medical assistance?

She walked away with a crash with just a bruise on her leg.

Scary stories.

What about the blood dripping down her hair and all that?

Right.

Yeah.

She was, I mean, that's serious, serious injuries.

Scary.

A protest are planned outside a branch of the Toronto Public Library to coincide with the appearance of writer Megan Murphy.

Megan Murphy is a big feminist.

She talks a lot about women's safety, and she's worried about the safety of women in places like female prisons and changing rooms because she doesn't want trans women in those rooms with her.

Oh, boy.

She kind of feels, kind of feels like you shouldn't have men in these women's places.

And

she's being boycotted, and she's being shut out because, yes, she's a hater.

She's a bigot.

She's anti-trans and she hates people.

Well, she's definitely not welcome at the Hennepin County Library in Hennepin County, Minnesota.

The performer there,

Sasha Sosha,

appeared to accidentally flash the crotch at the audience of children.

Or maybe not so accidentally.

Well, maybe not.

She is the Gemini Valentine,

and she takes the floor wearing a revealing leotard.

She usually wears this at strip clubs.

And

she decided to read to the kids, and the kids didn't like to see what was under her mini skirt.

You know, it's fun is we don't kind of care about the safety of women anymore, and we don't care about the safety of children anymore.

These are four and five-year-old kids

that they're being read to.

They're going to see it one day.

Got to learn about it.

They got to learn about it.

Yep.

New Hampshire family's Halloween display did not amuse the people in charge of the cemetery.

Rob and Christina Wohl lost their 18-year-old son Cole three years ago.

They wanted to honor his dark sense of humor with a display on his grave.

We were just trying to do something to honor our son's sense of humor.

Cole had a fatal heart attack shortly after a rodeo event.

His family described him as a big kid with even a bigger sense of humor.

He's not here with us anymore, but his humor was big and it lives beyond the grave.

We thought it could brighten people's lives.

Just kind of walk by and have them see it and chuckle.

Cole would have loved that.

What the parents did was

right there in front of his headstone, they dug up a little bit of the dirt and had a skeleton appear to rise out of the ground in front of his headstone.

Arms and legs and skull with a cowboy hat on top.

The cemetery, quote, was not amused.

They

removed the display at once, but not once.

They removed it at once, but not just once.

They removed it

three times.

The parents finally said, okay, we won't set it up again.

Or will we?

A woman named Rachel, mourning her ex-boyfriend, who had been brutally murdered by a biker gang.

His mother told her about it.

She didn't ask any questions.

She says,

you know,

I couldn't reason to question it.

I had no reason to question it.

But two years later, Rachel was sitting in a local restaurant with a friend when she remembered that her boyfriend, Alistair's brother, worked there and asked for a waiter to tell him to stop by the table.

She went, I haven't seen him in ages, and I'd like to say hi.

Restaurant employee told her he wasn't in that day, but informed her his brother, his only brother, was.

Her ex-boy, her murdered boyfriend showed up at her table to say hi to her.

She was a tad surprised.

Wait, wait, she had not, he had not been murdered.

He was undead.

He was undead.

Yes.

Wow.

He was not dead.

It's a miracle.

She says, I went into shock.

Next thing I know, the manager's over to ask if there's a problem, and there was.

My boyfriend, who was murdered, is alive.

He is working as a waiter in your restaurant.

Something too weird here.

So did he just not have the guts to break up with her?

Well, it was not like anyone cheated or anything.

She said that he owed her 300 bucks and he apparently didn't want to pay it.

So

he faked his death.

Okay.

All right.

That is always a way to go.

That's a way to go.

Yeah, sure.

Here's another way.

Woman living in a van in San Diego with her pet rats has agreed to give them up.

The San Diego Union Tribune says the San Diego Humane Society went to the woman's van near Del Mar on October 8th.

Authorities found her with her rats, and they had clawed into upholstery, burrowed into the seats, and gnawed at the engine wiring.

The captain, believe it or not, named Captain Cook.

Aye, I've seen some rats in me day.

Say the woman isn't hoarding the animals.

She started out with just two pet rats.

But rats can give birth every four weeks and produce a dozen in a litter.

She did acknowledge to the captain, Captain Cookades, that things had gone out of control.

Authorities have collected 320 rats that she was

living with.

And the good news is, and I'm not making this up, only in California, more than than a hundred are currently ready for adoption

what the hell is wrong with people it's unbelievable ready for adoption unbelievable i adopted a rat i didn't buy some designer rat i got it from i got it from the pound

uh this is a a little bit frightening the number of young americans watching online videos every day has more than doubled in just four years.

Glued to them for nearly an hour every day, twice as long as they were glued to them four years ago.

