And That's Why We Drink - E132 A Lost Bitch and the Weirdest Thing Said in an Interview

Episode Date: August 11, 2019

Hold on to your Bermuda shorts and khaki hot pants because we've got some doozies for you this week. Em shakes the dust off their Detroit notes and covers the extremely fucked up Eloise Asylum. Meanwhile Christine's bringing awareness to a cold case we don't think has nearly enough attention: the Boston murder of Swedish Au-pair Karina Holmer. If you have any information that could contribute to the case, please contact the Boston Police Department. Tragic cold cases are definitely a reason we drink. Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Get your new favorite flats at Rothys.com/DRINKFor $80 off your first month of HelloFresh, go to HelloFresh.com/DRINK80 and enter DRINK80Get two months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free when you go to Skillshare.com/DRINK2 Get 10% off your first 3 months of Ritual when you go to ritual.com/DRINK

we're back we said we would go get a snack i said yeah you said let's get a snack i said we'll be back in five minutes refer back to our last episode because we are currently recording two and this is the second one and at the end of last week's episode we said oh we're gonna go get a snack and we'll be right back and record this and it's christine and everything ever four hours later we'll be right back we're gonna get a snack and they're just like fucking disappear we didn't get a snack we postmates a whole fucking meal fat sals which are these gigantic sub sandwiches don't have fat sals near you go look up their website it's their menu is pretty good literally i ordered the only like vegetarian option which was falafel and it came

with like french fries and shit on it like they basically pile them into like it's like imagine every drunk food yeah you possibly want to eat and they put it on a sandwich imagine our stomachs i had mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers on my sandwich and chicken fingers weren't the main ingredient yeah right it's insane it's like roast beef right i had roast beef with chicken fingers and onion rings and mozzarella sticks and french fries all this to say we took a break and we're back uh sorry i came upstairs too and i was like oh my god i never saved the freaking audio yeah there was a second where i thought i was gonna have to come back tomorrow and re-record last week's episode i thought for a minute that i was going to quit the podcast forever, but okay.

I guess we were on different pages. Yeah, so we sat outside with the cat on a leash and ate our sandwiches. Yep, that's exactly what we did. It was lovely. I've never hung out with a cat outside before. It was a good time. It was a good time, huh? Yep.

Gio ate a spider web. Oh, good. To be fair, you ate mozzarella sticks on a sandwich. Everyone had fun. We all ate a lot of weird things. And our stomachs are not going to be happy. What is today? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know either. Let me look. What's today? So this comes out on the 11th, which is the day of our Facebook Live. So if you're listening, it's like in the morning. We're doing a Facebook Live for our patrons today. Yay!

I already went to Kansas City for a wedding. I'm sure it was lovely. To be determined? The newlyweds are happy as can be, I'm sure. Hopefully. Still. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.

One week down. They've made it a week. Oh, and literally in one, two and four days i go to austria so oh wish me luck man oh my goodness i know uh hope you have fun with that is there any reason why you drink this week uh nope is there a reason you drink i can make one up please don't uh I can make one up. Please don't. I did.

Well, I have something if you. I guess you go first and then I'll go second. Okay. Mine's not that exciting. Oh, God. Gio's here. Hi, Giovanni. Hi, Giovanni. With the sweet, sweet face and the happy eyes.

Okay. Sorry. Go on. You go first. I don't want to go first uh mine's not interesting ow sorry mine's interesting in a way that you'll judge me okay so i as of this week have decided that i'm finally i know i'm behind but i'm finally going to let myself watch the last 10 episodes of the office oh my god you've

never done it before i've never watched i mean i know this already but i'm amazed that you're gonna finally do it i'm just sick of not knowing what happens but i also here's the thing i have watched every episode through season seven like while michael's there sure i've watched every episode at least a hundred times and i can quote them verbatim sure but all of season eight and half of season nine i've watched one time oh okay and then you stopped and then i stopped but i don't know what happens in the last 10 episodes robert california i don't like i couldn't stand him my brother really likes that character i don't't like it. He stresses me out. He gives me so much anxiety. And then the fucking British woman, I could not handle her.

She just seemed like she was out of her mind. I mean, she was. Yeah, for sure. She just had some weird work values. It got really weird with Dwight trying to sleep with her. Everything got really weird. I just don't like that part of the stuff. I stop at seven. um it i just don't i don't like that part of the stuff i i stop it also like seven and kelly and

ryan aren't in it and like andy left probably to do um hangover or something yeah there's a lot of shifting which is like they did okay for what they had i think but um i haven't finished it i don't know what happens i will by the end of this week but i have decided i'm just gonna i'm just gonna find out but like i want to be able to quote like the entire series, but I can knock it through the Robert California. I mean, quoting Michael Scott is the only thing we ever do. You're right. What's wrong.

I feel like he's the pinnacle of the show. Um, but yeah, I just watched, I mean, I'm watching like we have different people's Netflix on different TVs. So we're always watching the opposite, like different points on different tvs that's very weird i never know who's dating who at what point um but we i just watched the good place again for like the fifth time it's my favorite show and they're doing season four but it's the last season and i thought that was like really smart to like end it while it's good yeah and the creator said like i knew it would end at season four and they tried to like convince me to keep going and i was like no the show has to end which

i think it's like a really brave move if you're getting offered it is millions of dollars to like keep going it's like just end it on a high yeah and like so let people remember it for yeah what it was yeah so anyway yeah but right now the office is like i've watched it i feel you though on that i don't want i've watched it once too i don't i've never watched it twice i don't want to know what happens because in my head i just want to pretend like i mean also to be fair like i watched so as of yesterday i didn't i hadn't seen like 12 episodes i watched two of them last night but it was kind of cool like feeling like oh there's new episodes of a show even though it ended years ago i feel like they're entertaining but it's not the comfort

of like seasons one through seven yeah like there's such a comfort of like i know exactly every character and what's happening in this also like robert california his whole character is to be so imposing and jarring and make you uncomfortable which means for the whole fucking season i just was uncomfortable and it's like and to me it was not in a very funny way i just felt really unhappy i just kept thinking like if i had a boss he thought i would quit day one oh yeah it's horrible he like it's really anyway anyway i'll give you guys an update they're like we all watched this 10 years ago yeah what of it um everyone's like why am i sitting here listening to an office review that should have happened there's probably already a really good podcast for that so surely and it's not ours um i also

so my thing was i was just my things like thing's, like, just as inane. So I'm super glad yours was not really, like, dramatic or anything. I just wanted to say thank you. I've been meaning to do this for a while. I, like, posted on Twitter what, so I've, now that I'm, we're settled from the tour and, like, back in our normal lives for now. Keyword for now. I'm, like, trying to, to like find things to relax and be a normal person again and so i got my switch out because i'd gotten a nintendo switch while we

were touring and i was like oh my god what game should i buy and i posted that on twitter and holy hell like i mean within seconds i was like i have to turn my like notifications off and everything because my phone went bananas bananas and people were super helpful and i downloaded um what did i download oh um i downloaded stardew valley which is my favorite most relaxing game what is that about you're a little farmer person and you like grow crops and then you also go and like solve some weird mysteries in town and like it's like very relaxing because you just kind of like go about your day and like collect it's like the sims yes it is like the sims mixed with mystery i don't know yeah mixed with like there's like a lot of stuff like challenges and things but yeah it's really relaxing and it blazes

knows that i will like just lay there all night and play that game. And it's my favorite thing while we watch The Office. Seasons 1 through 7? Well, yes, naturally. And then I also got Breath of the Wild. I don't know what that is either. Legend of Zelda. Because a lot of people suggested that.

And then obviously I was like, Eva, I want you to know that I'm doing this. And she lost her mind and was like,a i want you to know that i'm doing this and she is a big zelda lost her mind and was like holy shit this is so exciting and i was like okay gotta pull it gotta make the leap so i i also bought that and i haven't started it yet because i immediately got sucked into this other game but at least you've got something else to look forward to exactly and so i've i have that so i wanted to update because everyone was those were like the top two that people wouldn't shut up about through me and then also um pokemon eevee but i already have that wow my eevee and your eevee is named geo right correct yep and i know i already beat

the game so did you really yes so that's why i needed is it just normal pokemon yeah it is they're just calling it pokemon eevee yeah you just you just have an evie instead of like a bulbasaur or like a charmander oh so you really just have to really like evie or just be cool with it they have like a pikachu and a version and an evie version oh gotcha i just really like my little evie named geo i feel like i would only get a nintendo switch purely to play pokemon i don't care but i never i'm sure a lot of people are gonna be like what but i never gave a shit about like mario and all that i love it i think it's because i was an only child i don't understand the competition it doesn't seem fun that's but like what about like the single player mario like i mean i never i never bought them to begin with so the only time i ever played mario was when i

was hanging out like during sleepovers at other people's houses and they're like let's play and i was like this could not be more boring really i don't get it i'm but you don't like games in general right i really don't like games oh and that hurts my heart so bad when you told me that when we became friends i was like there will always be a rift between us yeah christine loves board games i just can't all games and my mom loves board games and she had to grow up or i had to grow up with her always being like let's play board games i was like i would rather literally just stare at a wall my mother would be like I would rather smash my head into a wall than play a board game with you children so we had the opposite experience I just

have no interest in like I don't get it fun oh that's too bad well also I'm not fun to play with like I'm I don't think I can confirm I took him to trivia one time and they literally looked up all the answers under the table and then pretended like they knew it for like a long time. And I was like, I'm going to see how long and like pretends that you knew this random information. And then I was like, am I literally saw you on your phone? I just don't care.

And I want to care. I just don't have it in me. I've tried to care and I can't. I was so mad. I know. But I never invited you again. That's fine you always got to kick down the bar anyway wow um i also anyway so i'm very excited about that so thank you to

everybody who threw me some really good suggestions and um i'm gonna do zelda next but i'm i need eva or eva wait yeah i'm sure you do yeah i thought i said evie oh my god i'm gonna need eva to like uh guide me eva loves zelda and has like tattoos yeah very cool so anyway that's that just thank you to everybody and that's kind of my new like self-care thing is like if i'm super stressed i'm like i can play video games for an hour and just calm down i feel like i should have something like that i think it's the office i mean it used to be toon blast but i feel like now i can kind of play like a more involved game i uh yeah i was trying to think of a game that i on my phone recently that i got but i don't have one oh i do have one i got um like uh vr pool like billiards

pool yeah oh i thought you meant like but like if you like it's attached to your camera and everything so if you like have your phone pointed at like your dinner table it looks like a pool table yeah that's really fun i um get so like with the goggles and stuff i get so motion sick i went to uh it's not it doesn't come with the goggles it was just like right right but like i want that they have them like google glass and stuff and i have played i went to a music festival in cincinnati and they had like a booth and we had just gotten there it was like 5 p.m i was like you were already hadn't even had a beer yet and then i fucking like hurled i was like this makes me so nauseous i

couldn't i'm really lucky i really like vr stuff i'm lucky that i don't get nauseous yet but i i have realized as i'm aging i am comes with age i think too i mean i really am getting more and more motion sickness literally age three started puking in the car so I went to a amusement park three months not three three months I went to um Knott's Berry Farm with Allison a while ago and after we got off her ride I was like oh my god and I was like trying to describe the feeling better because it never happened before and Allison was like that's motion sickness you need to sit down you're gonna vomit and it sucks because germamine like is so effective but it makes you so tired fall asleep instantly yeah i have the non-drowsy stuff i'm i'm not sure it works as well but i don't allison

says it doesn't and she is she i think takes germamine every single day it seems it's like the benadryl that's less drowsy it just seems it doesn't have as much antihistamine doesn't have the kick as well yeah anyway you guys have learned so much today anyway thank you for listening we'll talk to you in five minutes see you next week no we're gonna go get a snack uh okay i'll tell my story i'll tell my story so i just pulled my switch out and started playing behind my screen i'd be like you know what you deserve it i don't my story's probably not that great anyway. I really don't. I'm very excited for your story. So you did your, in your last episode, you covered your Detroit live show.

