Missing Interviews True Crime Garage /// Part 2

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Welcome to Off the Record.

I'm your host, Nick.

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Off the record.

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True Crime Podcast.

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Let's talk some true crime.

Welcome back to Missing.

I am Tim here today with Lance.

Lance, how are you today?

I am doing fantastic today, Tim.

I hope the listeners out there are doing fantastic as well.

And Tim, I hope you're doing fantastic.

I know the two guys that we have on this part two episode.

I know they started off a little apprehensive because Captain was nervous to talk to you because he was afraid that you were still mad at him.

But Tim, are you still mad?

I am not.

And I have not been holding any kind of grudge against Captain.

But so, yes, this is part two of our two-part conversation with Captain and Nick of True Crime Garage.

First half, we talked a little bit about Maura Murray's disappearance from North Haverhill, New Hampshire in February of 2004.

And in this conversation, we speak a little bit about the disappearance of Brian Schaefer from Columbus, Ohio, and he went missing in April of 2006.

And this is an extension of the conversation that we had with Captain and Nick when we visited them in the garage, in the proverbial garage.

It was more like a kitchen table and then a studio, but the overall arching concept is the true crime garage.

So it was refreshing to hear their thoughts on Brian's disappearance today and how these details have come up in the meantime and how they've had to adjust and go along with the realities of what comes with a missing person.

You know what I mean?

Because in the beginning, you're talking about a missing person and they start to appear one way in your head and you don't realize, hey, maybe they had these circumstances going on in their family or their friends or their romantic life or something like that.

So revisiting this conversation a few years later after visiting with them in person was, again, very refreshing and very revealing.

Okay, so we hope you enjoy part two of our conversation with True Crime Garage.

Make sure to check out what they're up to at truecrimegarage.com and follow us on social media at missing CSM.

We're going to take a quick break here for commercial, and we're going to be right back with Captain and Nick.

We have a timeline of the case,

but

the most important timeline of Brian's is from like, let's say, 12 to 2

on the night he goes missing.

And then you have the pre-timeline, and then you have the post-timeline of when he goes missing, but you don't even know if those matter or not.

You know, you find out that maybe he had a homosexual relationship with one of his friends.

You find out that

you know, that he had more conflict with his dad than his dad was leading on to believe you.

You find out that the dad had no alibi.

You found out, you find out that police actually took cadaver dogs to Brian's dad's house.

And you go, does that mean something?

Does it mean nothing?

Is it, you know, it makes for a better story, but

or did Brian at two o'clock just run into the wrong person?

And that has nothing.

Now, the pre-timeline and the post-timeline mean nothing to the case, but we obviously don't know that because we don't have any answers.

Yeah, I think sometimes, and this is speaking for me and Lance's journey real quick.

I think sometimes when we cover the culture of a case as well as the case itself, sometimes it blends a little bit in, I guess, an incorrect way to where you think, like, well, this person has a theory for you almost make assumptions on why people are pushing narratives.

And, you know, a lot of times

there's no reason.

That's just what they believe.

But I do want to get into Brian Schaefer a little bit more.

Can you tell us a little bit more about this case?

I know Lance and I appeared

in the garage a few years ago to speak about this case.

And it was a very memorable experience for us.

So there's a handful of cases that if somebody reaches out to me, I will talk to them anytime because I know enough about the case that I don't have to

take down notes before I call the person, you know.

So, in Brian's case, being one of those.

But, so recently, I was reached out to

this lady.

I won't name her because I never asked her if that was okay.

But she got

10 hours of footage of the night Brian goes missing.

And so she's been setting up up a basically

dissecting the video footage and in a very fascinating way.

This is when Brian showed up.

This is when other individuals showed up.

This is when other individuals left.

But before she actually got this footage, she had two pictures that she believed were of Brian walking down the steps.

And the last picture, he would have been, I don't know, five feet from the front door.

So to me, that would have definitively proved that Brian left through the front door.

But again, it's all narrative.

So when we first talked to the lead detective, Hearst,

he made it seem like there was a team of detectives that went through this surveillance footage and that they were able to account for every individual on the footage.

You then find out, well,

it was one detective that did that.

So again, I'm not questioning, you know, I'm not questioning

his integrity or how hard he worked on it.

But if you tell me 10 people examined it and then we figured this out,

that holds more weight than, well, one individual when he was not on the clock.

You know what I mean?

Like, in his free time, this guy was going over the surveillance footage.

So, I think there's more information that we can learn.

And

so, this individual that we thought could be Brian with further examination, we don't believe it's Brian.

We think we know who it is in the video.

We don't have that individual identified.

But because of just that work,

this individual was able to get 10 hours of surveillance, but it's only one angle.

So I do believe if we can gather more information and gather more things of this video footage that are fascinating,

that maybe law enforcement will give us another angle of the surveillance that night.

And you know that there is another angle?

Well, that's a good question, Lance,

and a fair question at that.

You know, I worked high-rise security for several years, and we, at that facility, we had

30 cameras that were running at all times.

Now, which ones we were recording on

were actually 16 cameras.

So while you could monitor as many as 30, we were only recording on 16 at one time.

Now,

some of those recordings would be scrolling through a series of cameras.

So it gets, I mean, every system is different.

Every system is unique,

but the captain's hitting on something that's very important to any case, not just the Schaefer case, but to any case.

It's the story,

as he says, is a man walks into a bar, he's seen going in, he's never seen ever again.

Well, he's never seen leaving that bar by

whomever viewed that surveillance footage.

