And That's Why We Drink - E150 Soul Stealing Otters and a Detector Inspector

Episode Date: December 15, 2019

Happy Hellidays, everyone (don't worry, we're workshopping it)! We're coming in cold this pre-holidays week as Em takes us to Alaska in search of the "land otter man", the Kushtaka. Then Christine brings us the cold case of Michigan teen Shannon Siders and her best friend turned armchair detective who helped crack the case. Also, feel free to join us on our hike of Rock Candy Mountain, but be forewarned we're only going if we get to stop and eat candy on the way... and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us!Go to CandidCO.com/DRINK and use code DRINK to get $75 off!If you need life insurance but aren’t sure where to start, go to Policygenius.comGet 50% off all holiday cards and photo calendars, plus great deals on photo gifts at Vistaprint.com. Just enter promo code Drink50. Offer expires Jan. 5th. Don’t spend a minute of your holiday season at the post office this year. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the Microphone at the TOP of the homepage and type in DRINK

okay we're speeding we're speeding we're rolling our way into your hearts oh and we're rolling right in too uh this is episode 150 which means uh i thought that seems pretty monumental that seems funny okay you said it earlier like it was nothing. I was waiting for this moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we were like, oh, it's episode 115. I was like, wow, we've done this a hundred times and then half of that again. You know?

Yeah. It seems bananas. We've done it 150% of the time. You get it. You know math. Yeah, 150. That's crazy. We're almost at 200.

Not quite. I wonder how long ago was our 100th episode? I guess I was back in January, right? No, that was the year. Yeah, 50 is another year from now. 52 weeks. Wow. So we still got another year.

Wow. I don't know if that makes me happier. It's a long time. Yeah, i felt like i was about to say like oh i bet the next 50 episodes will fly by but then i was like that is a whole year no but to be fair when we started this and if we had heard like oh in three years when you're still doing this podcast we would have been like what with the same fucking microphones and shit we would have been like no that's impossible wow 150 yeah okay well considering it's been that was literally two and a half basically an anniversary since our 100th episode yeah

precious 150 we love a good holiday so um send us some presents okay uh hello everybody welcome how was your thanksgiving right yeah for everyone listening right now so when this comes out we have not seen each other since thanksgiving we just got back. It was Thanksgiving last week. We are still doing these in advance. So that way we are chipper and happy. And these are entertaining instead of you hearing us when we're on tour and sad. hotels and lowly hotels i do not buy that shitty of hotels okay christine put me in a motel one time and they had the four seasons that's not the truth but we should make that a thing oh when was that when was that i hope like there's a news outlet that picks that up like one co-host treats the other one to a motel you know i book your travel stop complaining um what did i do for thanksgiving you went to seattle i did it was a good time yeah um i don't think i i don't think anything wild happened while i was there a lot of eating a

lot of eating i had good pizza i went to the funko museum i did see that blaze was very blaze is obsessed with funko pop yes it was a good time i'm not very obsessed with funko pops um like i have i have some but i like they're not like my thing that I collect that I'm like super obsessed with. They're definitely a Blaze thing for sure. But it was fun to see. I didn't realize how many. I mean, they have a lot. I did not realize how many.

That's what the museum told me. They had a whole Avengers scene and everything too. It was very cool. Oh, that's fun. How was your Thanksgiving? Oh, it was good. I went home to Cincinnati for the first time since, oh God, in like seven years, I think, or longer.

Wow. For Thanksgiving. Well, you know, we don't do much usually because we're Germans. What did you do instead? We didn't involve ourselves with any pilgrims. Well, I think most of us are, wish that that was the case. We did other, we did other things. Not me.

You know, my ancestors. Nevermind. Let's change the subject. So. White people suck yeah i mean i guess all around nobody none of us are uh in the clear point being um yeah i went home and it was pretty fun and my sister and i got our ears double pierced which you can't well oh i saw that on instagram you got hers ears her ears pierced for the first time and i got doubles sorry i'm fucking with the microphone because it's falling apart yeah so she got your ears they're under headphones right now oh yeah so look at those blue ones are the new ones and they get to stay there for six whole weeks until they can take the blue

new ears and so uh yeah that was fun and she got her ears because she was like uh i was like are you nervous she's like no why would i be nervous i was like because they're shoving a needle into you but okay um i was nervous anyway so that was fun i've never had anyone shove a needle into me unless it was for surgery yeah surgery yeah like a like a needle how many we went to surgery i've had two what are we allowed to talk about it i mean they're they're literally not anything like my wisdom teeth oh oh my god because we were talking about surgery earlier and i was like oh my god like about my mom just had her ankle replaced so in my head surgery is like this like very big like dramatic oh yeah i've only had very body parts i've been very lucky to only have minimal me too i had that too but i don't think that's kind of surgery for me it is because it's the only time

i've voluntarily voluntarily gone to a hospital for someone to remove something off okay that's fair and tonsils that's fair tonsils iils. That's fair. Tonsils, I guess, counts too. Anyway, point being, yeah, it was fun. And we went to nowhere. We went home and ate a lot of food. And I went through some of my old journals, and that was questionable at best because I was like, oh, these will be fun and emo and silly. And then I went through them, and I was like, oh, no.

Oh, no. I was troubled, dude. I had a hard time that's very depressing I got like really depressed really and you didn't notice it except for hindsight I mean I knew I was terribly depressed I literally read the journal entries and they were like they were like I don't think anything means anything and I was 12 I was like what is the matter with me wow and then I was reading them and my sister kind of like joking around like wow look how dramatic i was and i wrote poems that were like about how humanity is worthless oh my god it was insane i was writing these like creepy dark poems and um writing this very like kafka-esque

stuff and my sister goes how old were you know like 13 and she's 15 and she's like what i was like i don't i don't know i don't know what was going on when you were 13 oh my gosh i did not have a good time in high school let's just put it that way um i think i had a blast in high school oh i had different lives struggled yeah so i just it made me a little bit sad for my past self and i was like i don't think anyone real or i don't think i realized how bad it was and i don't think anybody kind of did anything to help me. So I was a little bit sad. But here I am. I've helped myself in my adult life. And yeah, we're in a better place now. Let's just put it that way. I think all of us have something like that, though, where when I look back on my childhood, I'll look at certain aspects of it. And I'm like, oh, I didn't realize how dark and sad that is yeah yeah well children are very resilient too like yeah i was just like blissfully ignorant yeah and now uh there are certain things where i feel like you and i have like not the same

different but the same uh when it comes to like some version of like a a dark upbringing and so i'll say things to you and ask someone who was also kind of raised in that environment it's like oh yeah well that's fine like obviously that happened to us but then i'll talk to someone who like had a like a happy blaze and allison are like what like their parents are like happily married still together they're they're not from like small town drama they don't have like multiple parents yeah and i'll say something to allison she's like that's really sad and i'm like is it i didn't know that i don't know i'm'm always like, I'm over it. Trust me. I spent six years in my journal talking about it.

I'm fine. Clearly, we went through it at some point. God, there was some dark shit. Anyway, I didn't even know why I talked about that. But it was it was an emotional journey. I posted the some of them to. Yeah. Some of them on Instagram.

Like they were funny. One of them was like, Renee, like, it doesn't even talk to me anymore. And then another one was like, Patrick St stump gets me like those ones were hilarious some of them were like i need to burn this and never show anyone ever again um anyway so that's kind of a side note i did also want to say that like we posted this comes out in later in december but we posted our tour dates we're going on tour um we are going to a lot of fun places we're going to toronto we're going to that's all that matters um we're going to new york we're going to philly we're going to dc we're going to we're going to texas a lot burlington vermont and portland maine which we've never been to yes

texas um and i just wanted to say real quick i know a lot of people are distraught because we're not going to florida Michigan or Salt Lake. Those were like the three big ones people were upset about. And we were not. We weren't able to fit them in, but it's not something that we did intentionally. A lot of people thought we are dissing them on purpose. We're not. A lot of people thought that we just don't like Florida.

No, no. And we did. We literally had six shows there this year. I wanted to be like, guys, no, we love you. But, you know, our shows there, as you know, we had to cancel three of them. Right. So that didn't work out quite as well for us. So this time around, they didn't fit into the schedule.

And that was the other thing. We only had room for 25 cities and our booking agent had to find a city with a venue. And, you know, some cities like, for example, Atlanta or something. He's like, I just couldn't find a venue that would fit on a specific date it just didn't work out it's not personal there's uh i and i before i had a any i don't even know what i'm saying before i was on this side of it where like i'm performing on a stage and like understand some more of the logistics of it i never understood why someone couldn't just come to a city and figure it out. But there's a lot to it.

And we did request with our booking manager, we did tell him that we wanted maximum 25 cities. And he did recommend that we go to cities that we hadn't gone to in that same calendar year. And since we had just done Salt Lake City, we had just done Atlanta, we had just done in new orleans atlanta salt lake and we did florida in march and i so i think there um i think his reasoning he's been in the business for a long time and he's just said that a lot of times you don't want to do a city in the same calendar year twice right right so we we understand it from that token so that doesn't mean we're not coming back in the future it doesn't and it doesn't mean we had a bad time a lot of people were like did we disappoint you i'm like no also we don't have like we have a say we can say like oh we'd love to go

but we also said we'd love to go to atlanta it didn't work out right we even we requested because atlanta uh our last i'm gonna put new orleans and salt lake and atlanta in with the 2019 tour even though they were a couple months later 2020 oh 2019 the 2019 tour but atlanta was like our loudest right and i remember thinking like we definitely have to go back but apparently since we had just gone there's like a when it comes to booking venues there's a formula yeah we don't and he's like just trust us and we're not involved like we don't get to say no we want we need that like we can't right we don't know the rules also um you know logistically some cities just don't have room for a certain weekend some it just didn't fit into a schedule um and so he did work really hard on the tour and we do have a lot of fun new places we haven't been before we're coming back to texas some other place we're

going to cincinnati actually we're going to bogarts which is the venue um where i saw my first concert when i was 16 full circle regina specter um so and it's in my it's in my neighbor well i probably shouldn't tell you that uh anyway you guys have probably already figured that out um also dc uh i'm warning you now if it is already sold out by the time that you are listening to this it's because my mother probably bought every ticket so i'm sorry she probably ruined it for you guys. I'm just letting you know. And patrons, that went off great, the patron early access sale.