Tara Grant. So I am also going to- I say it so proudly as if I didn't do it an hour ago. Oh yeah, I remember. I remember. I know all the information because I just said it before my sandwich got here. Quiz me. So I'm now also going to do my Detroit story now.

I think I really liked your Detroit. I'm trying to remember. I think I liked my... I'm telling you, I don't remember anything about it, though. Oh, good. This is going to go well. I don't remember it at all. What is it?

I think I'm going to like it purely because of the name. Is it a hotel? No, it's what we like the most. An asylum. Oh, shit. Maybe i don't remember this so it's probably for the best recorded we live did this what was the fight did i forget how to use words we did this live in detroit last week last week last episode i said go log on to our youtube or something so don't worry you're in good company go check your uh your your my book

and your face space. Go put it on your wall. Your Twittergram. Hold on. I have to leave. Sorry. I was trying to go. Look at that droopy tail.

Oh, no. I'm going to go away from Mommy. Oh, no. Okay, Gio. You go too, honey. Come on. Gio, go follow Olive. Go downstairs.

There's a big comfy couch. No. No. He's going to wait until you sit down. Then he's going to decide to leave. He's going to decide to wait right till when it gets good they're so comfortable i should leave now i should make her stand up oh she's dreaming she looks so happy and calm and asleep i should sit on her stomach is that what you do you happy little scorpio oh never all right so so we Oh, never. All right. So. So we recorded this. In Detroit. Live.

Yes. In Detroit. And it's not one of those audios that was sounding great when we got the audio back. So we're recording it live or we're redoing it live. Yeah. For you now. So this is the story of the Eloise Asylum. Oh, my God.

I'm excited. I remember the name. I remember the name, too, but Iylum. Oh my God. I'm excited. I remember the name. I remember the name too, but I don't remember anything else. Olive's back. Olive's literally back in the room after I, she begged to go outside. I have,

here's the thing. So I have Eloise Asylum and I'm reading the exact notes from the live show. So I might have added things in here specifically for the show. And now I don't know what they mean. Wink at audience. So it says, right, fun fact. So I have Eloise Asylum-Westland. Maybe it's in Westland.

Oh, probably. Because we always try to shout out places that people might know. We try to pander to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We like to hear applauses, so we say a lot of cities and hope that people might know and we try to pander pander to them yeah yeah we like to hear applauses so we say a lot of cities and hope that people from there are there we just grovel at your feet we just crave attention so i think it's in westland hence why that would be there i could also just simply check this on google yet i won't mom and sister were there we could ask them okay okay uh so this is the eloise asylum so here are my notes did you just say i could check google but i won't oh my god that's the most m

thing i've ever fucking heard here now i'm going to on principle hello you do not have to i was just using asylum olive can you get out good girl oh yes westland michigan okay cool um okay oh she got out okay so i have not looked at these notes since i walked off the stage in detroit so hey i at least pretended with that last story well i already know myself and i know as i read this i'm gonna go oh wow i know i'm just teasing i i had reread my notes um but yeah okay'm excited. So we'll both be in for a treat. We're all learning together. Have fun for all of us. So apparently it starts in 1839 in Wayne County.

Enter applause from the crowd. Do you? Vaguely, yeah. Cool. Wayne County. All right. I have nothing to say there. I don't either.

Okay. I just said I know where it is, like, as if that's helpful information for literally anybody. In 1839, Wayne County bought farmland to build the Wayne County Poorhouse, a.k.a. the Wayne County House. That might literally be why I recognized it, because you said that before. I might literally just be like, I know where that is, because you've told me that don't even know i might literally just be like i know where that is because you've told me that fact i'm not positive i'm so sorry and now geo wants to leave i'm kicking you all out look at that happy oh never mind look at that happy walk all the way out the door he's very happy making me get up and do work so the wayne county

okay so wayne county bought uh farmland to build the wayne county poorhouse which apparently got renamed to wayne county house apparently poorhouse was not tasteful not tasteful so uh and i'm guessing wayne county becomes westland in the future okay oh that makes sense sure um on lane on the land was a log cabin called the black horse tavern and the county housed 35 original residents there so i guess the original 35 people to ever live in wayne county in an entire county yeah they all lived in the same log cabin called the black horse tavern they lived in that cabin together yeah sorry i did not catch that that is crazy on the land was a log cabin black horse tavern and the county housed the original 35 residents there wow okay that's wild look i'm my mind's blown too so they were apparently

transferred from other poor houses nearby um and they did not want to live here because, wait, hang on. Oh, okay. So how do I phrase it? I didn't write it the right way. Do you guys want to buy tickets to our live shows? Oh my. I promise we do actually read them before the live shows. It's just, we've shut our brains off since then.

I mean, if we're being realistic, the night that i said these for the first time in detroit not even 24 hours before if anything like five hours before i was doing the note so it was fresh in my head so when i was telling you guys on stage that was the best i ever knew the information since we did a different story every night and that week we went to four different cities we were just like i like memorized four different stories and the second i finished a bullet i never thought about it again. So we only have so much room in our brains. And then we had to go do like several other shows the next week so I

I mean guys listen that touring was just so that was just not our shining time. We might have to do couples therapy someday. Probably. So they okay so they were transferred from other poor houses nearby and they had got transferred there to this house

the black horse tavern because apparently it was far away from the city and they intentionally wanted to keep them out of the city since it was a brand new city and thriving and they wanted they wanted people to be moving in but they didn't want them to see the poor people oh those were all the poor people yeah what the fuck okay yeah oh i get it poor house yeah okay wait so they were not i thought they were in a tavern and i'm i'm looking it up really quick because i'm not hand okay got it sorry it's it's later in my in my notes i just had to read my fucking notes can you believe it? Okay. Okay.

We were busy eating mozzarella stick sandwiches. Okay, so I'm just going to... Okay, so it was originally, before it was even the Wayne County Poorhouse, it was the Black Horse Tavern that they moved into and called it the Wayne County Poorhouse. Okay, so they were like, put all these poor people in here. Now look at the poorhouse. Yes. That's terrible. Okay. Exactly okay got it so uh fucked up it was originally just to catch everyone up because

wow there's already a lot of struggling here um it was the black horse tavern wayne county bought the farmland put everyone in the in the tavern and call it the wayne county poor got it got it got it okay so it was literally both yeah literally. Literally the same house. So you were right. So Wayne County wanted people to move into this poor house because it was far from the city and they were trying to transfer, quote, social dregs to an area out of sight from new townspeople. I'm sorry. Get the fuck out of here. That's my new band name.

Social dregs. uh originally these the social dregs were vagrants criminals um so kind of outlaws but eventually social dregs also became quote mentally ill and they started getting moved in with the criminals um they lived on the upper floor of a pig barn and um i forgot this but it gets sad so the mentally ill lived there on the upper floor of a pig barn chained to the framing stop um and uh in 1841 the first mental patient his name was biddy hughes and by the 1860s uh, that was just apparently a fun fact. And by the 1860s, the patients were moved to a bigger location. So for, what, 20 years? On 1839 to 1840 years. So for 40 years, anyone who was mentally ill just lived above the pig barn framed or tied to the frames.

That's sickening. I mean, that's treating them worse than animals. Which means, oh, I bet this is why i put this in so the first mental patient was bitty he was in 1841 so since 1841 until they moved out in 1872 he was one of the people that was just tied down tied upstairs oh my god um by 1872 the complex began running its own city. It was just so big that it had its own dairy farm, pig farm, bakeries, a slaughterhouse, a greenhouse, a cannery, a tobacco field, a laundry, a laundromat. I don't know why I said a laundry. A laundromat, a police department, a fire station, an auditorium, an amusement hall, and a powerhouse. And it was so big that it had its own zip code.

Holy crap. So this was a massive complex. Wow. This always, I mean, to me, every time one of these of these starts like that like and then they had self-sustaining for i'm like cult cult yeah exactly i always think that well it never ends well it's like utopian right it's like we'll keep ourselves separated from everyone else and you'll never have to know a society other than this or we'll put all the social dregs here and then just like let them fend for i mean it's so yeah fucked up we'll put all the social drugs ands here and then just like let them fend for themselves. I mean, it's so fucked up. Put all the social dregs and the pig barns of the self-sustaining complex and just tie them down. But here, I guess they can have an entertainment hall to play some VR billiards.

There it is. Okay. In 1894, the building was named Eloise after the president of the board after his daughter. Oh, I'm sure she loved that. Oh, daddy. Please name the entire um after his daughter oh i'm sure she loved that oh daddy but please name the entire institution after me i mean it's not like i wanted a pony or anything but okay so in the early 1900s my favorite tuberculosis slash consumption um brought many new patients into the facility can you believe it social drugs and it caused eloise to expand the little girl the little girl just like the

blueberry girl from really wonka uh sorry i'm so sorry i'm i'm listening rest in peace she recently passed she did yeah the who played the blueberry girl yeah no way uh so they had to build eloise even bigger they built three divisions. They built a sanitarium, which was the tuberculosis hospital. Fantastic. They built the hospital, which was the mental hospital. Fantastic.

And then they had the infirmary, which was the poorhouse. Oh, good. So, poorhouse, mental hospital, tuberculosis hospital. All side by side, in harmony. Holding hands across America. Across Wayne County. Across Wayne County, slash the Black Horse Severn. side by side in harmony holding hands across america so across wayne county across wayne

county slash the black horse sovereign um so conditions can you believe it we're still not good what in a 1913 report people in the surrounding area were hearing quote the chained unfortunate roaring and shrieking in discord with the squealing pigs beneath they're still chained to this freaking thing? Apparently they're still being chained. Oh, oh my god. What the fuck? I mean, it's not like they ever found out that that wasn't working.

They just needed a bigger place to do it. I'm guessing. They just needed to add a fucking laundromat. Yeah, exactly. A laundry, actually, according to my notes. A laundry. So, anyway, that's a nice dark sentence. Yeah. By the 1930s, overpopulation was in full swing

love it and there were over 10 000 patients over half of them were in the mental hospital and those had over over half of them slept in the mental hospital on the floor oh my because it was so overpopulated this oh god terrible patients had to start providing their own mattresses to live there so if you enrolled or applied or admitted and were admitted you had to come with your own mattress if you wanted to not sleep on the floor sorry what um there were 125 women to every five toilets oh no or maybe i'm reading that wrong i think there were only five toilets and 125 female patients oh no um so rooms had double the amount of patients they were meant for including the patients with tuberculosis there were 56 cooks who were also patients so the what

patients that were either were mentally ill or social dregs. They were also the cooks. Well, I'm just picturing like down Abbey where they have tuberculosis and they cough up blood all the time. And right into your stew. I don't want that person cooking my stew. Well, there were 56 cooks who were also in. Patients? Yeah, I didn't want to say inmates.

