And That's Why We Drink - E183 A Deeply Warped Tour and a Random Dan

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

Boy, are Christine's arms tired this week... because she's back in LA! Join us for episode 183 and an in-person recording session that we can only classify as "tipsy turvy". First Em covers a poltergeist of many names, one of which is Mary-Ellen, the Fire Spook of Caledonia Mills. Then Christine takes us to Sugar Land, Texas for the Whitaker Family Murders, after we have a brief Corrections Section TMTMTM. And don't forget to wave your trumpet at some cows this week... and that's why we drink!Please consider supporting the companies that support us!Go to www.BUYRAYCON.com/atwwd for 15% off Raycon wireless earbuds.Go to www.NativeDEO.com/Drink or use promo code DRINK at checkout for 20% off your first order.Go to www.Drinkworks.com for the nespresso of cocktails!Go to www.HelloFresh.com/80drink and use code 80drink to get a total of $80 off, including free shipping on your first box.

hi em hi hi hi hi oh my goodness i'm nervous i missed you i feel like i'm on a talk show all of a sudden no i feel like so nervous like you're gonna like interview me with all the hard-hitting questions that i can't answer oh i wish i had some prepared because that would be a fun way to start this off. My favorite thing whenever I do Marvel Mondays is people love to ask questions about you. That's my favorite. What? I told you this.

They asked what you smell like. Oh. They. Native deodorant. I did say you smell clean. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, that's good.

I should like get a fake account and go in there more often and watch these. I'm surprised you don't. I'm kind of nervous nervous because i watch them sometimes from my own but then i feel distracting because people are like christine you know and i don't want to take away from your performance you know i appreciate my performance yes like everyone wants to chat and i'm like hi i'm now but then i feel like i have to like joke along and i'm like this is not my performance i'm always it's always weird to me every week it feels like there's someone else new in there like this week deirdre was in there oh and i was like why are you here special guest you know all the answers to these questions maybe they're just like checking in to see if anything's changed anything's updated maybe anyway anyway i'm here

and i i flew in all the way my arms are literally exhausted i I was going to ask how your arms were. Yeah, like so tired. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Flap, flap, flap. Flap, flap, flap. There's no direct flights still. So Christina had to just take off on her own. All over America with my Zach blanket.

I'm so glad that I got you the best travel accoutrement. I stayed at my brother's apartment and he like set up the whole bed. And then I was like, oh, I don't need that blanket. I just got my own. I have ZB with me. What um I like your yellow shoes. I can't stop looking at them. Are they Rothy's? They are Rothy's. Now I feel like I've just mentioned two sponsors in one intro and I swear none of this is an advertisement. I legitimately just love these shoes. Well how was your flight? It was um terrible. Thank you for asking. Why? I'm just not used to flying and so i feel like i was gonna puke the whole time you know even i get really motion sick when we travel really really change things up from tour when you're on a plane like two times a day

single minute of the day yeah anyway i'm excited to see you and we are gonna get cheesecake after this in case anyone's without without question i even told christine i like i don't know what's going on with me today but i feel a little nauseous and i was like we're still getting cheesecake to be clear like yeah because i was like is there and you're like no no i was like there's no there's no turning back that's just where we are now by the way i do kind of know why i'm nauseous since because i already ate a lot of cake within the last 24 hours that's what kind of tipped me off to like is this going to be a problem and i was like it's not going to be a problem cheesecake is still i don't know what my deal was last night it was like 11 o'clock and I was so tired and I should

have just gone to bed and I was like I think I'm gonna make a cake instead oh you baked the cake yeah I've made it oh goodness so I had to eat some of it because it was now midnight and no one was awake to eat it with me so I ate some cake well I think that's very exciting news thank you this is my segue my segue we also have some exciting news i think it was smooth right that was also totally forgot about it so you really nailed i only remembered because eva a emailed us this morning and b i like made her tell me out loud so i could write it down because otherwise i will forget definitely forgot very exciting news yes so a um a uh listener named jessica reached out and does builds these

like beautiful newsletters for a living and sent us kind of a sample and was like hey have you ever thought about doing a newsletter and i feel like we had but like how on earth would we figure that out ourselves right yes and like you know so when jessica sent this in we were like holy crap this is amazing um yeah like i already sent out like a full like like, holy crap, this is amazing. Yeah, like, kind of already sent out, like, a full, like. Like, a sample. It was beautiful. Like, this is what I'm thinking. What do you think?

And we were like, we think go for it. How did you do that? Anyway, and so we're very excited to announce that we are now going to have a newsletter. Yay! I just, it's so silly because I feel like we've done all these other things. Like, oh, we're going on tour doing this. And now, like, the newsletter I'm so excited about. It's also, like, it's, like, finally some, like, little beam of light through COVID. it's also like it's like finally some like little

beam of light through covid it's like probably what it is like okay yes let's have a newsletter and everything came to a screeching halt and then we were like but here but it's no it's got uh some super fun stuff and we're gonna have uh more information on our website so um we are gonna have like a patron of the week and a pet of the week. I think month. Oh, yes. Month. Sorry.

My bad. Jessica's like, no. I just want a pet of the week. Gio's the pet of the week. Okay. Yeah. Gio's the standard, I suppose. Yeah.

You can submit all your, whoever you want. Yeah. And the signup is going to be on our website. We are currently building that. So, good luck to us. Again, this is us trying to do this all by ourselves on squarespace so we're gonna put like a um a sign up thing on the website so and that's why we drink.com it'll be fun i like i have uh follow newsletters of a couple other podcasts and like the only ones that i get really excited about because there's always just like goofy fun stuff in there i uh you just said so fun and then i thought about um renee so fun so fun so

cute so fun oh my gosh so fun love your hair anyway that's gonna be our newsletter that's the tagline right there so cute so fun um come on talk later we'll talk about this later i have not agreed to that but yeah and also thank you, Jessica, for also doing this at all. You must be so bored during. So talented. So bored. So bored during quarantine to offer this to us, but we appreciate it. She's like, this is my company and my business, but thank you for calling me bored.

No, she's very talented. So I'm very excited. I'm very excited. That's all I'm going to say. I'm going to sign up for our own newsletter on every one of my emails like a big dork. I'm going to sign all my friends up without them knowing. Listen, that's the best idea of all. Let's just sign everyone we know up.

I know. I know. Also, I just did that recently. Also, I used your email because my stepsister is trying to win a contest for her like ad team at school. And she was like, I need everyone to like, did you sign me up for? Oh no, you just voted for something.

Oh, okay. She's going to win by the way, because of your vote and the other like 20 people's emails. I know. So great. Anyway, looking forward to that on your behalf.

And if, uh, if her school or anything ever listens, I definitely intentionally voted willingly with consent i also have three stepsisters so they'll never know which one i'm talking about oh good okay mystery not solved bingo anyway this is our show where we talk about ghosts and murder and e-newsletters and e-newsletters yes and also how i use christine's email for evil so So let's see. My story.

By the way, I'm very happy you're here. I'm so happy I'm here. Last time I surprised you. And so you weren't like mentally prepared. This time we could both like get excited to do this together. We got to text each other about it. Yeah. That was fun.

I got to complain finally about the flight and everything. I don't know how you did that without complaining the first time. Oh, I find other ways. I find other people. You just complained to Eva. I got it. Yes. Much like you and your emails. I have plenty in my contact list. Do you just write my email address and just like, like an email I don't use anymore? I write your stepsister's email address. I just write to her. Okay. So my story is, excuse me, super short. I tried my best to find more information, but I actually have been using Marvel Monday for Evil also. And I've been asking people in there for like kind of immediate responses on like, is there a story I haven't covered?

I love when people are so helpful in that. I like, I ended up, it ends up being a good thing and like also a not so good thing because the whole point is to like out with people and answer questions. And it ended up working out for me because it was a slew of suggestions. Yeah. So I was like, okay. But also everyone's just watching me screenshot Marvel Monday a million times. But anyway, so this was from someone that recommended it through Marvel Monday.

So this is the story of, well well it has like three different names oh um it's called the antagonish ghost the antagonish poltergeist one of those two um and then the fire spook of caledonia mills and the mary ellen spook farm it's a lot of words that you just said a lot of words is that half your notes for the day? Mm-hmm. Yes. I just actually have it copy and pasted all down the list. It sounds like a lot of words. I don't, it just apparently, just in case anyone's wondering like, oh, well, are you going to cover this?

