And That's Why We Drink - E158 A Vodka Blanket and Radioactive Snow Angels

Episode Date: February 9, 2020

Alert! Alert! We're implementing the vodka emergency buddy system this week, people! Em's holding Christine and Christine's holding the vodka because Em's covering the long awaited story of the mysterious Dyatlov Pass Incident. Then Christine brings us perhaps the most recent story yet with the gruesome murder of Kevin Bacon, not the actor but a beloved Michigan hairstylist. We're also graced with the guest appearance of Gio's nap time blep tongue... and that's why we drink!

Okay. I also want to scoot away from the green screen because I'm like hitting it. You want me to? No, I think you're okay. It's just my dumb head. Your big dumb head. I know. Welcome, everyone, to our show. Welcome to our show welcome to our show it is a podcast oh dear okay well it's a it's not a great one it is a squeaky one how are you i feel like i've seen you a whole lot lately are you doing good me yeah oh you're looking at the camera i thought you're talking to like the how are you folks um i'm doing great thank you for

asking um we just had our texas leg it was bananas texas is fun y'all i had a blast uh especially in austin we got in a day early so i got to go do some fun things oh you got some bbq i did i also went i did like the museum of weird and things like that yeah it was fun um even i went thrifting and bought a record player like we really did the the austin bought eight tacos um we had a blast uh texas was a riot it's one of our longest tours of the longest legs of the tour so yeah but it was fun though it was really fun and we got to stay in some really cool hotels and airbnbs thank you to uh christine for that yeah they were interesting there was one interesting yes i some of them we couldn't even get into we spent a half an hour we were locked out of our own place my bad but it was very fun it was a good time and

next up we are going to Sacramento and San Francisco. And the San Francisco show is not sold out, and it's at a really cool venue, so please come. Okay, for the people who have now come to our Texas show, you now know what we were talking about last week. To the people who had come to our other shows, you are now also in the loop of how wonderful the show is. And for the people who are on the fence like, eh, should I go? Yes, go. You're going to be blown away. People are bringing friends and stuff who don't know the show.

And there seem to be, at least, unless they're lying to our faces, which is entirely possible, seem to be enjoying it. I think we've only gotten 100% great comments about the show. Yeah. Well, not until now, now that you say that, people are going to. Okay. Don't think you should be the first to say something mean who wants to be the 1%. Come on. We still have anxiety. Um, but yeah, it's a, it's a pretty darn toot and great show. Honestly, we're having so much freaking fun. It's so much fun. Please

come. If you're, if you're unsure, if you should, you should. Um, and also my, one of my closest childhood friends is coming to San Francisco show. so i need you to make me look really neat oh yeah that goes out for everyone at in dc apparently half my graduating class is coming i need them to think i'm cool because i certainly wasn't the last time they saw me yes um so moving on oh also my dad's coming to a show and he's never seen me perform anything so boy here comes dad i gotta look good did he build his thing for the super bowl he did he he built something i still am not unsure about what it is but he built he certainly used his hands and and tools and made something happen that sounds great uh oh yeah this

was super bowl weekend recently go chiefs okay i literally didn't even know it was super bowl sunday until yeah half the things were closed. I was like, what is going on? I am just a Chiefs fan by default because my in-laws are from Missouri, from Kansas City. And Blaze's mom is a huge Kansas City fan. And so his whole family was rooting for him. So it was fun. It was fun to root for him.

And they won. So yay. I didn't even know they won until right now. Great. Good for them um also i want to add uh real quick uh yes i wrote oh so we made a slight mistake um in the last episode i made a slight mistake and was talking about jim belushi being uh dead he's not dead um john belushi is dead his brother yeah we to be fair we knew that going into before we posted

the episode and then everyone twitter decided to also let us know yeah oh i didn't even see it well i'm probably the only one who got tagged because i was the one who was sure yeah so i yeah so i was like we've known and we still know but i'm also not going to go edit and change all the words from jim to john i don't think that we know how to do that actually so sorry about that and uh sorry uh jim that we called you alive please don't sue us i'm sorry dad please don't sue us i hope you are having a great a great life very alive live life and uh also the patron of the week is lacy brewer yay lacy lacy brewer didn't we i remember saying that name recently oh was that last week's i think so because i remember us thinking that's a great name did i give her two i think so i think lacy brewer gets two no the last one was the um

the person from uh oh yeah i was like that's really similar sorry god damn it well lacy gets two no okay then i have then i'll put the next one i miss i miss i thought alina but that was from finland from the one before that i see okay so then today's uh patron of the week is kato raid all right kato raid like gatorade katorade katorade fun fact my mom was uh at school she went to the university of florida and she was there when they were still uh giving out like the beta samples of gatorade to the school because gatorade comes from right university of florida hence gatorade but uh she remembers trying the very first gatorade before it became big and popular what flavor was it i don't know probably

lemon lime well kato raid this is for you happy episode happy episode sorry that we almost gave it away to someone else also hi lacy again alsoaci, again. Also, hi, Laci, thanks again for your support. My bad. I clearly put them in the wrong order. Sorry about that. It's fine. And then that's all I have for updates, Em. I don't think I have any updates.

All right. Well, that's fun for everyone else, I'm sure. Yeah, I don't think there's anything to say. Sweet. Texas was a blast. Please come to our next shows. Okay. say sweet uh texas was a blast please come to our next shows okay please uh so my story i've been uh holding off for a long time because i thought that i was gonna really need to do some intense

serious research and it was going to span across several episodes oh my because i was gonna get so into the research of it and i think i don't know why at one point I worked it up in my head that it was going to be such a massive story because I just did the research and I was like, that's it. So this is only one episode. Okay. And the research, yes, took me, I did still do like a lot of research on it. But as I was going through all my notes and like slowly breaking things down, I was like, oh, I'm only going to have enough notes for one episode. So like as overwhelming as you thought. Yeah. I don't know where in time i decided it was going to be this massive haul but i have been wanting to cover for a while i know you've wanted me to cover for a while i know our

listeners have requested it so it's the dial of past yeah i think that's why maybe i got it so hyped up in my head because everyone's been asking yeah it's it seems like a big one because it's like such a popular famous one but it's um but i there yeah i really wasn't it was i when i started i had a lot of notes so i still thought oh this is definitely gonna take forever but a lot of the notes were kind of repetitive so i'm so i've been waiting for this you know this is one of the first episodes i ever listened to of any podcast was about the DLF pass. Oh, really? Yeah. I think it was like the first or second podcast episode I ever heard. Well. On Astonishing Legends, to be clear. But I, so Astonishing Legends has, I wanted to say, has a really good podcast on them

too. Yay. But I tried to go off of just the notes on Google. And by the way, they actually, I don't, I still don't know if it's diet love pass or diet love pass or yeah love to yet love pass okay well uh diatlovpass.com has like pretty much all information you need like they keep really intense sources and information so and also the i will say the astonishing legends one came out years ago so like i know there have been updates and things that they've briefly mentioned,

so I'm sure there's updated news. It'd be really awkward if I didn't have those updated news in here. No, I'm sure you do. I'm sure. I don't even remember the episode. It was truly five years ago, so I'm ready to relearn it.

So the Dyatlov Pass? Yes. I'm never going to be able to figure it out. Dyatlov. In my brain, I know it's a different language, and I don't want to fuck it up, so as I'm saying it, I'm trying not to fuck it up and therefore definitely fucking it up i see what you're saying diatlov diatlov diatlov pass uh so this happened in 1959 and there were

originally 10 students from oral polytechnical institute which is now earl uh federal university it's ural so i don't know if that's ural ural okay i was going off of other podcasts and information and they were saying earl so i really i don't know if they were also guessing um well it's ural mount like ural mountains i think that would make sense to me listen i might be wrong i feel like someone called me a mansplainer recently so i'm just like you know what fuck it i don't know anything called me a mansplainer recently. So I'm just like, you know what? Fuck it. I don't know anything. I mean, please mansplain me because I don't know what I'm doing. Well, apparently. Ural.