That was. Yes, patients. Residents? I don't know. 56 know 56 cooks they made 32 000 meals a day holy crap which would make like if you're doing three meals a day it's like what 11 000 people jesus yeah is that right i don't know i don't know i wrote it down don't look at me uh suicide was becoming a bigger issue. The main cause was boredom. You would think with like all of these like wonderful facilities that they have, they'd be able to entertain. Not if you're chained to a wall, I guess. Valid. In 1939,

there was an article about the routine at this place because right now boredom is such a big issue. So someone came in and wrote like, what the average routine here here's a quote the residents rise at 7 a.m and go to bed at 7 30 p.m between uh between these times they sit and stare at the wall at their feet at the windows there's no exercise or organized social movement during the day during the day so 12 and a half hours there's nothing so to give them something to do uh some of the patients were allowed to leave the community for a few hours oh i remember this story now because i remember thinking what a dumb idea so they're like oh you can't do anything here but i guess you can go do it somewhere else yeah especially like people i guarantee you like

they weren't they weren't taking care of at least the patients with mental illness. So like if they had like really intense mental illness and it was going unmedicated and untreated and you were chaining them and not treating them right. Oh, totally. Making them go crazy because of boredom. And then you just like let them out for a couple of days. Give them a hall pass. Like, what are you talking? What are you doing? And then the criminals, like, let's not forget the fucking outlaws that live on this.

Right. They just keep them all in the same place. and they're just like oh you can have a couple hours off the off site like go have fun and just like let them go damn that is bananas so um where were we oh to give them something to do some of the some of them were allowed to leave the community for a few hours here are the problems if we didn't already go through that problems they ended up committing petty crimes sure they couldn't socialize with the outside world so people were freaked out they've been locked up for decades in a fucking pig farm and the people who were admitted into this place because they were alcoholics were going to bars i do remember this part of the story because i remember being like like what

you expect they're literally there for rehab treatment, basically. And then they're like, OK, you can go downtown for a few hours. Exactly. By yourself, unsupervised. And also, you have no sense of discipline because we haven't taught you anything. And also, you don't want to be here, probably. So someone probably admitted you. One patient was so excited about it being his turn to leave that he uh either he found it it was his

time to leave like he had like got a shift where he was allowed to leave the premises is that right premises yeah premise that would have been the stupid word to say it looked like you literally wrote that down in your head when you looked up you were like premise okay that would have been i was like did i do that right i knew one of the words was gonna be wrong and i was afraid i said the wrong one you were good uh so he was so excited that it was his turn to leave and he either got too excited and didn't want to wait until it was his turn or he got told he couldn't go anymore but whatever happened he decided that he was going to leave stole a car from the hospital it led to a high-speed chase and he ran two police blockades and caused five different accidents

police shots were fired including towards a school crossing while children were walking by oh my god um so and no one got hurt hurt but at time, like, that was just one instance of what happened. So by this point in the 1950s, for the last 40 years, there's also been a morgue and three cemeteries at Eloise. Oh, geez. Okay. Yeah, right. Eventually they have to add that, I guess. Yeah.

I mean, at some point. You go long enough. So there are an estimated 7,150 bodies buried there. Yuck. All unclaimed by family. family oh or they could not be identified that's really sad 7000 it's over yeah 7100 oh my god um so either they were unclaimed or cannot be identified all the bodies were finally discovered in 2015 wow that's recent they were largely neglected before then. Many believe that these bodies are of the patients who were members of failed experiments.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. That's bad. Okay. Because by saying like they were identified just means like, oh, we figured that they were patients here. Not like we have names of 7,100 people. We can actually give them some decency and respect. No, because they. Yeah. God,100 people. We can actually give them some decency and respect, no, because they... Yeah. God, how horrible. So a lot of them were from failed medical

experiments, and conditions over the years included patient abuse, beatings, neglect, chaining, lack of sanitation, there was no water temperature controls for showers, there were... Toilet handles had been broken off, so you couldn't flush. Oh my god. Rooms were 15 by 10 with

barred windows that were almost always broken there was always shattered glass everywhere and it was the first facility to perform lobotomies was it really which was done in the tunnels of the hospital why the fuck would you have to do it in a tunnel that makes it so much creepier um fun fact oh god this was the part where everyone in the audience went oh like i don't want to hear it so it was the first place to perform one of the first facilities to perform lobotomies and after it closed people exploring the tunnels have found leftover vials of brain goodbye i told you i've seen that was the part where the audience went, oh. That's the part where Christine chugged her wine and forgot everything about the story. Just blacked it out.

I mean, I've told you I've seen a vial of my own spinal fluid. Yes. Which will haunt my nightmares forever. And that was obviously very much different. But just the thought of finding vials of people's brain. I mean, that's so fucked up, dude. So apparently. It's so beyond.

So things like that were happening so that's why they believe most of the people that were dead and unidentified and unclaimed are from failed experiments especially if they weren't fucking they were just like leaving them around right i mean like so haphazardly just leaving chunks of brain and in the tunnels and not like i don't care to label this or like. Or save it or hold onto it or throw it away. Like absolutely not a care in the world. Fucking hell. Not a care in sight. This is bad. So also don't forget there were modern treatments as such as hydrotherapy, sensory deprivation,

twirling chairs, which I couldn't even imagine what that is. I was just talking about motion sickness earlier. Cannot fathom that. Straight jackets, shackles, and electroshock therapy. There were also lockers for the staff to lock patients in intentionally lock them in hold them still and inject needles of water directly into their skin just water um just water stop what i don't even know what that does what are they trying to do i don't even know what that was like is it like a placebo it doesn't that what does that do i mean if you're doing it into your vein that's literally just to stab them as like a punishment like don't do this or i'll stab

you like you spray a cat with a spray bottle yeah or all yeah i guess oh my god this is horrifying i should have looked that up i think i think it was too fucked up i didn't want to know blaze uh so the other stuff is fine but this one too injecting thing like whole literally lockers intentionally made for you to just hold someone still and yeah i don't know if it was intentional but they certainly made it an intention i mean if you're shoving someone in a locker i think you know what you're doing yeah so over time eloise became the largest public health care facility in the u.s wow was known for its advanced treatments yeah for sure lol um there were a lot of burn victims there were chemicals that were tested on patients literally lobotomies for no reason see that's horrible i mean they were really testing that willy-nilly on people like yeah i listened to

one podcast on dude that's fucked up on lobotomies and then i was like i don't know why i did that i'm never researching this topic again because it was so fucked up they i mean it truly was just probably for the slightest infraction or maybe just because they didn't like how your fucking face looked no well they just tested they were like oh we'll see what happens like they just literally wanted to see i mean do you know do you know how they do it i know how they i'm just gonna say no they put like an ice pick in where the tear duct okay that's all I is that's all I needed and then they go like this stop I know it's so bad that was all I needed to never hear about anymore like you just survive I would have absolutely passed out

from the pain woke up later and just apparently you don't it's just like you it severs your lobes and then you it like changes your personality so they were like testing it on people because people would act differently they would like if they were really worked up or whatever had you know some sort of illness disorder it would like sometimes completely shut you down so you would just so it was like a 50 50 chance you were doing a good thing you'd be like docile well i don't think you were necessarily doing good thing but like they noticed changes a lot of times in people so they would just like absolutely they were like this is a cure that's why they call it an ice pick lobotomy yeah yeah wow yeah oh my can you imagine testing that out the first time can you imagine being the doctor on the other end who's like i'm proud to fucking do

this to someone who's like well the guy who invented it was just like i guess let's try it it's like what on somebody you're just gonna take somebody and be like hold still oh my god absolutely not a million years i have to hold my eyes i know i'm sorry it's so bad i just like i listened to the episode and i was like i don't know what i did i've it's it's haunted me ever since he's like gonna tweet about this so listen to that episode, if you really want to know, because the history of it is very interesting, but it's very fucked up. Okay. I imagine it's fascinating. It's just something I, unfortunately, will never know about because I can't hear about it.

Ever since I heard it, I have avoided the topic extensively. It's bad. Until right now. Until now. It's totally led by you. When I forced it directly onto you. So, okay, it was doing a bunch of advanced quote treatments sure but it did for the record pioneer x-rays for diagnostic purposes in

1890s um it also did offer the first recreational music and occupational therapy okay so some of it worked they had some ideas i don't want to give them the credit, but okay. Sure. They get some. By 1974, the facility had downsized to be only a general hospital and a mental hospital, but it ended up closing finally in 1980, and during the 80s, most of the building was demolished. Okay. By 1987, there were only eight out of 75 buildings left. Oh, wow. And only 50 out of 902 acres left. Oh, wow. Really downsized. Yeah. Today, there are only four buildings that remain or at least as of when we were in Detroit. There's the building that was originally the firehouse, the bakery, the power plant and the commissary. Okay, so those seem like relatively pleasant places, at least a bakery. Yeah, at least not like the lobotomy yeah department or whatever the tunnel turn left

into the tunnel and you'll reach the lobotomy department i need the the head supervisor of the lobotomy department the head supervisor oh who's the brains behind this operation well okay so most of most of the land has been sold to ford motors or become a strip mall slash golf course oh my god i went to the ford motor factory up there that day i think you might have been on lb's property it was so cool because you get to see all the ford cars being made and stuff oh cool it's really neat anyway but yeah it's a huge property so probably it makes sense good probably a lot of ghosts there probably uh so wayne county sold the property and it will now be senior housing um horrible they always do that

they always why they always got to put old people that can't run away from ghosts right where ghosts are i mean and also like if they say hey i saw a ghost people are like oh silly you oh yeah they're like oh you're what senile or something yeah like yeah they're not it's like children like you they never trust children when children say i saw a ghost i mean yeah that's why i'm gonna trust my child every time they say they see a ghost and be like well we're moving that's why allison get the car warmed up poor allison she doesn't realize how many houses we're gonna live in because our kid's gonna say some stupid shit that i'm gonna believe well the thing is that your kid's gonna learn how easy it is to manipulate you that way i'm gonna let it happen

to you're gonna the kid's gonna be like oh i didn't drive your car into that pole the ghost did you're gonna be like oh no let's sage it here's a new car so while waiting for renovations uh the county is allowing paranormal tours so people won't break into it on their own because they know people will um there's also a film called eloise that was apparently filmed here and the fake blood from the movie set is still there but when people break in they think it's real blood of course so nice touch in the dark that's probably so scary nice touch to uh to them for letting not cleaning it stay there i love like, I mean, if there have been literal brains found on the premises, like. Yeah. Sure.

Why not blood, too? I mean, fair. So here are all the ghost stuff. So apparently there's shuffling footsteps. There are bright white and orange orbs caught on camera. It auto-corrected to prose. I was like, white and orange prose. Wow.

Lovely. Orbs caught on camera. There have been apparitions of a man sitting in the commissary there have been shadow people sitting on chairs and empty rooms that you walk by oh okay i don't love that um all this is a legend all this is a legend well sure i feel like any ghost story i know i just want to please don't sue me by nature uh apparently the second third and fifth floors are the most haunted you can hear a woman screaming you can hear heavy dragging and stomping and sounds of gurneys rolling through hallways oh bye um there's a quote from someone saying you can sense someone else's down here even though you are by yourself it was one of the most eerily quiet places i've

ever been people have seen a woman wearing white on the upper floors some have seen her on the roof oh god um spirits have been seen eating at the cafeteria tables there have been sounds of screams moans and growling and people have heard someone shout their name behind them when they're alone and nobody's there that always is so scary because it's like an intelligent yeah it's like it knows you're there it's not like it knows how to get your fucking attention and it knows who you are exactly if it were like residual instead of like yeah just specifically intelligent it's like okay you can be over there and walk up and down the hallway and you're not gonna bother me commissary right

but this like you know i'm here and you want my attention and you know my identity without yeah like how uh uh people have gone into rooms and the door has slammed shut on them nah there have been sounds of someone sounds of someone flowing you around in the dark following following thank you autocorrect i love that though that should be a new segment on our show what did autocorrect mean uh people have reported their clothes being tugged on and uh heavy items falling off of tables by them yikes on the third floor where most voices are heard you can hear whispering in the closets terrible whoa okay uh you can hear bells where the old fire fire department used to

be oh that's weird and a few people have caught uh footage of a spirit flying around flowing around maybe maybe flowing or following who knows um many have seen a man walking up and down the stairs and detroit paranormal teams have caught uh many evps dq2 sorry uh including the urs on the evps what's that who is this man and who are you better get fucking out of here. Wow. I was going to say the second one was long, but that third one. That one is, that one means it.