I just wanted to make sure I got all the names, so. It's all under one umbrella. Exactly. Yes. Also, if you can't notice, I can't stop touching my hair because it's getting too long. Maybe you can. It's perfectly long. Maybe you can cut it and dye it purple and then it turns yellow yeah well that did happen to me thank you for calling that

out to be fair people might comment so yeah let's just get it out of the way it's post purple turned orange yellow post purple purple went away um okay so this is the story of all those things so this is in uh the 1920s and this is in nova scotia oh love love it up there um and so i think this is actually in halifax i was just telling blaze how that way i want to go back i'm for our next anniversary when we can actually fly when i tell you i'm so jealous you've been to halifax and it's been my dream since i was 12 i do feel bad about that i did almost bring my halifax backpack today though you're wearing your belize one though i'm always wearing something you've given me it's like you're like slowly just kind of inserting yourself into my my wardrobe not slowly but uh not slowly just

injecting entirely um okay so this is uh in nova scotia it's a farm um and it was owned by alexander and janet mcdonald's although i couldn't stop saying zandy oh so i just thought of zandy the whole time old mcdonald had a farm got it eieio or no polter poltergeist i was gonna try to spell like halifax or something but that didn't work okay nope nope nope um and so it was zandy and janet their 15-year-old daughter, Mary Ellen, hence the title, the Mary Ellen Spook Farm. Got it. So the farm was near Caledonia Mills, hence the fire spook of Caledonia Mills, which was 20 minutes southeast of Antigonish, a.k.a. the Antigonish Ghost. Got it, got it, got it.

Triangulated, literally. Yes, all of it in one fell swoop there. Understood. yes literally all of it in one fell swoop there understood so this is in december 1921 and zandy tended was tending to his animals and he noticed that all of his horses and cattle basically just escaped from the stalls oh um even though he knew he had secured their like their stables and all that they like were just fucking out in the field and running around oh no um which i don't know how as one person you then gather all of them yeah because once you've gotten one aren't the others like just like i mean i guess that's what like sheepdog are for right they like i guess corral

them i never saw anything about dogs i just saw like he put them all back and it's like i feel like that was a really short sentence for a really large accomplishment why are we not giving him more of a trophy here? Right. It's like doing something for what I presume the entire day. And then it's like, oh, yeah, that happened. Anyway, he figured it out. Let's move on.

So he put them all back. Humble brag, I guess. And then minutes later, they just like all broke free again. What? And at that point, by the way, I'd no longer be a farmer i'd be like that was too fucking much i'm not gonna go chase down like a dozen cows again um although maybe he knows one of those tricks on tiktok i learned that like cows love corn and cows love like the trumpet or something so maybe he knew some weird slick trick to like get them all to him instead of played the trumpet he just like was in a cornfield and just like did this with a trumpet

he waved his trumpet around he just showed us i'm so glad you're not a farmer for the rest of the world i'm just very happy that you're not a farmer you imagine they're like oh what do we do with the sheep i don't know trombone i don't know you're like i played trumpet in eighth grade let me go get it it's like my ukulele is like i'm probably skilled enough to handle like one goat you know um so not only did he like okay so he brought all the cattle back in for a second time and uh he also noticed that as he's bringing them in um a lot of their like they look like their tails and their manes are braided like it's like something very intricate where like if the if first of all they just ran off themselves then there's no reason for that but also they went and got a perm right they went to they went to the

barber but also if the barber was the one right they went to they went to the barber but also if the barber was the one that was like releasing them there would have been no time to also do all this braiding their hair as he's trying to wrangle them right okay so it makes no sense if it were that's very weird it makes no sense if it were a person or the animals right either way it doesn't really add up um and he also notices that this starts happening all the time like he starts going into the barns and even if the animals are there all of a sudden there's like this weird like have different hairstyles every time yeah okay like one had a bob like a mohawk well technically horses always have mohawks right because it's just like no they're not like up though they're like

so they just have a relaxed mo yeah yeah yeah yeah they just have the mo falcon no i'm saying stop it to myself okay so um so not only are the animals acting weird but he also notices that um they're starting to find things like ash in the cow's milk ew so like that makes no sense and i don't know if that means like fresh from the cow or like in their store in milk where it's closed. They're finding ash in it, but it should never, it's never been there before. That's no good. And they're also starting to see figures walking around in their windows at night.

Oh God. And two neighbors actually saw a hand waving a white cloth from a window when nobody was home. Kind of like how I wave a trumpet to the cows. That was just you attempting to get them back inside. And what else? Oh, and then people started seeing a bright blue light coming from the barn. Oh.

Which I imagine is kind of like the alien kind of look of like something's glowing from the barn. Yeah, yeah. The McDonald's also started losing all their stuff and it started going missing like the alien kind of look of like something's glowing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the McDonald's also started losing all their stuff and it started going missing and things were like reappearing in random places for no reason, even including like heavy farming equipment, like the tractor wouldn't no longer be where it was. Um,

and so the, all this weird stuff's happening. And then June six. So now we're in 1922, that is known as the Night of 38 Fires. Uh-oh. Because now things are just spontaneously combusting. Oh, shit. And they're just igniting all over the place in their house, not on the farm, but in their house. So the McDonald's are apparently like wallpaper and like rugs and things that are not near

flammable material are just bursting into flame. Oh my God. And then they put one out and then on the other side of the house, all of a sudden another fire would break out and like including like wet towels, like things that should not catch fire. That's not, that's troubling. And so apparently there were at least 38 that night and they had even run over to the neighbors and had the neighbors helping them try

to put the fires out all over the house um and basically it just went on all night if one ignited and they put it out it would ignite some and so um even the neighbor said that it looked like the house was like short circuiting and blue fire would just appear on random things for no reason. Like there'd be a flash of light in the room and then all of a sudden something would be on fire. Oh, and what was extra weird beyond it, like being on wet papers and wet towels and like it shouldn't even be starting at all.

But the fires weren't hot at all. Oh, what? It was just the flame. Like it like it wasn the fires weren't hot at all oh what it was just the flame like it like it wasn't they weren't hot fires like it was one of those like uh candles from costco where they just like kind of flicker but there's no actual it was just actually just waving and waiting for you to like kind of like use a room unplug it okay um and so uh that was odd i yeah but also like in the grand scheme of things if you're gonna have 38 fires in your house at least it's not gonna burn anything down being cold right yes you nailed it um and so a week later the family at this point was still freaked out so they left

and they moved in with the neighbor and poor. Poor neighbor's like, no, no, no. Please don't bring your. Not my towels. Weird cold fire and not my towels. The neighborhood actually started like a neighborhood watch specifically for these fires. So sad. So people were taking shifts and monitoring the house for like just random fire at any turn at any time on anything um except flammable items um and so eventually the press heard about this and so it started spreading and only a couple days later this guy named harold whidden um he was an interviewer he was a reporter and he came

to interview them and he ended up coming a second time later to investigate on his own and stay in the house for three nights okay um and so when he went to go stay for three nights he also brought zandy with him uh-huh and also a local cop who is named detective peachy carol oh that's fun i like it why not at least you're known as peachy like you could be known for anything at least you're like jolly that's absolutely like a positive i mean it's not necessarily like menacing like or assertive like you might want oh it's definitely not like like intimidating right like you know makes like makes you like feel like you're kind of in charge it's like peachy's arresting you it's like although it

could be that thing where you're it's like, it's sarcastic because you're the exact opposite. Aha, here comes Peachy and he never smiles and he is. Here comes Peachy, he's gonna really fuck you up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, let's see. I'm like, he never smiles and you're like, he's gonna fuck you up. I just imagine. I'm like, he's a bad guy.