It doesn't mean that he's never seen again or never actually left

was killed before

he was removed from the building.

It just means whoever viewed that says that Brian Schaefer went in this way and he's not seen ever leaving in the same manner that he entered the bar.

Yeah, and we're just, and like I said, just

every

time I talk to an individual, when you talk to the detective, and I don't know, it was three years I had this rumor that Brian had a a gay relationship

well that is not a normal

thing for a college kid right like out of all my friends and my friend group in college I don't know if I had I mean I had gay friends so they had

relationships

but I never had a a straight friend that had a gay relationship and then was considered to be straight.

So when you have this rumor

for

years,

I mean, I had it for years.

I talked to this individual on the phone that was like, yeah, I, I dated Brian for like six months.

His friends knew about it.

His family knew about it, but none of them were telling this was never part of the story.

And maybe it's not a important,

maybe it's not an important part of the story.

But then when me and Maggie Freelan interviewed John Hurst and he

he never ever said it once on camera.

I don't know if people just didn't ask him or if he was just not willing to share that information.

But when he confirmed that with us, it's like, again, now we have to determine, is this part,

is this narrative important

to

because look, every, you guys covered a bunch of missing person cases.

I've never had a case where talking to whether it's private investigators or law enforcement that they lean towards, they lean more towards the idea that he went off and started another life.

I find that strange.

You know, normally it's like, well, that's a possibility, but we have no proof of that.

But so many times in this case, and I'm also talking about law enforcement officers that like, I'm playing a gig and the guys work in security and we end up talking about the Schaefer case.

And they didn't investigate the case, but they would just say, oh, well, rumors around the department were

that he went off and started a new life.

And

maybe other than the Mara Murray case, that's just not a narrative that seems very plausible in a lot of these missing person cases.

So, but also,

I mean, think about this.

When this source sends me these two pictures, you got a guy wearing jeans, a green.

t-shirt with a white undershirt, which was kind of a popular style back then.

So my first thought was, okay, well, we have a couple hours of surveillance footage.

We have to see

what are the chances that there's another individual wearing the same color green shirt with a white undershirt.

Well, we found one, like literally standing right next to Brian.

They're like basically wearing the same outfit.

And you're like, what are the chances of that?

So,

but I just think it's fascinating.

Like I said, this source sheet is going through meticulously.

And we've always heard that Brian was talking to these two girls at the end of the night.

But there seems to be another person involved.

What's interesting sometimes about true crime is you don't have to have faith.

This is not religion.

I can watch the footage and tell you, okay, this girl shows up.

And she goes apart.

She's a part of this group.

I can see now Brian's talking to these individuals.

Who is this other individual?

And

everybody I've talked to just seems like this individual didn't exist, that they don't know what, they're so confused on why I'm asking them about this person.

They're like, I don't know what you're talking about.

There was no other person.

Well, why am I seeing it on video footage?

Like, I'm not making it up.

It's there.

So

that's where it's been.

That's where we're at right now is we're trying to take this footage and build a timeline of events in the footage that we think matter.

And then is there anybody in this footage that we can identify as Brian leaving?

And

can we do enough work that maybe CPD will give us more footage?

Because I don't know if they're looking for the right stuff.

Again, one of the narratives was that Columbus police officers

talked to everybody that worked that night, questioned everybody, questioned the ban.

Well, then, when I questioned the band two years ago, they're like, we never talked to the law enforcement.

They talked to him two years later.

Listen to this.

This blows my mind.

And not to cut you off here, Captain, but the importance of this for people unfamiliar with the case is Brian, according to the people he's with, Clint, and I can't think of the lady's name,

Meredith.

So according to Clint and Meredith, at some point, Brian says, and this is just prior to them saying we never see him again, he says, I'm going to go over and talk to the band.

And we know that Brian was an aspiring musician.

He was a big fan of Pearl Jam.

And so

to say that they didn't enter the band until two years later is one thing.

But to know that part of somebody's story, a key witness's story, is that he said he was going to go talk to the band.

Well, that's your next breadcrumb in your breadcrumb trail.

And so, you know, it's very important that, and almost strange, they may have, it may have just been simple, as simple as they had a hard time tracking down the band or who it was that night.

We don't know the reasons for why the delay, but it's, it's important to, to understanding the story.

So there was a three-piece band.

They were called Rock House.

They were just a cover ban.

CPD initially said, well, we talked to the band.

They didn't.

Two years later, for whatever reason, there's a a group of detectives and law enforcement that show up to Ugly Tuna Saluna.

The band that played the night Brian Schaefer went missing was called Rock House.

The band that played the night that they came back two years later to just look around the bar and maybe just to discuss the case is what I'm guessing they went to do.

The band playing that night was called Filthy Habits, The Filthy Habits.

And they were a cover band as well.

Now, Rock House had three guys in the band.

Filthy Habits had three guys in the band.

Two of the guys from the Filthy Habits were in Rockhouse.

So when the cops came back and they're just looking around,

the guys in the band were like, hey, what's going on?

Like, why are you guys here?

It's a small bar.

It's a square bar.

Like,

from any corner, you can see anybody.

So they're just like, hey.

What are you guys doing here?

Why are the cops here?

And the cops were like, oh, we're just

discussing the Brian Schaefer case.

Do you know anything about it?

And they're like, well, we happened to be playing that night.

Me and it was the singer and the drummer.

And so that's when they talked to law enforcement.

But law enforcement didn't show up to talk to them.

They're just showing up to you.

You see what I'm saying?