Better get the fuck out of here. Other EVPs of spirits, there are other EVPs of spirits repeating words that you say when asking questions, including lobotomy and visiting. So it says it back? Yeah. Ew. Oh no. Almost it it heard you recognize something it went through lobotomy is also like a kind of a complex word to yeah i imagine it

takes a lot of energy to say lobotomy four syllables uh women are heard humming in the hallways and bathrooms there apparently have been photos taken of shadowy people sitting next to you at tables and leaning against walls oh no there are taken of shadowy people sitting next to you at tables and leaning against walls. There are photos of a white misty figure wearing a collared shirt. And one ghost has been seen sitting on the steps and acknowledges. Yeah, I remember. I remember this guy now. One guy has been seen sitting on the steps and acknowledges you when you see him and he's wearing Berm shorts what that's somebody's stepdad on a tour i was literally gonna say my fucking stepdad always wore tommy bahama and i

know those goddamn bermuda shorts are gonna be on him after he goes he just got lost on a tour he got stuck that's so weird okay uh you can also find his best friend your friend's stepdad in a bucket hat on the second floor oh my god no on his motorcycle oh lord oh roger uh oh roger uh so one investigator apparently cussed and there was an evp of someone saying don't say that i like that ghost i mean don't i mean he's a snitch but don't don't he's just a little goody two-shoes that's okay if there were any ghost that's allowed to haunt me it'd be the one that just keeps me in check that's true i mean that was me as a like a child just like i you're not allowed to say oh my god you have to say oh my gosh i remember one time in second grade i said the word damn because i dropped something oh no and by one of my other the other kid in my second grade class was like you're gonna go to hell for that and i was like

because i said damn i was like that sounds and that was literally what we believed as children like a catholic school that is a normal like you are literally told god will not like you need to seek forgiveness if you say oh my god if you use the lord's name in vain wow i mean i believe you it took me till in my head i was absolutely not. I'm not going to college. I still feel uncomfortable saying, Oh, my God, because it was so drilled into me to say, Oh, my gosh, that's like, it's really silly. But yeah, I just remember at seven, I was like, I'm not going to hell for that. You can shut your mouth. And if I am, I was like, prove it. You won't you won't you won't you won't but also like now it's so weird when i get emails like you swear too much on your show i'm like oh god i'm right you only knew like the years in agony i spent thinking i was going to hell for saying right this is my time reclaiming my time i put right i put so much effort into this so uh anyway so someone has said don't say that probably matt from second grade um yeah he was on that tour with the with your stepdad yeah he's in the other big muta shorts um one investigator left the room and

okay this person is not friends with the other ghost from second grade one investigator left and an evp caught someone saying lost bitch you're there too what the fuck holy shit it's literally the entire encounter of me in second grade i feel like you're the one saying lost vision i'm the one going you're not allowed to say that exactly don't be mean to them this is honest to god very weird the dynamic i love it so when cleaning up after a tour uh they had finished cleaning the hallway but the one of the employees turned around and a walker was in the center of the hall incorrect absolutely not and goodbye there was a medium that sensed a dark spirit and then investigators saw a black shadow walk by

fantastic then a vinyl record flew off the counter at them and slammed onto the floor remember when that happened yes i do you were to be fair you were talking about your guardian angel so it can happen both ways thankfully also haven't heard from rose on a long day i was thinking about her two days ago girl where are you i was like journaling and i was like whatever happened to you girlfriend if a record just fell from the ceiling and onto the floor and now i would lose it lost bitch where are you rose she's like you're not allowed to say that. She probably is. She's probably like, that's why I don't come back. So there's a quote from someone saying, I heard footsteps behind me.

I shined the flashlight and said, hello. No one was there. And it stopped. Fresh. It started up again, and it was louder and closer to me. I said, hello. Fresh. Again, and shined my my flashlight and nothing was there.

So I took off. Meantime, we were recording the audio after I left and we heard footsteps. It sounded like desks moving, drawers shutting, things moving for a good five minutes when there was nobody in the building. But somebody was walking around and moving stuff. We also recorded a woman humming at the same time I heard the footsteps. Wow. So a whole lot of audio

just happened i cannot imagine the overwhelming can you imagine thinking you're gonna hear silence and then you just hear everything in the room moving yeah and humming and like that's so eerie no thanks uh there are apparently file cabinets that move themselves papers shuffle and there are pictures and documents that move themselves to different rooms. It's also creepy. There's still pictures and documents there, you know? Yeah. They really just said, fuck you to like any professional courtesy. Like brains and pictures and doc. I just like left them.

Literally like worse than an abandoned hospital. Just like an intentionally abandoned hospital. I want to see the paperwork. I wonder if it's all been stolen by now. I'm sure there's something somewhere you could look. I really want to find it. by now i'm sure there's something somewhere you could look i really want to find it um there are feelings of an ominous being staring at you and making you want to leave okay maybe i don't want to go uh there are many have felt their arms and backs being touched and almost being

pushed out of rooms there is a part of the cemetery oh part of the cemetery nearby has a trailer park on it and a lot of people think that bodies are buried under the trailer park. Oh, no. Because the trailer park is also haunted. Mediums have sensed that maybe one ghost might be keeping all the other ghosts trapped there. Like a negative spirit is holding everyone there. See, I think you've talked about that, and it's so, it's scary. Because you think once you pass that, like, oh, you know, if there's a heaven or if there's an afterlife, like, you afterlife like you're in peace and so like the thought that you can still get trapped in like like there's still

someone like that's a bully on the afterlife eternity like that's not okay man apparently in the cemetery the medium also found a wig um oh okay so in the cemetery while she was like thinking about these spirits um she found a wig looked at it was picking at it and in it was still the scalp of a woman and found bones and a coffin torn apart so it was not a wig it was her actual hair maybe this okay to be fair this last bullet like really makes no sense i don't know if this was a vision she had or something that actually fucking happened because i'm like how would the skin still be on it medium found wig picked at it scalp of woman attached comma bones comma coffin torn apart i don't know what the fuck to do with that so i do move on so the people who were at

the detroit live show only you know what that sentence means they have a secret secret key that we don't even have so that is is really... That is information I wrote down. Whatever happened, it was very fucked up. Right. Like, I think... That we can confirm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, that is the story of the L.A. Zestairo.

Oh my god, we end on that? Fucking scalp? It's a mystery. It's a mystery. Oh, no. You're not supposed to know, apparently. That is... That is...

Oh, god. That is fucked up. I don't remember that. I don't even know what that sentence means i'm very confused i feel like i would have remembered that but i don't so me too hopefully i can coffin torn apart what the hell does that mean really hope i can forget it i need to go google that information and figure it out again i need you to not tell it to me a third time because i think then it might actually stick i see and i don't need to know that got it oh that was good

though that was spooky thank you thank That was spooky. Thank you. Thank you. It does freak me out a little bit when like I hear about places like this where there was so much sadness and then there are spirits still lingering there. And I'm like, it's terrible. They're still there. Yeah. Like, I really hope it's just residual stuff because the thought of like people's souls just stuck and lost and trapped there is like devastating i don't know what do we do i don't know what do i do i wonder if there's anything we can do on on the side to like because also like what are the odds that you even know that that's happening you know and then how do we even help like go to the light but like i mean clearly he's blocking the end of the tunnel if there's a

literal demon there what what good are we gonna do i don't know oh god it's terrible it's terrible anyway this is why i uh take klonopin sometimes and that's why we drink and take prescribed medication yes okay and see a therapist who thinks i'm batshit crazy okay even though you're a poor therapist she says let's be like i want normal. Hey, sometimes we talk about astrology and that's really fun. Oh, that's nice. I can trick her. She's a star. Aw, she's a star. She's literally told me before that I can trick her into things.

Because sometimes I don't want to talk about something that she wants to talk about. Yeah. And I can trick her into talking about astrology because we get really into it. And then she'll be like, no, we were talking about something. And I'm like, I know. Let's talk about this for the next hour. And then we'll see. I think maybe, you know, well, I am a Gemini.

And then I'm like, you know, the star. And so then she goes on and she like has her PhD, but she talks about like, I don't know. She's open minded. She's very open minded. It's a very interesting conversation to have with a highly educated person, which I never thought I could find. But anyway, she's lovely. She's helped me extensively.

Word. Okay. So I am extremely excited about my story today. Oh, good. Like, we do a lot of stories, obviously, but this one I've been wanting to do for a very long time. Oh, nice. It occurred to me finally

this week that I was like I haven't covered this yet and like I really really want to know it um I doubt it and I think that's that's part of why it's so I think good to me like is because it's it doesn't have any recognition anywhere really and it's such a big time to shine yeah it's like a big scary terrible thing and like it just doesn't have much press around it like it's been forgotten kind of and so i feel like it's worth talking about and um i like i've been racking my brain because i have known this story for years and i don't know i think maybe when we were in boston i learned about it but i cannot for the life of me figure out where I read about this initially or learned about it. Cause I thought there was a mini, my favorite murder mini-sode where, uh, Georgia's friend

called in, her friend Dory called in as for a hometown and talked about this. Basically, let me tell you what it is first. It's the murder of Karina Homer in Boston. And, um, it doesn't get a lot of press. It's not well known. Um, and I had known about it for years and I don't know how I found it, but then the mini sewed reminded me of it like last year. And then I started listening to crime junkie and she covered it. And I was like, okay, I got to like finally do this, but there there's nobody that's done it. I mean, crime junkies done

it and trace evidence podcast has done it, but like, that's it. Like there's no that's done it. I mean, Crime Junkie's done it and Trace Evidence podcast has done it. But like, that's it. Like, there's no. And it's such a crazy story. Gotcha. So I'm just very excited to share it because it's very fucked up and it's unsolved. So let's go. Okay.

So like I said, I listen to Trace Evidence, Crime Junkie were really helpful. A blog I found called Talk Murder With Me, which is very well done and a cool website and then uh the boston globe did a really good write-up on this so let's go to 1996 okay 1996 wow good old days um karina holmer she is ayear-old woman from a small village in Sweden called Alarid. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that. Probably not. She. Oh, so actually part of the reason I just watched Midsommar, the movie, and that was set in Sweden. Yeah.