He never smiles at anyone. like he's a bad guy he's a bad i'm just thinking like he's just like yeah i imagine peachy would be like in a in a cop comedy of like peachy's the one that everyone like he's like the grumble the grumble the the uh the carmudgeon carmudgeon yes that's no i'm glad we landed in the venn diagram of the two things the two extremes that we both have from not smiling to you're gonna get fucked up right in the middle that is curmudgeon and that's peachy and that's peachy got it uh-huh um follow now thank you and so the uh first night that all three of them were in the house it was fine but on the second night apparently harold and peachy um heard strange noises upstairs and they didn't know what it was but they couldn't fall asleep because the noises were so loud and then eventually harold felt something slap his arm really hard

to a point where he felt it like under the blankets oh he like he his arm was under a bunch of blankets and he felt the slap that well so that freaked him out and he told peachy about it and peachy was like yeah i felt something on my arm too and then they both for the next like 20 minutes um felt something staring at them and they felt very uncomfortable so peachy was at least not peachy then no no um and so they like it freaked them out and they told xandy about it later and he had slept through the whole thing he's like so yeah used to it yeah honestly i mean he lives there yeah probably just used to whatever's going on day to day um and so harold the next day was too freaked out and so he uh ended up leaving a night early because he was going to be there for three nights and he ended

up leaving um and he his reports on the house kind of gained a lot of interest i'm gonna take my hat off and fix my hair oh it's like how do you do it there it is it's the the sean hunter i can do now remember when i used to have like spiky hair not spiky but i definitely couldn't do this yes i do recall now it's like a nice luscious wave a lush a cloud if you will the other day i'm literally dm'd me well i i d i dm them about something and i responded oh it's about your hair yeah and then you're like man i just learned how like voluminous and full my hair is and i was like congratulations must be nice i never well because my hair was long and when it was long i

hated it so it was always up. And now, and then the second I cut it, I was like, I was going to keep it short. I never got to experience the like the Venn diagram middle, if you will. Yeah. Of like, wow, I'm pretty fortunate. You literally wrote hashtag blessed. And I was like, yeah, there it is. Oh, I really, I have realized, I think, hey, hair is probably my favorite feature about myself.

Okay. Yeah. I'm feeling confident about it. favorite feature about myself. Okay. Yeah. I'm feeling confident about it. Hey quarantine confidence. Let's go. Finally. It only took a pandemic for me to find some self-interest. So let's see.

Oh yeah. So they got slapped on the arm. Harold left the next day and he ends up reporting on the house and that's when it got kind of international notice. And so because this was the 1920s this was near the end of the spiritualist movement and of course sir uh sir arthur conan doyle was interested so he even came out i didn't see anything about harry price or houdini um actually i think harry price did work on this i feel like i remember hearing about this for the first time when i was doing notes for him so So I think Carey Price had the scoop, if you will.

But I don't know about that. So I know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was interested. And another person who came out who was super interested was this parapsychologist in New York. And his name was Dr. Walter Franklin Pierce. Okay. And people kind of knew him as kind of an ass. But he was very uh well esteemed in the parapsychology world so pretty much what his opinion was went he was allowed to be an ass

he was allowed to be arrogant yes um and so he came to investigate and he spent like a few weeks there um and he invited harold to come back since he had had an experience there. He also invited Leo, the neighbor. And he invited, like, not the McDonald's, by the way. Oh. Like, their neighbor and. Maybe they didn't trust them. Maybe they were like, we want outside sources to be in on this. Actually, that makes sense.

Like, let's put them to the side. So their neighbor came. Harold, the reporter reporter came back and then a local random person named dan sorry dan was like what about me and they were like i guess we have room in the car yeah i don't they didn't explain his relationship at all i imagine he just like popped on the scene and was like if you need a third they're like don't. I feel like Dan's that kind of guy where you're like, okay, just don't tell.

And then Dan walks in like, what are we talking about? He's absolutely that person that you like leave out of the group chat. He finds it anyway. He always finds a way in. He creates a new group chat. Also because he was a local, I said he was a local,

but the phrase that was actually used in the notes because apparently um a halifax resident like a local in halifax is called a haligonian oh hell yeah i'm fucking about that i like that i didn't know that because when i first read it they said and a haligonian named dan and i was like an alien breed of alien or something it does a little bit in the best way like the pleiades the pleat what are they called from pleiades i don't know i'm just back to thinking about fucking acon so acon and the heligonians wait a minute make a band wait um canadian rock band just like billy talent like on tour i warp tour warp tour i love it warped indeed yeah deeply warped

let's see uh so later uh oh yeah so fucking dan joins yeah yeah and then one of the things that and several things happened uh before this like they had investigated i think like the scorch marks to see like what was actually burning and they interviewed everyone in town but um the main thing that happened was harold ended up uh or dr prince the guy that was in charge of this he had dan and harold try automatic writing cool which i think is interesting to the story but also i'm kind of uncertain of it because i've heard you talk about it and it doesn't sound like something you can just do it sounds like you have to practice it right i mean i feel like you can anyone it's like one of those things that as far as i know anyone can do it but you're right like you need to be like in the right headspace and

like meditate day one yeah i feel like it's something where you have to be you have to fall i mean maybe if they followed the protocol maybe maybe dr prince was super duper good at explaining the directions maybe dan was somehow i doubt dan was good at following instructions maybe dan was actually just like a secret like reiki master maybe it's it's possible um but so he decided that he wanted them to try automatic writing so he told har Harold and Dan to hold pencils over the paper. Basically, this is what he told them, which doesn't sound like very, like, narrow, like, detail of instruction. Okay. He said, okay, here's pencils.

Put them over the paper. And then spirits, if you're around, talk to us. I see. So it doesn't sound like anyone got, even the spirits didn't really get any direction. The spirits were like, wait, what do you want me to say we're already doing that we're setting fires they're like i don't want to work with dan you work with dan no you work with them oh so anyway they it sounded like that like nothing really happened from that um what a shock and later i think like six days later har Harold actually had to leave because he had to go report on a different story.

And so he said like, oh, I'm heading out. But before I do, I have this really weird urge. Like, can you help me try to do that automatic writing thing again? Okay. And so Dr. Prince set him up with the, you know, pencil and paper. And basically for the next two hours, Harold just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote so he really went from like like grasshopper to like full-blown expert um so he wrote for two hours and to this day we don't know what a lot of the messages said okay because harold was like oh some

of those were really private and it's like what does that mean um what and so and that just makes everyone want to know more yeah i was like okay way to like definitely keep our entry yeah like string me along um but so he promised that the spirits wouldn't uh or he promised the spirits he wouldn't say what happened but he he did give like out of sleep over yeah don't let them know i have a crush on dan oh my god that was just dan like whispering from behind the curtain like making him think it was a spirit maybe that's why he was afraid to say something because dan was next to him and he was like they said some shit about dan oh they're not having it with dan i'm not gonna that must be what it is um so that being said harold does claim that the spirits let him know that the fires were caused by paranormal events, that they were responsible and nobody else in town.

He also got a message from his sister, apparently, who passed away. And according to the messages, his sister said, quote, people must realize that those who have passed beyond are ever present. God is merciful. God is good. He is just. Spirits do visit the earth after death okay here's the thing i understand that like i respect automatic writing and i think it can be a really powerful tool but also it's probably the easiest thing to fake because

you're literally closing your eyes and just doing you're like oh i'm getting a message from a spirit and you could write like dan sucks and be like i didn't say it yeah exactly oh the spirit world god is here and i mean you could just write that shit out yeah exactly and my god damn it my hair you're really gonna have to cut my hair or something um i don't know if that's a good idea i've seen what you can do with your brother's hair so anywhere is up i was gonna say you probably don't want me involved um but so, yeah, that's my thought, too, of like day one, he didn't know how to do it. And then like six days later, he was like, oh, let me give another whack at it. And now he's just writing.

It's like, oh, I figured it out. It seems unlikely. It just seems a little much. Yeah. And so basically, it seems like none of the messages were negative in any way which is good if you're gonna fake the writing so at least you're saying nice things yeah yeah yeah um but uh he did say that most of the messages were good and apparently when he did make contact with the spirits causing mischief excuse me they did say that they wouldn't bother the mcdonald's anymore okay so fine good so dr prince published this report in the journal of american the

american society of uh psychological research psychical psychical research yeah i mean i was like the other one if you look back at my face or i did not look like i knew what i was talking about i was like i knew someone where we said cyclical or something. Yeah, who could forget? Who could forget when people still tweet me every day about that one? Who can forget? The ASPR. The ASPR, yeah. Right, right, right, right. So he published his findings in that journal.

It was the 1922 version for people trying to find it, if you want to. But despite Harold's messages and, like like this automatic writing that was like so profound apparently um dr prince still took away from it and you can read it in the reports that he thought that it the whole time it was the daughter mary ellen what is up with those like the same with the mongoose like the daughter's always like it's always the stirring up some trouble it's always like a 15 year old girl who lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere who's bored in the 20s. So cute. So fun.