So then that changes the whole narrative.

And to be interviewing the band.

And

super,

I've known all those guys for a really long time.

Super talented guys, super, like their sweetheart guys.

And

I told them, I was like, you guys know that one of the number one theories on the internet is that the band killed Brian and dismembered him and put him in cases.

And they didn't believe me.

They like had to look it up on Google and they're like, wait a second, there's people out there on the internet that think we might have killed this guy.

I'm like, yeah,

that's how crazy this is.

But yeah, so it's just,

but like I said, it goes back

to my point that I just think like it's easy to assume that whatever narrative we're initially being fed is the truth.

And then you have to question,

are they feeding me this false narrative?

Because it's nefarious?

Or is this just their version of what happened or their version of what they think is important?

You know, and

so I

mean, I don't think

there's no evidence to me that that

Brian went missing

or on his own accord.

But the other thing too is we have this narrative that, okay, well, if Brian got drunk, the narrative was Brian got drunk, had problems in his life and decided at 1.55 a.m.

he was going to go start a new life.

But there was all these people saying, oh, well, this person checked his apartment the next day, and this person checked.

Nobody checked his apartment until like

Sunday or Monday.

So he could have got back home, woke up, took a shower, went to the gym, and did whatever, and then decided, nah, you know what?

I think I'm going to take off and go on vacation.

And that to me,

so what we also uncovered is that Brian, multiple times in his life, just took took off and went on vacation.

So, is it a possibility that on Saturday he was like, well, screw this.

I don't really want to go on vacation with my girlfriend.

I'm just going to take off and go to the Virgin Islands or whatever.

And then something bad happened to him there.

That's that's a possibility, you know.

But yeah, so every day it's like I get a new text message about some piece of the puzzle of Brian Schaefer's case.

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One thing that is so tough for me to wrap my head around is, well, I guess two things.

You just kind of sparked it in my brain here by saying, like, did he really just decide at 1.30 in the morning to, this is the moment that I'm going to start a new life?

That's one thing.

Like, people don't typically do that.

Also,

getting away with murder without a single trace of evidence is also very difficult when you're looking at, like, the band.

You know, the band, who I'm sure has never committed murder before.

They've never had probably some serious allegations towards

the drummer.

Just the drummer, of course, always the drummer.

But, you know, like all of a sudden the band becomes like mastermind killers who can

find a random person and

spur of the moment and then get away with it clean.

And, you know, or anybody if Brian's walking home.

and somebody meets him on the street that just happens to be one of the most efficient killers ever.

Well, the only reason why I I think that's a possibility is because that campus area,

I actually know of maybe five people personally that have just been randomly attacked late night walking home.

Because I think what would happen is that these

wannabe gangsters gangster guys would be driving around campus and they'd see a guy walking and they go, okay, well, you want to be a part of this group?

Go beat this guy up.

I mean, one of my friends literally was just walking home from a party one night on a well-lit street and five guys jump out of the car and beat him up and knock his teeth out i mean he it permanently has uh replacement teeth he did nothing he didn't yell at you know nothing happened and then a guy that me and nick grew up with was shot and killed basically on the street Brian went missing from

simply because a car drove by.

They almost hit this guy.

The guy was like, Hey, watch where you're going.

I'm walking here.

And those guys thought it was some different guy.

So they come back around, shoot him, and then whatever, you know, a couple of weeks later, when they're arrested, they're like, look, we thought he was this other guy that we had beef with, and he wasn't.

And we killed the wrong person.

So.

So I'm just saying that that has happened in that area.

So if he was intoxicated and decided that he was just going to walk home, it wasn't a super short walk and he would have went down streets that he might have ran into the wrong person.

And, you know, we have a

perspective that is different on that case than many others because we were,

you know, Brian, because he was a medical student, he was older than your traditional college student.

But, you know, the captain and I grew up in Columbus and have a lot of ties to campus.

I mean,

you can say what you want about the campus, but they had some of the best record stores in central Ohio, if not maybe in the state.

And so that's one reason to go there.

The captain played in a lot of bands, played at a lot of those different bars.

And I, for a period of time, worked for the university.

So,

what the captain is saying is not wrong.

It was not students that was making campus so dangerous.

It was the people that lived around.

The campus back then

was surrounded by

very low income, high-crime areas.

And

when you have criminals and you have violent people that want to victimize others and steal and rob from others, they don't do it.

on the street that they live in or the neighborhood that they live in.

They drive to where they think they can get something of value value or some money.

And the thing with Brian that's that I'll never, the hurdle that I'll never be able to clear with his case is

he, if he, he, if he, one, we know he was very intoxicated.

Okay.

We can see that on the on the video.

If he wasn't very intoxicated, he's pretending to be for some reason.

So he's very intoxicated.

We know he's been out all night long with a handful of different people, starting with dinner and then going from bar to bar.

He's very intoxicated.

He's likely alone.

We know the two friends that he was with claimed that they didn't see him leave the bar.

Walking from that bar to his home, he would have made for a wonderful target for a car full of thugs that want to do something bad.

They would have looked at him and they would have said, Let's go and get that guy.

And maybe not with the intention to murder or even physically harm the individual, but physical harm is on the menu if he doesn't comply, if he he doesn't give us his wallet, if he doesn't give us this or that or the other thing.

And I've always thought that that was what Brian ran into late that night.

And that goes with the crime trends of that area of that time period as well.

And I've had, depending on which detective I talked to, and it's

not in regard to Brian's case,

but in other cases, I've had some detectives tell me,

if you end up in the landfill,

there's a high high probability they'll never find you.