And it. Getting a lot of press. Fizzucked me up for that night. I had weird dreams that night. What is it? What kind of movie is it? It's called a folk horror film. Okay. Oh, I heard about Blaze complaining about you. dreams that night what is it a what kind of movie is it it's called a folk horror film okay oh i

heard about blaze complaining about you coming home and talking about pubic hairs and stuff there it is yes i don't like this he was like he hates scary movies he was like i was trying to be so extroverted and talk and i just decided he's like i tried to join the conversation they kept saying pubic hair and the third time i was like i'm going to take a shower i don't alexander and ali and i saw it in like i don't watch scary movies very often is it on tv no no in theaters right oh it's on theaters okay so it was really good i really liked it was it scary um yes okay very scary it's more like psychological thriller like kind of like get out it's from the director of hereditary but um it's called a folk horror film and like it goes it's like cult sort of oh but it's like batshit crazy oh but i like it i think you'd i

think it's very scary like i think you'd like it it's creepy as hell word oh okay yeah so i mean i personally really liked it um i think it's getting good reviews uh and that says a lot because i really don't like scary things, scary movies. Scary things, sure, here we are, but not scary movies. I hear you. Okay, so Karina is from Sweden. She, before settling down and starting a career, she's like very, she's very smart, like has aspirations and stuff, but she's like,

you know what, before I settle down, I've always dreamed of traveling and I've always wanted to go to the U.S. But so she lived in this small village. Her family didn't necessarily have the funds always wanted to go to the u.s but so she lived in a small village her family didn't necessarily have the funds for her to travel to the u.s um so it at first it seemed like kind of a pipe dream uh then one day she happened to buy a scratch off ticket and win fifteen hundred dollars casual yep good for her i won 10 bucks the other day on a scratch off and i was very excited i never won any money from it blaze once won 300 what like and had to mail it in because it was too much to like turn it at the store oh cool i know i was like shit man um yeah blaze somehow always wins something on those but

yeah i won 10 bucks and i've been talking about it for five days so love it imagine winning 1500 very exciting so she decided this is perfect. I'm going to use this toward traveling to the U S. Oh, so is Gio. Bye. He's off to Sweden. Oh. Um, so she decides to use this to travel to the U S and she says, you know what?

I'm going to become an au pair. Okay. So becoming an au pair is very complicated. It involves background checks visas etc it's not just moving into someone's place totally and like especially in another country i had like three au pairs growing up and because the one the first one well what happened we want to know well renata is just very picky picky with people and particular and so she and my dad were running the restaurant

so they always hired german au pairs to like speak german with us and um we yeah i have i have quite a varied like i feel like childhood on the one hand i'm like yeah i grew up with like gunshots outside on the other hand i'm like i was raised by nannies for those who don't know christine she had a very 50 50 life very it went like from rags to riches to rags to riches to like both at the same time but like only if i turned one direction like also being the child of the divorce i can't confirm that like having two parents means having two lifestyles totally like you're a different person and i actually i mean sorry to bring this about myself again literally talked about this in therapy because i talked about the drinking thing and my therapist was like you've been here for a

year and a half i had no idea this was a. How have you like hidden this so well for me? Like I'm so good at detecting patterns and I'm like, I am an expert at presenting myself in any way. Listen, children of divorce have quite a skill set. We have talked about this a lot. We have. I think when we first became friends, I think we both found out pretty soon we were both children of divorce and immediately had a clicking of like, okay, so I know I can't bullshit with you because you know all the game. I think part of it is like divorce through childhood where you like have to learn how to lie to and how to adapt to like different yeah and how to um what's the word uh present yourself a certain way to some people and then present yourself a certain way to other

people and switch how to be a chameleon yes totally and it sounds sneaky but sometimes for some children it's a survival mechanism you have to learn to survive it's truly just like a coping survive so anyway it's it's not a skill set people should want but it is handy once you've learned it right right right exactly yeah i the whole point i don't know what the fuck i was talking about i'm so sorry but i so i had an au pair i had a couple growing up um before the divorce right and uh before things got tough before things got real weird uh but my parents were running a restaurant we lived next door like a sitcom or we lived above it truly i can confirm if you're wondering what

that means i was confused because christine told me and i was like that can't be how i'm picturing it in my head and then i went to ohio I made Christine show me and she literally imagined like it's sort of like a townhouse style I don't know imagine like a building attached to another building and one of them's a restaurant and one of them is a townhouse and Christine's parents own both of them they would literally just like walk through a hallway upstairs to get to the industrial kitchen very weird yeah very odd also it was a 90s still like i was in the kitchen helping make strudel so as of like a little child speaking german it's also child labor loss happening it's the most dwight shrewd childhood i can imagine especially with the german shit going on well my mom like i used to fold silverware like that was my job

how old were you like two or three like i folded all the silverware um like in the paper napkins and my mom like two yesterday the day before sent me an article or like a screenshot of like from buzzfeed like a listicle and it was like uh things all servers know or people who work in restaurants and one of them was like uh it was like rolling silverware will make you want to blow your brains out my mom was like well sorry i did this to you for several years at the age of two at the age of two i was very good at it um but so sorry so i had a pair and then she was i guess the story i was told is that she was cutting my fingernail or my brother's fingernail thing and like cut it really badly and like she did

that like multiple which is why i have a problem with fingernails yeah i because there was one bad fingernail cut and you never come back from it i'll come back and i guess there was just like enough of those times where my mom was like i cannot trust you to be home alone with my child then i think there might have been more going on i don't know and then there was another one i had a babysitter this is the whole different story but she locked me in a room and then my mom set up a camera and like caught her like she invited her boyfriend and left me in a room for like hours and i would just sit in the middle of the floor there's a lot that i've repressed but it doesn't matter so i had au pairs too so i get how complicated it is to like have someone come

and live with you and like you have to go through background checks yourself and then they have to go through background checks and there's a language barrier i mean there's a lot sure so this is why she finds a kind of backdoor way got it into being an au pair which it wasn't quite legal obviously um i don't know how she met the guy nobody really knows how she met the guy but she met a guy in sweden who offered her a quicker and cheaper way to become an au pair um unfortunately obviously it wasn't legal and this guy had actually been convicted twice already for this illegal business he was running got it so uh karina was like you know what i'm gonna go with a head with it anyway it's pretty clear she knew like some people say maybe she didn't know it was illegal but like she was smart enough to know like she didn't have a visa and also they gave her a fake id gotcha so So like she knew. Got it. But so she signed up for this thing.

Everything went fine. She moved to Boston and she started working for a pretty well-to-do family. Their parents or the parents names were Frank Rapp and he was a commercial photographer and Susan Nichter and she was a prominent painter. So very wealthy like Boston family. They actually lived in Dover, Massachusetts and they had two young children. And I don't know. I have heard of Dover from when we lived there, but I don't know much about it. Same. I looked it up.

And so the median household income in the U.S. in 2016 was $57,600. But in Dover, it was $173,000. Okay. To give you an idea of how drastically wealthy this place is got it like more than triple the national holy shit yeah very very wealthy area um fun fact dover is also home to the dover demon a creature reportedly sighted on april 21st and 22nd 1977 by multiple people noted dover demon uh the wikipedia page is small but i mean maybe you can do your magic

and find some my magic listen this is why i don't cover a lot of things because if it's too small to do a whole episode on i just kind of why i don't do it i was bummed out because i was like this could be a thing and then i was like one day i'll have to do an episode where i just cover all of the small ones i wanted to just like a rapid fire yeah there are so many people who will say why don't you cover this and then i look it up and it's like, I can't. It'll take five minutes. It'll take literally less than five minutes. Maybe we should do it and be like, are you happy now? You got a five minute episode.

We're happy. We can go eat more snacks. Right. True. No, no, no. Yeah. No, I totally feel you on that. It's very rare that happens with murder, but it does happen to where there's just, even

as this, there's so little that like, I only have two or three sources where I have to take everything, which is why I'm like crediting it because i'm like they were able to find a lot of stuff yeah um anyway so they lived in dover really you know nice place wealthy family um there's a dover demon running around somewhere of course uh so things started off well she really liked the kids she got along well with them what she would do is she'd watch the kids during the week and then she'd have weekends off to kind of enjoy boston and her employer frank so the dad had a really nice loft in downtown boston where he would do his commercial photography so actually on the weekends she was able to stay in the apartment in boston and like hang out and

like invite friends over and like it was a good setup for her sure for anyone for anyone truly better than our basement apartments right god our apartments in boston were just heinous like really dingy dark basements uh so he'd work so he'd work there on the week during the week and then she would go on the weekends and stay there um and she there are actually a lot of au pairs there that she like connected with and a lot from sweden actually so she had like people who spoke her language who she could connect with so she never was described as being lonely out there which is really good so she had a lot of friends that she could invite out to the apartment to the loft and then they would all kind of go out and drink go to bars on weekends and that was kind of her setup so karina regularly sent letters home to update her

friends and family and like almost weekly i think like she sent a lot of letters back home i mean i guess there wasn't really she didn't have a cell phone so it wasn't texting that kind of thing got it um so in summer of 1996 she'd been in the u.s for a few months when her friends and family back home who were receiving these letters started to notice kind of a shift in her. She began writing home to say things hadn't been going kind of the way she'd hoped or expected them to. She was a little bit vague, but in one letter, she announced to her family that she was cutting her trip short. She spent most of her time cleaning. She was exhausted and stressed. She's like, I'm not getting enough sleep. All I do is clean. It's like household chores day in, day out. And the trip just wasn't what i pictured so i'm cutting my trip short but that

same time one of her friends back home in sweden received a different much more ominous letter from her oh shit to her friend she says she's cutting her trip short because quote something terrible has happened oh she says i can't tell you what it is in writing but i'll tell you in person when i get home oh shit and i bet she never got home she never got home oh because someone found out she wrote that letter and like when i'm i was listening to crime junkie and they were both like no like you have to write it somewhere like yeah something bad don't go to your grave with that secret. Make it a notepad, a locked note in your phone or something. She was like, send like a time-delayed letter.

Send an email to yourself. Right, right, right. Or like a Facebook message or something. Mail a letter to yourself. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah, exactly. So she said, I'll tell you when I get home.

Something terrible has happened. Sent the letter. Otherwise, aside from that, they were like, okay, I mean, she seems all right. She's coming home. Like, she's cutting her trip short she wasn't happy um so she had also dated around a bit she had actually dated um a couple men casually one of them had been a boston police officer actually um and she kind of had a few flings but like nothing really serious so she seemed to be otherwise like socially at least pretty fulfilled so friday june 21st 1996 karina and her friends meet up at frank's studio like they usually did before heading out to their favorite bar and it was called zanzibar and it was located at

boylston place in boston uh it's right by boston common i literally like did this so cool did the uh how far away view so it's really wild so it's catty corner to emerson which is where eva lived and like went to school it's it's across the street from that old timey cemetery where i made blaze film that weird film for school about how I died. Yes. What a good what a good video. It just ended up being like an alt j music video. You know what Blaze was a fantastic actor though. I'm still so impressed by that. Like that's he I don't know he takes school seriously. And if you say dance, he says how fast he takes my instructor. doesn't take schools he takes my demands very seriously which are gonna get him into trouble someday for like blaze is like definitely like

at least to the public not i know you have a different life with him but he comes off as very quiet kind of his own thing like this is his own thing yeah he's a little reserved but like and so to have seen you film an entire short video of him acting like you're dead and watching him so distraught. He was a fantastic. I didn't know he had it in him. We were dating like a year. I don't even know how long we've been dating, but I was like, oh, you're coming up for the weekend to visit. Hey, so I have to film an entire short film.

Also, I need you to be the only actor in it. And then I like filmed him the whole time and then there was a surprise ending that i was dead it's like the most fucking narcissistic bullshit in the whole world it's the most gemini thing i've ever heard of i'm gonna have a i'm gonna film you being really sad because i'm dead hey i just realized something when i was two i literally threw myself in front of a van and my mom grabbed me and said, why the hell would you do that?

I said, I wanted to see how much you'd cry if I died. And she was like, that is, you are a psycho. You're two and you are a psycho. And also, how would you have seen it if you have successfully died? How would you have found out? I waited instead until I was 25 and then made Blaze do it for me. And then recorded it so you could look back at it at all times. still on youtube somewhere it is so sorry to anyone who should delete it before this comes out i should probably fucking delete it but also i can't delete it i want to save it

but oh my god it's so good absurd but so that cemetery oh and then we did it in a cemetery that was from like 1750 so like i pretended like I was buried there, but it was like Edgar Allan Poe. No, it was like the grave looked like you died 500 years ago. Like Revolutionary War Cemetery. It was so ridiculous. So that literally that cemetery, like right there looking at it is that bar or where the bar was, is the point of my story. So a lot of history has happened on that block, is what we're telling you. A lot of really dark things have happened.