And often they're seeing the videos on services like YouTube that are supposedly off-limits to children younger than 13, and they're watching pretty much whatever they want to.

But the good thing is, a lot of these videos are just kids unwrapping toys and playing with them.

And so

they're just wasting time.

A procedure

that has been touted as the future of medicine has left a patient dead.

Now, doctors are

being more open.

They're bringing transparency to the still new technology.

Doctors, books, and blogs have been publicizing

fecal transplants.

It's like a

poop transplant?

It's a procedure where stool from a donor is transplanted into the intestinal tract of a recipient in order to restore healthy bacteria to the gut.

Now,

that's interesting.

You know,

how do you become a poop donor?

You know, at least in this one, you don't need a magazine.

You just go in and just leave your specimen.

In June, the FBA, FDA, announced that two people who had fecal transplants from the same donor got sick with E.

coli.

That damn Jack from Jack in the Box.

One of them died.

But few details were shared about the scary incident.

Now, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, where the incidents took place, not the incidents.

the fecal transplants, want to give their side of the story, hopefully dispel some of the fear hanging over current clinical trials of the procedure.

I'm not going to give you any more details on the

transplant of the fecal matter.

I just want to know

how much can I make on fecal matter.

You know, if I'm a donor, do I get money for it?

Because

that truly is shooting money out of your ass.

I just

want to say.

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The clock strikes 12.

Puts a chill in the air.

The office is empty, deserted, and bare.

You stayed far too late.

Going home is too much, for the streets are now crawling with zombies and such.

You see them all moaning and scratching and biting just outside your office in the parking lot lighting.

And a voice in your head says, you'll make it.

Just go.

And you say to that voice very loudly, Hell no.

So now you must sleep in your office desk chair, with hopes that by morning no ghouls will be there.

With its dynamic variable lumbar support, it's surprisingly comfy behind the desk fort.

And you sink into sweet dreams of work productivity, and drool at the thought, as is your proclivity.

Then you wake in the morning, the sun is bright, no despair, because you've slept the night in your cozy x chair

x chair is on sale now for a hundred dollars off just go to xchairbeck.com that's xchair beck.com or call 1-800-4xchair go to xchairbeck right now use the promo code beck you're going to get a free set of the new x-wheels with your chair xchairbeck.com

it was a crime of contempt

One young man's logic misguided through the onslaught of insanity.

His name remains unspoken, but his crime is unforgettable.

This is his story.

True.

Nervous.

Very, very dreadfully nervous, I admit, and am.

Why would you say that I'm mad?

The disease sharpened my senses, not destroyed me.

Not bull,

the sense of hearing was acute.

I heard all things in heaven and in hell.

Oh, I heard many things in hell.

How then, am I mad?

Hearken and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.

It's impossible to say how the first idea entered my brain, but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

Object, there was none.

Passion, there was none.

I loved the old man.

He had never wronged me.

He had never given me insult.

For his gold, I had no desire.

I think it was his eye.

Yes.

It was this.

He had an eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye with film over it.

Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold, and so, by degrees, very gradually,

I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Now, this is the point.

You fancy me mad.

Madmen know nothing.

But you should have seen me.

You should have seen how wisely I proceeded.

With what caution, with what foresight, with what dissimulation I went to work.

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it oh so gently.

And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a lantern dark, all closed, closed, so no light shone out.

And then I thrust in my head.

Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in.

I moved it in slowly, very, very slowly, so I may not disturb the old man's sleep.

Oh, it took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening, so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.

Ha!

Would a madman have done something as wise as this?

And then, when my head was well within the room, I undid the lantern cautiously, oh, so cautiously, cautiously, for the hinges creaked.

I did it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.

And this

I did for seven long nights every night just at midnight

but I found the eye always closed so it was impossible to do the work or it was not the old man who vexed me but his evil eye

And every morning when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone and inquiring how he had passed the night.

So you see, he would have been a very profound old man indeed to suspect that every night, just at 12,

I looked in on him while he slept.

Upon the eighth night, I was more than usually cautious in opening the door.

A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine.

Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers, of my sagacity.

I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph to think that I was there opening the door little by little and he not even dream of my secret deeds or thoughts.

I fairly chuckled at the idea and perhaps he heard me, for he moved on the bed suddenly as if startled.

Now, you may think that I drew back, but no.

His room was black as pitch with thick darkness, for the shutters were closed and fastened through the fear of robbers.

And so I knew he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on.

Steadily.

Steadily.

I had my head in.

I was about to open the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out, Who's there?

I kept quiet.

Still, I said nothing.

For a whole hour, I did not move a muscle.

And in the meantime, I did not hear him lie down.