And I've just always thought that somebody, it wasn't an efficient killer.

It wasn't some criminal mastermind.

It was just wrong place at the wrong time, crossing paths with a violent person that tried to take something off of him.

And I think he may have ended up in a dumpster somewhere.

There's a lot of dumpsters in that area.

And yes, did they check the landfill?

We know that they did.

That doesn't mean that he's not in the landfill.

Did they check the dumpsters?

Yes, we're told that they did.

But just like the surveillance footage, it doesn't mean that they checked the right one or they checked the one that he was put in before it was the pickup schedule.

And so I just, I've always thought that that is a stronger possibility in Brian's case rather than him leaving to start a new life, whether it was impulsively or the plan all along was to do it in the middle of the night after drinking heavily.

It's an unfortunate situation, and it's a situation that nobody wants to root for, obviously.

I would rather be wrong, but it just seems like a very likely thing because we try to apply all these different mysteries and different parts of the story to these true crime cases when they're unsolved, right?

Everybody looks guilty, everybody looks like a good suspect, and every action is suspicious.

But the majority of the crimes out there and the murders out there is person A gets mad at person B and kills person B.

And it could be they got mad at him and met him for the first time that night when they were killed, or they've known him for 20 years.

Well, think about this.

Okay, so

the night that Mara went missing,

there's a lot of

I've seen this a lot on the internet where people go, well, why, why when these cops show, when they showed up that night, they didn't didn't start this like crazy in-depth search?

They didn't really start searching what till the next morning?

Yeah, they drove around a little bit that evening,

but I just think they

thought it was like a DUI

situation where she

got away from her vehicle.

Whether she was in the immediate vicinity or hopped into a car, I don't know what they were thinking, but I think that was their.

But they do start

some searches the next morning.

Yeah.

Well, even according to the dispatch, they said that they expected that she would show up at the cottage, which was the hospital.

And that's like written in the dispatch logs, like make sure, I don't remember the exact wording, but it was like, if she shows up at the cottage.

So, yeah, it was along the lines of intoxicated person.

will probably find their way to this hospital.

So, so in this missing person case, people were going, well,

they should have started checking that night and not the next day.

Well, Brian, they really weren't checking or doing much of anything until Monday.

So, you see what I'm saying?

Like, so now we got

this longer time that has passed.

And in Mara's case, they're searching in the wide open, basically, right?

And then Brian's case, it's opposite.

It's a very condensed, highly populated area.

And I think

I'm not saying that the cops made a mistake because when you talk to anybody that has done missing person cases, the first thing they'll tell you,

I believe my father has done 4,000.

But out of those, 90-some percent of those cases, the next day, the case is off your desk because the guy came home.

So,

so you can't fault law enforcement for not going, oh, all hands on deck.

This guy was super intoxicated.

But here's what we've learned since, you know, like since we've talked to you last.

And hopefully, I'm not repeating stuff that we said before, but

I think this stuff, again, goes to narrative.

So, law enforcement never talks to the band.

So, then when I talk to the band,

I think this is maybe something important.

Somebody came up to the band, a guy.

And somehow

there became a confrontation between

this guy and one of the girls that were hanging out with the band.

But these guys weren't confrontational in the sense of like, hey, man, what the hell are you doing?

You're being a jerk.

I'm going to kick your ass.

It was just, no, this guy's being a jerk.

Let's.

get him away from us.

But there's, but what do we know?

Brian told his friends, I'm going to go talk to the band.

And then the band and their friends have a confrontation with some intoxicated drunk guy.

Was that guy Brian?

And so if it was Brian, is it possible that he got in another confrontation with somebody outside the bar or leaving the bar?

So

I think, and then also just the fact that like the narratives keep changing.

Like the narrative was that Brian went to dinner with his dad because, hey, I'm going on vacation on Monday, so I got to see my dad before I leave.

No, Brian and his dad weren't speaking.

They weren't on good terms.

So it was kind of a come to Jesus moment of, let's go out to eat.

Let's see if we can establish,

build back up this relationship.

And so then what you find out is that him and his dad got into this huge argument over money and

inheritance money that he was getting from because Brian's mother passed away.

So we have eyewitnesses at this restaurant that are like, yeah, they got into like kind of a shouting match.

So that was the narrative that I heard then for years.

And now I recently learned, oh, yeah, well, they got in a shouting match, but they calmed down.

They finished dinner.

And then they went back to Brian's house.

And Brian, his dad, and Clint had a beer before Brian and Clint left to go out to the bars.

But we don't know if Brian's dad even left Brian's apartment.

So maybe Brian gets back to his apartment drunk and his dad's there.

We don't know.

But we do know that, you know, now we know that law enforcement did look into his dad as a possible suspect.

His dad had no alibi.

Obviously, they had an argument over money, so that would give some motive.

And so, again,

I don't know if these little details are important, but it's just building the story.

And

again, if I told you

person A went missing

and a couple hours before they went missing, they had a shouting match with their father, you'd want to know about that.

That would be, I think, important information if you're law enforcement.

I mean, it was important information enough to have cadaver dogs.

go out to his house multiple times.

And then also just like weird stuff, like his brother had, his brother was supposed to meet up with him, never met up with him.

But law enforcement tells, it goes, well, but dude, he has an alibi.

I go, he has an alibi till when?

Two o'clock.

When did Brian go missing?

Around 1.55.

You know what I mean?

So is that really an alibi?