So bored. So cute. So fun. So bored. Yes. Put a mongoose in the wall. I know I just repeated it, but I needed it for the emphasis. I liked it.

I loved it. I liked watching you say it. It's more fun. I liked when you said it. Okay. Okay. Moving on. Okay.

No, you're so cute. Okay. You say it. on. Okay. No, you're so cute. Okay. You say it. Okay. I'm just like lost in our love. I totally forgot. What else is new? So Dr. Prince does think it was Mary Ellen.

He also said he doesn't trust Harold's automatic writing. Well, okay, glad. Glad I'm not the only one. But let's say it was real, that Harold's automatic writing and uh well okay glad glad i'm not the only one but let's say let's say it was real that harold's automatic writing was real because dr prince was so uh well like renowned in uh that field even if it was real because dr prince said it wasn't real it completely discredited yeah that sucks so he can really just like yay or nay something and yes it's the word of which also went with mary ellen because as soon as he said, I think it's Mary Ellen, everyone assumed it was Mary Ellen.

He blames the poor teenage girl. Yeah. Yeah. And so he said that even though the automatic writing was his idea, he still doesn't trust that it ever happened. Like there are some reports where he has like legitimately said he's denied flat out that that story ever even happened. Oh, wow. Even though apparently. Maybe that automatic writing did work and it was just like so personal shit about himself that he was like, I can't release this to the public.

Nobody can know. It never happened. Your mother from beyond has come back and told me all sorts of weird shit about you. About me and Dan. About you and Dan. told me all sorts of weird about me and dan about you and dan so uh this is a quote from prince that said uh the fires were undoubtedly uh set by human hands judging by the unmistakable signs left in the house the burns are never found on the wallpaper higher than the reach of a person five feet tall which is the height of the girl in the family valid point i guess mary ellen came back

and said i have never set fires i have never untied cattle in the barns i never uh plated the tails of the horses i would have been too afraid to which same i like don't want to get near a horse long enough for their butt that's where they kick you yeah yeah like why would i let me touch every single one of their tails for a long enough time that i can braid it fully yeah i gave a french braid and not a one will kick me no no i don't believe it um uh i've never played their tales i would be too afraid to first they claimed i had a boyfriend a sweetheart who did the who set the fires and now they're saying i did it i tell you i don't care who dr prince is he ought to be ashamed of himself oh

hell yeah and she was 15 in the 20s so So like, good for her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She stepped up. And then Dr. Prince later kind of took it back. And he said, well, before he took it back, let me be clear. Before he took it back, he said, oh, well, the Mary Ellen I met would have never been able to even make that statement about me because she had the mind of a four-year-old. What? Who is this fella?

He's a classic, I guarantee you, cisgender straight white man. Oh, my God. Who felt a little douse of rejection or a dismissal and was like, well, you're stupid. So anyway, that's what happened. What a jerk. And so he ended up, I guess, getting called out enough. I think even other people thought that that sentence was like way out of line. And so he ended up taking it back.

And then he ended up saying, oh, well, it was still Mary Ellen. And she is not capable of doing those things because she's like smart. She's so smart, you guys. But she definitely still set the fires because she was sleepwalking and or possessed. Wait, okay. So he really just... And he's like a well-esteemed expert in this. And he is like, okay, well, it was her boyfriend who, like, by the way, has never been mentioned ever in this storyline.

Like, can't braid someone's hair to save his life, by the way. And then he was like, oh, no, it's Mary Ellen. Oh, also, she has the mind of a four-year-old. Never mind, she was possessed. Or maybe she was sleepwalking, which also is, like, so the opposite of being possessed. I think it was his way of cushioning the blow of being like, okay, fine, I'm going to stick with my quote that it was you, so I don't look stupid, but I'll take the responsibility off your shoulders.

Because if you were sleepwalking or possessed, you didn mean to yeah but i just did it by accident okay sure sure sure sure sure so uh some actually believe that like another common theory is that the neighbors were just setting the fires um there's all committing random acts of arson for no reason um but also remember that allegedly the fires like yeah these weren't even like normal fires also i feel like if you set enough if you set 38 fires this one's house like the house is gone though also if my neighbor knows how to set a wet towel on fire that's a bar trick i'm gonna do it again i'm gonna come over i want to don't tell me you didn't do it put it on tiktok put it on tiktok yeah unless it was wet with like gasoline right but um anyway where was i i don't know i don't know

anymore so oh so one of the original legends that are not one of the original legends one of the legends now to kind of set up the story is that apparently there was a guy who came to the farmhouse forever ago and he needed somewhere to stay from the night and when the mcdonald's told him no he like cursed their daughter and ran off into the night and they think okay well the legend now based on what dr prince has said is oh she was cursed this whole time and that's why she started sleepwalking and being possessed and setting these fires instead of braiding the hair her horse's hair and just like also like practicing her braids yeah i mean when you don't have a sister or another friend out there with long hair you gotta try on the horse you gotta give it a little bob especially when there's nothing else

to do yeah i'd be braiding i'd be i know every inch of that horse's hair. So cute, so fun, so bored. So Harold said, just another way to kind of, not discredit Dr. Prince, but just to give you another perspective on his strategy of investigation. Harold said that Dr. Prince acted really weird during the investigation. He was already known to be super arrogant.

He clearly was arrogant with Mary Ellen saying that she was stupid. And basically he just started acting really weird. Apparently the whole first night that they were there, he didn't even investigate at all. He just made himself like comfortable in someone else's house and was demanding all this privacy and like, didn't want anyone near him. It's like,

he kind of just like moved in. What? And then the uh oh nobody else was allowed to stay at the farm including the mcdonald family which now makes sense you made a good point of like oh maybe they would have like been maybe they would have been messing around or like muddled up the investigation in some way um although at the time apparently a lot of people thought that if you brought in the family to the haunted location it would trigger activity right so i think for people who think that way it was weird that such an important and like

well-known investigator wouldn't do that i see okay interesting um and so he also denied uh harold did any automatic writing later on even though harold was like that was one of the most like spectacular things that ever happened to me so like it definitely happened how dare you um and dr prince when he so first of all he never talked about the cattle or the braiding of the tails he never even covered that he would always kind of dance around that when asked and when harold and peachy were like what about when we felt that hand and heard noises uh dr prince said that they were hallucinating because they were so cold that even though they never said they were too they were hallucinating because they were cold so like they were hypothermic like that doesn't make sense no um. But so that all being said, Dr. Prince did say that even though he didn't believe there was any paranormal stuff going on there, except maybe a casual possession while she's sleepwalking.

Sure, sure, sure. He did say that there were some weird things that happened in his office when he got back to New York, just like some like weird knocks and sounds that he wasn't used to. Okay. So he's like, oh, well, that was kind of weird. Maybe something followed me home. But then we never heard anything else after that right um but uh three months after the investigation the mcdonald's moved back in so poor leo their neighbor was like it's been three months please go back to your home oh right they were still there oh no so three months later they moved back in and there was no paranormal activity for a while. But then small little fires started again.

And so because so many people believe Dr. Prince's reports of it being Mary Ellen, the like local authorities took action and just arrested Mary Ellen. Like her parents didn't charge her or anything. They just said like, you're committing arson in your own home. Oh, my God. And they brought her to the Nova Scotiaotia home for the insane oh my god and the newspapers dubbed her the fire spook that's awful so she like was just hanging out braiding her horse's tails and then all of a sudden she's oh no put away in an institution because someone decided to say that she was an arson and everyone believed an arsonist and people believe that decided to say that she was an arson and everyone

believed an arsonist and people believe that's awful um so she was released a little bit later but it it was noted that whenever she did for the rest of the time that she lived in that house she would go into weird trances at night apparently oh and apparently little fires would start around her oh okay wow that's creepy And like in areas where fires don't start. So she would just be walking and all of a sudden there'd be a fire just kind of like popping up behind her. Oh my God. Although I don't know if that's local legend or that's straight from the McDonald's mouth, but that was mentioned. And now, so she later moved to Ontario.