Especially in a non-Alt-J music video. Oh my god, I remember I got 100 on that, and then he was like, actually 98, because you literally just put music through the whole thing and didn't put audio. And I was like, okay, I'll take it. I remember doing so well on that and hating that project. What did you do? I made Matt act in it. It was about PMS. I remember that.

I made Kat be his girlfriend and be like PMS. Give me chocolate. And he had to go to a grocery store and buy a bunch of chocolate. I used to make Muhammad run around for my videos in like, in like negative 10 degree weather. And I was like, put on this weird wig and run into seven 11 and like grab a bunch of stuff. And he's like, really?

And I'm like, yes, it will get us an A. I can't believe, I feel like when Matt was over for like the superhero party, I feel like, I feel like that got mentioned. Oh God.

Almost like I was bringing it up. Someone asked like how we knew each other. And I, I brought up that story and I, I think he overheard it and ignored bringing it up. Oh, we're shutting that down. We're not going to talk about how I used to help you in Boston with your shitty projects. This Blaze and I have not discussed this thing that happened.

Eva, just take all this out. No, don't take it out. Don't take it out. It's an important part of. We both made some pretty bad films. But it's really wild because you and I were like in these, all these same classes. There were like 12 or 15 of us and like we were not really friends, but like we were doing all of this side by side.

Were we in any films of each other's? No, I don't believe so. I don't think I did one project with you. I went to the same graveyard. It's very full circle now. I did one of my projects at... Oh, I remember that. Wait. At that same time with

you with sarah yeah you me and sarah did that project really yes the ghost hunting one of fucking course we did that holy shit not some full circle wait i forgot we did that i was part of that i remember did you come with us to the graveyard yeah i think i was like wow do you know why because i think i was like i know a graveyard because i made blaze put his head on one and cry i'm pretty sure he literally put his head on the ground i'm pretty sure i forced you to go there with me which sounds about exactly what the first time we ever hung out we went to a graveyard and ghost hunted and we thought not the most destined experience it was on a tractor that was like a year before the tractor we just didn't even know we we didn't even talk

to each other yet i remember i used to sit next to you um every however whenever we had the class i sat you sat to my right in comedy script writing oh and i remember looking at you and being like i don't know why i'm here i will never be in in comedy. Michael Lohman's class. Yes. And everyone else was a bully. And we were like teaming up against it. I remember looking at you, though, and being like, I will never be in comedy. I don't know why I'm here. And here we are with our own fucking comedy show. Literally, we were like, this is the worst. Yeah. Also, that was when I had full blown depression and my sleep cycle was the opposite. I remember you would come to class and be like, I haven't slept in 48 hours. And I was like, oh, dear.

And I didn't even know you yet. I was just saying information to you. I remember being like, wow, I'm absorbing a lot of. You're learning a lot about me without anyone wanting it. Yeah, I would like I was really fucked up in Boston. That was probably the worst that my depression's ever been. Yeah. But I would like wake up at like eight o'clock at night and so when i would see you for class like

our 8 a.m at like 8 a.m i'd be like oh i just like i just i'm gonna go to bed i do remember that very clearly because i remember always struggling you were i mean like in all seriousness so fucked up yeah i would that was me in undergrad but yeah like i remember oh my gosh anyway lots of stuff so also this terrible murder thing happened i'm so sorry that i keep changing the subject anyway anyway this and it i don't mean to say i was so excited to tell the story because i wanted to talk about myself i promise you just want to talk about how you filmed your boyfriend crying because you're dead yeah that was not but you don't need attention. I don't need the attention. I need it a little bit.

No, I'm just kidding. Point being, that's where the bar was. Okay. So picture. I know what you're talking about. Basically the scene for the rest of the story. Yes. Just to be clear.

Gotcha. Also, I think if I had known the story then, I probably would not have played around there. I didn't know that this had happened. Also, if you live in Boston, go put your head on a grave in that graveyard and and maybe absorb some of blaze's tears fake tears by the way uh i think i bought him up here after don't worry um so basically where are we we're at zanzibar i don't even know where we are anymore we're at zanzibar which is catty corner from emerson across from blaze's Blaze's wife's, Blaze's girlfriend's cemetery. Got it. So, anyway, Zanzibar opened in 1988 and it was considered, quote, best club with a new theme by Boston Magazine. With a new theme.

I know. I was like, what a fun category. Yeah. In 1988. The excerpt I found reads, quote, this new dance club is a Banana Republic fantasy. Love that for them. I know. Oh my gosh. We should call that guy who got lost at the asylum. Right. In his shorts.

This new dance club. Guys, it's a Banana Republic time. You should go over. I mean, sounds pretty great. This new dance club is a Banana Republic fantasy complete with palm fronds wicker satays and waitresses and khaki hot pants khaki hot pants oxymoron right there that should not be together in one phrase the music is numbingly dumb disco for white people who can't

keep time oh this very quickly turned into an insult and yeah i was like it started as really fun we started with best but i guess anything with a theme doesn't really end well. Right. In other words, goofy suburban fun. Okay, so basically what I've gathered from other people who actually I read on Reddit, like people who knew this bar, it was kind of a trashy bar for like young people, people with fake IDs and stuff. But also a lot of foreigners who were au pairs or who worked, who had moved to the U.S. temporarily, went to this bar and could kind of connect and hang out. Sure.

So that's where she and her au pair friends would go. So they go to Zanzibar for the night, as usual. Karina is wearing a sparkly top and tight, shiny silver pants. Okay. It's 1996 Banana Republic fantasy. That's exactly... She's nailed the aesthetic. She's nailed it. And that's just important as far as like witness reports.

Sure. And her shininess. Even though she's not 21, A, rules were more lax back then. It's the 90s, you know. But also B, as part of the sketchy organization that skirted the rules, she had gotten a fake ID. So she was able to use that to get into bars. So here's what we know for sure. She and her friends having a great time at Zan's bar, dancing, drinking, partying it up.

But Karina is drinking more than usual and gets really fucking drunk. It's reported that around 2 or 3 in the morning, she fell asleep in the bar. So the bar closes around 2, 2.30. She fell asleep in the bar, possibly in the morning she fell asleep in the bar so the bar closes around 2 2 30 she fell asleep in the bar uh possibly in the bathroom and security when the bar was closing escorted her outside um and it's reported we do know that she tried to get back into the bar to find her friends but they were like we're closed like we're trying to get people out we're not letting people back inside um so the bouncer wouldn't let her back in.

So at this point, there are a number of witness testimonies as to what happened next. It was confirmed by multiple people that Karina spent some time talking and dancing with a homeless man outside the bar for a few minutes. And this guy, they looked into this guy. He's just kind of like a friendly local guy that like people know. And he just not harmless. Not yet. Or harmless. Oh, yes. Yes. Not harmless. Sorry. friendly local guy that like people know and he just not harmless not yeah or harmless oh yes yes sorry i i tried too hard there yeah yeah yeah no but i'm i you got it yeah i'm there you're there um a couple people saw her talking to a man with a large white dog um and they're both wearing this

man and this dog are both wearing superman shirts the man was later identified as herb whitten and he was known to drive down from the north end to uh to the bars in boston with his great pyrenees in an effort to meet women so well who isn't doing that i mean to be fair that works but also it's a little like honestly i think people are more approachable. Like, it's easier to strike up a conversation if you're walking a dog. It just is. Yes, it is.

Especially if you're a drunk person, you know. Not that I've been there. But, like, it's also very sleazy. Like, he would literally drive down with his dog to be like, I'm going to pick up drunk boys. Like, it worked, but ethically you shouldn't do it. It's also very sleazy. Like, he would literally drive down with his dog to be like, I'm going to pick up drunk boys. Like, it worked, but ethically you shouldn't do it. It's fucked up. Like, he would wait outside bars with young girls and, like, try to pick them up. Yeah.

It's just... Evil genius. It's just creepy. It's just very creepy. I don't even know that it worked. Like, it's just very creepy. Oh. He was...

Anyone with a dog, it would work for me. Regardless of... You would get picked up and go home with this guy? I don't know about that. I don't think so. I would just want to pet the dog. mean i think maybe that happened but he literally was just trying to bring women home i don't know i don't know that that really worked um but so he's like yeah i just go down to pick up chicks okay so okay they see you're talking to that guy uh

then another witness says he so he's a friend of karina's and he saw her getting into a gray mitsubishi with four men so he notices this and he's like oh like we don't know those guys i'm gonna and i know she's wasted he goes up to her she's in the car and the window's down and he says hey let's go you came here with us come on like we'll take you home and before she can get out of the car before she can even respond um he was allegedly confronted by one of the men uh who said get away from the car before she can even respond um he was allegedly confronted by one of the men uh who said get away from the car you little shit or i'll crush your fucking head and so that report was basically like she was with these guys that one's a humdinger yeah that one's tough um a final witness also claimed to have seen her between 3 30 and 4 a.m outside a 24-hour convenience store

on tremont street so 4 a.m this this last sighting was the last reported sighting of karina ever and it is uh not believed well let me phrase that better it is believed she never made it back to the studio apartment to frank's apartment that night um based on like checking the apartment and they don't think she ever got home that night for the next 30 hours no one sees or hears from karina but again it was friday night into saturday morning and she usually stays at this apartment so her employers aren't expecting her back until monday so it's not like they would have known she was missing um and also like she didn't have a cell

phone so i don't know if she had a cell phone. I don't think she had a cell phone. It was 96, right? Yeah. I don't know. I'm actually quite sure. I remember them saying she didn't have a cell phone. And like, even though she might have gone out Saturday night to usually like, it wouldn't be that alarming if like she didn't go out for the night, if she had gotten really wasted

the night before. But like, so it didn't seem very startling to anyone that they hadn't heard from her. really wasted the night before but like so it didn't seem very startling to anyone that they hadn't heard from her so sunday afternoon frank and susan her host parents are home watching the news when they see a broadcast that a body of an unidentified blonde woman had been had been found in a dumpster with a fake id so the family gets nervous they contact the police they're like we haven't heard from her recently um we called the apartment didn't get an answer and this uh description fits karina our au pair and so they contact police and is like and are like i think that's her spoiler spoiler alert it is her unfortunately uh when it's

confirmed that karina is indeed the unidentified blonde woman the police tell frank and susan how her body was found. So what happened was in the early hours of Sunday morning, a homeless man was scouting through garbage cans and dumpsters near Fenway. Actually looked up the dumpster. Really? Yeah, it's, well, I'll tell you in a minute. Sorry.

I just feel like it's happened so close to where we were. It's just very jarring to think, you know. Yeah, yeah. Close to home. I now finally get it when happened so close to where we were. It's just very jarring to think, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Close to home. I now finally get it when people write and they're like, oh, I'm from that town in South Dakota. Like, you know. Yeah.

It's just so troubling when it's near where you know. I mean, you just said Tremont Street and I was like, well. Right. I feel like I was on Tremont Street every day. Right. When I lived there. And like Boylston and all that. Yeah.

It's very. Yeah. So early hours of Sunday, a homeless man was scouting through garbage cans and dumpsters near fenway looking for bottles and cans to turn in you know whatever it may be just collecting um he's digging through a dumpster at 1901 boylston which that i looked up it was right where we lived so there was like that yard house there was a harvard vanguard where i got my remicade infusions there was a marshalls across the street and like wow you'd walk up there to get to ralph's or alberson's or whatever i don't know what was the store um star

star market no is it whatever it doesn't matter um but yeah it was like joe's no i don't know it was like that street right up like not if you're turning right to go toward BU, but like if you went, if you cross the street from Brugger's Bagels and kept going down where there was like a Yard House and a Marshall's and a... Oh, like by Fenway? Yes. And then there was like, they had just built that new Target as we were moving out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's across from, it's three from that Target.