I do know a lot of people on Instagram were kind of upset that Mean Greets were sold out already. It is because we had a Patreon pre-sale just for patrons to give them kind of like an extra boost since they've been supporting us for so long. And so Patreon, people were very patient with me. It was kind of like an extra boost since they've been supporting us for so long um and so uh patreon that went people were very patient with me it was kind of chaotic and round of applause to you specifically i know i know we can't hear them yeah oh i know we can't hear them but everyone like in your own car or office or wherever you are just kind of do like a little clap for christine because she handled all that so gracefully like handle like we had gracefully we had a little like a couple hiccups

on our end um and we were able to figure them out but when i say we i mean like christine and eva handled it so thank you guys for we haven't slept much in the last couple days but thank you for it went great for handling it thank you m for your kind words everyone was really kind and patient you patreon folks are are great like good people i'm in that facebook group the closed patreon group it is so much fun and like people are just so positive and it's it's amazing um speaking of which we literally never remembered to do this uh our patron of the month for december is abby haynes abby hi abby you've been uh supporting us for a long time so i wanted to give you a shout out thank you so much you reminded me of something i also forgot to do okay say one more thing yeah

real quick if you're a patron there's something that is coming to you in the mail it might have already arrived but um i don't even know if m knows this i think you do but you haven't seen it yet i uh sent out a little surprise for all our patrons if you sign up before december did i get one you did yay that's all i care about yeah if you signed on before december you um get a special uh little surprise in the mail, really small, but yeah, look out for your mailboxes. The thing you reminded me to do is I told you that I was going to start remembering to shout out the person who requested the story this week, because the last two weeks,

I, people in our Patreon did request stories, and my two stories came from those people and I forgot to list them so I want to find the person that requested this story this week and if you want to join our Patreon it's patreon.com slash atwwdpodcast is that right? yes, atwwdpodcast

so we have a good time over there we have fun and thank you for being so supportive and patient with us this week uh why can't i find this hang on oh okay here okay so this is my story of the week this is a mythical creature and this was requested to our oh are we starting yeah i just jumped sorry do you have more updates um no i don't think so i thought you were gonna say the people who requested it last week oh no i did not find those people i'm sorry okay i thought maybe they dm'd you someone someone tweeted out to me about one of them but i not the other got it okay cool uh cool no i think that's all i had i just want to make sure i'm

like fully ready to absorb your story i have an update what i love you that's all why is that an update what was the status before uh it was looking good not great just teasing but we're on the up and up today i love you too and thank you for being so kind to me this week and and what did i do i left you alone that was what was so kind you're i gave you a break you're amping me up you're giving me kind words you give me five minutes of hyping you up it's's going to get weird. Okay. So this is a shorty, but a goodie. Okay. This is from, I don't have the real name.

Did you screenshot them? That's what I said. I did. I get nervous. I screenshot like pages of them. Me too. Oh, no one's going to be able to see that. But so this is from your Instagram handle is half underscore awake.

Half. Oh, that's me. Actually. Also, I mean, actually, this is just us as an Instagram. You're speaking for all of us. But so thank you so much for submitting this. And to clarify what we're doing is for all our close friends who are patrons, they get to be in our close friends get to be. Yeah.

It's what an honor it must be. We allow it. Yeah. They get to be in our close friends group on Instagram. And so we in there now. I've still I've still an M's idea, yeah. They get to be in our close friends group on Instagram. And so in there now, I have still an M's idea, too. We kind of request story ideas to, like, listen to the patrons and what they want to hear. Listen to the people.

Listen to the people. Give the people what they want. Sorry, your turn. The people who want this exactly are half underscore awake. Or just half awake. So this is the story of Kushtaka. What is that? So apparently the other names are Kustika, although it's pronounced Kushtaka, but it's spelled differently.

Okay. This creature is also known as the Otter Man. What? The Land Otter and Alaska's Other Bigfoot. Alaska. Alaska, Alaska, Alaska. Okay. Okay.

So this is Native alaskan folklore um and the story primarily comes from two different tribes of the pacific northwest called the i'm gonna try not to mess this up the tlingit and the tassimshian tassimshian tribes cool um so other tribes have uh that are not those two, they have a similar creature as, as Kushtaka that they call Natina and Yurayuli. So they might all be the same creature, just named different things. Sure. So here's a quick description about Kushtaka. 500 pounds.

Same. Half a weight, 500 pounds. Yeah. Got it. So far, this is looking like me. Okay. 500 pound shapeshifter. I don't have that. have that no unfortunately that's the one we don't get um supernatural strength yeah definitely am definitely am um supernatural speed and agility and water and can conjure illusions

what does that and my favorite thing about where i got this information google um in the sentence where i found that information it said they can also conjure illusions this may involve magic it's like oh i have a hunch it involves magic if they're conjuring illusions or it may not apparently the kushtaka can are also telepathic they can teleport at free will and they can even manipulate time and space allegedly so literally just do whatever the fuck they want. They can just do it all. That sounds nice. For the most part, it sounds like they are telepathic and shapeshifters.

And they can conjure illusions, which is part of the telepathy, where they can envision something and plant it in your mind so you're telepathically hallucinating. Right. So those seem to be the main things. But on some smaller sites, I found that they can manipulate time and space, which is pretty cool. Apparently, the kushtaka are bipedal. They are six to eight feet tall. Maybe bulletproof. Maybe.

Maybe. Same with me. Maybe I'm bulletproof. We should probably not test it out, though. They are covered in dark fur. They kind of do look like a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch, just fur all over them. Talons on their hands. Human feet tail glowing eyes and needle sharp teeth okay not great when the kushtaka is in human form because remember they shape shift right when in human form you can still recognize that it is not a mortal human but kushtaka because uh these creatures do their teeth never change so there's

always needle sharp there's yeah so they could be a human with needle sharp teeth and that's you know it's kushtaka vomitous what is that called you were just talking about it with your brother oh yes um uncanny valley yeah it's like when something's still off something seems off like uh it's like ai typically it refers AI. So if artificial intelligence is kind of trying to be human, but humans know something's not quite right. Right. It's a little bit eerie. It's like this but instead of in a digital space, it's in a cryptid

space. So Kershaka apparently lives in the many waters of southeast Alaska and they eat fish and mollusks and they emit a three-part whistle that uh apparently goes low high low that is their whistle who was like just like that it sounds like or maybe fast like oh i don't know it's not like a bird no i can't whistle i don't know how i was about to try for

the first time on camera great you were about to try for the first time to whistle i can't blow out i can only blow in i was gonna say i can whistle inward but i can't change the pitch or anything yeah i can go basically i can like make my mouth small enough that when i'm like inhaling a whistle sound comes out but i can't actually whistle a tune me neither okay good glad we're in the same page wow i always say that people are like i don't know what that means but i literally don't know how to whistle. I cannot do it. I can only do, like, inward. Also, for a long time, I couldn't snap with my two fingers. I needed to do it on my ring finger. Really?

Yeah. Wow. But I can't do it with my middle finger. And then it blew my mind that other people use their middle finger. I found out way late, like in high school, that people snap their fingers with their middle finger i was like what are you talking about you're so weird why you do it with your third finger and they were like okay you're kidding me anyway anyway back to the kershaka i bet they snap with whatever finger they want they snap with their sharp sharp teeth uh so yes they emit a three pitch whistle which either may be a way

to communicate with each other or it might put victims in a trance. So they're not sure, but that it does, they do whistle. So based on whichever version you're hearing, cause there's a couple different, either through tribes or different regions,

they all have a different story, but Kushtaka for the most part can either shapeshift into any creature or only shapeshift from human to otter. Okay. Hence otter man or land otter um so different versions suggest that if he if he can only switch from human to otter some stories will say that he can shapeshift into any species of otter or a human and some stories say he like it's a specific otter and a human that he can change back and forth into.

I see, okay. So sometimes he can be multiple types of otters, but in different towns, you'll hear that he can only be a land otter. It's always a he? There's no other? So kush, I'm pretty sure they are gender neutral, actually. Oh, you're just biased. I was just being an asshole.

Right, got it. actually oh you're just um i was just being an asshole right got it um so i know that i do know that kushtaka is a singular and plural like if i'm talking about a group of kushtaka it's multiple people it's multiple creatures that are kushtaka creatures okay so they can appear friendly and helpful so there are some regional stories that say that they're actually nice and they've been known to actually save people that are lost out in the water but they're actually more often known to be cruel and dangerous and they are known to turn you into kushtaka like them oh no so even if they are helping you out at sea it's a trap to get you on board with them because i mean you can just shape shift into a human help someone oh i see okay and then all of a sudden turn them into kushtaka oh so they're being helpful is actually

a trick they will save you by turning into kushtaka by turning you into a kushtaka so you can survive the cold water okay it's like if you're floating around the water and you're freezing it's like okay well i'll turn you into an otter so at least you like a big sasquatch otter so that way you can at least survive the water but that rhymes otter water wait a minute i love it tmtm that's our new brand um so they so they could they'll turn you into kushtaka and you'll think like oh this is temporary no once a kushtaka has turned you into a kushtaka you can never be a mortal human again oh so you can now shapeshift into a human with like kushtaka teeth like you can you'll always be able to turn into a humanoid creature but basically they are taking away your humanness humaneness Got it. I was going to say human-cy, which is not...

I like that, though. I do. I wish that was a word. It is now. So these tribes often believe that, the two that I mentioned earlier, those tribes believe that without a proper goodbye after death, your spirit cannot reincarnate. So they actually think that Kushtaka is evil because it is stifling you from being able to reincarnate with the rest of your family oh like they're keeping you stuck like they're

trapping your soul in a kushtaka body no so they may honestly might just try and they might really just try to be helpful and like save you and turn you into a kushaka so you won't die but they are inadvertently taking right you're right away to reincarnate when you pass on interesting but a lot of people say that um kushaka do that on purpose like they want to build their group and so they will actually seek out people that are lost in the water or in the forest and lure them away so they don't mate right they just transform other people as far as i know i did not look up their sex habits okay why um i was you know i don't know that's a good question that's usually the first thing i look into so sometimes

they won't wait for someone lost in the water they will go out and look into the forest and they're known to uh imitate cries of a baby or screams of a woman that's not cool to lure you in to want to help them which is also sasquatch um sasquatch really and some in some different regions people think that bigfoot or sasquatch will imitate cries so you'll go looking for them why do they want you i thought they don't want you to look for them you can never find them okay so they just want it just to bother you that would bother me that's also though uh i think that's been said also about the jersey devil and a few other cryptids i think most of them somewhere regionally in the world there is a storyline of

like oh they'll imitate cries so you go into the woods but then you can never find them okay in this case what the difference between them and kushaka is that it's so they can find you and then lure you away. You have a nefarious agenda. Yes. Right. I mean, even serial killers have done that. It's really, that's not okay, guys. Don't do that.

Yeah, humans can do that too. And it's not good. So oftentimes they'll be seeking out prey on little kids because they're the easiest to lure away. What? So a lot of parents have used Kushtaka as a cautionary tale for wandering off. Sure. A lot of parents have used kushtaka as a cautionary tale for wandering off. Unless you can be rescued in time by a shaman, it's pretty impossible to ever no longer be a kushtaka once you've been turned into one.