There was no more activity on the farm after she left um but then the family later moved and the farm fell into disrepair and some stories say that um the farm itself mysteriously caught on fire one day and the whole thing just kind of burned down it was bound to happen listen full circle a little closure um but a the local legend now is that the whole land is cursed and if you ever take anything from that property then you are bringing the fire spook into your home and things will start catching on fire oh no which apparently there was one woman who did take a cup and her house later caught on fire i don't know how soon after but it did catch on fire and burn down um and local investigators have said um that the curse is very real one group said quote this curse has been tested by regular

everyday people who have put things such as shingles or bricks in their sheds in their backyard like just picking up a random thing and putting it kind of near their house and it catches on fire what it will it said the buildings will always catch this is so weird so the mcdonald's were described by people as quote straightforward substantial and god-fearing um i think this was actually peachy who said i firmly believe that neither the fires nor the strange occurrences about the farm were caused of human hands oh my god and harold the reporter said um quote i will believe to the hour of my death that the fires in Alexander McDonald's house and the mysterious unfastening of his cattle were caused by spirits. Wow.

So everyone except Dr. Prince thinks that it was spirits. Dr. Prince thinks it was Mary Ellen. I think Dr. Prince knows what it is, but he something. I think it was Dr. Prince at this point. Maybe. Maybe it was just fucking dan i think he something somebody caught on to something and he wanted to put that all behind him that sounds like a conspiracy anyway he's like that never happened i don't know shady who

it's a mystery it's a mystery honestly if you don't believe the story maybe go take something from the tell us what happened property and then throw it near your house not ours yeah don't put it in our homes please throw it to your own house well thank you em yeah that's a nice spooky spooky story a little eerie a little eerie in theory um great well i have a story for you as well. Excellent. Oh, okay. We can just both do that then. No, no, no. I really. A hair mate, a mane.

A mane. I need her to braid my hair. I knew I was in trouble. I started doing the Justin Bieber thing and I was like, oh my God, we got to get out of This is too far. I was like, where are the scissors? Okay. I have a story for you. This is the story of the Whitaker family murders.

I love it. Okay. Nevermind. I was going to say I love a good family murder. This is the story of the Whitaker family murders. I love it. Okay, never mind. I was going to say I love a good family murder. Not what I meant. Not what I meant. Out of context. No, I love stories. I assume this is similar to other family murder cases you've told, like the Bloody Benders or what was the one I said a while ago where everyone was found in the barn?

I just I I like- The Hinterkaifeck. The Hinterkaifeck murders. Yeah. I don't know why, but that the- The genre. The genre. Yeah.

It's very specific. I like those the most because usually I guess I think, oh, if there's a disappearance or a murder, it's gotta be someone they're related to. And the title alone takes that rumor out for me. I know. Oh, now I don't know. Now it's like a bigger mystery. Yes. And the title alone takes that rumor out for me. I know. Oh, now I don't know.

Now it's like a bigger mystery. Yes. Yes. I agree with that. Um, so where, okay, I found this on,

uh, a, so I found this cracked article on crack.com. I love crack. Me too. I fucking love crack. No, crack.

Crack. To be clear, I feel like this is a very easy episode to just pick and pull. I love family murders and crack.'s that's not that is not our stance on the issue um uh okay but not really so uh oh i also had a little corrections corner that i forgot to mention up front sort of so you know that website mysterious universe yeah so i guess you would use that for your erotic alien fanfic yes okay so i i went on reddit and i don't even subscribe to our reddit page because i get scared because people sometimes

say not nice things um and i'm a baby oh did i mess up did i say something no no you didn't so but somebody it came up for some reason i guess it was like it like knew who i was anyway i don't know it came up and i saw this headline that was like hey do you guys know about the mysterious universe controversy thing and i went what is it and i went and read the and they were very nice whoever posted this like they weren't critical or anything but they were like i don't know if i and christine know this but um because we talk about that website a lot. Sure. What's wrong with it?

Apparently the guy who creates the blog or the page and he hosts a podcast, which I didn't know there was a podcast, but I guess he hosts a podcast. Let's just say he has some troubling viewpoints and he's made it very clear in some of his tweets and his podcast um that he's kind of just a terrible racist asshole uh so i was really good to know we did not know that um okay glad we found out apologies all around yeah and i didn't even know there was a podcast but apparently that's kind of where this all stems from because that's where he kind of spouts his own opinions. He lets himself really color himself. Where he says, I love family murders and crap. But he, yeah, got it, got it, got it. But like in reality, some of this stuff,

and apparently it used to be kind of more conspiracy theories and fun stuff. And now it's like conspiracy theories that are troubling and not, just not in line with anything that we really believe. It's not a cute look. It's not cute. It's not fun. It's's not cute it's not fun um it's not bored it's not boring i tell you that uh and then i went on his twitter and i was like yeah really we're gonna talk about this over cheesecake yeah i'll show you over cheesecake

also can i do a corrections corner too of course it's not really i don't think entirely necessary because i've already made my case pretty clear in the at least amongst the marvel monday community um but so a lot of people have been tweeting me saying that i uh an english speaker by the way who does not who does not know spanish when i was talking about the island of the dolls i kept saying don instead of don julian i was i was saying for short for don julian for short i was saying don instead of julian because apparently don is their way of saying like mr right like the guy so i will say one english is my first language second uh and a lot of people were nice about they were like we know you don't know but like just so you know um i would like to credit my uh my research on uh bagel bites who kept saying dawn and so i assumed that that was direct your future correspondence so i realized that i should look elsewhere research wise than uh zackopedia so

just just so we know i was i heard dawn a million times and i don't think i heard a lot so i just kind of ran with it but wow okay so just clearing the air secondary incorrect information that you got from an incorrect source as far as i'm concerned he probably maybe he was saying i swear i kept hearing don so i just ran with it and don is an is an english name so i just yeah you know donald trump okay don and dan all our favorite characters in this show anyway i am aware of it so you don't have to yes tweet at me about it. But I appreciate it. I didn't know this.

I appreciate the Spanish speakers trying to educate me a little bit. Yes, agreed. I appreciate it a lot. And I feel like I will add, again, that we're always open to correction. Because, again, we don't know maybe 1% of the world's information. And we don't pretend to. Yes. And we try to do our best to do our research properly.

Sometimes things... Did I already do the correction about pronouncing to me wrong oh i don't think so oh my god that was the other thing somebody got upset that i pronounced one of the the victims wrong the jeffrey dahmer victims oh and i felt really dumb because i was like i looked up so many pronunciations and that one i knew somebody with that same name spelled the same so i just assumed i knew how to say it right and i didn't i guess i didn't hear it in any documentary so i do appreciate that the people who for those of you listening when you do correct us you usually do it pretty politely so it's like yes sometimes oh the ones i've seen at least the don julian everyone was like we know you don't speak english and this one this reddit thread was like really like they were like i'm sure emma christine don't

know this but like just a heads up to everybody else maybe they'll see this and thankfully somehow the universe put it in my gmail i don't even know how it ended up there but so thank you for the update we now know um yes mysterious universe let's not let's not talk about that anymore let's just stay in our own universe wait a minute hey speaking of universe my world was just our universe is probably its own version of troubling i love that stay in your own universe wait a minute instead of stay in your lane okay let's get that on a shirt i'm so sorry i did not mean for that to become like just a huge like uh no back and forth correction to be said correction section oh there we go listen wait a minute eva

write that down please christine you're really on it today i'm gonna get me like a correction sections like a sudoku i feel like i could like accomplish the world numbers i feel like i go what is something i could accomplish that normally i couldn't and i guess it's sudoku is where my brain immediately goes so let's uh why don, why doesn't everyone take that? Okay. And just make your own assumptions. I'm going to go back to my own universe. I'm so sorry.

Let us talk about this family murder that Emma's so excited about. Right. So I will say I got a lot of my information from a super great episode of the Generation Y podcast, who was at CrimeCon the year we were. Good times, good times. There was a great write-up in People, Newsweek, and on Medium. So those are just the main sources. So this takes place in Sugar Land, Texas. Oh, I already love it.

In 2003. Sugar Land. I bet Sugar Bush is from there. Magical place. So there's this family. names are the whittakers and they're pretty standard like well-off white upper middle class family uh comprised of parents kent and tricia and their two sons 24 four-year-old thomas bart who goes by bart and 19-year-old kevin so four people four people two sons and just just kind of your average well-to-do white Texas family.