He was still sitting up in bed, listening, just as I had done night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently,

I heard a slight groan,

and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror.

It was not a groan of pain or of grief.

Oh no, it was the low, stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.

I knew the sound well.

Many a night, Just at midnight when all the world slept, it had welled up from my own bosom, deepening with a dreadful echo.

The terrors that distracted me.

Oh, I say I knew it well.

I knew what the old man felt and pitied him.

Although I chuckled at heart, I knew that he had been laying awake ever since the first slight noise when he turned in the bed.

His fears had been ever since growing upon him.

He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not.

He had been saying to himself, it's nothing but the wind in the chimney.

It's only a mouse crossing the floor.

Or, it's merely a cricket who's made a single chirp.

Oh yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions, but he found them all in vain.

All in vain.

Because death, in approaching him, had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim.

And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel,

although he never saw nor heard, to feel

the presence of my hand within the room.

When I had waited a very long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little, a very, very little crevice in the lantern.

so i opened it oh you cannot imagine how stealthily stealthily until at length a single dim ray like the thread of a spider shot from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye

it was open

It was wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it.

I saw it with perfect distinctness, a dull blue with a hideous veil over that chilled my very marrow in my bones.

But I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but an over-acuteness of the sense?

Now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound.

Such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.

I knew that sound.

I knew that sound well, too.

It was the beating of the old man's heart.

It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates a soldier into courage.

But even yet, I refrained.

I kept still.

I scarcely breathed.

I held the lantern motionless.

I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye.

Meantime, the hellish tattoo of the heart increased.

It grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder every instant.

The old man's terror must have been extreme.

It grew louder.

I say louder every moment.

Do you mark me well?

I told you that I was nervous, and so I am.

And now.

At the dead hour of night,

amid the dreadful silence of that old house,

so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror.

Yet, for some minutes longer, I refrained and stood still.

But the beating grew louder and louder.

I thought his heart must burst, and then a new anxiety seized me.

The sound.

The sound would be heard by a neighbor.

The old man's hour had come.

With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room.

He shrieked once.

Only once.

In an instant, I dragged him to the floor and pulled the heavy bed over him.

Then I smiled gaily to find a deed so far done.

But for many minutes, his heart beat on with a muffled sound.

This, however, didn't vex me, it would not be heard through the wall.

At length, it ceased.

The old man

was dead.

I removed the bed and examined the corpse.

Yes.

He was stone.

Stone dead.

I placed my hands upon the heart.

I felt it for many minutes.

There was no pulsation.

He was stone dead.

His eye.

would trouble me

no more

If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.

The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence.

First of all, I dismembered the corpse.

I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.

Then I took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber and deposited all between the scantlings.

Then I replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye, not even his, could have detected anything wrong.

There was nothing to wash out, no stain of any kind, no blood spot whatever.

I had been too wary for that.

A tub had caught it all.

When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock, still dark as midnight.

As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door.

I went down to open it with a light heart, for what now do I have to fear?

There entered three men who introduced themselves with perfect suavity as officers of the police.

A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night.

Suspicion of foul play had been aroused.

Information had been lodged at the police office, and they, the officers, had been deputed to search the premises.

I bade the gentleman welcome.

The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream.

The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country.

I took my visitors all over the house.

I bade them search.

Search well.

I led them at length to his chamber.

I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed.

In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room and desired them here to rest from your fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied.

My manner convinced them.

I was simply at ease.

They sat, while I answered cheerily.

They chatted of familiar things.

But

ere long,

I felt myself getting paled and wished them gone.

I headached and I fancied a ringing in my ears, but they sat and still chatted.

The ringing became more distinct.

I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling, but it continued and gained definitiveness until at length I found that the noise was not within my ears.

Now,

no doubt I grew very pale, but I talked more frequently and with a heightened voice.

Yet the sound increased.

What could I do?

It was a low, dull, quick sound.

Much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.

I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not.

I talked more quickly, more vehemently, but the noise steadily increased.

I arose and argued about trifles, a high key, with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased.

Oh, why would they not be gone?

I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men.

But the noise steadily increased.

Oh, God, what could I do?

I foamed.

I raved.

I swore.

I swung the chair in which I had been sitting and grated it across the boards.

But the noise arose overall and continually increased.

It grew louder and louder and louder.

And still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled.

Was it possible they heard not?

Almighty God, no.

No, they heard.

They suspected.

They knew.

They were making a mockery of my horror.

This I thought, and this I think, but anything was better than this agony.

Anything was more tolerable than this derision.

I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer.

I felt that I must scream or die, and now again, hark, hark, louder and louder and louder.

Villains, I shrieked.

Dissemble no more.