That sounds more right than Ural. Okay. I don't know. I mean, I'm pretty sure. And Ural Mountains does sound right to me. Okay. So nine students, originally was 10, 10 students from the Ural Polytechnical Institute, which is now the Ural Federal University, are going to go on a trekking expedition in the Ural Mountains. Each was an experienced, at least grade two hiker.

And by the end of this expedition, they were all going to get certified for their grade three hiking. So that was kind of the big point of this. To get your grade three certification, you had to have traveled like 200 miles to like like have right racked up all these miles to be able to have have a certain certification and grade three at the time in the soviet union was um like the highest class the highest certification you could get so this was a big deal for them damn so their goal was to reach a mountain that was six miles north of where this incident actually happened.

So they were six miles off at the end of the day. But the route that they were taking was going to be a category three in difficulty, I think, out of five. And so, fun fact, the reason it's called the Dyatlov Pass is because the leader of these hikers, his last name was Dyatlov. Oh, okay. Like he was on the trip? He was the leader of the group. Oh, I see. Okay. So the members, their names were Igor, I'm going to guess, Liadmila.

There was Rustim, Nikolai, Zaneda. And then there were two people named Yuri and two people named Alexander. Oh, perfect. Just double them up. Yeah. So the official trek begins at the end of January. I'm going to go off of January 27th because the days before that were kind of like, oh, we're driving to the city where we will begin the trek.

But January 27th is where they actually begin climbing. And on day one of their trek, one of the people named Yuri decided that they were actually going to abandon ship and leave because they had really bad joint pain and they also apparently had a congenital heart issue. Oh, geez.

And so they were like, I'm not going to keep going. So went from 10 students to nine. Did they start at all or did they just stop? They had started and he just went back. Oh, I got it. So for the next few days, we do know what happened Did they start at all or did they just stop before they... They had started and he just went back. Oh, I got it, I got it. So for the next few days, we do know what happened because there were diaries and cameras found on their campsite. But it was pretty much just climbing.

And then on February 1st, that's when we don't really know what happens anymore. Because they had planned to go to a certain area before nightfall and let that be their checkpoint. And then they were going to set up camp and then continue climbing the next day but that night that's when the the incident happened so what they have assumed to be the situation is that a snowstorm came through while they this is while they were hiking to their checkpoint a snowstorm came through they got lost and disoriented and ended up going off course by accident. They ended up going further west to the top of the mountain than they planned to. But they had probably inadvertently gained a lot of altitude by going that direction. And so they didn't want to lose the altitude that they had gained, or they didn't want to have to trek

all the way downhill just to get shelter for the night to trek all the way uphill again. or they didn't want to have to trek all the way downhill just to get shelter for the night to trek all the way uphill again so they voted to set up camp and that's pretty much what we think happened or that's the last information we have so the mountain that they were on is called colat siakul it's not in english guys i'm so sorry i really don't know um apparently the rumor is that it's called dead mountain in great the language of the indigenous people they're called the monsee um oh so it already had that name it already had the name kolat sikol but it was like yeah but it's apparently the rumor is that that translates to dead mountain although all the indigenous people have said that it's actually it actually

means mountain of swirling winds. So I think someone was just trying to make the story spookier. Although swirling winds would probably kill me on a mountain anyway. So they ended up setting up camp in this space where they didn't accidentally mean to be. And so after that, I think the rest of it becomes kind of rumor based or what investigators think happened. The plan at this point was that the team was going to send a telegram to the sports club where they created this expedition. They were going to send a telegram by February 12th. But by February 20th, when they hadn't gotten any word, relatives started freaking out and they were telling the club,, like, we need search and rescue, we need like, we need to find out what happened to them,

because we should have heard from them by now. And the first rescue groups were actually just volunteers and other students that went through the school. And then later, like the military was called in. Oh, boy. But the first group of people were just students and teachers and volunteers. Okay. So they start looking and on february 26th and remember the last information we have from their diaries was february 1st so february 26th while the searchers are looking around they end up finding the group's damaged tent so 25 days later yeah wow so they find the actually it's one of the students was that volunteered to search found their tent imagine being a student volunteer

and finding this found the group's damaged tent where they had set up camp and his name i think it translates in english to michael but it's mikhail mikhail sure so listen i don't want to make it i don't have no any better uh so he quoted saying, part of the canvas was poking out, but the rest was covered in snow. I used an ice pick lying nearby to uncover the entrance. The tent was half torn down, covered with snow. It was empty, but all the group's belongings and shoes had been left behind. And inside. And shoes.

Yeah. And inside he had found a blanket, rucksacks, their boots, the route map uh official papers money and alcohol so all things that you would not leave behind especially the alcohol especially in the cold and you're like right also don't they have like a a trope that they all love drinking there so like you would definitely not take the alcohol wait where are we again i mean the soviet union soviet union yeah i mean yes that the vodka i think it was vodka that they found. Yeah, they did. Yeah. And vodka doesn't freeze, famously.

So you would be able to bring that along with you because it would just stay nice and cold. Right, right. Its own blanket. So they ended up finding all that in the tents. And so they're like, well, something is wrong here. They left the vodka. They left the vodka. Forget the route map that they left.

Forget their boots. Forget their shoes. here they left the vodka they left the vodka forget the route map that they left forget their boots shoes and uh but so once the site was discovered investigators found that the tent had been this these are some weird things this is what makes it start sounding more like a conspiracy okay so investigators found that the cut the ton what's wrong with me the investigators sound like a conspiracy oh my god And then they turn into demons. Investigators found that the tent had been cut open from the inside, not just unzipped and left. Cut open.

I see. They had also found eight to nine sets of footprints that were leading to the edge of the woods on the opposite side of the pass. So they were actually going downhill. So, like, they would have had to climb all the way back up. But they were going downhill towards the tree line okay and they found that these footprints uh showed that the people were either only wearing socks either they were barefoot or they were wearing one shoe and barefoot on the other foot so goose cam goose cam so they were they apparently cut themselves out of the tent ignored their their shoes, and then were going downhill.

Holy shit. So at the edge of the woods, because they saw they were going to the woods, so they went to go check. And at the edge of the woods, there were remains of a fire. There was also the trees above the fire. There were broken branches at least five meters high. So it looked like someone had been climbing, probably to look for the tent um oh interesting and then they found two bodies and those two bodies were only in their underwear so they did not even bring their clothes with them to leave the tent and it's by the way sub-zero i'm gonna say february february and soviet russia in mountains and soviet

union i'm sorry it was uh i think they said negative 30 degrees celsius it was like fucking cold what is that in fahrenheit it's negative 22 degrees in fahrenheit that so just for my own edification sure just because we're i don't know americans i don't know the difference that's horrifying negative 30 degrees celsius negative 22 degrees fahrenheit so even just to not be wearing shoes is alone like yeah like unthinkable unthinkable i mean you're definitely getting frostbite you're definitely getting hypothermia so two of the bodies were found in their underwear to assume that they were the ones who were either climbing the trees and or making the fire um between the tent and the woods so in that space where they had been walking uh barefoot

three other bodies were found all at different distances so they weren't walking together it's almost like one of them died early on two of them continued the climb and someone died and then the third one continued to climb so they were all like a couple hundred feet away from each other like staggered yeah weird okay it's almost like they kept giving up on each other and like just fighting to get back to the tent what the fuck um they were all also in very weird poses suggesting that they were limping or crawling in some way back to the tent oh my god one of them of these three one had bitten off his own knuckle one had a long bright red bruise on the side of her torso as if she'd been hit with a stick or a baton or something and one of them had a fractured skull holy shit it took search and rescue two more months to find their other