So in December of 2003, the family went out to celebrate Bart's graduation from college. So he was graduating with honors that month from Sam Houston State, and his family was super excited because at this point he was 24, and they were like, you know, he did it. He's finally getting his degree. He was 24 and they were like, you know, he did it. Like he's finally getting his degree. So they went out to a place called Papa Doe, which is a local Cajun restaurant to celebrate. And they had a great time. There's even a photo of like him holding up a plate where they write in like chocolate icing, like congratulations.

And I like just use my finger on it. I'm like, I don't know if that's allowed or not, but I do that when they give me that. Actually, they never give me the congrats. It's always for someone else. And then I put my finger in it i'm like i don't know if that's allowed or not but i do that when they give me that um actually they never give me the congrats it's always for someone else and then i put my finger in it yeah anyway that's cute of you it's charming at 29 especially during a global pandemic how nice it just reminds me of the carvel cake where you just dropped it in my fucking you will literally never i was mid eating it escape a reason to bring that up are you still eating i had a fork with it you had the nerve to pressure me to drink yes i'm sure the i had to pressure the host of and that's why we drink to drink my husband's birthday party i was so mad i saw that i saw that carvel cake and also we al Allison and I were the last people at that party.

And I was like, fuck yeah. Like, I beat everyone else out. I could eat the shit out of this cake. I survived the gauntlet and had the cake. I was like, thank God you didn't present this when everyone was here. I would have gotten a sliver. And now I get a whole fucking cake. Bite.

And it's just in my lap. And I was like, do it. And then I kept going, you can still eat it. And you were like, I cannot. It is dirty as hell. We're in your house. I'm covered in dog fur now. So no, I can't eat it and you were like i cannot it's dirty we're in your house i'm covered in dog fur now so no i can't eat and then i was like see i'll eat it and you were like that's not proving anything i know everyone is thinking like we've heard this story a million times

but i have to think about it every day so yeah and has to think about it because it was so traumatizing so like another carvel cake out of you i'm gonna buy your cheesecake in a few hours okay we're good now so anyway they go to this uh cajun restaurant and as a graduation present bart's parents gift him with a four thousand dollar rolex casual same holy shit they asked later like why did you give him that and the dad was like he really wanted it i was like yeah me too but what must be nice oh my god i'm like my car was less than that when i first bought my first car anyway okay oh my gosh in any case uh just to give you an idea of kind of their lifestyle and everything so four thousand dollar rolex after dinner they returned home and tricia the mom and kevin the 19 year old brother

they headed in first to the house while bart realized he had left his phone in the car and ran back to grab it. As he turned to head back toward the house, he heard gunshots. Oh. Trisha and Kevin had come face-to-face with a masked intruder who was in their home who had shot Kevin first right through the chest. Oh, my gosh. Then shot Patricia right in the chest. Oh, my gosh. kind of struggled and he got shot in the left arm as they fought. Then the shooter exited through the family's back door, jumped the fence and escaped the property. So a neighbor heard the commotion,

came over, was trying to stop the bleeding with their own t-shirt called 911. And Bart, the oldest brother called 911 shortly after. And unfortunately, 19 year old Kevin died like almost instantly. Sure, right in the chest? Right in the chest.

Within minutes of being shot. He and Trish, his mom, were airlifted to nearby Memorial Hermann Hospital. And unfortunately, Patricia tragically died shortly thereafter as well. So Kent and Bart, their injuries were not as... They were in their arms. Yeah, like the shoulder and the arm. So they were rushed to the hospital and they both survived their injuries. The bullet that hit Kent hit six inches from his heart.

So it missed, you know, any vital portions of that. Good. Good? Question mark? Right. Yeah. So when first responders asked for information about their attackers, Bart told them he believed the gunman was black. yeah um so when first responders asked for information about their attackers bart told

them he believed the gunman was black and they they said oh like why did you think that um if he was in a mask and he said oh i could see like through part of his mask yeah like through the eye hole so they were like okay um then they put them in the hospital and they were like time to recover you know um police were like okay this must have been a burglary gone wrong uh so they went and examined the scene and they found that kevin um 19 year old kevin's gun safe had been pried open with a blue crowbar and the murder weapon had been left behind and it was registered to kevin so whoever had broken into the house had pried open the safe the gun safe um taken the gun out and used that to kill the family and then left the gun at the scene a little strange that they left the murder weapon behind

um and even though the gun was left behind bart's cell phone had been stolen so like the one he had gone out to grab and brought back into the house so they were like that's a little bit odd um wait so wait so the phone was still did he was the phone actually legitimately in the truck or in the car yeah so he had gone and grabbed it and was walking back with it and then he got into a fight with the oh right so one thing i thought was maybe that the guy went to grab the gun and accidentally grabbed it i also saw the cell phone it was like an old school early 2000s like big block phone you know what i mean yeah so they were like maybe he went to grab the gun and just grab the phone i didn't realize it they were he felt something and just

grabbed for it right so they're they weren't sure but it was just a little bit odd do you think it was um not knowing the answers yet do you think this guy wanted to actually kill them or do you think he broke into the house wanted to get into the safe for money right found a gun and was like oh well this is my way out of here in case they catch me so at this point right so at this point that was what they were thinking is this guy got in to rob the place just money was looking for money was yeah found the safe you know grabbed the weapon out of it so that's kind of like the the initial view that that police had of the situation at the hospital. Kent and Bart grappled with what had just happened, especially Kent, the dad. He later described having laid on the ground and he heard his wife like still alive.

I can't imagine. Awful. Yeah. Like and what he said was he called out to everyone in his family and she he called out to her and he just heard her like gurgling basically. And he said, I didn't know what I didn't like. Basically, I didn't know that I would know what the sound of someone with blood in their mouth would sound like. And he's like, but that's what I knew what was happening. I mean, it was really, really traumatic. So he said he instinctively knew the sound of someone trying to clear their lungs

from filling with blood which is just like the most horrific thing um so both kent and bart were obviously angry they told investigators they wanted them to catch whoever had done this to their family um meanwhile investigators like looked at this as like a pretty basic robbery but somehow they just like couldn't they kept hitting dead ends left and right. So a house was robbed pretty close like to that, to their house pretty soon after. And police were like, oh, well, that's probably the same guy. Cause I guess Sugar Land, Texas doesn't have a lot of, um, you know, violent crime. And so another house nearby was robbed soon after. And they were like, oh, that's probably the same guy. But bloodhounds didn't pick up that man sent at the whitaker house at all and so they like had to determine like well there's nothing to

go off of here because there's no indication that this man was in their house um so the lead investigator his name was detective marshall slot and he took a closer look at the crime scene and that's when he began to notice some inconsistencies let's say so in an interview with cbs news he explained in the master bedroom the dressers and armoire all had drawers open on them but they were all open an equal distance it was very neat and orderly yeah like a like a a burglar with ocd maybe perhaps like just got to make sure it's all right perhaps Perhaps. They were like, this doesn't strike us as your traditional burglary in that it looked like someone had just opened the drawers, but like. Right, it wasn't flailing and quick and yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Like it was almost intentional that they were trying to make it look like a burglary. Right. AKA staged. So again, not typical of a robbery um and additionally the safe that housed kevin's gun so the safe that the killer had pried open with a blue crowbar um was in a pretty remote part of the house so the burglar had gone directly to the safe as if they knew where it was which was strange because like how would you break into a house like yeah exactly know exactly where this safe was um and again they had left the murder weapon they had left all the electronics

in the house but they had taken bart's cell phone so they were like this is just a weird right so far i i kind of understand the argument of like maybe the guy thought he was grabbing the gun and but like if it was like a nok Nokia phone or something could have felt like. Yeah. Like a gun. Yeah. So even so I watched the forensic files I've said on this too. And they actually had photos of the drawers.

And like you said, I mean, it was really. So it says like, oh, they were open like an equal amount. They were literally open like an equal. It wasn't even like, oh, they were just open and not rifled through. It was like maybe they were open like very were just open and not rifled through. It was like, maybe they were open, like very specifically. So it was just really strange. I was trying to think maybe if they like tipped it over or something and all the drawers fell out. But then if you like push it up, like some of them are going to close a little more than others.

Like it's too precise. Yeah, exactly. And then that. I've also done that, by the way. What happened? What was the thing where you stuck your, you got your head stuck in something? Oh my God. You were, this was like a couple months ago or something.