Wow. That sucks. You're never supposed to say their name three times in a row, kind of like Beetlejuice. Kind of like what you just did 40 times in a row? Mm-hmm. Super. Because apparently then you summon them towards you fun fact what the hell m don't do that there is one uh sighting in 1900 from a gold prospector named harry colp

and he had three friends they were out at um thomas bay and they saw a colony of kushtaka um so the thomas bay is actually called the bay of death because there was a huge landfall that killed 500 villagers back in the 1700s so it's also known as devil's county fun fact oh my but apparently he was there he was looking for courts there was a what sorry a landfill a landfall i think it was like an avalanche or like a like a ground avalanche i don't know what a landfall is i imagine is like an avalanche or like a ground avalanche. I don't know what a landfall is. I imagine it's an avalanche without snow. Okay.

Do you know what a landfall is? Is it like a landslide? I guess so. Landfall was on three different websites, so I'm just trusting it. Okay. I mean, I think, yeah, probably like a landslide, I would imagine. Maybe it's just a different word for the same thing. I mean, it makes sense.

Okay. I thought you said landfill. I like how I couldn't think of landslide so i said avalanche without snow which like i'm not entirely wrong but i still hate myself i uh no you're not wrong at all um it's like a waterfall without water yeah you know just a fall cliff it's a cliff moving on its own but not an earthquake not moving at all because there's just a natural It's just a natural disaster. What is wrong with you? Okay. So Harry Culp, he was out there. He was looking for quartz and he climbed over a ledge. And when he got over this ledge, he felt like something was staring at him.

Super. Turned around and saw a whole colony of kushtaka running after him. Ugh. And so apparently it scared him enough that he wrote about it but never showed it to anybody because he didn't want to look like he was losing his marbles. And so after he died, his daughter actually found it and then I guess like published it. Love that. And so it has since been coined like this like manuscript.

It's been coined the strangest story ever told. Okay. Which like if I were to write a biography or an autobiography i would want to be called that too i mean it's kind of funny though because like his whole purpose of not sharing it is not to end up on all these block like paranormal blogs and now i'm talking about it the time and now like his name is all over them it's so sad so uh there's this is an excerpt from it i couldn't call them anything but devils, as they were neither men nor monkeys, yet looked like both. They were entirely sexless, their bodies covered with long, coarse hair, except where the scabs and running sores had replaced them.

Each one seemed to be reaching out for me and striving to be the first to get me. The air was full of cries, and the stench from their sores and bodies made me faint. I could feel their hot breath on my back. So they're pretty close, unless they can breathe really far um they can smell them too their long claw-like fingers scraped my back oh the smell from their steaming stinking bodies okay this guy's getting too into that you're really a little shamey here was making me sick oh he's definitely not body positive um while the noise out there sores sores. Some people have sores. While the noise they made, yelling, screaming, and breathing drove me mad.

Reason left me. How I reached the canoe or how I hung on to that piece of quartz is a mystery to me. I think he's like, I still got the stone, though. Like, this is Indiana Jones or something. I hope he, like, wrapped it up in that story. Yeah. And here is the stone. Sealed it forever.

So that's just an excerpt from apparently the strangest story ever told that's pretty strange so kushtaka fun fact are vulnerable against copper in case you ever run into one you're like how do i say myself have some copper on hand okay um sometimes they are afraid of fire no one knows why but apparently they're also uh repelled by urine so pee on them i guess okay i'm not gonna judge you i mean if you're scared enough when they get combined you pee anyway maybe it'll save your life i know i know what to do you know the do you okay let's hear it you know those moscow mules yes and they come in those little copper cups oh p in it pp and then throw it just go one two three pp yeah and then copper in your face i like it copper p in your face okay so i

wonder if p has copper in it also maybe like throw some fire in there like a some matches in there oh i don't know i'm trying to think of how to combine all that light it on fire there we go does p is p flammable no because it's pretty much like gasoline well unless you're like really not hydrated thanksgiving we were drinking we weren't drinking p we were hold on let me rewind if you're drinking enough alcohol and it's in your system could you light your p on fire sure someone try that no don't try that i mean try like in a safe space but try it no you're okay i just want to know i'm not gonna do science now this is not what this show is but um we had this thing called a um oh god what's it called i think like a foyer song and bullet

you know and um sure yeah you basically it's this german thing that we did yes it is a german thing that i gathered surprise and you put like wine in it and then you put like orange slices and lemon slices and then you have this thing called a zuckerhut which is a sugar hat and it's this giant cone of sugar and you put kind of a spit on top and then you pour rum on it all over it and then you light it on fire and so then all the sugar melts into the wine underneath if i I were an alcohol drinker, I would. Yeah, it sounds fun. It's kind of like making like a, it's a very Christmassy drink because it has like, you know.

Yeah. Orange and. I hear you. And then you have like a fire underneath it because it's like a warm drink and it's like a cider. But it's wine and rum and sugar. You can pee it on that and then put it in a copper mug. Why don't you just bring a sugar hat and then pee on the sugar hat and set it on fire? Oh, wait a minute.

Wait, no, the rum... Did you figure it out? The rum is what's on fire. What if... How about we just go back to the classics, get some gasoline, light it on fire, and then pee on that? Or that. Pee gas.

Why don't you just bring a bottle of rum? You could use it anyway. Or a bottle of pee. But the rum you could use if you didn't find one of these things. That's true. It has multiple needs. The rum could come in handy. The pee, not you first of all offended i've never seen a big sugar cone i just discovered it i've never heard about it and i posted it and all these people dm

me oh a foie a tongue and bullet and i was like what the f how do you guys speak german um i would like one one day just the cone i just want to like lick it like it's a lollipop my mom doesn't listen to this so i'm going to tell you i bought my mom one a whole set for christmas so i'll show you i bought three sugar hats i'll take one i love a good sugar hat yeah can i wear it or just looks like a cone like it's just like this it's like a cone really you could wear anything if you try hard enough yeah i could wear geo if i was strong enough to put them on my head. Tape it. Speaking of Geo, the main way to prevent Kushtaka from coming near you is they are terrified of dogs. Oh, well, hello. Okay, forget all the other things I just said.

Just bring a dog and some rum and you're fine. What about dog pee? That's two things right there. There's a lot of options now. Okay, yeah. Okay. As long as somebody has urine in them. Yeah, that's the real key here

so okay kushtaka are terrified of dogs any if you have a dog and they are uh one of those dogs who are a little too chatty and they're often barkers this is where they come in handy never heard of one if you have a dog that barks a lot kushtaka is less likely to come find you because they're so scared of dogs well good thing i have three so you finally have a use for your dog's uh voice when it's unnecessary not necessarily wanted yeah um okay so this is where and this is dogs that have died natural deaths nobody's doing any sacrifices or anything but apparently these tribes have also sworn by having dog bones and using them as weapons against Kushtaka. So if there's a dog who died of a natural death, if you use their bones and turn them into like knives or something.

So even their bones are repellent. Yeah, like innately dog. Wow, I wonder why that is. They just don't like canines. That's random. So the best way, if you are in a pinch and need to kill Kushtaka, and not really in a pinch, if you have everything at your disposal. But also if you're in a position where Kushtaka needs to be killed, you're in a pinch and need to kill a kushaka and not really in a pinch if you have everything at your disposal but also if you're about to if you're like in a position where kushaka needs to be killed like you're in a pinch you're definitely in like a moral emotional pinch you're actually

like in a vice grip of terror or something so they are best killed if you pierce their heart obviously i think most things act that way or de decapitated. Again, it's not too uncommon. Effective. But it's best done if you pierce their heart or decapitate them with a dog bone. Well, okay. Wrapped in copper. Oh, okay. The copper part maybe you can make pretty sharp.

So, there you go. And then burn the body to prevent them from regenerating into more kashako. Oh, sure. Because you still, you regenerate like a a worm like you cut their head off i imagine it's like reincarnating but instead of reincarnating it like your soul into another form you're just becoming another like you just morph back into another kushtaka oh god okay so because essentially if the belief is that your soul is trapped in kushtaka then if you if your soul reincarnates anyway you would just be stuck in that space right but you can reincarnate into other things yeah i don't know how kushtaka

science and genetics work like soul genetics you know comment below if you have don't comment below i already know everything i said is the dumbest thing you've ever heard you don't need to tell me again so uh they're often confused with Bigfoot because they do look a lot like Bigfoot. A lot of people have defended this and been like, no, they're not Bigfoot. They're just a baby Sasquatch with mange. And I'm like, that's your best? It could also be like an animal we've all seen. Right.

But apparently the argument is, no, no, no, it's definitely a Sasquatch with mange. Or it could just be oversized otters. Right. Apparently the argument is no, no, no. It's definitely a Sasquatch with mange or, okay. Or it could just be oversized otters. Right. Well, the otter thing gets me thinking. Cause I'm like, if they're shape shifting into otters, I'm like, okay, it probably has something to do with actual otters. Right.

I'm thinking like if you're also Alaska. So fun fact, Alaska has almost 30,000 otters. I love otters. So it's like, it's probably an otter. You know, you see them everywhere. Like odd. Speaking of odds. Yeah. It's probably an otter you know you see them everywhere like odd speaking of odds yeah it's probably an otter odders odds or if you were an otter you'd be an otter you'd be a pretty odd otter i tried by the way to join the odd fellows recently does when you say try do you mean you failed uh no that means that they're the closest lodge is an hour and a

half away i see so but i wanted to join. So speaking of odd things. That's pretty odd. If they get a chapter out here, then I'll join. You just go to meetings and eventually the like... Did you go to the meeting? No, because the lodge is too far away. Oh, really? How did you try to join it?

I tried to join by looking for a lodge to go to meetings. Oh, I thought you like submitted an application or something. No, no, no. I mean, so I'm part of an elk lodge out here. Did you know that? Yes. I loved it. I have.

Okay. Yeah. What? It's super good. Nothing. You don't like them? I just have a lot. Don't worry about it.

We'll talk about it another day. Let's put it this way. I did it when I didn't have any friends and I was like, I want a reason to like go out and like have like a community and like meet up with like a group of people. And they really liked me because I was like 40 years younger than everyone. So I was very popular there. Um, but yeah, I'm part of an elk lodge and then I just never went as much as I thought I was going to and not to knock them or anything, but I just, you know, they're all like retired and the activities aren't as wild as I would like them to be. And I thought, well,

the odd fellow sounds fun. It's probably the exact same scenario. It does sound fun. I will say that. Anyway. So are women allowed to join? Am I allowed to join? Oh, okay. So I think a while ago,

a lot of those organizations like the Moose Lodge, I actually wanted to join a Moose Lodge and their lodge was too far away, which is why I joined the Elks. Okay. So I just totally broke my allegiance to them to go join the Elks. But I think they all used to be, you have to be male to join to go join the hawks um but i think they all used to

be you have to be male to join but then the world's changing and they were like well the world's changing somewhat but the ones that i have encountered are not the most worldly open-minded people let's put it that way gotcha i've been a part so i've been a part of uh the elk lodge out here but i also knew people in virginia that were part of the Elk Lodge out here. But I also knew people in Virginia that were part of Moose Lodges. And they were a goddamn blast. So I think I just lucked out with the people in my charter. Yeah, I don't know. I might a couple of my uncles have been involved. And I remember they literally had nights where the women would have to cook and bring in the food, but they had to go to a separate room. It was like, no, that was not that was not

how that worked for. Okay. It was really bad. We had very different experiences. I think it's a lot like fraternities and sororities where a lot of people are anti-Greek life. But if you had a great Greek life, then you're like, why do you hate it so much? I think it's kind of like that.