four remaining bodies because remember there was nine right and i've only mentioned five so there were four other bodies needed to find took them two more months oh my god they ended up finding them in a ravine by the woods and they were hidden under 13 feet of snow so i'm amazed they even were found at that point right 13 feet of snow well i guess the snow used to be taller and it was slowly melting oh i see i see um so over time it was easier to find them right so of these four bodies some were wearing no clothing and some were wearing each other's clothing suggesting that as they each died the people still alive would take the clothes off of the bodies to keep themselves warm oh my fucking god dude this is so wild one had a fractured skull another had a weirdly twisted

neck one had an open wound on his head and a couple of them had fractured ribs. Their bodies had soft tissue damage, and forensic scientists say that that is from the snow, just general natural decomp. But they're not really sure why, because if it were natural decomp, it would have happened on the entire face and head all at the same rate sure but what's weird about it is that it's not even like parts of the body were kind of falling off it's that only specific parts of their faces were damaged and by damage like missing what so like one person was missing her tongue which like isn't even on the outside of your fucking face um could that be like animals eating it they that's one theory okay but they think uh so she was missing her tongue and her lips the tongue looked like it had been ripped out one person was missing his eyebrows and two

people were missing their eyeballs so authorities after all of this ended up deeming their deaths as hypothermia just said all of them died from hypothermia which makes sense because again it was negative 22 degrees fahrenheit at the time of their death so yeah i'm sure a percentage of the of their deaths was caused by hypothermia help at the very least right but another thing that makes it weird is that three of them had severe physical trauma and, and that's not included in their death. And those three physical, those three instances of physical trauma, they all included, which I haven't even mentioned yet, major skull damage and chest fractures that forensic scientists have said are comparable to the force of a car crash, like a massive car crash. have said are comparable to the force of a car crash like a massive car crash but the weird part is that there are no external injuries showing on them so what all the damage happened on the inside just internal severe internal injury severe internal injuries but no signs of what could have

caused it goose cam so they think like they were saying that something must have caused immense pressure on the inside almost like they got crushed from the inside or something like they were saying that something must have caused immense pressure on the inside almost like they got crushed from the inside or something like they don't know how this happened so what's more weird like i said the bodies uh had no external wounds but their internal injuries like it suggests that they were crushed by something but none of them were found under a tree or anything right and info information that was released to the public never once described the condition of their internal organs they didn't want people to know weird shady shady so the official word is that they died because of a quote compelling natural force which was just

their way of being able to sweep it under the rug like under the guise of anything so it could have been hypothermia nature did it or something. And then once they announced publicly that it was a natural force that caused it, then the investigation and the case files became classified instantly. And the public was banned from the site for several years. No one was allowed near that space. And in 2009, the hikers' diaries finally became accessible to the public. Only in 2009. Holy shit. the hikers diaries finally became accessible to the public only 2009 holy holy shit so that's the

only way i think that we know yeah the first half that they like were even like going into town and they ate some bread and then apparently one of them like two of them had just broken up with each other so it was kind of awkward that they were on the same trip together soup sock so the original lead investigator back in 1959 his his name was Lev Ivanov. And now, 30 years later, more information is becoming public. I'm going to mention that later, but I wanted to say his name, Lev. He's the original investigator because we're going to talk about him more later. Sure.

But up until recently, and still, like still, it's still a conspiracy. Sure. People are wondering wondering why was the tent torn open from the inside why did they leave all their belongings why were they barefoot why were half of them naked how did they get internal injuries likened to major accidents uh why was the case classified where were their eyes like i mean everything just like really really all over the fucking board so here are that's pretty much the whole story so now i just have theories yes so the biggest one that people claim is that there was an

avalanche so a lot of people think that the hikers woke up in a panic they heard or saw signs of an avalanche coming and so maybe snow over the night had blocked their tent entrance. So maybe they had to cut themselves out. Interesting. And they maybe they weren't clothed well because they had been sleeping. But also in my mind, it's like if you're sleeping in the tundra, essentially, like you will have clothes on even if you're sleeping. Well, two of them are just broken up. Maybe there is some making up they were doing. Maybe in the one tent they all shared.

Listen, there's vodka involved you never know that's true body heat is important the vodka blanket so a vodka blanket everyone's under the vodka blanket everyone's cozy on the inside so uh they might not have been clothed because they were sleeping or sleeping together apparently that was that i just joking i don't think they were sleeping together. To be clear, I don't want anyone to yell at me. Then they think they must have then ran to the tree line to be safe from snow that might fall from the avalanche. Maybe they could stand behind trees and the snow wouldn't hit them. Sure.

And so they accidentally got split up in their panic. And so some made a fire. Some just tried to get back to the tent. And those in the ravine had gotten swept away from the actual avalanche and buried in snow okay got it so some of them found a fire some of them tried to go back to the tent some of them ended up in the ravine because snow actually did sweep them away do you think they got like do they think they got like um swept up in the blizzardy type weather and like couldn't stay together maybe maybe or maybe i think that um visibility was like right okay so it's hard to like keep they couldn't see each other so i think they were they all knew to run to the tree line

and weren't together and got split up okay got it so the issues with this are that there are no signs of an avalanche that happened in that area there's no it would be a big one there's like no pattern or debris or any sign of a massive snowfall okay well then that that changes things also that the bodies in the water would have been swept much further away and under a lot or any sign of a massive snowfall. Okay, well, then that changes things. Also that the bodies in the water would have been swept much further away and under a lot more snow than just 13 feet after a couple weeks. Oh, also the tree lines would have been damaged.

I mean, if it was a real avalanche, the trees wouldn't fucking be there. Sure. If they crushed them to death, right? You'd think, yeah. And also since 1959, there have been over 100 more expeditions to the area with no reports of avalanche signs. So it's unlikely because it's not statistically a place that there's a lot of avalanches.

Right. And apparently there's new updated terrain science. I'll never understand that. I love that. That sounds very smart. Apparently they pay attention to like the slope of the slope of the i tried understanding it i didn't it's like tell me everything there was like three big factors where they could figure out the probability of avalanches and they said that that area specifically will always be incredibly

unlikely that is really cool that they can do that i had no idea and the hikers they were all there to get their highest certification in hiking like they would have known the signs of an avalanche and they would have known uh the signs of a place that likely has avalanches and they wouldn't risk spending the night there and also i think they probably i mean you might get into this but like you'd think they'd know like the protocol of like like saying together yeah like don't just flee also wear jacket. Grab your shoes or something. Grab the vodka. But yeah, I mean, the fact that they were, you know, pretty much incredibly naked and they just like scattered like there should be at least like a hand holding there. Like wrap each other up with some rope or something.

This is how Em does emergency protocol. Without any. Hold hands, everybody. Listen, without any emergency protocol awareness, I at least know a buddy system. Truly, we're holding hands and I'm holding vodka and that's our emergency protocol. Christine's my buddy and vodka's her buddy. We're all holding hands. We all need someone.

A warm vodka blanket. The weird thing about it, too, the part that makes it more mysterious, is that footprint patterns show that when they all left the tent, none of them ran in a way where their footprints are consistent with someone in distress. What? Ew, that just freaked me out. Footprint patterns show that all eight to nine of them were walking at a very normal, lax, easy pace. That gave me, like, big creeps. So whatever did happen, if it wasn't avalanche, obviously you'd be running for the fucking belt.

You'd think so but they weren't running and that becomes a big factor in a lot of these theories of like well whatever happened that caused them to flee in a panic they certainly weren't running like it so that becomes a big factor that's chilling almost yeah so it's almost like they all casually just left. Naked. Naked. What the fuck? Another big theory is that there were fall winds on the mountain that would have created denser air near the tent and they wouldn't have been able to breathe. So they would have had to leave.