Blaze was putting it on backwards and he didn't believe me. Was it what? It was a dresser and he was putting on the panel backwards and I was like trying to prove it to him and he didn't believe me. And so I said, look, I'll show you. And I put my head in to show him the back. He works at a hospital and he's like he comes home with so many thoughts of like how do people get in these stupid

fucking situations and then you're like look i'll put my head in to prove a point and then he's like christine take your head out and i was like i can't and he's like christine take your head don't be an idiot take your head out and i literally like you know how your ears get stuck then and he was like that's not a thing and I was like of course it's a thing like have you never stuck your head through a banister and he was like no and I was like oh well I have and he was like that doesn't help me like you need to get your head out and then I started crying because I was like laughing and I was frustrated and also my head hurt you probably felt wildly like claustrophobic it was very bad I was like this is not where I want to be at this very moment fighting with my husband but also my head is stuck in a dresser so i'm not winning the argument when

you got out where the dressers were the the drawers like in perfect precise order because that might confirm something about this oh my god uh yeah so then i proved that he was putting it on backwards so i proved my point good job you were right that's the most like bullshit christine thing ever where i'm like i will literally do anything to prove that i'm correct which is just so messed up like by being correct you did something so i injured myself i caused like more problems than than there were before look i'll stab myself to prove that the knife is sharp it's like okay you did it i mean that's like i i know i'm sure i've told this story but like when i was two i jumped into traffic i ripped away from my mom's hand jumped into traffic i almost got hit by a van and my mom was like why the hell did you do that and

i was like oh i wanted to see if you cry if you'd cry if i were when i was dead and like that's me trying to prove there's a there's a tiktok right now like like a sound bit like about a bite of um someone going like i'm not gonna bash her like everybody else but she needs a lot of psychological evaluation i literally was two years old my mom was like well this is gonna be a long 18 years my two-year-old said i want to know if you would cry when i die i'd be like well let's get in the car and go to therapy yeah yeah no my parents uh at that point and my sister now is has a much she's in a much more advanced world as far as therapy at that point in my life 1993 i was not i was not ready i think the world was not ready. The world still isn't really ready for you. The dresser wasn't.

Help me. Okay. Anyway. So they're looking at this case and they're like, something's weird about this scene. Something's off. We just can't figure out what it is. And then a strange tip came in. So there was this journalist covering the case and he had made a strange discovery. He had called the university the sam houston

university to figure out what degree bart had graduated with and the university was like he is not enrolled at our school yeah oh and the journalist was like wait what like i was just calling to verify yeah that he was getting a criminal justice degree also think about like that journalist who is like i found a fucking hook nobody else knows yes like like that's the ultimate scoop our story is gonna be the one exactly and he i'm pretty sure he was in the forensic files episode was he really served it i was like yeah of course so he uh made that discovery and he's like hey police um turns out he like isn't at university not only did he not graduate he was still listed

as a freshman on academic probation so since his freshman year had not advanced and he's 24 now he's 24 he'd basically been living in a townhouse that his parents were paying for like partying it up not working pretending he was in school so just bad look big red flag right yeah doesn't not cute not cute not cute um of course his dad was like angry hurt confused and like honestly pissed because he's like listen like now they're looking at you like why on earth would you have lied to us about this and when investigators asked why he had lied bart told them he needed a break from school but he didn't want to disappoint his family and he felt a lot of pressure we've seen this before yeah i can understand that in some cases still fishy in this scenario it's right now fishy right now it's not good this is not a good look yeah so when bart

was released from the hospital he moved back in with his father uh the two of them lived together and underwent what kent called a seven-month discipleship, where according to ABC news, they spent almost every day together reading the Bible, discussing their faith, like kind of coming to terms with what happened to their mom, wife, and son slash brother. And it was like this father,

son bonding experience that Kent said brought them extremely close. And they were just trying to like recover together basically. And then in the summer of 2004 police caught a huge break in the case when a man who claimed to be a former roommate of bart's contacted police and said so a few years ago just a heads up bart asked me to help kill his family oh and who said this a friend of his okay bart's former roommate called the police and said hey i feel like you guys need to know this information that a couple years ago here's some hot goss yeah um i know that journalists already found some scoop but i have a scoop of my own um wow yeah so he said a couple years ago like this is not the first time you know the notion of his family being killed has been brought up he's like a few years earlier bart had asked him to help

kill his family the wildest part is his parents knew about that but his parents kind of looked at it he was like i was drunk we were joking it was a misunderstanding and so his parents were like okay and they all moved on so double red flags i'm not gonna bash her like they're everybody else but she needs a lot of psychological evaluation so like just not good um what's worse is only three days later bart disappeared and he disappeared from his like bible study with his dad he just like vanished and his dad was like uh-oh yeah so on the lamb he's on the lamb his dad like had had kind of suspicions growing that bart may have been somehow involved in the murder of the family but he didn't fear for his own safety because he's like we're building a bridge to each other

got shot in the shoulder i know and he's like but we're building a bridge to forgiveness but then the second bart was gone kent said things began to crash down around him because he knew if his son were innocent there's no reason he would have just like right fled right um just because there's like a little suspicion thrown his way so uh police didn't know at the time and kent didn't know at the time but bart had fled to mexico okay meanwhile his dad's left behind like grappling with the fact that his son probably had his entire family killed and like had him almost killed. Right. So he's up there dealing with that. And meanwhile, Bart is in Mexico. So in the Generation Y episode, I listened to Aaron and

Justin described Bart's time in Mexico. And like they did a really good job of telling this whole story, which I didn't really see in a lot of other places. But apparently he had taken like anywhere from seven to $10,000 from his dad in cash and had bought an ID off a guy who was a busboy at the Whitaker's Country Club. And his name was Rudy Rios. So he bought this ID off Rudy Rios. And according to 48 Hours, he settled in a town called Saralvo, where he found a girlfriend and found work at her family's furniture shop. And his story when he got to town was basically that his mother was a sex worker. He was essentially an orphan, like he had been abandoned and that he had sustained this bullet wound while fighting in Afghanistan. So he was like this like local hero who had come in from America and needed to be like taken in by a family so he had

a girlfriend and her family took care of him he worked at their shop i always think about the like the new girlfriend or the new partner of like someone who just comes in mysteriously and like imagine how shattering yeah it is for them when they're like holy shit that's where you came from why wouldn't you just trust somebody like yeah it's especially like if i found out now allison is like a serial killer i'd be like wow i you'd look at me and go what have you who did you bring into my life that would i would kind of be the central point of that issue i think also be like wow i dodged a bullet she probably wanted to kill me so many times. Somehow we're all still okay. Yeah.

As far as I know, Allison's in the clear. Okay. Just FYI. Who knows? Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. So apparently, like, while he was down there living with his girlfriend's family, she and her mother got into an argument. She was really upset.

And she later said, like, she didn't know anything was wrong with him until this argument happened between her and her mother. And he just looked at her and matter-of-factly said oh well we can just kill your parents oh and she went sorry what and he was like well i know you're upset and you two got into an argument like we can just we'll take care of it very quickly very quickly his true colors are showing escalate real fast right and she was like i don't know think that's like i'm just a little angry thanks darling but yeah i don't think that now i know not to make you mad yeah yeah yeah exactly so um that was his solution so it was more than a year after bart had fled to mexico before police made another huge break

and at this point they had no idea where he was um apparently bart's neighbor whose name by the way is steve champagne oh and i was like i could i'm sure i didn't hear that right and no it's literally steve champagne and it's spelled steve champagne wow and i love that it's steve yeah and then it's stefan so steve champagne the neighbor came forward to police and confessed to being involved in the whittaker family murder, explaining that although he was the getaway driver, Bart had been the master, the mastermind behind all of it. So he told investigators that Bart had lured his family to dinner to celebrate his fake graduation from college.