I admit the deed.

Tear up the planks.

Hear,

Here is the beating of his hideous heart.

Happy Halloween to my daughter Mary.

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Timothy and his sister Elizabeth anxiously waited for their dad to get home from work.

It was Halloween.

It was October 31st.

They were so excited to go trick-or-treating.

As soon as they heard the doorknob turn, they rushed him at the door as he walked through, still clad in his white optician's coat.

Ronald rounded up his young children and he went out, trick-or-treating.

Remembering the times when he was trick-or-treating, now wondering, how did I get so old as I'm walking my kids down the street?

He accompanied his children to their friend's first stop of the night.

4112 Done Rail Drive.

He rang the doorbell.

Nothing.

The owners were taking much too long to answer the door.

Children impatiently ran to the next house, leaving their dad in the dust.

When Ronald finally caught up with the kids, he was sporting five giant pixie sticks.

The children all greedily grabbed the neon sticks of sugar, but Ronald promised he would distribute the candy among the children when they got back to the house.

After all, he was the one that waited.

It was really late when they got home.

He got the kids ready for bed, but before he fell asleep, Timothy requested a treat from his delicious haul.

He chose the crown jewel, a 22-inch giant pixie stick.

The sugar had stiffened some in the tube, so Ronald helpfully rolled the candy between his hands to loosen the contents for Timothy.

The child hurriedly poured the confection into his mouth.

Timothy recoiled.

It didn't taste dad like it's supposed to.

In fact, it tasted awful.

Dad jumped up.

Ronald dutifully ran to get some Kool-Aid for his son to wash out the bad taste.

But the Kool-Aid didn't make it very far.

Timothy immediately started vomiting and convulsing.

When the ambulance finally arrived, they found Ronald holding Timothy as he foamed from the mouth.

Less than an hour later, Timothy was pronounced dead at the hospital.

An autopsy revealed the eight-year-old had died from a fatal dose of cyanide.

The two top inches of the giant pixie stick, Timothy prized so much, contained a dosage of cyanide that was enough to kill two adults.

Thankfully, the other poisoned pixie sticks remained untouched.

Ronald sobbed as he hypothesized at what an unidentified monster was handing out to children.

He told the police officers he vaguely remembered getting the candy from 4112 Done Rail Drive.

He didn't get a look at the owner.

He only saw a shadowy arm.

When police arrived at 4112,

they questioned the Melvins.

But they were confounded when they learned Mr.

Melvin didn't return home from work until 10.30 that night of Halloween, and Mrs.

Melvin stopped answering the door when she ran out of candy at 6.45.

That's before Ronald said he was there.

Not to mention that none of the candy that Mrs.

Melvin gave out that night were pixie sticks.

Police interrogated the entire neighborhood and still couldn't find the source of the deadly candy.

The dad.

Who had watched his children rush to his legs to say, please, dad, let's go.

It's Halloween, was beside himself.

Already having a terrible year, and his son's death appeared to push him over the edge with grief.

He was $100,000 in debt, eight months behind in car payments, was being threatened with repossession.

He held 21 jobs in the last 10 years, and he was struggling hard to keep his latest optician gig.

He further strained the family financing by taking out a $10,000 life insurance policy on his children earlier in the year, to which his wife protested as an unnecessary expense.

She probably would have objected to the additional two $20,000 life insurance policies that Ronald took out on Timothy and Elizabeth on October 3rd if she had known about them.

Mrs.

O'Brien would have also been horrified to find out that mere hours after Timothy's murder, her husband called to collect on the policies.

Ronald was a man who had never had a parking ticket in his life.

By all accounts, he was a dedicated father and a devout member of the Second Baptist Church.

But it only took a jury 46 minutes to find Ronald guilty of capital murder and four counts of attempted murder.

Ronald didn't just kill his own son.

He is the man responsible for killing Halloween for generations of children yet to be born.

He's the reason we had to go to the hospital to have them x-ray everything.

He's the reason we could no longer have popcorn balls or candied apples.

Ronald Clark O'Brien,

also known as the candyman by his fellow death row inmates, successfully perpetuated the decades-old myth that some despicable people violate Snickers and Milky Way bars with the intent on mercilessly killing innocent children.

The truth is, and you should know it, this Halloween, police have never documented an actual case of anyone randomly distributing poison goodies to children on Halloween.

There is no madman giving out apples with razors, no arsenic-laced twicks.

But in 1974, there was one monster who deliberately put cyanide in a pixie stick.

His victim wasn't at random.

His victim was his own child.

So,

this Halloween.

Let your kids eat their candy.

Don't scare them with a legend that just isn't true.

But I also wouldn't tell them about Timothy either.

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