Oh. Apparently, that's how in 1978, a group of Swedish hikers actually did die from fall winds. And the topography of the mountain that they were on when this happened is very similar to the mountain that this group of hikers was on. So they thought that might be a thing, but it's really, really unlikely. But the theory is that it would have forced them out of their tent and they would have had to go seek shelter and food somewhere.

But then again, like you would have at least grabbed a jacket. It's like lack of oxygen or something. Yeah. Again, I tried to learn about terrain science last night and it sounds like the it's almost like i'm gonna fuck it up and someone's going to tweet me and i don't know a terrain scientist oh please be gentle on us i don't know what this listen this is the best that i could figure out at midnight so whenever they's a fall wind on a mountain, it's because the mountain slopes. The wind on top is a lot colder and not as dense. And then because it's flowing down the mountain, it becomes more dense, like more energy builds or something. I don't know what's going on.

And you can't breathe at the top or the bottom? You can't breathe at the bottom. Got it. Because it gets more dense and it's less dense on the top. I don't know. I don't know what's going on and you can't breathe at the top or the bottom you can't breathe at the bottom because it gets more dense and it's more less it's less dense on the top i don't know i don't know about fall okay no i just stop christine i didn't ask you i was just saying is it lack of oxygen i think it's like okay or there's like yeah they just can't breathe they can't breathe period all right that's all i know okay guys listen listen i'm not a meteorologist or a or a terrain scientist but so in theory they would have not been able to breathe and they would have had to leave but then they why were they

walking so calmly why did they not have their clothes why didn't they at least put shoes on like no matter how much air you can't breathe you can at least grab your shoes to put them on later or you can run or you can run. You can think if you can. Yeah. This is wild. So another theory is that all this was caused by infrasound, which is a very low frequency that we can't hear, but apparently our body will react to it. And so they think the way that the wind was going around the mountain created a vortex

called a Karman vortex street. Apparently those produce infrasound that induces panic in humans what so they think that the hikers would have been driven out of not only out of their minds but they would have like fled the tent in distress thinking that something wrong was going on oh so it makes you what like paranoid or something it makes you apparently freak the fuck out like you feel like dread it like convinces you that you need to to flee the area and it's just a sound that does that right wow um that's kind of scary that you don't even know you're hearing it and it's doing this to you it's like a white noise

but like a different frequency where like it makes you feel a certain way does that happen in the world like is there like in other places do we know maybe that's really scary i'm like am i in that maybe i know different types of like i know white noise is only one type of noise but then there's like brown noise pink noise and all of them actually make your body react a certain way so i think based on frequencies this also does so uh the injuries could have the injuries after the fact because they could have like freaked out ran away that would have explained why they didn't have an emergency protocol because they weren't in their right minds they would have ran away and then by at the point that they were far enough away from the frequency

they would have kind of regained their sanity and realized they were lost oh shit and then maybe they could have sustained those other injuries from like falling down the ravine because they trip or something and then like land on the rocks and that would be the intense crash internal damage but they're first of all they're again their footprints don't suggest that they were in a panic right and they um there's not enough evidence apparently through acoustic scientists there's not enough evidence to show that low frequencies really even give us complete mild symptoms let alone extreme duress oh and also with so many people you'd think like somebody probably wouldn't have been that yeah someone would have been affected less and then like what is going on unless one of them i guess scared everyone else like right i don't know something's after us or

i don't know but so that's another big theory another one the original theory even from the investigators was that they were attacked by the indigenous people up there but first of all they're a very peaceful group of people and also at the time the soviet union really hated them apparently and would find any reason to imprison them torture them anything like that so it was just an easy scapegoat kind of oh that's fucked up but the um the footprints that also show that there are only eight to nine in that whole area. So if other people were there to attack them, you would have seen it. Oh, true.

Also, the hikers' physical injuries could have not been caused by another human being because the damage done to them suggests a force stronger than human strength. And there was no soft tissue damaged on the outside. Everything that happened was on the inside. So if they got hit, you would have seen a bruise or a cut. What the fuck? Yeah. And also, at this point, the indigenous people hadn't even committed a single crime in, like, 30 years.

So it wasn't... It was not them. It was not them. So some other theories are that maybe the wind was so strong it blew one of them away and they tried to rescue them. Oh, God. But the wind would have also blown away the tent. Okay, fair. They think it might have been animal attacks, but there's no animal footprints in the area.

Sure. And they would have stayed in their tent. Yeah, I feel like that's one of those things, again, of like, they probably have protocol for that. Right. I mean, I know I would stay in the tent. I don't know if that's right, but... And then I would hold hands.

I would hold you. You would hold the tent. I don't know if that's right. And I would hold hands. I would hold you. You would hold the vodka. A lot of people literally think that it was a Yeti or an abominable snowman because they are said to be in the Ural Mountains. And in 2014, the Discovery Channel actually twisted an episode into making it sound like a Yeti was involved in the story. Oh, boy. sound like a yeti was involved in the story oh boy um there was on one of their cameras one of the hikers cameras there was a picture of something that could be a yeti that was they took a picture and it was creepy and it was shown on the discovery channel but it could have also been one of the other hikers or one of the indigenous people but it's so blurry you can't really tell

sure if it's a yeti so it is creepy it reminds me of the panama the girls who were who disappeared in oh yeah with their cameras and then they looked through the footage later for clues if that freaks me out so much well one picture suggests maybe a yeti was involved okay um but for obvious reasons i don't think it was a yeti i would hesitate to ascribe that uh theory right and then uh and another big theory which isn't really a theory it's probably just legitimately what happened because it's common um was paradoxical uh paradoxical undressing um which is well have you ever heard of like when people die on mountains they usually find them naked oh is it like they get hot in the because they're so cold their brain thinks that they're

actually hot and so they take their brain thinks that they're actually hot. And so they take their clothes off before they die. I did not know that word for it. What is it? Yeah, paradoxical undressing. Oh, my. So that actually happens to 20 to 50% of people who die of hypothermia, where you remove your clothes in a response to perceived feelings of being burned. Because it's like having snow on you, and it's so cold, it's hot.

Your whole body feels like that. And so you take your clothes off thinking you're on fire i always uh well clearly i'm an idiot but i always pictured it as like oh your body's protecting you by being like no you're gonna you're nice and warm before you die i didn't know it felt like burning i'm like that oh no you feel like you're like it's just like if you hold an ice cube long enough in your hand it's so cold it's hot for some reason i thought it was your brain like shutting down and protecting you like now we're warm before you die it's your brain shutting down yeah it's the first i think it's your hypothalamus or something like that but it's whatever regulates your temperature gets confused okay i understand i didn't know it was that fucking traumatic i mean obviously you're dying of hypothermia it's

traumatic but i meant like i i didn't really understand the science behind it. That is fucked up. Okay, great. Super duper. Fun fact. One theory is that's at least why they were naked. But what's interesting is that although all of them probably had hypothermia

in some way or another, a lot of them were wearing each other's clothing, which means that some of them were in their right mind enough to know to layer up maybe they knew maybe they knew if i'm if i feel like i'm on fire i need to put more clothes on maybe it was like they know how the how your body does that and they were trying to maybe i don't know they were like this is the fucking end game like if i feel like i'm on fire more more layers yeah so those are a lot of the most common said theories, but my favorite one is the military conspiracy. Yeah.