And as they celebrated, Champagne said he was in the car in the parking lot while bart's roommate a guy named chris chris basheer chris brochure sorry uh hid in bart's suv outside the house then brochure entered the house disabled the alarm with the code bar had given him waited for the family to come home shot them all and he knew where the safe was because bart had told him hey my brother's gun safe is here bart had told him hey my brother's gun safe is here i guess it didn't even cross my mind that like oh yeah if he didn't i should have known so much earlier in this story if i had just used my brain like five percent more of like if he never graduated then yeah why why did he he would have known this graduation yeah he lied to his family uh-huh he said oh i finally graduated let's go out to dinner yeah i i didn't put that early part of the story it's because it's it's hard to because why would

that even be i guess maybe i excused as like oh he just felt guilty and played along yeah because that i'm sure that happens too yeah oh but also there's a photo which is so chilling an hour before his family was murdered there was a photo taken of him and his brother and in it he's literally flick like flipping off whoever's taking the photo and like smiling with his brother but he's giving the finger and like you don't even notice it until you like look closely and you're like oh no he's intentionally giving the finger to whoever's taking this photo and like smiling and he knows that in about an hour they're gonna all of these people are going to be killed wow i can't even and not that i want to but if i like if i tried to put myself in that place and like sit with everyone and know what was going to happen i mean like it's unfathomable it is yeah what that anyone's

brain could go there is just wow bananas bananas so um basically he shot the family christed and then he said he later said that before he fired the first shot at kevin he thought he saw him smile briefly because he was kind of just like surprised or like thought it was a prank or like taken aback which just like that chilled me i don't know i just thought that was so disturbing um so after shooting the first three members of the whittaker family he and Bart wrestled or fought and he shot him in the arm which was planned as like oh to take the guilt off sure Bart and then what asked uh when asked what motivated his involvement Steve explained that Bart had told

them his family was worth a lot of money and that he promised them millions of dollars if they helped pull this off but the kicker is they had not gotten one cent like they literally shot his whole family and then he was like anyway thanks and i was like well duh they're not gonna cover for your ass now oh my gosh if you like didn't even pay them right it's just yeah like hold up your end of the bargain yeah like what what room do they have to be like i'm gonna defend this guy right well also like imagine his quote luck like, being able to have two roommates and, like, or a fraternity roommate who are on board with this to begin with. Like, it makes me think that he must have pitched the idea of killing his family to

multiple people before he just found, or he didn't just, like, try on the first time. And the roommate was like, that's a great idea. You know know like there's a probably a lot of people out there who are like who have been propositioned for him yeah yeah that's a good point that i had not thought of like who else like had heard about him jokingly talking about this you know yeah um so according to 2020 bart had told steve champagne uh the getaway driver, after the shooting that he wanted to finish off the job and really kill his dad the next time that they did this. So he just wasn't even like, oh, thank God my dad actually survived. He was like, no, I wish he had died. He was like sitting through his discipleship.

Yes. Like, God, his Bible study. Exactly. Wow. That's actually right. Right. So if they had any doubt as to Steve's story, they didn't after he led them directly to the lake years they were able to take this devil bag and get dna off of the mouth of the water bottle that belonged to chris brashear who was the shooter so now they're like well shit we really tied this all to them wow um so at this point they finally

have enough evidence to pin this on bart but the problem was they still didn't know where the hell he was because he went to mexico um but then a good guy named rudy rios showed up yeah and he couldn't resist the ten thousand dollar reward why would you why would you like knowing like i don't know if he knew he probably didn't know at the time when he sold his id like what right this guy had done just thought he was like getting him a beer like getting him or something yeah exactly by the way i don't mean to keep interrupting but i wonder and maybe someone out there knows but like so does he just become get immunity for like what he did who like this rudy guy for like because i imagine he could get arrested for like giving someone a fake id i don't think it was um i don't think it was just like it important enough to be charged i because i wonder like

if you were part of it in some way and you did something mildly illegal that you didn't know was part of a bigger story i think since he was like you want to come forward and like call yourself out or i don't know especially because he was like hey by the way i know where he is i just didn't know what he had done so i don't think they ever had any intention of like getting him in trouble for it okay um and i think it was just a mild thing of like oh well my id was expiring so i just like gave it to him and he you know i don't think it was like anything deeper than that gotcha but yeah that's a good point but so they he did come forward and say like hey i know where he is

um and although he managed to hide out in mexico for 14 months bart was finally arrested shortly thereafter and now that they had him in custody police asked why the hell he had done what he'd done to his own family and he matter-of-factly told police he was 100 guilty and that he did it because he hated his parents and his brother okay sure um the prosecution uh when this went to trial the prosecution claimed that bart wanted access to his family's wealth which was estimated at more than a million dollars and bart does deny this but also i'm like i don't care what he denies i don't trust him yeah like he's not a trustworthy person um during the trial it was also revealed that bart had tried multiple times to off his own family so like there were these that attempt that we had talked about

earlier but it came out that there were was at least one prior plot in 2000 bart had had a couple of his acquaintances from baylor university break into his own home to kill his family but when the alarm went off they fled so like he attempted this before wow like full-on attempted it um the gunman chris brashear who by the way is white and bart had like lied intentionally about being like oh i saw that he was black because that could really turn into a rabbit hole of issues throw off the case right um so that was just like worth pointing out of like he was just from the beginning like planning this out and trying to throw the investigation obviously um so chris his His name is really hard to say. I do not know why. Brashear? Chris Brashear. Brashear. Okay.

So Chris Brashear pleaded guilty to murder. He was a shooter and was sentenced to life in prison. And Steve Champagne, the getaway driver, took a plea deal with a 15-year prison sentence in exchange for his testimony because he's the one who kind of came forward. Like I said, Bart testified he was 100% guilty um but in somewhat of a plot twist so this is why this cracked article about plot oh i don't think i even told you the cracked article was about plot twists okay true crime stories with major plot twists i see full circle here got it we just said we loved cracked and that was it uh yeah so plot twist bart's dad took the witness stand to plead for his son's life

um and despite his pleas the jury sentenced bart to death for the murder of his family and so kent was wholeheartedly against his outcome he he was like i think this is an unjust sentence for my son because uh neither bart's late brother or mother would have wanted him to die for this which i'm like who knows how do we know that but okay i guess you wouldn't want your own son to die but also you wouldn't want your son to kill you so i don't know it's just a weird change scenario yeah things are a little bit off balance um but in any case uh he explained the most important thing for him was to find out the why of the situation like why bart felt motivated to like destroy his family and cause such pain no worries and cause

such pain and his conclusion was that bar had always felt empty inside hadn't been able to accept his parents love or understand emotion he felt defective and broken and so he spent years uh learning to forgive his son basically and he says like through his faith he was able to heal because he was able to forgive so i mean i'm happy for him that just like he was able to move on. Right. Despite like, I don't know, this is all a lot. If there's a silver lining or a good part of this, then it should be like the lad finds some peace. Yes.

And he got remarried and like he said he was only able to find happiness by forgiving his son, which I'm like, okay, good for you. That's good. I don't even know how you would do that. I't either i don't know if i could do it and that's why this is just like the ultimate plot twist i guess um so uh meanwhile according to detective slot who was on the case since the beginning he said the only way he can reconcile what bart did is by concluding that he is a sociopath um i'm personally inclined to agree because in response to detective slot's statement bart simply said well then i am what i am oh okay oh uh-huh okay um in february of 2018

bart was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection that day mere minutes before the execution was scheduled to take place all of kent's effort his dad efforts paid off and bart was spared the death penalty by uh the texas governor greg abbott uh when bart got the news in the small holding cell that was literally feet away from the death chamber uh he told prison officials i'm thankful not for me but for my dad any punishment that i would have or will receive is just but my dad did nothing wrong the system worked for him today and i will do my best to uphold my role in the system. Bart's sentence was commuted to life behind bars without the possibility of parole. And to this day, Kent remains wholeheartedly on his son's side.

He's now remarried. Like I said, he believes having forgiven his son, like, brought him happiness. son like brought him happiness in 2008 he wrote a book called murder by family in which he walks through the entire ordeal from like the pain at the beginning to how he has managed to forgive his son and according to abc news ken's book details the letters he and bart have written over the years like while bart was in jail um and on death row including one he wrote to bart that ends with my son i love you all is forgiven And that is the story of the Whitaker family. Wow. I think my favorite part is at the beginning.

You said, yeah, these stories are so interesting because it's immediately taken out that it's someone that they know or a family member. Eating my words. And I was like, oh, boy, here we go. Well, I still liked it. I still couldn't figure it out for a while. It's a tipsy, topsy-turvy. Oh, topsy-turvy.

Tipsy will be me in a few hours turvy is miss christine yeah anyway well thank you everyone for listening to our episode today yeah and then go check out our newsletter yeah stuff on the website yes and that's why we drink.com and we will see you there uh and that's why we eat cheesecake after and a little bit and drink also i wanted to get some tipsy turby yeah bye