I mean, I just, I think not, you know, but, and again, that I think when you put these ideas out there or just put out your thought process on how you think of the case, people then

could take that as that I'm implying that Brian's dad is responsible for him going missing or his brother is.

And that's not what I'm saying.

I'm just saying these are a part of the story.

Again,

we don't know if that's important or not.

Am I making any damn sense?

Sometimes I just feel like I'm screaming at a wall.

My biggest frustration with true crime,

and I don't think Nick likes this joke, but I don't think we should call it true crime.

I think we should call it what we think we know so far.

But the amount of stories, whether it's John Benet Ramsey or West Memphis 3,

the narratives that were fed initially are so bullshit.

And then my question is, why are they such, I mean, West Memphis 3, Three teenage boys that just, well, all they did was listen to heavy metal and wear metallica shirts like

and then they were thrown in jail for murdering three eight-year-old boys and it's like that's a narrative you're fed for so long and you're like they weren't just like innocent

like little angels that were railroaded by the system these were

weird kids that were confessing to the murders

and telling people in public that we murdered these people.

So I just think that a lot of these narratives in these cases that we hear, you have to start pulling it back.

But again,

I just start questioning: why is the false narrative put out there?

And is it just,

are we part of the problem?

Is the documentaries part of the problem?

Are they just trying to

cultivate a story?

Does that make any sense?

Yeah, I think when there's no answers in a case and you're looking at all angles, as a consumer, it's easy to believe that we're only going down this road because it does matter, you know?

Yeah, because

just talking to somebody like in a bar and we start talking about the Schaefer case, and I just start bringing up, well, there's this thing that you might not have heard, or this thing.

And they're like, so you're saying that the dad did it?

And you're like, no, I'm just trying to tell you, I'm just trying to fill in the gaps.

And this is probably what happened a lot with your guys's podcast.

You guys would hear a rumor about Mara and try to follow it up.

And then you probably get a bunch of people going, so are you trying to say that the father was involved?

Are you trying to say that, you know what I mean?

Like, and you're like, no, I'm just trying to figure out what the truth of the story is.

And then once you figure out the truth of the story, does it even matter?

You know, because again, Brian could have gotten in this horrible fight with his dad.

He could have said, Dad, I hate you.

I never want to see you again.

And then at 1.55, when he left the bar, at 2.05, he runs into a bad dude that has nothing to do with his dad and has nothing to do with anything other than just a bad dude at the wrong time.

Or did he get hit by a car

and that person was heavily intoxicated and decided, oh, well, he's still breathing.

I'll just dump him off in this

dumpster or something.

So, yeah.

I don't know.

Since the beginning of time, I feel like we have always, as a human race, tried to solve stuff.

You know, from the simplest way of how am I going to feed my family tonight.

And that's a series of decisions that you make.

And you make the right ones and you make the wrong ones.

I think that that translates to today where, you know,

man walks into a bar, he's seen going in, he's not seen going out.

Some people still have that part of them that's like, I have to figure this out.

It's just, what do you do with that?

Like, what do you do with those narratives after you have,

you know, processed the information information internally.

So do you go out and be public about it in

what manner?

Do you, do you be public about it in a, you know, broadcast, like I've solved the case manner until the next theory comes up and then you're like, no, I've solved it this time.

Or do you just kind of try to make people

process it as pragmatically as you did?

You know?

Does that make sense?

Well, Nick always says, you know, I hope you're not hearing what we're not

saying.

Yeah, don't hear what I'm not saying.

Yeah, exactly.

Which I can throw that warning out there, and they constantly hear what we're not saying.

But it's, you know, it's, it's, it's searching for the truth.

It's seeking the truth.

You know, I said that in my book.

I said, you know, I grew up always thinking, because reading true crime and watching mystery shows, I always thought that I liked a good mystery.

And the older I got, I realized I don't.

I hate them.

And, but what the reason why I hone in on them and focus in on them so much is because I want there to be some kind of solution to this.

I want to, I want to know what actually happened.

And, and so it's the hate of the mystery part that, that drives me.

And so, it's, yeah.

Um,

as far as the telling of these stories,

I can't say that, that people don't tell them, you know, what is their motivation for telling the story.

I can't say what's in their head and in their hearts.

You know, I can only tell you why we tell the stories that we do.

And

we do it because we hope to

keep the story alive.

You know, when we covered a long time ago, one of it felt like a big undertaking and it felt like it was something really big for the show.

And it turned out to be something big for the show.

We covered a case.

The victim's name was Tony Muncie, Anthony Muncie.

He was from Columbus, Ohio.

He was murdered when he was a teenager, and he was disposed of on the side of the road in another county.

He was partially dismembered.

And, you know, for a handful of months, it was a really big story in the early 80s.

And when the captain and I were digging through cases and whatnot, and this actually was a case that I was looking into before we even started the podcast because I was working on a book that never happened that it was going to be about some Ohio cold cases.

And

it really struck a chord with me that

this poor teenage boy

was killed.

And it was a story for a couple of months.

And then it was like

it never happened, almost to the point

that he didn't even exist.

You know, it was,

I was, I was incredibly shocked.

And this will show some of my naivete, but I was incredibly shocked that there, here was this teenager, this kid that was killed in the area where I grew up.

And I never even heard the kid's name or never even heard anything about the story until I stumbled upon it on the internet.

And it wasn't being covered as a story.

It was simply just a cold case, just a name with a date on some cold case list.

That's all it was.

And so I do think that it is important to keep telling these stories.