So they think that this entire thing can be explained away with the fact that there was some sort of nuclear testing or UFOs in the area. It's even believed by a lot of the hikers' parents that it was something involving the military because even they were not given a lot of information about what happened to their kids. One of them is quoted saying, what went on up there is hard to say. The families were told you will never know the truth. So stop asking questions. And in those days, because it was the Soviet Union in those days, in the height of the Cold War, a quote, if they told you to shut up, you would be silent. So, yeah, they were just told like you're not going to find out anything and that could be you know it could have really meant like you'll never

know the truth because we literally don't know jesus so stop asking questions and just move on but it also comes off as like if we knew something we're not going to tell you sinister almost yeah yeah so um the files like i said were classified. And once they were accessible in the 90s post-Soviet era, parts of the files were still missing. We still don't know what happened to them. So Lev, who I told you. Was it Lev or Leave? I think Leave has an I. I'm going to say Lev.

I'm going to say Lev. Sorry, guys. I remember him. So he's the original investigator from 1959. He even admitted that he was told by his superiors that were uh high-ranking officials that he needed to stop investigating and not talk anymore about it oh shit um and he apparently was super determined to figure out what happened and they were like you need to forget about this so there's another quote relatives the media and the public don't hide their

suspicions and something was hidden from them so everyone kind of knows but no one's allowed to talk about it that something fishy happened yeah um and one guy that became friends with lev his name was oleg and uh when lev passed away oleg was the one that inherited his personal archive so he got to see all the things all the classified information that lev knew but wasn't allowed to talk about and he knew something fishy was going, and he was told to shut it down and never think about it again. But he had kept his archive, I guess, this whole time. So at the same time as the incident, this is some of the information that Oleg found in Lev's archives. At the same time as the incident, many animals were found dead in the area, and locals were suddenly banned from using well water.

Also, the indigenous people were banned from the area, and locals were suddenly banned from using well water also the indigenous people were banned from the area and hunting was prohibited for four years four years also all of the bodies in one way or another ended up at least at their funeral because they had open caskets and people could see that they had an orange coloring to their skin their hair had grayed and they were prematurely aged oh what yeah their skin was orange their hair had grayed and what was it they prematurely aged they looked older than they were oh god and they were all college students they were like in their 20s what the frick that is weird also fragments of the body's organs were sent to sent out for chemical analysis and olig this archive, found that there were signed documentation saying that the organs were successfully delivered, but as soon as the result samples and paperwork came through, a secret lab department came and took them all away. So we don't know.

We don't know. Another classified piece of information he found was that a lot of the hikers' clothing had high levels of radiation. Oh, shit. Also, when the bodies were going to be autopsied, big barrels of alcohol were delivered to the morgue. And that was apparently an old-fashioned way to protect yourself from radiation. You're kidding. If you bathed in alcohol first. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. you you're kidding if you bathe in alcohol first so oh my god oh my god oh my god also my favorite

thing is that the morgue uh the morgue that the bodies were taken to according to lev's personal archive the morgue the bodies were taken to was surrounded by kgb officers not police and nobody was allowed in and like i said the incident what happened at the height of the cold war and some believe that the hikers may have accidentally walked into a nuclear testing site oh shit and the hikers were then shell-shocked in some way by the explosions they fled the tent they fell down a ravine and then animals and natural decomp ate out their organs sure sure it checks out somewhat because the campsite that they set up on actually was near a Soviet nuclear testing ground that did parachute mine exercises. Oh, my God.

The parachute mines apparently detonate in the air instead of on the ground, and they, quote, cause heavy internal damage with comparably less external trauma. Oh, well, there you go. Which is exactly what happened to them. There you go. It might also explain the radiation found on them also giving them orange skin, gray hair, and prematurely aging. That's terrifying. But if this was a military thing, they would have never allowed students and volunteers to be searching in that area. True.

They would have never let the parents find out that that's where their kids were found. Yeah. And only the hikers had radiation on them not the whole mountain and fallout would have been everywhere interesting and also i'm just thinking like why did they let them see the bodies at the funeral if right it's kind of weird like wouldn't she think that that they would hide that too skeptics think that um the morticians actually tried to cover up the frostbite and tried to give them a natural tan and the makeup was orange i was thinking that too i was like maybe their bodies were so great and yeah frozen so a lot of people

think it was just like the makeup from the mortician that made them orange because the only reports are from the funeral where people saw it no that makes a lot of sense to me yeah um also only the hikers had radiation on them, like I said. So if the radiation came from the air, they would have all had it. But only some of them showed signs of radiation on their clothing. So it's almost like some of them were in a more nuclear area. That almost makes it weirder that some of them had it and some didn't, right? It's almost like some of them, like, up and left and, like, went to a really dangerous area and came back. like, up and left and, like, went to a really dangerous area and then came back.

Or, like, maybe there was one very, like, a Reddit theory that I found that's, maybe the KGB found them on the property, woke them up or cut the tent to tell them to leave, and then they all, like, were filed out, which is why their feet were so, why their footprints were so normal. Like, they were almost, like, led out. But then it doesn't explain how they all died in different positions in different distances so um geez some think that the testing ground wasn't far away and the hikers radiation could have actually just come from drinking contaminated snow from old fallout oh interesting okay but that means that the contamination was

then in the land and it doesn't explain why they had radiation on their clothes. Maybe they washed their clothes in it? Maybe they, like, rolled around in the snow. Maybe. Maybe they were doing snow angels. Vodka, again. Radioactive snow angels. Oh, fun.

So, others think that the radiation could have come from the mantles or the fabric bags that came with their lanterns, because in the 1950s, those were slowly being weeded out because they contained thorium, which does emit particle radiation. Interesting. So they think it could have just been some of their gear had radiation. I see. I see. But it still was a nuclear site that was nearby, and people believe that the hikers maybe saw too much. Around the same time as the incidents,

there were other local reports of glowing orange orbs falling from the sky, and some believe that this is either a ufo theory or they think that these were government experiments that people were seeing especially because it's such a like desolate area if there were a couple local reports like no one's gonna believe it and no one's really ever gonna hear about it so this was a space to do nuclear testing yeah um especially if they could just tell people shut up and don't talk about it, and they just won't. Yeah, exactly. And these orbs were seen many times in 1959

by meteorologists, military, and locals. Wow. On the same night as this particular incident with the hikers, one other group of hikers reported seeing orange fast-moving balls, which are potentially rocket missiles. They were quoted saying, this bright burning object object appeared it was wider at the front and narrower at the back with a tail and there were sparks flying off of it and in 1990 before lev died he admitted that his team got several reports of fireballs in the sky and they couldn't figure

out a rational explanation for them but since then then, Lev has stated that he thinks the unspecified energy directly caused the skier's death. He's convinced that these fireballs actually are what killed them. Wow. Okay. He said, we found that some young pine trees at the edge of the forest had burn marks, but these marks did not have concentric form or some other pattern. There was no epicenter. This once again confirmed that heated beams of a strong but completely unknown energy were directing their firepower towards specific objects. In this case, the hikers.

Hot damn. And then he even went so far as to say, I suspected at the time and an almost sure now that these bright flying spheres had a direct connection to the group's death. Whoa. So, and then he's dead, so, like, no one's ever going to say anything about that. But, I mean, the lead chief investigator says that something fishy, potentially military, was going on up there, and they were just in the crossfires. Damn, damn, damn, damn. One fun theory that people have come up with is that some of the hikers

were actually kgb operatives and they were delivering radioactive materials and so some of the some of the hikers were just collateral damage but three of them had pretended to go off course so that they could actually get to a like a spot where they or something yeah like a trading exchange spot so they were delivering radioactive materials and that which is interesting is that one of the people named yuri on this expedition he actually did work for a nuclear plant two years before oh intriguing yuri and then they think something went wrong in the the handoff and all of them ended up dying. That's just a random theory.

Oh, my. But again, no matter how expert you are at being a CIA operative, you would have still left footprints in the snow. Oh, true. You mean the people that they were meeting? Yeah. Yeah, true. We also know that six were killed by the weather, but three still suffered brute force trauma beyond human strength. So it's not a matter of the CIA just like shooting everyone.