I mean, lodges are literally just adult fraternities. Sure, yeah. I'm not super into that. Maybe that's why I'm... Yeah, because I love Greek life. Yeah. I mean, I don't... Different lives we led.

I don't dislike it. I just... You just don't love it like i do i just don't i didn't even know what it was until i went to college and i was like what the hell is going on why does it want to have glitter all over them i definitely didn't i'll tell you that uh so where are we anymore sasquatch with mange otters odd fellows that's how we got there oh my goodness wow everyone is gone okay so so the reason i found out that otters have 30 or that alaska has 30 000 otters to begin with and that's why people would even why people should assume that it's probably otters that they're looking at right is because one of the websites that i looked at about the land otter man is i guess some sort of uh biology website or science like natural habitat website

and so they were talking about this legend this legendary otter man and then they they clearly were like well while we've got these readers here let's throw in some actual facts about otters they like took advantage of it that's amazing to be like fungicational sorry so while i was learning about the otter man he keeps scrolling and eventually they have like fast facts about otters so here are a few of those they are otters are believed to be one of the most intelligent non-human species on the planet because humans are the most intelligent obviously did you hear everything we just said for the last half an hour none of it was intelligent we've actually just reverted that fact back and otter

would have literally swam away because they're smarter than us no an otter would have taken over and done the podcast better uh apparently there is evidence that otters have been around for over 30 million years whoa didn't know that me neither apparently every continent except australia and arctica and arctica have an otter population somewhere suck it and if the legendary kushtaka is any indication this was the last fun fact on what has now become an educational uh excerpt here the last one if the legendary kushtaka is any indication they will steal your soul oh it's like it when the otters will yeah it's like if like apparently they are might be related to kushtaka and they'll steal your soul steal my heart it went from like a legend folklore story to educational facts to like a real roller coaster like we're gonna rip back

rip it back and try and force them together i don't know what this website was but i liked the ride it took me yeah it sounds fun so allegedly why why would otters if this folklore like how were otters inspired to become a cryptid in what way was my next question so i looked that up and allegedly otters have been uh chosen among other animals to be inspired by the kushtaka folklore or to have created kushtaka folklore because at the time otters were apparently uh the one of the most human-like animals in the area so back when this when this folklore was created they were the animal that had the most human-like behaviors well they hold hands if you've ever seen a video of otters holding hands like it's precious you they can't be evil look at that fun fact in san

diego they have uh you can reserve tickets and go into like a pool and then they like release a bucket of otters to come swim in literally just like dump them in like here's an otter package for you um okay it looks really fun i kind of want to go swimming with otters um so at the time they just seemed like the most human-like animal and so it made the folklore easy to believe that kushitaka could be people trapped in otter bodies since they're acting so much like humans okay um so some ways that they're like humans they're intelligent friendly social they like to pull pranks on their friends and with that many similar traits to us and they like to hold

hands things like that it was very easy to anthropomorphize their behavior so if you're in a community that believes in spiritual magic and they already act like humans, it's not that far of a stretch to believe that they might actually have been humans in a past life or are human adjacent. So that could be where the inspiration came from. But another way that they're like humans is that they can be cute or playful to be manipulative and get something from you. Oh, that's funny. Which means that oftentimes otters actually shouldn't be trusted at all because if they're doing anything sweet it's with an intention so that's where like what so william burroughs says well speaking of cute things at all i just like this and i feel like i'm cute billy billy bros no i don't know but i thought this was like this

probably should be like a tweet somewhere in the world. A creature who knows he's cute soon isn't. I was like, that sounds like a burn for an ex-boyfriend or something. That's my next like pinball. You know, those like little felt boards with little letters. Yes. So I will explain that in a second. But one of the other ideas for why otters would be an inspiration for

the kushitaka folklore is because they are really wonderful in a lot of human-like ways and they're also not so great in a lot of human-like ways just like kushitaka who will draw you in until they can prey on you um it's just another way that you know otters also apparently do that in the natural world and richard martin this guy is clearly like anti-otter in every way because there's a book out there called like the dark side of otters oh come on and this is a quote from ricky kip come on from ricky martin uh ricky martin richard martin oh his name is literally ricky martin okay got it uh this is a quote that i kind of has nothing to do with the story but i needed to put it in the second i read it because i'm never going to see the sentence again otters exhibit

no self-control no family values and practice lots of kinky sex oh god forbid i know first of all that sounds like sounds a little slut shamey yeah a million percent to be fair though that immediately made me go look up like why like what the hell the sex practices i mean what are otter sex kinks and i did find out that oh my god this is the best episode we've ever done so here's a lot about otter sex um i will say i was team otter because of the hand holding thing i think everyone's been suckered into thinking i have some fun facts about otters too they haven't said and now you're are you gonna make me regret them yeah can i say them real quick yeah while we still love otters oh i don't want to

notice i want to know i want to know okay i went to the um long beach aquarium and they have a whole thing of otters and they had this like board and i took a photo because i was like that's me because it was like otters like some like 20% of social interaction and then they need 80% of like alone time to make up for it. I was like, okay, they're very introverted and they get tired of other otters very quickly and need to like rest and like. So very human like. Recover. Yeah. I mean, it falls into this like.

It was so funny. It's believable that maybe they were humans in a past life. It was like they pull pranks on people or they pull pranks on other otters, yada, yada. And then they're very introverted. I like i i'm that right so that totally validates this whole like why tribes what's what you're about to say so apparently it is very regular for otters to not only be fond of necrophilia with other otters and other animals their size but also a lot of forced sex okay i was worried that's where you're going dolphins do that too yeah well apparently otters are known to be so forceful

and like biting and holding people underwater not people holding otters other otters underwater um so a lot that's where necrophilia comes in because usually okay all right you know the animals they usually kill animals not usually but there have been enough reported times where like there are many articles about this um someone who works at an aquarium is writing a very angry email right now i'm totally butchering it so i'm going to try to be as like like pc as possible there are have been enough instances where there are many articles online suggesting that it is very common for otters to forcibly have sex with their female counterparts um and to a point where many of

them have either been savagely attacked or died it's very bad it's really bad what i'm gonna switch things up that's not kinky sex that is not what that word means exactly so this richard guy's gonna figure out your vocabulary, Ricky Martin. If this was all consensual, then like they can have as much kinky sex as they fucking want. And that's what kinky sex is. Not that. Consent is sexy, guys. Okay.

So I'm going to switch things up real quick because I talked about something dark and let's make it happy again. And we can all like two seconds before I start talking. Let's laugh at my expense because in order to look this up i typed in otter kinky sex oh no and i forgot in that moment that otter is a gay term oh sure and so i ended up getting a lot of gay porn on my computer last night so there's that oh boy what a night um but so anthropologist richard barazul bar, uh, has said that land otters might have also been the inspiration for this, uh, for this folklore because land otters at the

time were a symbolic bridge uniting humans and animals. Because it was a land otter that could be both on land and sea. And so it was just a way for, it was like represented unity in a way. So they probably had Kushtaka be like oh it's part land animal part water animal and then it kind of got morphed into this dark creature wow um a couple fun facts there is an episode on destination america's alaska monsters uh about the otter man um very funny because it was very funny and very laughable and they decided at the end that they could not find the spirit because it's just an elemental spirit. Like, it's not a real creature. It's just with with the world. Okay, it's also the main antagonist in the book, The Beast of Barcroft. And in TMZ, TMZ did a report in 2013, that Charlie Sheen actually went to Alaska on a private jet to try to find Kushtaka himself. And when this was, I think, during the tiger blood phase. Sure. Yeah, that. So he apparently just went on a little private jet and went to go look for Kushtaka. Didn't

find anything. Fun fact. And or did he? Well, he didn't because he was quoted later saying it obviously knew our group was too far skilled to be snowed in this fashion so it stayed hidden like a sissy he said that fighting words to the kushtaka charles charles are you listening billy ricky and charles are you listening chuck anyway that is the story of the kushtaka that is our otter sex lesson for the day there's your otter sex also i'm like really sorry if we ruined like your favorite animal just now because if you like i know a lot of people otters i loved otters i did too and um i really was like oh i can i relate to them now i'm like i don't know yeah it's just a very dark side but it was also very sad the day that i learned that dolphins um right i used to

love dolphins assault too and it's like oh i mean guess what humans do it too so it's like you know what i mean i guess it's just animal i mean guess what humans do it too so it's like you know what i mean i guess it's just animal kingdom people are fucking terrible sometimes dolphins are terrible yeah that's my hot take for the hot take most most creatures suck in some way at least in one aspect except for geo except for the only thing that sucks about geo is that he's a scorpio but well we make do with it we make do um yes i uh also elephants also i don't think i have a bad fact about elephants please don't give me one don't that is not an invitation to give me a bad fact i i christine loves elephants like really a lot and i i donate a lot of money to elephant sanctuaries please don't ruin elephants for me i would be very very tragically upset um anyway shall we move on to this nonsense sure what have you got boy oh boy um is it bad yeah okay yeah great yeah it's rough happy holidays

everyone i know i was gonna do a christmas one, so the next one, I was going to have a whole holiday theme for the month of December. But then, I mean, I'll explain it in the next week's actual week of Christmas episode, what I ended up doing. But some of them with the Christmas ones, I was like, it's even sadder. I don't want to ruin. Like, I don't want to do that. Yeah. Maybe we should. No, never mind.