It's a good reminder that something tragic happened, something, something and somebody's responsible for it you know i think you quit telling these stories then then somebody's getting away with with great injustice and and great harm that they did destroying people too that don't follow these stories maybe they just watch a date line here or there a couple times a year

you don't realize

forget about the impact

you don't realize how many victims there really are in these stories You know, it's not just the kid that got killed and dumped on the side of the road.

No, there were so many victims in that case, and there are so many victims in a lot of the cases that we cover and that you guys cover.

And one thing, too, that will shock people is the killer's family a lot of times

are the victim that's overlooked.

Oh,

it's not a good feeling to wake up and realize my son is a horrible monster.

It's not a good feeling to all of a sudden figure out that your sister was bilking people out of money and all killed this man to cover it up.

It's horrifying and tough for those people too.

Well, yeah, they have to then try to figure out why

their son or daughter or brother or sister became that perpetrator of violence.

They have to think to themselves, was it something I did in the upbringing?

Did I not do something right?

Did I miss signs?

Did I miss signals?

And that has to be just as painful as somebody wondering, why was my son or daughter or wife killed for no reason, randomly, out of the blue, an act of violence that she didn't ask to have

on her?

You know, trying to come to terms with that is just everyday torture that you have to, you know, go through therapy to get through.

And a lot of people do, but a lot of people don't.

And a lot of people turn to violence in that case as well they'll start to become violent themselves so yeah you're right it's not just one person that you have to look at and say there's the killer there's the victim i feel bad for the victim like the ripple effect and we always say that the ripple effect the butterfly effect

is infinite yeah

because you know back to like bill bill roush

chicken his life forever yeah the chicken forever chicken or the egg

Were you going to do these actions no matter what?

Or were these actions propelled because you had a traumatic experience with a girlfriend going missing?

You have no answers.

But also, then back to the narrative thing.

I do think sometimes these narratives, there's not a nefarious, they're not simplifying it to be nefarious.

But like I was just talking to Aurelia the other day, and she's the one that told me about Mara's case.

And it was like, it simply was you know the New Hampshire girl that went missing in New Hampshire she went to UMass that was the the narrative you know I mean so that was enough for me to go well let me look into it and then you're hooked and now you then the narrative expands so I don't think always the narrative being simplified or not true is coming from a bad place it might just be because that's how we simplify Brian Schaefer the narrative a guy walks into a bar and never walks out again.

And we'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors.

Thanks to our sponsors, and now we're back to the program.

Well, my question to you guys is, when is your book on the Brian Schaefer case coming out?

I wrote a book last year called IPP, I Pooh Pooh.

It did pretty well.

It has the audible version of it.

No, again,

see, this goes back to my thing.

I don't know if you guys wrestle with this

or not, because again, you guys are coming from

to me, and maybe it's just because I know you on a different level than other people know you

or how I came to know you.

But like, I view you guys as filmmakers,

like in my mind, but I'm sure most of your audience views you in a

different light than that.

And just like I said, I think me and Nick's path and what we're doing with the platform is different.

And I think that's okay.

You know, and

because there's stuff that he

like when I say he's a true crime expert, like every almost every case we cover, he says something that I'm like, oh, I never even thought of it that way.

Or, wow, that's a very,

how did you get that piece of information?

I looked, I looked at this.

I had 10 sources on this case, and I didn't come across that.

So

I think, I don't know, I think all that, that's, that's something I wrestle with all the time.

Because sometimes I think, oh, I have this platform and I got these five victims' families that I need to call back.

And then there's other, there's other days where I'm like, I'm not calling them back because I don't care.

I'm not calling them back because

if I

keep going at this pace, I'm going to break down at some point.

Yeah, burnout.

Yeah, burnout's definitely a real thing.

Well,

yeah, Nick, I know you did write a book.

Are you going to write another one?

Have you considered that?

I hope to.

In the early stages of putting together a story that would be,

you know, not just a different case, but the case and the way that the storytelling would go would be considerably different than the Delphi Murders book.

And,

you know, with the Delphi Murders book, I really felt like I was writing it.

I was writing it for me, but I also had to keep in mind that

a large portion of the people that

would be kind enough to read my book would be people that are already part of our audience.

And so

I did what they tell all writers not to do.

I wrote myself into the book, but I felt like that I needed to

give a little more background because we don't get into too much personal stuff on True Crime Garage.

We try to keep the story about the victim and the facts of the case and

some of our theories and speculation.

But, you know, so I did kind of give the

reader information on why and how I got into True Crime.

Because, you know, when I was a kid, True Crime

was this

single bookshelf in the back of the bookstore that

very few

people ventured to, and even

fewer people wanted to be seen standing in front of.

It was kind of looked at as like tabloid news

in a way.

And so,

you know, today it's so

there's so many people that

follow the stories, and you have have these these shows that everybody tunes into and um

i have this weird fear

of

and it's because it's happened multiple times that i'm you know i'm in a bar or i'm somewhere in a in a in a big social gathering and somebody asked me what do you do for a living uh what is it that you do and

I'm always hesitant to answer that question truthfully because I know 90% of the time what will follow.

It's going to be, I'm going to be peppered about some case that I may know,

I may be familiar with, or it may be a case that I don't know anything about.

But

the worst questions that you can get is,

you know, you can pick any victim, or let's use Mara Murray as an example.

Like the broad question, and I'm sure, Tim and Lance, you guys get this, that people that don't know your show,

but find out what it is that you're working on.