Oh, shit. So it's like right there. Anyway, everyone's like, we don't care. We get it. I did, I shopped for groceries there. You're the only friend I have where I've lived in multiple places with. So I mean, our like little group that moved out here, like Matt and Christine and all that.

But anyway, OK, so. So it's fun to be like, oh, yeah, I know that whole city that you also lived. Yeah. So like it's relatable. But so the dumpster he's looking through is like in a private alley um separate from kind of all the retail locations and it's hidden from view he's digging through the dumpster when he finds a bag that seems particularly heavy when he tears the plastic open he sees an arm and when he sees the arm he goes running for help finds police

and says you need to there's a body in that dumpster. So this poor guy probably fucking traumatized. I can't imagine. Like, how can you look in the trash again after that? It's like, I would never look at another dumpster ever. Terrifying. So they take a look in the bag and find a torso. Shit. This is the second story in a row I've done with a torso.

She, okay, this is rough. So Karina's torso torso we found out later was karina had been completely cleaned ew there was no blood drained of blood all her makeup had been removed which is just so weird and creepy um and she had gone out that night like full sparkly get up like like okay someone had removed all her makeup her body had been fully and precisely severed at the waist and they uh obviously combined this whole torso thing with my other least favorite thing which is that they cut off her torso at the waist meaning the only bone they had to saw through was her spine i know oh my god oh my god it's literally the worst

we've already talked about fingernails, spines, and torsos today. I'm so sorry about that. You almost hit all of the worst spots. Yeah, let's see if I can nail the home run. Oh god. So the cut looked very precise and methodical, like clean cut. Yeah, it's's like surgical like someone with a background yeah it looked like almost very well done and precise but at the same time they went through the like again they went there were no bones they really had to cut through so i guess it could have been done with like an electric there's no real way of knowing right yeah it's not totally clear um it's not just a rando with a

knife like it was definitely like a intentional intentional project that wasn't like a random hacking yes exactly gross like they took the time to like clean it out of blood and everything there were strangulation marks around her throat so they figured out she had died of strangulation but uh the problem was that the body had been found about two miles from zanzibar meaning there was no way to know where the crime scene was so there was no way to know where this had taken place um where she had a been killed where she had been dismembered because between those two miles it could have been anywhere right um and outside of there too uh so the autopsy also showed that she could have been murdered

anywhere between 4 a.m saturday when she was last seen and 4 a.m sunday so there was like a 24 hour window where they were not sure how um how long she'd been alive yeah so they said like she could have been killed right away she could have been held somewhere for hours she could like there's no way to know um so that was even obviously made it more difficult to nail down any details and like obviously what's terrible too is that she could have been alive for 24 hours before ending up in the dumpster which is also awful um at first they had no way of identifying the body because our id was fake but then the host family called in and said hey this description sounds like our au pair um after interviewing witnesses mentioned earlier the first person police looked at was herb witten

the guy with twinning with his dog um because he was known as like a sketchy dude that wandered around and tried to pick up drunk women right um around clubs and bars and zanzibar's security footage actually showed him right there in the area that night and a witness said i saw her talking to him so it was like okay let's talk to this guy first um he explained he was only down there to pick up women with his dog we get it he made himself a bigger class act right classy dude uh he reported he didn't know what happened to karina and he was known as like neighbors and stuff called him very creepy very off like he just wasn't it wasn't like a well-respected dude um lo and behold he had a

solid alibi so he had gotten a speeding ticket on the way home that night um and had been pulled over and so that could be verified so that gave him an alibi like i wasn't off murdering someone i was in my car right it would be difficult to dismember and dispose of her body in that time but certainly not impossible and like branching from that what if she was in the trunk right like what if what if he had brought her somewhere already and was speeding home like we don't know what if she was in the trunk and he was being home i don't necessarily think that rules him out completely to be quite honest with you and a lot of people don't like that that immediately pulled him off the suspect list yeah um because obviously they

didn't search his car or anything uh but so that gave him a full tie alibi um and he was taken off the list okay uh they later did examine the vehicle and couldn't find any evidence of a crime being committed so either she hadn't been in the car or he had cleaned it very well uh he was considered an unlikely suspect through the rest of it um although he did seem to act really weird throughout the rest of the case and like he was an odd guy so i guess that wasn't like shocking wasn't abnormal yeah exactly um but still it's it seemed kind of unlikely that he had the skill to like pull off this dismemberment right it was like you said like black dahlia it's it's often related to the black dahlia

like that precise like that like surgically precise um but at the same time he was known to build things regularly as a hobby and did have a buzzsaw so something to consider something to think about uh either way this lead was cut short when a few months after the murder witten's sister called 911 uh witten had uh taken his own life. He died by suicide in his sister's bathtub by cutting his own throat. Shit. A lot of people found this incredibly incriminating. Like he had something to hide. In the midst, exactly, in the midst of being investigated for Karina's death. And then his lawyer confirmed he had developed quite a bit of paranoia surrounding the case and was like getting increasingly agitated and upset about the public being in the public eye, public exposure.

So, I mean, that trail just kind of ended at that point. And the next person of interest were Karina's host parents because they obviously, you know, were close with her. So remember how they called police of their own accord to be like, I think that's our au pair? Yeah. Well, police thought that was a little suspicious because the description that was given on the news is that a blonde girl's body had been found. Oh, that was it? Yeah. Got it.

And, like, with a fake ID, but still, like, that wasn't necessarily... Something they could have known or would have known. Yeah, would have been like, oh, for sure, that's her. Like, it just, and they weren't expecting to see her till Monday. So it was just very odd that, like... Like, they were very helpful. Yes. Like, almost maybe too helpful.

Yes, yes. And so it was a little bit strange. And it just kind of struck police as odd. So when police questioned other nannies and au pairs who knew karina and the family they found out frank the dad was considered by many to be very creepy and sleazy to women like the young women um sometimes flirtatious and sometimes crossing the line and being directly suggestive oh boy uh there had actually been a rumor that karina may have been pregnant that's one thing um possibly with frank as a father which is perhaps why her body had been

severed to hide any sort of pregnancy um another theory was that perhaps it was severed to hide any evidence of sexual assault sure so it's not clear this is all rumor um but that's just one thing that was thrown around uh this would also explain the quote terrible thing that had happened that she had written to her friends about um it could also have been sexual assault like i said um if he had raped her she may not have gone to authorities knowing she was there illegally right for fear of being deported etc this is all speculation and rumor but this is just one thing that people throw around yeah uh when investigating the family police found them extremely difficult even hostile uh extremely uncooperative neither had an alibi and immediately

lawyered up but um also they had been housing an au pair who hadn't gone through legal channels so like they had they did have something to protect yeah they needed to hide their like have legal support for that but then something weird happened what's up tell me right behind their condominium like 200 feet away is a condominium they owned uh monday a day after karina's upper torso was found at 9 20 p.m police are dispatched to a dumpster fire that is located 200 feet away from their condo. Where the bottom half of her is? Well, Dover police recovered the charred remains of clothing and various pieces of trash. The dumpster had been extensively damaged, but it was really suspicious.

There were no remains found. It didn't test positive for blood, but the fire had been started intentionally. So it's thought maybe they were burning her clothes maybe some evidence um they didn't find remains but it was just very odd timing that the day after her body was found a dumpster fire went up like in their backyard essentially right right right right behind their condo another person of interest was a musician this is like kind of random and weird uh a musician named john the whiz uh stage name uh he was a musician who lived in the area it's unclear how he was connected initially to the case but he was rumored to operate in black magic

what does that mean he was kind of in this likeunge band, and it was said that he did, like, occult stuff, you know? And so, obviously, that immediately made people be like, ooh, Satanism, you know? But shortly after Karina's murder, he released a song with the lyrics, quote, I've got an old man's car, I've got a jazz guitar, I've got a tab at Zanzibar tonight, that's where I'll be. So people were like, that's odd. Zanzibar? Yeah, where i'll be so people were like that's odd zanzibar yeah he's singing about the bar but like outside uh of the lyrics there'd been no link to her people just were like that's so weird and like he could literally have just been singing about her murder or her murder

without even like having done it like right you know everyone knew it happened however i forgot about this in an interview with the Boston Phoenix, he when he was interviewed about being a person of interest, he made the following statement, quote, I have human thigh bones that we use in a magical ritual. And so people were like, wait, what? You have human thigh bones. I mean, remember, right, our bottom half is missing, right? It was just a very weird thing to say in an interview. So literally, I can't think of anything weirder. I think maybe it's the weirdest thing that's ever been said in an interview. And we've been in I feel like they didn't ask him if he had human five bones. I feel

like he volunteered that information. It would be really hard to ask a direct question. Right? To get that kind of a response any question how does that information reveal itself there's really no need for you to tell anyone that really right i mean yeah so that was just very strange and then his song and but like people i mean there was no link otherwise um he just was a weird ass dude sounds like it so police also spoke remember i said karina had dated a few guys casually um so one of whom was the police a police officer so they had uh there's not a ton of info on him including his name they have not shared his name but boston police say he was thoroughly investigated and wasn't connected to the crime but this statement raised some eyebrows

because at that point b Boston police was really corrupt. They were going through a ton of scandals. Like, they were just not in a good place. There was a lot of cover-up going on. It just was one of those things where people didn't necessarily trust that statement. Got it. They questioned more than 300 witnesses and potential suspects, but found no fucking links to Karina and what could have happened. So as far as Karina's family back home in Sweden, obviously they were heartbroken, devastated.

When a detective on the case spoke to Karina's family, her father asked the detective simply, what am I getting back? And the detective was like totally taken aback. But he responded, you're getting her upper torso you're getting her beautiful face because they were there waiting for her body and they didn't they knew she had been mutilated but they didn't know right i mean the i mean how bad it was thought yeah 19 um her remains were sent back to sweden and a funeral service was held friends and family attended they all wore bright colors to celebrate her vitality um so i'm just going to read some of the theories

because this case has never been fucking solved and like it should be solved like it should be solved right right right somebody has to know something about someone got away with it yeah someone got away with this horrible horrible thing um so some of the theories are that herb whitten may have attempted to sexually assault her killing her in the process um that's one theory killer may have been an unknown attacker just like someone who took advantage of her being intoxicated maybe offering her a ride to another party before raping abducting and killing her or just abducting and killing her um a third theory is that her police officer boyfriend had killed her leading to a cover-up um since there isn't much revealed about

that relationship but um who knows and finally many continue to theorize that karina's host family were involved and were the ones to blame for her right that sounds pretty likely to me that one right like isn't it always people who know i mean not always but like i mean it sounds like out of guilt they were very quick to report her or just out of like what we talked about in the last episode like overly cooperative of trying to hide something by being by being so like oh yeah and misdirecting and all that yeah and being like so overly cooperative that it's like fishy yeah um so there's that i mean many believe at least that frank and susan have more information than they've

let on like that at the very least people are like they've got to know something because she wrote home something terrible had happened right like i mean come on they have to know something right like i mean maybe not but that's my guess is that they do. So rumors have circulated for the last two decades that either Karina was in perhaps in a relationship with Frank Rapp or perhaps was sexually assaulted by him. All alleged. There is no proof of this. Just want to clear that up. One, the response to the crime was very odd.