Maybe we shouldn't. What if we just did like animal sex fun i was gonna say what if we did the most fucked up ones for the holidays and we called it hellidays hellidays tm tm tm tm tm hellidays that's us no it sounds like hollandaise or hell maybe we could eat hollandaise or hellman's mayonnaise never mind okay okay change it flip it and reverse it okay i'm not gonna continue um yeah so i there were some like really brutal like i'm doing i'm doing a christmas one next week let's put it that way but that's here we go let's just go let's just go so i did um m's cool thing and i put out a to the close friends on instagram i had a topic request for holiday

themed topics um so next week i'm gonna read some of my favorite responses because some of you are weird and wrote me like some weird answers and they that would be fun they made me laugh so we just did an episode where we just read things people say to us and it was really funny so you guys made me laugh thank you um so i'll read those next week. But one of the messages I got was from RachTodd21. And they said, first they said, the murder of Shannon Siders is wild. Netflix cold case files, season one, episode seven. Great episode on it. Then immediately after, there was a second message that said, oops, just realized you

were looking for holiday themed. Shannon Siders is still worth the eyeball emojis. So I guess a look. okay so i was like you know what actually rage todd you kind of read my mind because i wanted to like do a non-holiday one before next week's episode so thank you for that suggestion and i love cold case files on netflix so i watched the episode and i have made a little presentation for all of you great this is the story of the murder of shannon siders um oh and i know a lot of people are upset we're not going to michigan on this tour um so this

is a michigan story for you we did salt lake last week that's true gotta do some florida maybe i'll get the flu again the florida yep um so this is a michigan story um the sources i used was a cold case files episode michigan live the cincinnati inquirer wzzm 13 grand rapids justice for native women.com and the detroit free press so let's go okay this takes place on july 17th 1989 shannon siders is an 18 year old young woman living in nu Ago, Michigan. She was raised by her father after he and her mother had gotten divorced and he got custody of her when she was four years old and raised her as a single dad. So Robert, her dad is, he works the night shift at Pepsi Cola, which is near the factory, which is nearby. And his shift would start at midnight and then he

would get out at 830 in the morning. So July 17th typical work day he heads to work and leaves shannon at home when he gets off work the next morning and arrives home shannon is gone um at first he's like okay it's strange it's like you know 8 30 in the morning i don't know where she would be uh but so he goes to some of the neighbor's house he goes to some of her friends houses uh she's not there He even walks through the neighborhood, like, calling for her. Maybe she's walking around the neighborhood. And it's a really small town. So, you know, in a few minutes, he realizes she's, like, not anywhere. Yikes.

I hate it. It's bad. So he goes to the police office. I do this every time. It's like when my mom mixes up the gas station and the grocery store. Yeah. I think it's because I want to say post office and I say police office you say post station i don't well that doesn't work i guess i mean because we do so many stamps.com ads that i think i just say post office so much right right

police thankfully i don't say police station a lot i mean i guess i do you kind of do that i do you're right you're right i probably say more okay forget it um so he gets a police station and he begins to print off flyers and hang them up all over town. He reports her missing. It's, yeah, he's trying his best to get everybody involved in the search for Shannon. So at the police station, there's this young girl. Her name is Amy Bonner. She's 15 years old and she works at the sheriff's department as a police receptionist.

She's doing like basically a summer job, which is kind of a cool summer job at the police station i think so i thought so i would think so um so one day she is working uh her phone her work in the desk she's answering phone calls and she answers a call from a very excited she said his voice was very excited it was this man and he practically yells at her into the phone i just killed shannon cyrus instead of happy excited like just yeah oh no yep bad so she's like interning there basically she's 15 yeah can you imagine getting traumatizing again another shout out to dispatch people because like i don't know how you do it i don't either i truly it would be very very hard on me i don't know how you do it. I don't either. I truly it would be very, very hard on me.

I don't think I could do it. So she obviously tells her boss and they so the guy hangs up. She tells her boss they look into the lead. They try following him, but they can't figure out. Nothing comes of it. But it's jarring because up until this point, they knew Shannon was missing, but they didn't know she had been murdered. And now it seemed like that could very well be a possibility. knew shannon was missing but they didn't know she had been murdered and now it seemed like that could very well be a possibility so a few months later over labor day weekend two guys are walking

in the manistee national forest off the beaten path don't do that by the way no uh so i think we all know what's about to happen they made some s'mores and had a great night no the end i wish the end i wish i could and that's why we. I wish we could rewrite all of these. We should do that. We should have like a... I don't know if that's... That seems a little... I don't know. It sounded fun for a second and then reality sunk in. It sounded fun if it actually worked.

If we could actually fix things. Like a choose your own adventure but it's all good. But let's re-steer history into positive. It sounded fun for 30 seconds and then I was like oh no that's fucked up yeah that seems to be a lot of our lives yeah these days anyway in this career please entertain me with this this horrible so these two guys are out labor day weekend walking through the manistee national forest off the beaten path and they stumble upon two id cards uh great One is a video rental card and one is a gas card.

And the names on both of the cards say Shannon Siders. No. So they call police. Police come over to where the IDs were found. They find a pair of blue jeans and they are Shannon's blue jeans. Not a good sign. I hate that. Yep.

This area was actually called the Hole in the Woods, which, no, don't go in. I think if a part of the woods has a name it's because enough things have happened there yeah exactly good or bad exactly usually bad the woods as a whole is enough i like to avoid but the hole in the woods seems like the place it's like if anyone were no one has thank god but if anyone were to ever be like oh let's go climb like devil's canyon i'm like why is it called that i don't want to like i wouldn't hike if you if it was called like happy fun place right right right definitely not going there now candy cane mountain right um big rock candy mountain that's the one i would hike for sure if any of them absolutely you would hike it really

yes okay because i could stop every five seconds and eat candy that's true i would i would take like the little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rock so you would have a blast at the bottom if you put it that way you wouldn't even have to hike i would actually take a chairlift and then i would just like you would just hold the wine glass while it fills itself up except i've fallen off chairlifts twice so maybe not and a rock candy mountain i had a lot of skiing accidents when i was younger because I'm not very sporty. And my stepmom insisted on making us go skiing every winter. It was bad.

My mom tried to warn her. My mom's like, she does not have American genes. She has very German, like stout genes. I do love going skiing. But I have had some gnarly falls where I was like, oh, boy, I don't know if I'm going to come back from this one. I mean, there was one year my brother fractured his vertebrae vertebra vertebra on the mountain there was one year i literally fell off the chairlift it was like really bad shit i've never had anything i to this day like knock on wood but like somehow i've never broken a bone and like i'm the clumsiest person on earth so i don't know how

that's hasn't happened i'm literally so lame though i got like stressed but i get really like i get hurt and really fucked up ways to make up for it where i'm like oh i didn't break my arm but like now i just can't move for five days i've broken my ankle but they're like yeah and then i i've this is terrible i've like fractured my back several times but like stress fractures from like heavy backpacks and shit like nothing no like actual skateboarding fall like the last time i hurt my back was really bad like it was the time when i with you oh yeah that was i literally had to get a doctor's note so i didn't have to like do any intense work for like three weeks and the doctor said i sprained my spine i was like and there would be there would be times where like i'd just be sitting there and my spine would just like collapse like my

i would just feel my whole body just like fall you know how i feel about spines i would tell i told the doctor that i was like it's literally my back is not like it's literally giving out like all of a sudden it's like i don't have a spine my whole body melts into gravity and he was like yeah that happens and i was like what do you mean that happens i just have to continue living i am not gonna be responsible for you on this rock candy mountain i don't i don't want to be especially when you're you're not landing on like a puff of snow you're landing on that's what i'm saying i'll be busy falling off the chairlift into a spike of candy really loving these tangents this is what happens when we don't see each other for a while i know it's problematic everybody hates it i'm sure but we do like as we say we as if you

listen to pod lords you'll learn that we were not friends before the podcast and so we are we constantly are like what like learning things about each other that we had no idea yeah so fun facts fun facts um okay so let's get back to this horrible thing they find a pair of blue jeans and the area was called Hole in the Woods. And it was actually a well-known party spot for kids. So that's where the teens would go. The youths, yes. The hashtag teens, which is where I don't want to go.

Not anymore. Even when I was a teen, I did not want to go. I would have died to be invited. No, I'm too scared of those teens. died to be invited no i'm too i'm too scared of those teens um in the cold case files episode they interviewed robert her father and he said he's older now obviously but he said he went out there when he was a teenager but at the time he didn't realize that like kids still went out there so when he heard this he was like oh my god like that's where i hung out when i was a teenager and now they found my daughter's like missing ID cards and jeans in that spot.

So he didn't even know that's where she would hang out with her friends. It's just very weird, like layers of the story. So at this point, Robert is obviously fearing the worst. He actually goes out into the woods on his own looking for Shannon, which is just makes me really sad. You know, she's his only daughter. He's like, she's all that I had. So he went out into the woods looking. He he's just like i feared the worst like i just assumed i'd find a shallow grave or find her body or something and this part oh gosh okay this is where i started to cry okay he says

in the episode that he he said i do believe some people have some sort of connection or esp or an ability to connect with those who have passed. But that day was a day I determined I don't have those abilities. Because she because she didn't say Dad, I'm over here. And I just like, wow. And you know, what's interesting about that is I'm so convinced that my first of all, my mom will never die. But when if she were to i'm convinced that i will hear her or sense her and the fact that like someone else felt that and then really like that's such a helpless it is it's terrible powerless feeling like they were just they had each other and he was like the fact that i just never he's like i you know he thought he would know like he thought he would find her and

he's like i it just nothing happened and so that just broke my heart and that's well that's when i began crying so ding ding great if we're keeping tally um i guess so i guess we are so october 15th 1989 um three months after shannon's disappearance robert uh is at home with his girlfriend at the time and he receives a phone call so it was a call from a woman named wendy who worked at a local bar that robert and his girlfriend linda frequented so robert's girlfriend and linda answers the phone and hands the phone to robert and he picks up and here's wendy on the other line say bob they found a body up here they think it's shannon so he said that's when everything just collapsed um a hunter walking through the manistee national forest near where her belongings had been found a month earlier had stumbled upon her body

and police actually told robert that if he had gone a few yards further like if he had gone a little bit further on his search he would have found her body so he was looking right in that area but he so close hadn't gone into the wood line far enough um yeah and so maybe for the best he didn't i don't know um but so shannon's body was found it was almost three months from the day she had been reported missing her injuries were examined thoroughly she had been brutally beaten uh the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head according to the detroit free press shannon's skull was found detached from her body about 14 feet away uh there was a pocket knife and a pair of table legs also found near the body and it's on table legs yeah it's it's so i was thinking about that because

like this sounds so random but also if this is a spot where kids like go party all the time and have for decades like right who knows what kind of there's probably some randoms like we don't we had a in virginia we had a quarry that we would go to and there's always always i only went a few times but there was always something weird there yeah as far as i saw i mean selena and i used to went around putting potatoes in people's mailboxes so i'm sure there's claim to fame weird shit um yeah so i didn't know if that was related or not, but that is what they found near her body. So, uh, she had been found on her back, uh, with her legs spread out and it was believed she had been a victim of rape. Her shirt was pulled up and her underwear had been pulled down around one leg.

The bones of her hand, cause she had decomposed at this point, were clutching a necklace. because she had decomposed at this point were clutching a necklace uh there was also some mutilation um so just a warning for the next 15 seconds uh it appeared that the skin around her vagina had been cut uh first they weren't sure if it was like a torture thing or if it was someone trying to hide evidence after the fact okay so they weren't clear on that um but so that's what they found when it came to funeral arrangements robert really had a hard time because he couldn't bring himself well first he couldn't bring himself to look at shannon's body especially after what had happened to her and then he also struggled with picking pallbearers to carry the casket because he felt that whoever had killed her knew her right whoever had killed her raped her and that whoever had killed her knew her. Right. Whoever had killed her, raped her and or whoever had killed and raped her knew her.