I hate the one who's like, hey, Mara Murray.

So

go.

Like, what's the question?

Am I supposed to do a show, a podcast, right here in front of you?

You got your PowerPoint ready for the presentation?

Well, real quick,

Tim, Lance, we'll start with Tim.

When somebody asks you at a bar what you do,

what do you tell them?

Yeah, I don't go to bars too much these days,

but

geez, I guess I would probably say podcaster,

you know, and try to get out of the conversation, try to shift the topic very quickly after that.

And Lance, what's your answer?

Yeah, I say like, I have a media company.

We do podcasting,

primarily like true crime stuff.

And then they'll be like, oh, really?

I'd love to, you know, people will typically say that they like, you know, oh, we watch Netflix documentaries.

But I always end up saying like, you know,

it tends to get pretty heavy.

You know, it's pretty heavy, indicating like, I don't want to talk about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm here trying to talk about something else.

Yeah.

But then I'll ask them what they do.

Like, it's real easy to just like hook it around and just say like, yeah, so that's, that's me.

What do you do?

But yeah.

You know, a lot of the times like the conversations will happen where we'll hang out with our neighbors who know what I do and they'll say any updates on and then they'll they'll, you know, fill in the blank there.

And I think they get it now.

When they first met me, I think they wanted more, and now they just know by my body language.

Like,

if I say no updates, like, that's it.

That's gonna be like, no, there's, there's not, not a whole lot to talk about.

Then we just move on.

But I also want to say, like, it's, it's hard sometimes to have conversations that aren't about the work.

Yeah.

Like,

like,

you know, if my kids are having a play date with

a dad, um sometimes it's hard to not talk about who we just interviewed or who our next interview is and uh and i don't want to get into it but sometimes i just don't know what else to talk about so i do yeah well sometimes it is kind of like you you start talking to people because you want to see their reaction yeah yeah or hey and sorry that's kind of selfish but like what did you do today oh that was your job well today we talked to the guy who stole five million dollars from a lanis more set went to prison, came out, and now is trying to reinvent his life.

Wait, they're like,

what was that one?

I got to listen to that one.

Latest Crawlspace,

Jonathan Schwartz.

Oh, my God.

I'm sorry.

It was a

crazy interview.

Crazy conversation.

I'm going to go listen to it.

But what do you guys say?

Well,

what do you say, Nick?

Well, I mean, I'm honest about it, but if there's a group of people and it's kind of going around in a circle, you know,

I will

usually conveniently

try to be the quiet one that doesn't say anything.

I've also, and it's not that I'm trying to be rude, it's it's but but you know, it's like I said, it's the dumb, the fear of the dumb question of the uh, you know, Matthew Perry, okay, what happened?

Like, you know, I don't, I don't know, you know, like there's there's a lot of cases and stories I'm not familiar with at all, but it but I'm also one of those guys that like

if I'm out in a social place or if I'm at an event, I'm there for the event.

I'm there for whatever.

I've never been the type that loves sitting around and talking about work or bitching about work after the workday is done.

You know,

that's just me.

But we all do know somebody that all they talk about is their work.

And

good for them.

And

I'm very happy and I'm very lucky to do what I do um and get to do this and i that's not lost on me but

if you if you see me sitting there on the bar stool uh i'm i'm there for um he's probably about a fun conversation in and usually the the game that's on the tv in front of me well i i try to tell people all the time if you listen to the show people are like man i'd love to have a beer with the captain and i'd love to talk true crime with nick and i'm like if you meet us like at an event like

I'll probably be the one talking about a case and Nick will probably be the one drinking a beer and talking about football and having a good time.

But, but our dynamic is also a little strange because, you know, our father was a detective.

And so when we first started, I remember Nick was on some show or some documentary and it said like true crime expert.

And at first, my dad was like,

how is he a true crime expert you're like i'm a detective i i was a detective for 20 years and and now

so many years later you know nick wrote a book he's involved with project porchlight they solved a murder they uh figured out these uh jane does and john does and

and so it's weird because my father is now very uh proud of everything he's done uh and kind of does view him Oh, well, he didn't do the job, but he is an expert in this field.

But then he's weirdly proud of me

for not wanting to be an expert.

And if that makes any sense, like, I feel like I'm here to help facilitate what he's doing.

And when I say that, people are like, you're just as much of a part of the show.

I'm like, yeah, I know that.

I produce, I edit every show.

I know what I'm doing, you know?

But

when when people ask me at bars, what do you do?

I say, I edit audio for commercials.

And it's like cool enough where they're like, oh, cool.

Like at a studio, I'm like, no, I just work at my house.

But like, it's cool enough, but not enough with,

but it's true.

I mean, it's cool enough to stand out as unique, but you don't really have to get into it because

I get it.

I get what a commercial is.

Yeah, if they ask me questions, I'm like, yeah, we do ads for BetterHelp and

simply safe and hello fresh you know you probably heard those I do and they'll be like you know like ads on podcasts yep exactly

you've heard my work

no but I think but I think it's okay and I think

look

my favorite murder they blew up nobody on that show is claiming to be an expert they're still entertainers and comedians and that's fine.

I don't think we all have to then define ourselves as armchair detectives.

It's something I'm super fascinated.

What I also hate is when listeners go, it's amazing to see how

involved and evolved you become in the true crime space.

I'm like, I was always fascinated with it, but it's just, it's a smaller percentage of who I am as opposed to Nick,

you know.

Just like me and Nick both watch NFL football,

but I don't have like two or three fantasy football leagues, and I've never bet on a game.