Right, right. And so they really don't. Those are like the biggest theories. In 1999, the Dyatlov. Yeah. The Dyatlov Foundation was founded in 1999 to continue studying the case and maintaining a museum that goes towards trying to figure out what happened. And the most recent update is last February, so almost a year ago today, Russian authorities actually announced that they're going to reopen the case.

And they are acknowledging the fact that there are about 75 main theories surrounding the deaths. 75? At least. Oh, the main ones. Those are the ones that they started with. At least. Like, those are the ones that they... Oh, the main ones. Those are the ones that they started with.

And what's shady about it is that CNN has reported that out of those 75 main theories where all of them have some sort of legitimacy to them, they are only going to pay attention to three explanations. And they're going to ignore the other 72. They're only paying attention to three. And they are all three that we've already been able to debunk. Oh. Like, which... Do we know which ones an avalanche oh a hurricane there was wait what all you could you could literally just type in like 1959 weather was there a hurricane no um alexa was there and then a snow slab avalanche

where just like instead of cascading down the mountain there was just a massive clump of snow that fell so oh my gosh so they so a lot of people are mad because even though we know none of these are likely possibilities they're kind of teasing us with like oh we're gonna figure out the case but they also might just be covering up the case again with with a new reason it's frustrating putting money and energy towards that when we know that's not what it was. Yeah. It's so it's like, thank you for looking into it, but also you're not looking into it. And then it's like,

yeah, it's still sounds shady. Cause it's like, why are you trying to like turn our heads and make us look at these, these situations that we know aren't true. Why aren't you paying attention to the, like diverting the attention? That's shady as hell.

Yeah. So anyway, that is the amazing um i'm i'm so fascinated one thought i had what if it was like i don't know if this is a thing or not what if one of the people in the group got like like lost like hmm what's the right term for it like when uh kind of lost it and went you know like went went, uh, kind of lost it and went, you know. Like, went a little wild and killed everyone? Or just, like, started reacting in a certain way that scared everyone or, like, I don't know. You know what I mean?

Well, so there are a lot of theories that there, like, there was some sort of foul play. But a lot of the, um, a lot of the counter-arguments. Like, snapped. Sorry, that's the word I was trying to think of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of the counter-arg arguments were that six of them were never harmed except by the weather. And then the other three, it was still internal blunt trauma with no external damage. So no human could have done that. So do you, what do you think? Also, the footsteps show that they weren't running or scared.

Well, what if one of them like kind of quote unquote snapped and like cut his way out of the tent or whatever and went off and then they went to try and find him? Oh, like he just was like, I'm done or something. They were like, no, that's a thought. And then maybe they split up in search parties. I don't know. I mean, the best part about this is no one knows. It's crazy. These unsolved ones get me good, though.

Every time these conspiracies. Do they have any thoughts on what the internal like how that could have happened? Like a fall? Do they have any thoughts on what the internal, like how that could have happened, like a fall? They literally think it had to have been an incredibly high amount of pressure or someone, something crushing them, but they don't have an explanation for it. So they also think that if it were military testing, something with that much radiation they were next to could have done some sort of internal damage. Okay, okay, got it. Like, I forget which part that I mentioned it, but there was some sort of testing that is known to create internal damage without external signs. So that's why they think that it could have been a military thing, especially because they were so quick to classify everything.

That is just... Also, his little tongue is sticking out while he's sleeping. I know. I just want to pull on it like taffy. A little blip. He's sweet. Oh, man. Anyway. That was a good story, Em. blip. He's sweet. Oh, man. Anyway.

That was a good story, Em. Thank you. It's been years in the making. I've wanted to. I'm so happy you covered it. It freaks me out to this day. Yeah. I wish I could have ended this with, like, giving you a reason.

But. Well, I mean, maybe someday we can do an update. Yeah. Like Golden State Killer. Yeah. I mean, that was a surprise update nobody expected all right so this week i am covering a story that was suggested by one of my close friends one of you all from patreon oh wow uh i did a little q a on um on instagram close friends

and i asked for topic suggestions i got a, including one from M that said, just cancel the story and list the reasons you love me. Are you going to do that? Yep. Number one. You're okay. Anyway, here's my story. Good, not great. Good, not great.

You're fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. So somebody named mags.microbiology, you sound smart, suggested this, requested this. It's the story of Mark Latonsky and the murder of Kevin Bacon. No, not that Kevin Bacon. Okay.

Actually, I'm going to skip forward and read the line here. The article on heavy.com reads, Bacon is not the actor with the same name to state the obvious in like the first paragraph. Got it. Okay, got it. Because I'm sure that's everyone's first thought. we could pretend though i mean for the sake of our story i think maybe let's not okay for this is probably not the time to i'll find out later to uh to uh to ascribe murder to people who are alive sure i've already done that last you did already do that um we don't yeah we're We're just going to stick to the facts.

Jim Belushi and Kevin Bacon are going to come after me. Can you imagine, though? What a story for the grandkids. What a story. Okay, so anyway, thank you, mags.microbiology, for the suggestion. This takes place in Swartz Creek, Michigan, which is a suburb of Flint. And this has actually taken place over the last few months, like literally since like November, December. Oh, really?

So it's just like eight weeks ago. Yeah, it's extremely current. Let's put it that way. So things are kind of still developing, but it's a wild story. So Christmas Eve 2019, 25-year-old hairstylist Kevin Bacon, not the Kevin Bacon, so he's a former hairstylist at Vintage Beauty and JCPenney. He's getting his degree in applied psychology at the University of Michigan,

Flint. The night of Christmas Eve, around 5 p.m., he tells his roommate, Michelle, that he is going to go out and meet with a man he met on Grindr. A little over an hour later, at 6.12 p.m.,

Michelle receives a text from Kevin saying he's going to be out for a little while and he's having a good time, so he's not sure when he's coming back but uh the next morning when kevin didn't show up for christmas breakfast with his family his dad was immediately worried because they had plans to get together on christmas morning and it was not like him to miss that and when he couldn't get a hold of him, he called the police and reported him missing. Gotcha. Later that day, they found Kevin's car in the parking lot of a plaza near a family dollar. Inside the car, police found all of Kevin's belongings, including his clothing, his cell phone. Oh, boy.

Everything except his car keys were was in the back of the car. So, OK. December 27th. So two days later, Kevin's family and friends uh formed search parties to look for him and his wow i'm sorry it's just hitting me that it's christmas yeah yeah christmas day they imagine christmas day like you don't know where someone is and they're supposed to be with you yeah your own son and they found his car on christmas day like with his cell phone in it which is just wow gut-wrenching yeah so uh they so they find his car two days

later they organize these big search parties and his family alerts the media um and at this point when people start searching grinder actually releases a statement that i'm going to read here we at grinder are heartbroken to hear about this terrible tragedy and share our condolences with mr bacon's family and friends while for reasons, we do not offer public comment on individual user accounts. We remain fully committed to working with law enforcement in the event of any investigation. And I always think this is interesting because there's such, they're trying to,

trying to develop and figure out the like laws and protocol around like social media and like privacy laws and cell phone records when someone's missing. And Kevin's dad said he had a really, really, like social media and like privacy laws and cell phone records when someone's missing. Right. Kevin's dad said he had a really, really, really hard time getting access to Kevin's account because of, you know, privacy reasons and laws and things like that. So I think it's just really interesting how probably in 10, 15 years, there'll probably be clearer rules on that. Yeah, we're just living in a nebulous right now.