Right. Right. So how could he pick one of her friends, a pallbearer or like a family friend knowing maybe one of these people carrying my daughter's coffin? It's got to be such a terrifying thought when someone you love is a victim of murder. And like knowing that chances are statistically that person who did it is going to come to their funeral right right like you're just and you're just standing amongst strangers at this point because you're like i don't know who did it but statistically someone here did yeah and um especially at a small town you know everyone gathered for the funeral and like okay so uh

you know he instead so this is interesting um instead he didn't pick anyone from any men from her friend group or any boys instead he asked several of her cousins all women or girls to carry her casket so um i just thought that was kind of right kind of nice uh shannon was very well loved the funeral was attended by many of her friends and classmates a couple of her friends had asked if they could write a letter to shannon and put it in the casket robert let them along with some other like remembrances of their times together in high school the original investigator said um oh what does this say i don't know that's half the fun okay let's figure this out um the original was that where you fell asleep and your head just, like, smacked the keyboard? It might have been where Junie was. Either that or Junie.

Junie was involved. Just falling asleep on your laptop. So they had asked, oh, I see. The original investigative team had asked Michigan State Police Behavioral Analysis Unit, BAU, to build a profile on who may have killed Shannon. So this is interesting. So they're building a psychological profile, like, criminal minds you know um so the profile they believed she was likely killed with by somebody within her peer group um who was her age uh according to cold case detective adam mercer who was interviewed in the episode as well uh he believed

this person would have been in her age group and then the crime had possibly been committed by more than one person. There was also a good chance alcohol and drugs would have been a factor, and they believed this was most likely a sexually motivated homicide and that she was killed by someone she knew. So this was just, like,

it struck the small town of Nuevo to its core. Like, this was just horrific. It was obviously shocking for an 18 year old woman to with no like enemy no known enemies to be brutally assaulted and murdered um especially by someone in the community and someone she knew and someone they knew um and so there was like that classic small town fear of do you really know your neighbors which by the way you don't i don't care what you say you don't i don't believe you do anyway um unless you're like bffs or something unless you're like you and celine like right right right unless you like grew up like yeah you're like really close but i just i'm like i don't i don't know also i'm not a very i mean there's there's wherever

there is a serial killer there's probably a neighbor that doesn't know they're a serial killer right i mean even if you think doesn't know they're a serial killer. I mean, even if you think about someone is living next to a killer. Exactly. It could be me. I could be living next to a killer. You could be sitting next to a killer. That is the truth.

Yeah. Like even with Joe D'Angelo, Golden State Killer, people were like, oh, he was just always out fixing his boat and would wave hello. And like how, you know, and you can't blame them. Like, how the hell would you know? Listen, if your neighbor is a pillar of the community, you need to just lock your doors. If you haven't heard our advice yet, then you're doing something wrong. Go call the police on them and tell them we sent you.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't say you heard it somewhere, but you forget where you forget. You say you heard on a really, really cool, awesome place, but you don't remember what it's called. Right. Say you heard it on last podcast and left no i'm just kidding i was like what's another podcast i was like what's another true crime show um don't do that

also don't put it on anyone i'm so sorry especially us i'm just teasing okay especially us yes um anyway back to this fucked up stuff so robert pointed out to investigators that shannon had a class ring that was very important to her it had her initials on it and there was an inscription on it as well and that was never found in the house and it was not found on shannon's body okay so investigators began to think maybe this was like a trophy exactly so when shannon's body had been found a forensic entomologist had been hired do you know what that is no entomology yeah skin no bugs that's skin is dermatology bugs i should have known that i okay i dated a biology major in college and she took this

entomology class anyone that was a biology major at my school had to take this class where literally for an entire semester you had to carry around like a major at my school had to take this class where literally for an entire semester you had to carry around like a butterfly net and you had to catch different species of bugs like that spongebob episode throughout no truly like jellyfishing like we would go out to like dinner and she'd be like oh there's like there's this bug let me go get it and would have to like pull the butterfly out like not just when you're at school like all the time carry this butterfly net around so you could get as many species of bugs as possible. What did you do with them?

And then at the end of the year, you had to make dioramas of them. You killed them? I didn't. No, but she killed them? I mean, they ended up on a board. Oh, no. Don't do that. No! I mean, I don't know what to tell you.

It's already happened. It's still happening there. Don't do that. But I should have known entomology because i heard it all the time and anytime i saw someone on campus with a butterfly net i was like they're definitely a biology major anyway keep going or they just really wanted or they really like butterflies i don't know um so they had this forensic entomologist who basically studies the bugs that on a decomposing body to figure out time of death and that kind of thing so uh this

guy analyzed the insects and larvae what cycle they were in on her body to create a timeline over death and forensic entomologists are not used very often but because shannon's body had been found out in the woods after so many months they thought it would be a useful tool the entomologist was able to determine that it was somewhere in the last couple weeks of july to the first week of august that shannon had been killed going back to the timeline police had to determine who shannon was with who was like who with whom she last nope i don't know you know okay i don't english is not my first language well that i knew they had to determine who she was with last before she died uh turns out she had been with eight people before she died and the

last people to see her uh were other like friends from high school friends in her peer group um so suddenly they had eight people they had to interrogate and figure out if they were involved so all eight were interviewed at the police station some of them took polygraphs and the idea was to try and rule them out one by one by using shannon's friends answers they were able to build a sort of picture of what had happened that night. So Robert had left the house about 1030 to go to work. And Shannon was still home at that point. He was on his way to the factory where he worked.

And after he left, Shannon ended up meeting with a group of friends she knew. And they were local kids who liked to hang out at the hole in the woods. Yep. They'd all gone to high school together, just like a typical group of teenagers out partying in the woods yep uh they'd all gone to high school together just like a typical group of teenagers out partying in the woods uh one of shannon's closest friends at the time julia liditz was interviewed in this episode as well and she described that's why i love the show because i find like the actual like family and who want to tell the story get as true of a story as possible yeah and it's nice because sometimes you don't know if a show is like exploitative or just like

drama drama you know and Getting like a genuine interview. Yeah. And like letting the victims tell the story rather than like just pulling the most interesting headlines and stuff like that. So I thought that was kind of cool. But so they interviewed one of her best friends at the time who said that. Sorry, I lost my spot. Julia. She described the group of people she said she

didn't consider them shannon's close friends uh they were kind of acquaintances from high school but not like best pals sure uh the group got together meeting in three separate cars and ended up in the infamous hole in the woods they hung out for a bit did a bit of driving as you do that one i did do a lot of in high school just driving driving around that's what you do that's what you do what else is there literally i don't know i remember and i think about it now in high school when i'm like what did i do with my friends because i have so many memories but most of them were just driving to each other's houses driving to each other's houses or like driving to get a burger but like we didn't drive anywhere outside of, like, a 15-mile radius. And yet I remember having a blast.

And it's like, wow. I don't. And then that also was before I had an iPhone and everything. Right. Before I had social media accounts. It's not like we were taking pictures. I'm like, maybe. Was I just, like, having, like, old traditional fun?

Like, I guess we had mix CDs. Like, we could be playing mix CDs. We used to make each other mix CDs. Yeah. Listen to them in the car and then, like, go quarry for different drives and then what would we do at the quarry we would walk around in the grass and sit down and then we would leave oh i did that kind of thing but i didn't go to like we had a park where people like smoked pot and did like oh people also did that at the quarry i just didn't do it we also had a we had two different

cliffs there that people would jump into the water so it was like a summer oh you mean a waterfall without water yeah yeah it was like a tall rock that once maybe had water but there was no and it was not made of candy so m did not climb it or jump off of it we had but don't jump off we had a friend who literally bursts his eardrum jumping off also people die all the time from jumping off of high oh it was a 60 foot cliff no especially if you're drinking you don't know if there are rocks underneath you hit the water wrong he don't do that versus eardrum and had like intense surgery on his foot i'm telling you people kill kill kill themselves that way jumping i mean accidentally it's really bad um anyway so they did some driving which i also did that was kind

of what we did for fun which i'm like god my poor mother was paying for gas all that time i know because like i definitely wasn't. And then food once I drove, once I got somewhere. Oh, yeah. So many McDonald's runs. And then now I'm like, oh, God, if she only knew. And then I think I had put, she one day figured out that I was going to the gas station, like, three times a week because I just drove around so much. And she was like, you need a job.

Stop. I remember, I just, and maybe it's because we live in a city now where we're so far away from all of our friends. Like, traffic is a real bitch. Yeah. But like, I just remember calling people being like, want to go grab a smoothie? And then you would just go get a smoothie. And then that was enough of a hangout that it was like it warranted another 10 minute

drive home. There wasn't like an act. You didn't need to. It's like if we're getting together, we have to do something. Not because like, like, I would I would rather text you and not be in traffic for an hour. Totally. Or like FaceTime. I mean, we have that now.

But like, yeah, we'd be like, oh, do you want to sit in my basement for two hours and eat candy? Yeah. That was the event. It would be like, well, that's worth the 15 minute drive. But now if someone was like, hey, do you want to sit in traffic for an hour and 20 minutes to come sit here and do nothing? And watch a next marathon?

No, I don't at all. Actually, if it were a next marathon, I'd probably come over. But anyway, I keep distracting. I'm trying to make a bad thing more lighthearted. Good job. Thanks. You're doing great. So they did a bit of driving and eventually decided to go home.

She had been hanging out with these two guys named Levi Pearson and Brandon Seavers, and they did not have a great reputation in town. Julia said, let's just say Shannon did not shannon did not like being alone with them um with brandon siever sorry which is not a good sign uh he didn't think highly of women or girls he would often refer to them to women and girls as sluts and whores he didn't tended to make women uncomfortable i wonder why um just very like touchy-feely like very not aware of boundaries right but they're aware of they're aware of boundaries just didn't care about boundaries right right right but he's still like but and also making passes at them while also disrespecting oh sure and the second i turn turn him down they're the slut and

they're oh you're a slut or a bitch or a prude that's how it works um anyway so there was also a tip that brandon had left town shortly after shannon went missing so they're like huh well that's fishy brandon was brought in and according to his interview, Shannon had been riding around with him in the car and decided she wanted to go home. The opportunity came up for her to get in the car for someone else, and she did because she was uncomfortable, I guess. Brandon said he didn't see her after that. When asked why he left town, Brandon explained he had gone to Colorado to pick up a cousin and came back. And he actually did come back right away. Like, he didn't run away or anything.