It's hard to ignore. And then there's a dumpster fire on the property the day to the crime was very odd it's hard to ignore and then there's a dumpster fire on their property the day after her body was found uh and then there's susan's art okay oh as years passed frank and susan kind of fell out of the limelight like i said this story just stopped receiving any sort of press which is just very sad because it deserves attention and closure. That is until people began to notice an odd trend in Susan's art. Remember, she's a prominent painter. Right, right, right.

Several of her pieces depicted violent scenes that had really odd links. Like what? To Karina. So her site was actually taken down in early 2018 but when i was listening to crime junkie the episode was before that and they were literally describing the paintings and i i'm so bummed that the website had been taken down because i got to hear the description of the paintings i bet you she took the website down because people were talking about them yeah going and looking at them but so I will just read to you.

What the description. Crime Junkie gave. Looking at these paintings. And I found a couple of them. I went on. The Wayback Machine. Where you can find like. Archived. Pages of websites.

And I found a couple. But. I couldn't find the full exhibit. Unfortunately. Okay. So this is how they described it. It's called. The Never Been Seen Exhibit.

And the painting is called. Carried Across. It's a blue painting. what looks like a man holding the body of a naked woman upside down oh and she looks unconscious or dead and he looks shocked and horrified in the shadows there looks to be another woman or another person probably a woman caressing the man's head as if to comfort him so that's one of the paintings okay there's another picture or another painting called events which is a girl who like is blonde looks a lot like karina i mean it's you know painting so it's subjective but yeah uh and it looks like a blonde girl or woman pushing away a man who has wings but like pushing him away from her sure so that

one's a little bit odd too um and then there's a tweet that i found when i was trying to find all this shit in the middle of the night um the tweet was by someone named bill grider who had listened to the crime junkie episode and was like going through the website and he noticed another painting of hers called third world donkey and the painting is just of a woman's torso well if that doesn't tell you anything so on the one hand it's like maybe this is her way of coping with like a fucking horrible tragedy that a young woman that was like living with her and basically her surrogate daughter for a while was and And also her own trauma with it of, like, people thinking that she was involved. Totally. Like, it could totally be, like, not her and she's just telling her story of what happened.

I mean, even... I can't imagine even being associated with this without being blamed. Like, that must be fucking traumatic to have, like... She was raising your children. Like, she was in your home. She was your family, basically. So... And then she was accused of perhaps being involved.

So you're right. Like, it could be a way of coping. Could have nothing to do with it, and people are reading into it. It could also be very telling. Or it could be very telling. And, you know, perhaps a guilt thing. Perhaps she knew something. Perhaps she's expressing.

It's unclear. So it has now been over 23 years since this murder. There was a partial print that had been found at the scene. It's never been matched to anyone in CODIS. And tragically, the lower half of her body has never been found. Shit. Former homicide prosecutor David Myers says the case still haunts him to this day. And he says not many do.

In an interview with the Boston Globe, he said, It's as haunting today as it was 20 years ago, if not more so, because no one has come forward because whoever is responsible for this, whether it's one person or more than one person, has apparently not slipped up and said anything to anyone who would have an interest in saying anything. And there's no crime scene. There's no ability to determine with any definite basis how she was killed, why she was killed, where she was killed, never mind who killed her. So it's like so frustrating because there's nothing like they don't even know where she died so there's nothing to go on except like a partial print that's crazy it's terrible so it's technically still an active case but there has been like no movement essentially they barely get any tips most people

have never heard of this like it's such a small it gets such little attention for being such a gruesome horrific crime in such a big city um especially for like a young blonde woman i mean i feel like right in the u.s those are the stories that get the most attention so it's a little bit shocking to me it is very weird um anyway it's considered very unlikely that any concrete answers will be found i mean i sometimes like sometimes like to think, like, back in the day, we never knew, or people never knew DNA was even a thing. Yeah. So, like, maybe someday there will be something we don't know about, which is just what I try to tell myself as, like, a comfort thing. But, you know, who's to say?

Her family still hopes to find answers, but it's been extremely hard for them because they're not U.S. citizens. They can't get the ball moving over here. People aren't as interested in working on a case for, you know, of somebody who is not a U.S. national. Right, right, right, right. Who's here illegally anyway. Like, it's just not, nothing has really moved. And they don't have the money or, like, the sway to get any attention and to keep Karina's story in the public eye. So that's why I've been wanting to cover this for so long.

They've struggled to keep the public's interest. And this is one of those cases where I personally believe somebody knows something. It was recent enough that whoever did it is most likely still alive. Someone who knows something about who did it is someone out there is still alive yeah yeah someone who knows something about who did it or what happened i like just hope somebody comes forward and is like i can't live with this guilt anymore anything right or i know my neighbor my boyfriend whoever um if you have any idea what may have happened to karina um maybe go look up her photo if you were in that area during the time i don't know um contact bossoston pd if you have any

idea as the case is still open they're seemingly pursuing any leads they said that come their way anything they're looking into uh former prosecutor david meyer who i mentioned earlier i'm just going to end on one of his quotes from the article from the interview with the boston globe he said quote for the family of karina holmer nothing would be more satisfying than bringing them some sense of justice, some resolution. I don't want to say it would take a miracle, but it would take an extraordinary piece of evidence to charge someone, let alone prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. There is nothing about this case that's ordinary, and there's everything about this case that's extraordinary. Wow. And that is the case of Karina Holmer, the Swedish nanny.

And there's Gio to make his opinions known. Yeah. To have the last word as usual. Um, yeah. So that's just such a fucked up story. She was 19 or 19 or 20. 96. She was here for a few months just to like travel.

Isn't that crazy? Like in that timeframe. Yeah. And like, she won a lottery ticket, which is the only way she could make it over here and was so she's like this is fate this was meant to be that i could like make it to the u.s i mean it's just awful just like snuffed she was just snuffed out like her it's very very fucked up and sad um and like some people have tried to frame it as like oh well she was out drinking it's like don't don't yeah no you were out drinking right right the fuck does that have to do with anything also like she's 19 or 20 saying that you know you

deserve based on what you're wearing yeah totally like shut the fuck up i mean i say this i've said this before but like anytime i hear that it's like i should be able to walk down the street butt ass naked ass naked and not be raped sorry is that too much to ask you know it's like just pisses me off when people turn it on her like oh well she was partying yeah what i you know there's i'm very glad that i'm not surrounded by conservative people who actually think they're like i don't know yeah that girls are asking for anything. In LA, we forget how common that is. I mean, I do, like, until I go home to Ohio or anywhere, and I'm like, oh, shit, I forgot.

Yeah, I didn't realize how conservative parts of Virginia are until I go back now, and I'm like, I cannot believe I used to just sit here and listen to this conversation. And probably, like, I was probably guilty of some, like, really stupid shit at some point until I like used my goddamn brain. Yeah, it was like it's a rough transition to go back and think, oh, God, this is. I never I never realized how much I changed when I moved out here until I was out here for long enough and then went back to Virginia and heard some of the conversations that people in our like big generic circle say. And I never used to be offended by everything that came out of their mouth.

And now I'm like, please never come near me again yeah like how anyway things like that like she was asking for it totally or like or like guys can't control themselves yeah or she was drunk i mean i mean even when it's murder like not just sorry assault yeah exactly like oh well you know boys will be boys but People can get angry. They just can't control themselves. She put herself in their way. It's like, what are you talking about? So stupid.

Like, you, I should, I'm saying, seriously, anybody should be able to fucking lay naked in a room and not be fucking touched. Like, this is not, that does not make anyone your property. Yeah. Your right to talk. It's, I mean, obviously, I feel like i'm saying this and it sounds so absurd we're saying it to an audience of people who already agree with us right exactly and it's just mind-blowing people who don't are just gonna leave one-star reviews which they do it's just it's just like one time in the very beginning i don't remember what happened but in the very beginning of this

podcast we got hate mail from a guy because oh do you remember that it was when i was working at nickelodeon i don't remember what it was my day job too there was something where like this guy left this woman and she used his credit card and we were like and she he like fucked her over and like cheated on her or something but left his wallet or something so she went and bought a bunch of shit which like sure don't do that but like also we were like yeah i get it or something like we just responded as like good for you like if he fucked you over like and then she by the way took her own life so like it was a very fucking trajectory for her it was not like he he basically pulled the not all men card in an email or something you're you're being discriminating against men by saying like you should take advantage of their money and

i was like that's literally not at all we are talking about suicide i'm sorry that you got overshadowed by credit card purchases also every man that says not all men just let me see you like picketing and volunteering and protesting and then you're allowed to say not all men but i have a headache i have a headache too i have a headache too anyway sorry i have i'm sorry i have i have not to be on my soapbox but we've been here all day so i'm just ranting but i have fucking family members who are like well not all men i'm like okay well many men and like right that's not the point it's like that's like saying like oh, white lives matter. Yeah, obviously they've always mattered. We've never said they didn't.

There's a reason we have. Right. All lives matter, obviously. But there's a point. There's a reason why some of them need to be. We need to make. We're just getting into our like. The liberal Geminis in us are just losing our minds right now.

The L.A. avocado eating liberals are out to play sorry we think black lives matter and people should like no means no like my bad my fucking bad sorry there was a really funny tweet i saw today where it was like like a quote that adults will tell you we're like as you get older that you become more conservative and then it said but actually me as the years go on and it was a screenshot of the cha-cha slide where it says slide to the left. That's actually really good. My ex-boyfriend used to say that. He's like, well, you have to understand.

Well, if anyone says you have to understand. This is its own long story, right, in and of itself. But whatever. But he basically used to say like, well, you know, as people get older, statistically proven they become more conservative what are you talking about oh so that's why i need to now become a republican because if i'm a grandpa in 50 years i'll like i don't that if conservative means love is love and nobody's fucking killing anymore then yeah i mean i also think grandparents today are probably a little less conservative than they were 50 years ago.

That's what I like to think. I'll tell you, my grandparents are two of the most liberal, supportive. I mean, my grandpa identifies as Republican, but when it comes to like the fact that I'm LGBT, he has other LGBT grandkids, like nobody fucks with that. He's like, they are the most progressive grandparents I've ever seen. My grandma loves to call me and tell me all about how she's watching uh i am jazz yeah the transgender uh uh girl on um tlc yeah um she loves jazz that's hysterical she anyway they are very progressive like old dogs can learn new tricks so slide to the fucking left motherfuckers cha-cha slide with me grandma you lost bitch sorry for our rant we're just so tired and it's so fucking hot in here sorry and hopefully everyone

who's listening is not a republican so everything we just said is uh perfectly fine to say and your brains aren't exploding voted for trump and your brain did and I hope you do it again too Trump JK please don't fucking 2020 god I by the way I'm dying for the red hat that says uh make racists afraid again oh yeah I love that hat wait you know that exists right yeah oh I thought you meant you're dying for I just want to buy it but oh it's great it looks like make make America great again but it says make racists afraid again that says make America emo again that i love but i i get too nervous to wear it because the font is so small that's why i haven't gotten the that hat because i'm actually like i've worn it once or twice and people will in la will literally fucking gun you down with their eyes and i'm like okay they don't like

read the fucking hat yeah read it i know you're across the street you really don't know but like i'm gonna not wear this anymore that's why i have i was in san francisco and i almost bought the hat and i was like i don't even want people to even wear it like yeah throw food at me or something because they didn't read the hat um there's one karamo made a shirt that i really wanted that said um that said made by immigrants and i'm like yeah me too i want that shirt love it anyway anyway fuck everyone anyway fuck trump just kidding i love everyone and i wish they loved everyone too unfortunately they don't yes too bad but we love you all right we do deeply and we're so thankful you're here you're probably not here anymore but anyway good night to

only the people who believe love is love and that's why we drink that's why we fucking drink we love you also that's it that's all goodbye