Yeah, exactly. So around 3 p.m uh that same day the 27th search parties were looking in the area of sports creek raceway uh after someone claimed they saw drops of blood in the area but the search was ultimately called off yielded no results whatsoever it was a false lead the next morning though on saturday December 28th, police got a tip that Kevin was last believed to have been at the home of a man, 50-year-old Mark Latonsky, in Shiawassee County, Michigan. They didn't reveal how they knew, like how they had gotten this tip. But I think The Washington Post said it was probably in his Grindr app, like maybe his roommate knew who he had met up with. Maybe she was able to

open up his grinder and see who it was that kind of thing so they were able to to determine that mark latonsky is the person he was meeting up with so they detect so detectives perform a well chair check welfare check at mark latonsky's home and he opens the door and he's basically like oh sure come on in take a look around so this is uh where shit gets fucked up okay so they enter mark's home and at first he's just like come on in and at first they don't see anything and then they take a look around and they find a secret room in the basement okay that's always good great in that room they found kevin dead he was hanging from the ceiling rafters by his ankles completely nude and mark latonsky was immediately arrested obviously and he readily

admitted to killing kevin he said he had stabbed him in the back after they met up slit his throat then once he was dead he tied a rope around his ankles and hung him upside down from the rafters Then once he was dead, he tied a rope around his ankles and hung him upside down from the rafters. According to police testimony, he also explained that he used a knife to cut off Kevin's testicles and eat them. Fuck. Yeah. Holy shit. Just a lot. A lot.

Oh, my God. And, like, somewhat unsurprisingly, this was not the first run-in Mark Lutonsky had had with the law uh believe it or not okay only a few months earlier and it all happened within like so this first one is october so october 2019 till now this like weird massive story has occurred so it's like extremely recent um october 10th 2019 operators received a 911 call in which a man tells the dispatcher he's desperately yelling he says i don't know if he drugged me i woke up in the basement chained in his basement oh my god so he tells the dispatcher a man had been hitting on him at the bus station they went out for drinks and the next thing he knew he woke up in the same man's basement in a desperate attempt to escape

he said he used a butcher knife to cut the leather strap from his ankle that was connected to a chain and he was able to flee the house before jumping a fence with the ankle strap still on him like still attached to him oh my god and he jumped a fence ran to a um phone you know the nearest like gas station phone he could find and so uh the so he was from out of town but police were able to find him and he said he didn't want to press charges he told police he didn't want uh anyone involved according to michigan state police lieutenant david kaiser quote nobody wanted the police there nobody wanted to file charges a lot of times people

have a professional life and a personal life they don't want to intertwine the two their personal life is very secret very protected okay so however unfortunately only a month later a similar incident occurred at the same guy's house mark lotunsky on november 25th 2019 which i think is like right when thanksgiving was so shit wow he's ruined everyone's holidays oh my god november 25th 2019 a neighbor called 911 to1-1 to report seeing a man running outside with a bloodied face wearing only a leather kilt with another man chasing him oh my god oh my god what the fuck is going on the fuck it is just the weirdest shit ever so the uh police came out obviously uh the young man told authorities he had also been chained up in Mark Latonsky's basement and had gotten away. How is he not in jail yet?

I don't understand. I'm telling you. I'll tell you right now. He said he had become frightened or spooked, and that's why he ran. But everything that happened in the house was consensual, so he did not want to file a police report. And so the two men that had met with him were like, it was all consensual, but they had just, you know, it had gone too far and they ran away. But they didn't want to press charges because what they had originally been doing in their minds was what they had wanted to be doing. Sure.

So, I mean, obviously things went too far for them, but yeah, neither of them wanted to press charges. Let me see. Neither of them wanted to press charges. Let me see. So at this point, since nobody filed a police report, the police were not able to do, like, there was no criminal act, basically. So as law enforcement, there wasn't anything further they could do. Mark, for what it's worth, said he just wanted his $300 kilt back, which is what the guy was wearing. So they gave it to him.

After that, they had to just walk away because there was nothing more they could do, nothing to arrest him on. And so obviously now they have something very, very major to arrest him on, which is that he just told everyone he murdered and cut off Kevin's testicles. And ate them.

So they look into Mark. His social media presence, he had a different name. It was Olicos Kai Lucas. And his social media was full of pictures showing him wearing his $300 kilt. On LinkedIn, he described himself as a self-employed chemist who worked in the barrier residence division of the Dow Chemical Corporation in Midland, Michigan,

characterizing the rates of decomposition of polymeric materials. Whatever that is. Okay. But he's self-employed, so I don't know what he's doing in there. Got it. Okay. He's doing all that in his house, in his secret room. I don't know.

Yeah, I have no idea. So his Facebook bio claimed, those who really know me call me a straight arrow. I'm sure they do. Okay. I am a chemist and an experimentalist. One way to put it. Yeah. So his photos were all of like him in this kilt and kilts.

It was like his thing, I guess. And there was actually, interestingly, on the article that I read on heavy.com, this Instagram user posted a picture and said my mom took this photo she was at the grocery store and she saw this guy in a kilt and she was like chatting with him about the kilt and they took like a photo together and post and then she's like and months later i realized like that's the guy fuck and so she had the photo of her mom with the guy and was like she ran into him at the grocery store and was complimenting his kilt oh my god it just gives me the creeps i hope the next person i see in a kilt is not a killer i hope so too um yeah so that that uh was like his thing you know um so

he was a straight arrow quote unquote yeah right because he was quickly charged with open murder and bodily mutilation fuck okay and awful yes and despite being so open to letting police into his home and then he outright admitted that he had killed Kevin, he pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder and dismemberment and mutilation of a body. His attorney is seeking an insanity defense, describing a litany of past mental health issues. For example, according to court records, he was known to stop taking medication prescribed to treat his mental health illnesses, which are described as major depression, paranoid schizophrenia and traits of a personality disorder in both 2010 and 2012. His defense lawyer claims that he is fixated on a conspiracy theory involving multiple nations slash countries and multiple trust accounts and he also allegedly believes that he is a noble person from the thomas clan of wales oh and that the name mark latonsky is a cover for his true identity edgar thomas hill oh wow a lot of information i just heard just a big holy shit okay that's his like real facebook bio that's like his um that's that's that should be on his linkedin for sure

that's like his close friends i'm actually a noble so that's like what he tells his close friends on instagram like you get the real me right right on his bumblebee ff oh boy um so that's what his lawyer allegedly that's what he believes this is what his lawyer his defense lawyer is claiming as part of the insanity defense i see um however he has been there were a couple times for example in i forget what year it was but he was also charged with kidnapping his children and like taking them and the charges were dropped but he was charged with kidnapping because he had taken his kids away from his um their mother and you know you know that kind of thing like a custody custody issue and in all the

other cases before this he had been perfectly fine to stand trial like there was never any mental health defense at those during those so this is kind of a new a new defense of course like at this point he's only on trial for the murder of kevin bacon but according to the washington post um a dozen a dozen detectives and a criminal analyst this by the way gave me major goose cam are on the case trying to figure out how many people mark latonski has met on grinder and make sure they contact all of them to see that they're all okay because like who knows it is crazy there does have to be an algorithm on the back end of like every single person that's matched isn't that wild yeah but it also makes

me wonder like i'm on bumble bff and i've been on tinder like back when i like was single like it's like i wonder who i like yeah luckily didn't meet up well weirdly i'm literally thinking of the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. Yeah. Where it's like the, you know, oh, and that was actually part of that Instagram post was like, you know, they say you walk past 17 serial murderers in your lifetime and whatever. And this person was like, and my mom like hung out with one at the grocery store. Right, right, right. Like, you really never know.