Gotcha. and came back and he actually did come back right away like he didn't run away or anything gotcha um the other kids did confirm his story saying they had witnessed shannon getting out of his car and into another car so at this point um police were like okay well we can't really pin anything on you um the car that she had gotten into was the car of paul and matt jones they were brothers who grew up south of nuevo and the original plan was that they um would go back to shannon's house to watch some movies and drink some beer but the group split up with shannon um and paul and matt's car in matt's car nope shannon in paul and matt's car i hear you i hear you they allegedly dropped her off at home after that they told police they dropped her off between midnight and 2 a.m and that was that

because she was tired and didn't want to hang out and drink any more beer uh they even went into detail about the house they said her porch light was on, the TV was on. They saw the dog kind of running inside the window looking out. So investigators tested out these stories. It seemed to check out. You could actually, when they did kind of a test run, you could see the TV from where they said they'd parked. You could see the dog running around.

The porch light was always on. Okay. So it kind of matched. So they were like, all right. I mean, it looks like you did drop her off at Shannon's house at her house sure um they also passed the polygraph test so everybody at this point is kind of being checked off the list although all eight of the group had been thoroughly investigated nothing came of it and um you know we're watching an episode or i was watching an episode of cold case files so you kind of know that it's gonna go cold and the leads are gonna dry up so this is kind of

a fun fact from the opening of the show which like gets me every time so there here's a fun fact there are 120 000 unsolved murder cases in america and only one percent are ever solved wow and so these episodes are stories of those cases that are solved so it's like really the odds are just once the case goes cold the odds are just zilch zilch yeah so shannon's grandmother um is still alive she was interviewed in the episode as well she says not a day goes by that she doesn't think about shannon and wonders how old her children would be whether she'd be a grandmother by now and she would be a great grandmother um it became as robert put it a hole in their heart and she was an only child uh she was basically just taken fully away from them wow and from the way it looked they'd never find

out who did it which is just the worst part and the killer was walking free presumably wow so robert tried to keep the the case like alive even though it was going cold um he put up signs billboards they all said who killed shannon siders um he tried to keep her in people's memories try to find answers but again over time just nothing came of it yeah things just slowed down no more leads now we fast forward to august 2011 it's been more than 22 years since shannon's murder wow uh nuevo got a new police chief in 2000 his name is is Pat Hedlund. And part of the reason he took the job in Nuego was he wanted to solve the Shannon Siders case.

Oh, wow. Which I thought was really interesting. Yeah. The district had also gotten a new administration set up and they decided to put to set up a cold case task force, which is just like I just always think that's so badass to like go back and find like who did these things that they think they got away with it but we're gonna figure it out like really come and ask you hot this time or cold oh so they brought on detective mike stevens who also said finding those responsible for shannon's murder was the reason he became a police officer which is really interesting such a small town i mean small area if you hear about this growing up and you're like, that inspired me to become a police officer.

So that was really interesting. This task force's first order of business was analyzing Shannon herself using victimology interviews, interviewing close friends, family, and so on to figure out who she was, what her lifestyle was like, her behaviors, that kind of thing. The first thing they learned was that Shannon was known to always wear her class ring on her right hand at all times and like i mentioned the key had the key the ring had not been found anywhere not in her body not in her house and this became a key point in the investigation got it uh so the first order of business uh according to detective headland was to make sure it wasn't just laying where the body was found and they didn't find it he was like maybe it was there nobody saw it so this is where i got excited because i don't know if you know this about me this is another fun fact that i don't think i've shared with you what um i am a metal detector hobbyist yeah i knew this you did um i don't and think i

know the extent but what i have brought up metal detectors to you before and then you really really got off on a tangent really weird thing that i like don't talk about i don't know why i think i just get really overwhelmed um but do you actively metal detect i did for a long time and i have three metal detectors you still do here i don't have them here they're oh it's gonna be like homie let's go oh god i should bring them here they're very hard to transport though how big are they like are they like i like the size these microphones but are they like they're not intense like expensive versions yes yes i bought a very expensive version in high school like that was me in high school i was such a dork well no i had one but i had like the sky mall meant for kids one and i knew it was not good

so i got one of those as a kid and then I was like, oh, I'm obsessed with this. And I saved up a shit ton of money and bought like a really nice one with like the little computer screen and everything. Holy shit. Yeah, it was like really wild because my uncle does it in Germany and in the mountains. Like I went with him a few times in the mountains where he lives. There were a lot of battles that took place like over thousands of years. I was just thinking like i would love to have your metal detector in my hometown right i would love to

see what the hell's going on it's really cool like the ones that we would do them in austria and like find we found roman coins like things from thousands of years ago it's really crazy you find like weapons my brain doesn't even i know it doesn't it's so wild and you're up in the hills where like nobody's ever been in hundreds of like nobody lives out there i feel like it's got to be a tough hobby because you also have to like i imagine understand like i'm sure there's like forestry laws on like being able to dig in certain areas and stuff oh yeah i didn't think about that i don't know if that i don't know how are you allowed to just dig a fucking hole if it says something's 50 feet down but my uncle does like he does a lot of

work in that field so i think he probably has maybe he only goes in places he knows is approved property i'm not sure also their town austria is like so small it's just mountains so i'm sure like nobody's doing anything but it's really dangerous because there are still mines oh so you have to be like he told me that while we were walking up this fucking mountain i was like okay you go way ahead of me. And he's like, no, no, you'll spot them. I was like, you'll spot them when they're exploding in your face. And I'll poke it and say, what's that?

Like an idiot. Anyway. So I just, I love metal detecting. I haven't done it in like two or three years. If you wanted to get into it, I would do that with you. Let's do it. I'm not kidding. I would do that with you.

Okay. Okay. Let's do it. Okay. So anyway, that was one of my- Renata, ship it on over. Renata, ship it on over. Renata, ship it, please. Anyway,

basically, I got excited because he said Detective Hedlund was like, several years ago, I got into metal detecting as a hobby. And I was like, me too. And I miss it very much, by the way. I've found some cool things. Okay, I'll talk you about another day.

I need to stop talking. I'm intentionally not asking questions. I know, I keep wanting to tell you all the things I found. I'm like, no, no, no, not today. So he went metal detected and search as he might, he never came across the ring in any sort of area near her. And he knew what he was doing. So he did not find it. He said, I found a lot of bullets, though.

Yeah, that sounds about right. So remember Amy Bonner, the former 15-year year old police receptionist who had answered the phone when that guy was like i just killed shannon so so now she's like 35 or something yeah two decades later exactly 35 7 something like that you're exactly right uh she had she said she had never stopped thinking about that phone call which i'm like me neither yeah neither. Yeah, how could you? Traumatizing. She decided I'm going to solve this murder. Okay, Christine. With my metal detector.

Just coming into a police office post station with your metal detector going, I'm here to crack the case. Oh my god, I'm such an asshole. That's the thing, too, is like I think I never talk about it because I got I was just got so made fun of in high school and stuff i was like not cool at all i haven't caught you up at

all lately on my genealogy stuff so you and i could be uh we'll have a sleepover yeah but so like i couldn't talk about it in high school i would get fucking bullied so i never talked about it now i'm like i bet i could talk about it without people fucking i'm surprised you didn't just hit people with it if they yelled at you oh i just cried and journaled about it without people fucking i'm surprised you didn't just hit people with it if they yelled at you oh i just cried and journaled about it uh and you're with your poetry i wrote poems about it um i'm so sorry so detective pat headland with the metal detector detective detective detector i guess detective a detector is as if is it not as a machine a detective person. Right. He's a detective detector because he does both. Oh, I see.

I see what's going on here. I like it. I'm trying to make it not funny joke. You know what he is then? An inspector detective. I was going to say inspector gadget.

A detector inspector. Yes, there it is. One of those things. He made a very smart move at this point. He knew, as he put it, that people, I love this line,

people would say things on a keyboard that they may not say in real life. Amen. we have learned that very quickly um people are not always very nice that's the truth so he set up a facebook page and almost immediately a message popped up from amy she said she wanted to be involved with the page he told she told her she told him about her background and how she had gotten that call and how she really wanted to be involved. And he told her, OK, you know, you're a civilian. You can be involved.

But any information you get, like, you really need to give it to us unfiltered without expecting anything from us in return. Like, he's like, I can't promise you anything from our end since you're a civilian. So some people were starting to think Amy had started the page. And he was like, great, let's keep it that way. So instead of people thinking a police officer, a task that's smart i know i was like that's actually really brilliant because people on the internet are not always filtering themselves and especially if they just think some lady's running it not like a cop exactly so he's like i'm happy to let them think that let their guard down and it worked amy received a message from a woman named stephanie

who said she had some information she said she believes her family was involved in shannon's murder this family was the hammond family and they also had a bad reputation in town for incest abuse violence etc stephanie describes the family's lake house she says that our family has this lake house it has a creek underneath it um she says shannon had been drugged and raped by several people in the basement of that house stephanie went on to say shannon had been held there for several days before being thrown into a van and brought out into the woods where they ran her over with the car fuck wow so amy's like all right i'm coming over i was like amy is kicking some ass here. She's ready to go.

So Amy shows up. She sees the house. She sees the creek. And she's like, holy hell. Like, this might have been where Shannon, you know, had her last moments. She called Pat Hedlund, who showed up. And he was like, okay, wow, this does actually match the story. There's this creek.

It's, you know, this family that has a lot of arrests behind them and that kind of thing um they enter the house cautiously and they immediately learn the house has no basement and it has never had a basement so it was a false lead oh okay because she said that she was tortured in the basement in my head it became a lifetime movie where like she trapped someone in her house she like made up a story to get them over oh to be like there's no basement and then like locks the door so i think i kind of didn't get it at first but i think she remembered it from decades before and she didn't live there anymore like she just called and said oh my family used to have this house gotcha so then they showed up the house it is just like she described with the creek and stuff so maybe she was telling the truth.

But then there was no basement where she could have been held for days. And they thought this is probably a faulty memory or something like that. So then they dug into the family and nothing connected them at all to Shannon. So this seemed like kind of a false lead. But I thought that was a very creepy turn. And also, like, what is wrong with people sending in? I mean, maybe it was a false memory but if it was intentional to just screw them like right the investigation stop it yeah so obviously frustrating um the direct quote from detective headland was amy was a pain in the butt

sometimes but i can't fault somebody for being obsessed with a case when i'm the very same person because she like dragged them out there and all that you know so amy admits outright she was obsessed she received death threats for for the work she was doing but she just saw that she said as a sign that she was getting closer to the truth meanwhile detective headland says the task force was moving on to the next item on their agenda which was exhuming the casket oh i know they didn't want to look at Shannon's body. They wanted to read the letter from her friends that had been placed inside the casket on the day of the funeral. Because nobody had ever read those letters.