We're involved in a different way.

Yeah, sports is a great escape, I think.

That's

for me for me, at least, from work and everything else.

It's just

you used to be able to dunk, right?

I have dunked in a game before, once, one time.

I've never done it in a game, but

my life ain't over, my friend.

My life ain't over.

I was on a breakaway.

It was lucky.

But my God, you guys, this has been a great conversation.

We got to do this more.

Why don't we do this more?

Yeah, this is

easy lifting.

Yeah.

Yeah, this has been super fun catching up with you guys and

hitting a plethora of topics.

Are we going to see you

in Colorado?

Yeah.

I believe so.

Yeah.

That will be fun.

That will be fun.

No formal announcement yet, but yes,

very likely.

Let's see if we can connect and do something there.

Well, I hope so.

You guys always look handsome and

always

you look better and smell better than Bob Ruff every time.

Every time.

That's a compliment I'm going to take very seriously.

I appreciate that.

No, he does smell nice, though.

He is a very nice smelling man.

Yeah.

Well, cool, you guys.

What's coming up

soon on True Crime Garage?

Hopefully this episode that we are doing right now.

Yes.

Fantastic.

No, we were actually just had a meeting this morning to

add some new cases to the calendar.

We don't like the, we're not big on announcing what's coming up because we've a lot of times

we're always getting approached with different cases and different stories.

And sometimes,

you know,

one may leapfrog another story.

So

it's a fluid calendar that we keep.

But yeah, we got some

interesting cases.

And you know what's

wild is all these cases that we've covered over the years.

When am I going to stop being shocked?

Right?

I would have thought by now that I would just be like, okay, here we go again, you know, with this, this crazy story.

They just keep getting more far out there and more bizarre as we dig deeper into this space.

Well, you know, I think that's a testament to the two of you, you know, not being

so battle-weary, not being so desensitized that they still affect you.

So that's good.

Yeah, but

do you wrestle with this, though, too um people love dateline right because there's a start and there's an end of the story and i do think it's important to cover uh cases that are solved because you there is something you learn from that

but

when you have a platform like

we just feel like it's more important to

cover the unsolved cases because it might stir something you might have an effect effect on

life.

And so I think we wrestle with that sometimes of, you know, are we doing too many unsolved cases or too, you know?

So I don't know if you guys wrestle with that as well.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But, you know, there is an obligation that comes with this.

And, I mean, you weigh it.

And, I mean, the story is nice when it gets wrapped up, but

you also have to make sure that there are stories out there that aren't wrapped up that can be wrapped up.

So it's got to to start somewhere.

Yeah, I think we find the unsolved ones a bit more purposeful, but

I think listeners tend to gravitate towards cases that have been solved, I think, from what we've heard.

But

yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

I think for me as a listener, I'm always more interested in the unsolved stuff.

I think I come from that school of like the Bermuda Triangle and like Bigfoot.

And like that, that is like where my interest in mysteries began.

And it's, you know, morphed quite a ways.

But,

but, yeah, I love, I,

at my core, that, like, I'm interested in the ones that we'll probably never, you know, have a great answer for.

Yeah, one day they're going to do like a docuseries of the

explosion of podcast and how

it formed.

Because we started like you guys, when it was a complete wild, wild west,

uh, and it seems not so wild, wild west anymore.

Uh, it seems a little bit more.

And it was a bunch of a bunch of no-name people that had podcasts when we all started, right?

It was a bunch of Tim and Lance's and Nick and Captains out there, right?

And it's like Steve Gushimi just did an ad on our show that he's got a podcast coming out now, so it's, it's, it's all uh the famous people are, they're gonna, they're gonna squeeze us out of this, this space, Tim.

I just saw that Bart Simpson has a podcast.

Really?

I saw that.

I saw that.

That cartoon character.

Long awaited.

Long awaited.

Long awaited.

I've always wanted to hear a long-form interview with Bart Simpson.

No, but Lisa Simpson has a true crime podcast.

Yep.

But I think it's interesting how

people have evolved over time.

And some shows have become more entertainment as opposed to

trying to move the needle.

But I'm proud.

Like, maybe we're not the biggest show, whatever.

At least we're trying to move the needle.

And I'm proud of that.

And I'm proud of what you guys are doing.

And,

like I said, you can yell at me anytime you want, Tim.

I will never stop loving you.

No matter

no matter how many times you hurt me.

I still don't even know.

No more yelling.

I still don't even know what the cover is.

I don't even know if you yelled at me.

I'm making this all up.

But I'm proud to know you guys.

I'm proud to have worked with you guys.

And I'm proud that you continue to do what you do.

So thank you for having us on.

Yeah, I mean, the feeling is entirely mutual.

You guys are honestly like an inspiration to be in the same conversation with.

And, you know, even having this conversation has been an incredible highlight of the year, to be honest.

Yeah, and I know it's hard to keep up with code name Pay a Horse.

Well, who can?

But you got to try.

You got to try.

You're so pale and fast.

I'm glad that you said an inspiration there, Lance.

So maybe in Denver come this fall, I could inspire you to buy me a drink

or two.

I will always step up to a challenge like that.

I want to make sure that that fulfills your inspirational needs.

Well, yeah, we can't wait to

rub elbows with you guys again in person sometime very soon.

Hopefully, in Denver this September,

that'd be great.

There's no better place for the pale horse to ride than Denver.

I'm just glad you said that.

I'm just glad everybody acknowledged that.

I didn't want to have to do it myself.