Yeah. I mean, I have, I could have run into five of them or run by five of them today or like i could have been parked behind one like you never know this is why i don't leave my house take a tip from me oh terrifying yeah it is uh so just be careful who you trust i guess let's put it that way look out for number one yeah um so let's see so they're looking into who he has matched with on grinder to make sure everyone is okay and there aren't any other you know unknown victims who are maybe missing persons that kind of thing because who knows this might lead to other i mean hopefully not but this might lead to other connected disappearances and the case is obviously ongoing so we don't know yet if any

thing's been found but it hasn't been released yet uh i will let you know if it is um actually you guys will let me know probably on twitter and then i'll let you know back on the show yeah uh kevin bacon's funeral was held last month friday january 3rd in swartz creek michigan wow i don't think you've ever told a more topical story. His funeral was last week. We're recording this February 4th. So it was, I'm sorry. Yeah.

So it was January 3rd. So it was a month ago. Oh, January 3rd. Wow. Still. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's one month ago.

It's really, really dark. Yeah. They held a candlelight vigil later that night. Kevin's loved ones made banners. They brought balloons. Friends painted the flint rock in his honor. According to those who knew him, Kevin had a love for family, friends. He had cats, two cats named Smokey and Fuzzy.

He had a dog named Hannah, and he loved doing makeup and hair. And then his roommate, Michelle, the one who was kind of the last person to talk to him and see him alive, described him beautifully on I think it was an Instagram post she wrote Kevin could brighten up any room he walked into he loved talking about hair makeup fashion and music he loved Taylor Swift Lady Gaga and Jeffree Star he was amazing at making vivid hair colors look great and was passionate and creative about his hair work he loved the color Tiffany blue with a passion he loved getting tattoos he also Thank you. so empathetic and gave great advice and perspective when I needed clarity. He was like my own personal therapist. I remember asking Kevin not too long ago what his dreams were,

if there were no limitations and he could be anything. He said he wanted to be a hairstylist for the runway and wanted to work as a hairstylist in a major salon in a big city. I believe he fully could have accomplished those dreams. He was so creative. Aw, that's really sad. Yeah. You know what's also wild is like thinking this only

happened a month ago like yeah this sounds this sounds really pragmatic and and not emotional or practical not very emotional but like that person is like probably still looking for like a new roommate and like there's like other things like still happening after the fact like the ripples are still very strong in their lives right now. And like the, I mean, usually when we tell stories, it's like I kind of in my brain, maybe it's not true, but at least for comfort, I can tell myself like, oh, it happened a while ago. And maybe the grieving process isn't, isn't as intense.

But like right now, like people like someone's son died last month. This is like very real right now. Holy shit. I know. someone's son died last month this is like very real right now holy shit i know and that makes it so it brings it back into like reality rather than just like a story and that's why also like i wanted to just read that because i know a lot of the articles have been like about the killer and you wore this crazy kilt and he had whatever mental illness and it's like you know obviously that's a big part of the story, but I feel like.

Like that just happened. Like there's so many people suffering right now because of this. Wow. And I think it's worth talking about him more than it is about the man who killed him. So as of the date of the research, which was early February, the most recent news articles I could find were with updated information were from last week. So end of January. So that was like the most recent news articles i could find were with updated information were from last week so end of january so that was like the most recent updates um as of now latonsky is scheduled to undergo competency competency and forensic valuations to determine his competency to stand trial and that's kind of what i was saying in a much less coherent way earlier that in the past

he's been found competent to stand trial at his other criminal hearings but um he's undergoing that right now as well uh he will be moved from the shiawassee county jail to the center for forensic psychiatry for uh for evaluations and this process could take 60 to 90 days if not longer apparently there's like also a big delay right now um in transferring people and so they outright said uh to the media, like, this might be delayed. Currently, the court sessions are on hold until the report is submitted. So it might be a while till we get another update. Lutensky's lawyer claims that he seems to truly believe the grandiose stories he's been telling his attorney. Then again, it's his attorney saying that. So who knows? Right. But at his arraignment hearing on December 30th uh for what it's worth latonsky said that uh no he was not mark latonsky he was

edgar thomas hill and mark latonsky was his nephew so that's where things have started if latonsky is found not competent he will be hospitalized in a lockdown facility and he will be treated for his mental health concerns until he is deemed competent to stand trial. And perhaps the weirdest aggressive turn that my research took where I was reading these articles and all of a sudden I was like, huh? Is that Mark Lutonsky's house is now up for sale. Okay. The one where Kevin's body was found. Oh.

Apparently it has been foreclosed on and will be up for auction this month on february 26th so uh just a heads up if you're in the area i guess wow oof goose cam i know it's so weird and again it's like the same thing it's like the ripples yeah because they have to it's a house now it's an empty house they have to they're gonna sell the house like also they're gonna sell the house and people who are interested right now are going to be like, oh, 60 days ago someone was killed here and their testicles were taken off and eaten. Yeah. So this is actually. 60 days ago.

Interestingly enough, this is what the article was talking about. Basically, the article was saying the house is up for sale and yes, someone will buy it. Well, first I'll read the property. So the property records show that Lutensky purchased the home for $80,000 in May 2001. And later that year, he applied for a permit to build an eight by 20 foot living space in the basement. So he's been kind of into this for that entire time then. That is a good point.

This was 2001. So for like 18, 19 years. Oh my God. You just gave me like the biggest creeps i hope these are only these are the only ones that he's found since like social media dating came out somebody do some more research holy they should check like emails and reddit and shit like things that have been going on since before tinder newspaper classifieds i don't even know yeah there's probably been a lot more scary he's probably just lucky he only got caught on so many

i don't know man i don't know he's been fantasizing something since 2001 yeah yeah but the last two apparently it was just plain old bdsm and they wanted to be part of it so you know maybe maybe it was just a sex dungeon maybe and maybe he just got to a point where he finally acted out what he had been, you know... Concocting. Concocting. So who's to say? But we do know one thing that happened down there, and it was very tragic and very terrible. Scott Myers, who's a realtor based in Genesee County, said,

There's a buyer for every property. It will 100% sell. I was like, eee, okay. Okay. Also, apparently in Michigan, you are not required to disclose if someone has been killed or has died in the property. And however, they said anyone who Googles this house, it's going to be just articles. So like, sure, they're going to know. If you plan on moving into a house, just look at the history first. Because you could be going to a place where it's not expected that they tell you.

Yeah, I mean, and he was basically, yeah, that's a good point. And he was basically saying, you know, they're going to know. Everyone's going to know. It's in the news. This is a small, really tiny town. Like, they know what happened. Right, right, right. Grindr also, for what it's worth release tips for those using

their service so i'm just going to read those uh they said always meet up in a public space let people know where you will be and with whom and if something uncomfortable or strange happens contact police the company says quote give them all the facts if you do not report this person he in all likelihood will do it again to someone else so be safe out there folks um be safe out there yeah it's a scary world sometimes and the fact that this is so recent is like really gut-wrenching it's everything our parents warned us of yeah of like don't meet people online and that's exactly what we do now yeah and i mean for 999% of the time it's perfectly safe and happy things happen and we make friendships and relationships, but you never know. There's some creeps out there who will take advantage of you.

So I did want to add the sources I used were heavy.com, click on Detroit, WNEM Channel 5 News, WILX Channel 10 News, The Washington Post, USA Today, and Newsweek. And that is the murder of Kevin Bacon. And thank you,s microbiology for the suggestion yeah wow lots of stuff going on that is a dark one yeah and very recent maybe it'll be an update on that one too i know because it's uh the trial hasn't happened yet so i'm curious to see like what um what happens probably the most recent story i've ever covered like as of the release of the episode you know yeah I think so I think so yeah let's uh let's hope we get some answers and let's hope uh this guy goes to jail I guess or gets treated in happy news Gio just woke up from his nap and went right back to sleep his tongue is still out of his mouth but he looked like that whole time you were telling the story,

he was running with some great squirrels. Yeah, at least he's having a good time. Thank you guys. For those of you who want to see more, learn more, hear more, we have a website, and that's why we're drink.com. Yes, we do. We also have our Patreon, ATWBD Podcast. If you want to tell me which story to do,

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