So there was a tip somewhere like maybe read the letters. There's something important in there. So they, with permission from Robert, they exhume Shannon's's body they take out the handful of letters which were from friends they mostly said how much they loved her and would miss her there was no confession there was nothing in the meantime they were also looking at shannon's body and that's when detective mike stevens said i think we've discovered something and they found some hair in her right hand

oh uh so he gave the impression or he had the impression that maybe she had fought back against her attacker and now they could do dna testing on that hair and see if it matched anybody um but the hair was hers damn it i know this show like will get you and that's why i'm like taking notes i'm like oh my god oh my god and then they're like anyway it was nothing i'm like well i just did Okay. Now I'm going to mislead all of you guys. But it is interesting. Happily, I suppose. But it is interesting because it's like, you see like how they think they're onto something.

Right. And then it just so quickly. It almost gives you a more true experience of the forensic side of like, oh, here's evidence. Never mind. Totally. Here's evidence. Never mind. Or like, we definitely know who did it.

But then there's like no way this person could have done it. Right done like right this guy is such a creep and he was seen with her and then nope wasn't him like it's so i mean it makes sense especially with a case like this where it was 22 years later and they were still following fake leads or false leads um so yeah interesting turn of events nothing came of it unfortunately um so da da da-da-da-da-da. Meantime, they looked at Shannon's body. I said that. The hair was hers. So during the investigation, detectives interviewed approximately 400 people,

everyone they could possibly think of who had any connection to Shannon. And that is how they met Julia, Shannon's friend, who I mentioned earlier. She had been interviewed before by detectives like back in 89 when this first happened um but she had not been interviewed since so they were like we want to interview her again and ask her for her story and see if there's anything more we can get gain from from an interview so the interviewer she explains that she got off work at 10 on that night july 17th she knew shannon had some errands to run but they had planned to connect after 10 p.m to hang out so she went over to shannon's house around 11 30 and she wasn't home she headed over about every half hour this is us in high school like she just walked over

every half hour to see if she was there just check in you couldn't facetime or anything right so she said she went over every half hour to knock on the house or knock on the door and see if she was in the house she even went in the house at one point to be like is she asleep but she was nowhere to be found the last time she went over was 2 45 a.m on the 18th the morning of the 18th now if you recall paul and matt jones told investigators they took her home at around 12 midnight oh okay so police said somebody's not telling the truth here right somebody's not telling the truth she says i went over at 245 she was not there nobody was there she wasn't asleep nobody was in the house so then they began to re-interview people from who were there that night and one of the people they re-interviewed was named lindsey bradley she was a friend of shannon's but she had also dated paul

jones one of the guys who supposedly dropped shannon off at her house that night i see in her new interview she admitted to police that one day she was driving around with paul in his car and she noticed something in his ashtray it was a class ring oh boy and at the time she was upset saying hey you asked me on this date like i thought we were together and now i see another girl's class ring in your car most 80s thing i've ever heard i thought we were pinned right yeah and so uh yeah we're going steady but yeah so she sees this ring and he she said his response through her through her so much and she still remembered it to this

day he responded let's face it she's probably dead what and she was like of course you would remember that fuck yeah so she tells police this now and uh the new theory was that perhaps paul and matt had taken shannon um or had talked them her into going with them to another party spot but when they arrived there was no party it was just the three of them they believe there was some attempt at sexual advances and shannon resisted and they refused to take no for an answer and that's where things went south yikes all of a sudden uh pieces were clicking into place um but at the same time this was all very circumstantial they needed like actual solid evidence if they

were going to take these people in and this is where amy our friend comes back into the picture got it she tells police through that throughout her hundreds of investigations with everyone in town multiple people told her she should talk to a woman named Jenny Corrigan. Okay. And Amy was like, Jenny Corrigan is one of my close friends. Why should I talk to Jenny? Uh-oh. And she goes and says, Jenny, everyone's telling me I need to talk to you about this.

Like, what the hell connection do you have to this case? You know I've been working. Oh, that's the other thing. She knew she had been working on it for years. She's like, if you had something. That makes it shady. Yeah. She's like, if you had something to say like you know how obsessed i am right and

jenny that's like if i if i told you i have a metal detector downstairs you'd be like why would you not bring this up what are you talking about like i know patrick stump did i never tell you yeah exactly just like keeping some information yeah did you know that i actually toured with fallout boy uh don't do that to me. So she's like, Jenny, you got to fucking tell me what's going on. Jenny finally breaks down and says, I never wanted to say anything, but I know how Shannon was killed. Can you imagine if you are obsessed with a case that your best friend happens to know the information about? The actual answer.

So she began crying hysterically. She broke down telling the story of what happened. She said, i've been too terrified to tell this story for 20 years i'm like still scared wow um they were a little skeptical because they'd been 20 years they were like why would she not have told this before um she explained she'd been way too terrified to come forward she was scared of retaliation um and they she said okay the other person you need to talk to is dean robinson so it turns out dean had also been an eyewitness to what had happened that night so the two of them together told police everything they knew on july 18th 1989 uh the night shannon went missing jenny wasn't hanging out with the group of friends she was jenny what am i doing you know what i keep doing now um i keep doing this thing

where i do talk to text while i'm like reading or watching something and then i sometimes miss the corrections when i go back through the notes it says jenny oregon i'm so sorry is that like your code name oh jenny corgan i'm such an idiot it's literally jenny i was like how do you not know who jenny is we've just been talking about i know i'm very confused between amy and jenny and just all these names okay jenny corrigan i see very basic 80s they are like shannon jenny amy yeah heather heather heather so i'm sorry about that uh jenny was not hanging out with a group of friends uh that night in the woods she was riding around with dean robinson they came across a car that was parked and Dean started talking to the driver of the other car while Jenny stayed in the passenger seat. Jenny heard the person in the other car identify themselves as Jones, so like Matt and Paul Jones, and overheard him say they were looking for a girl, which to police suggests that Shannon had escaped from them at some point.

Oh, no. I didn't even think about that yeah they were out in the dark late goose cam goose cam yeah rough goose cam so some wild geese yeah wild geese indeed so uh they were basically hunting down shannon because they said have you seen this girl? We lost her. I hate it. It's terrible. We're looking for her in the middle of the night. So Dean and Jenny left thinking like, okay. I mean, now looking back, they're like, holy shit. But at the time they were like, oh, they're probably all drunk and like they just want to pick her up.

Who knows? So Dean and Jenny leave. And the only logical explanation is that Paul and Matt had found her and caught up to her at some point. They beat her up. They raped her. And then they bludgeoned her to death. Later, Dean and Jenny were driving back through. And later that night, they saw the same two brothers standing outside the same car.

And they were like, that's odd. But this time, there was a girl laying on the ground, seemingly unconscious. Oh, shit. So Dean got out and ran up being like can i help like what happened thinking you know something terrible had happened yeah and he as he was running he tripped on a branch is you know really dark out and as he hit the ground he looked at the body it was like right in front of him and it was shannon and she was dead so at this point paul ran over and began kicking him in the face and matt came around the back back of the car with a hammer intending to kill him because he's been a witness now to this.

But Jenny, watching this from the passenger seat, began slamming on the horn on the steering wheel. And when they realized somebody else was in the car, like somebody who they didn't know how many people were in the car. Right, right. And they're like, well, we can't kill this guy in front of whoever's in that car. Right. We can kick him in the face and throw a hammer at him right and then peace out so they jumped back in the car they didn't hit him with a hammer they jumped back in the car and just drove off um so finally after three years they were like okay we know who did it and then arrested them i had

enough to arrest them and brought them to trial in june of 2014 so this is now 25 years after shannon's murder brother matt brothers matt jones 44 now and paul jones 42 were charged with premeditated first degree murder and shannon's death during the trial a witness named bernadette clark testified that while at a party in 1990 she overheard the brothers bragging about running shannon down with a vehicle and beating her with a log. She heard them say they'd gotten away with it, they'd been questioned and were let go, so it would never be pinned on them. When asked what she heard Paul say specifically, she said, quote,

I heard him say that they had taken her out to a party spot. She discovered that there was nobody out there. She got out of the vehicle and they grabbed something as she started to leave. He said they chased her with the car, hit her, knocked her down with the mirror of the car, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. has also claimed the brothers had made troubling statements um in the years after the murder including quote the bitch got what she deserved and a threat matthew leveled at another woman at a bachelor party where he grabbed her throat and said he would quote put her in the ground like that bitch up north that okay so there's a second person no he grabbed this lady and said like oh

i'll put you in the ground like that oh i thought in my head I thought he was talking about Shannon and was like that bitch up north. And I was like, there's a person before Shannon. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I see. I see what you mean. He like threatened someone basically saying like, I'll do it. I'll do the same thing I did to Shannon. Exactly.

Another witness named Ronald King said he overheard one of the two brothers say maybe we shouldn't have hit her so hard. She was looking good. She should have give us she should have gave us what we wanted oh my god and i think we're in the clear in may of 2015 matt skip jones was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole and paul jones was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 30 to 75 years in prison in 2017 the brothers attempted to have their convictions overturned uh and failed thank god so thanks to amy and her badass civilian detective skills uh the case was solved wow at the did the dad ever find out or is the dad did shannon's dad pass away no he's in the episode

oh right that was stupid of me i didn't make the connection yeah yeah it was like 2018 this yeah okay i didn't know if maybe like he had passed on and i never found out like her grandma's still alive like she was interviewed in this too okay cool yeah yeah um i want to make sure he knew about the justice no no yeah uh yeah yeah no he was interviewed in um his grandma or her grandma was also interviewed um so at the time of the episode when the episode came out um it was like this year last year shannon would have been 45 now today robert is sure she would have had children because she really wanted to be a mom someday uh he says while he wishes more than anything that he could have could have his daughter uh because she could have lived a long and happy life with kids of her own and he could have been a grandfather. He finds solace in the fact that after so many years,

Shannon received the justice she deserved. And that is the story of the murder of Shannon Siders. That was a good story. I mean, it was a bad story, but it was a good story. Thank you, RachTodd21, for suggesting that as a non-holiday theme. Definitely not holiday brand. No. And a lot of the stories were like that, but then like,

and it was on christmas and i was like okay like well yay i don't want to like make this a weird goofy thing like so anyway thank you for that and sorry for that also sorry for all the tangents too we haven't seen each other in a while so yeah just it comes out um i guess i guess that's it right i guess come buy tickets and see us live we really want to see you guys it'd be very cool to be able to say we sold out our entire tour. So that's my goal for this year. We didn't sell out all our venues last year. We want to do it in 2020.

That would be dope. Say we had a sold out tour. Yeah. How dope would that be? It would be dope. And it would be awesome also. Go to NSWDrink.com slash live. All the cities are there.

We also have really cool tour art. So go to ATWWD podcast to see the name of our tour and the logo very exciting stuff we can't wait we also have a patreon and you can follow us on our social media all that good stuff yeah we're all over the place and that's why we drink