And That's Why We Drink - E229 Team Aliens and the Opposite of a Jolly Rancher

Episode Date: June 27, 2021

If there are no flying saucers, then why are you at my house, weirdo?? ...is what we would say to the Men in Black should they come a knockin'. But don't tell them that, because we really don't want to see them in the first place. Welcome to episode 229! Em takes us down under for the Westall UFO sightings at a school in Australia that lands some kids in detention and others permanently disappeared?? #babsforpresident Then Christine bums us out again with the gut-wrenching story of wrongfully convicted Ronnie Long and the broken justice system that kept him incarcerated for so many years. We also discover that when we're off, we're actually on... and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners at HelixSleep.com/drinkGo to ZOLA.com/DRINK today and use promo code SAVE50 to get 50% off your save the dates! Use coupon code DRINK for $10 off your first box at FABFITFUN.comBack by popular demand, receive Bacon for Life! Right now, new members can get bacon for life when they sign up! Just go to ButcherBox.com/ATWWDTry ZipRecruiter FOR FREE at this web address: ZipRecruiter.com/drinkHead to Rothys.com/DRINK to find your new favorites today!

bye and hello to everyone else welcome to episode one nope one wow are you kidding me one of many episode one of the rest of your lives. This is episode 229. Is that correct? I don't even know. Okay, great. Of the rest of your lives. You've made it to the next chapter. You've done it.

You're here. You've done it. Welcome. You're in the new phase of life. This is so embarrassing. Hi, everybody. Did you say recently you were like, oh, we were trying to title our episode so we could send the audio to Eva and you were like, what episode is this? Five is this five and I was like girl it's been a little longer than five

I think I said one again I think I just keep saying it's episode one I don't know what is going on I appreciate the the the newness that you still feel for the show I'm trying to bring a fresh energy to the table okay is? Is this podcast a newborn baby? What's happening? This is a fresh infant. Welcome. Amethy, hello. How are you doing?

I'm okay. This has been a busy week. This is a chaotic week. It's true. I don't know what's going on, but we're really overwhelmed. Um, I guess it's very, um,

meant it's very like meant like written in the stars as like Gemini season. It's like just the most chaos I've felt in a long time. It is. It is. the, the problem is M and I both separately had vacations planned and they both happen to not coincide. They hope both happen to not overlap for a single hour literally

kiss at the end of when Christine lands and I leave exactly they're both long trips and so yeah yeah I mean trying to uh mine is four days but yours is pretty long I think mine's pretty long I uh mine's 10 days I think because I also I also, I'm going to be like close to Florida. And so while I'm there, I was like, I should also see my grandparents. Well, where are you going? Tell us. I'm going to the Bahamas, which is. I know I'm so jealous. I don't know how to feel about it because I, I mean, I'm excited that like I get to go. I'm lucky enough that I get to go, but I haven't been, so we used to go every year. That was like the big family trip every year. haven't been so we used to go every year that was like the big family trip every year and so um I used to go all the time when I was a kid but I haven't gone since high school I don't think or

maybe since like the first year of college so a lot of time has passed and we used to have like all these things like we always saw and we always did when we got there but literally we've like changed families since like there's been a new marriage and there's new traded a man traded him out yeah there's new dynamics now and so I don't know like also it's been like what 10 years so I don't know what it looks like anymore so I used to be really excited because I like knew all the things I wanted to do and all the things that we had planned and now I feel like I'm going on like someone else's family trip and I'm like I don't know what what like what am I doing each day so I'm little nervous, because I still think about going there as a kid and like,

not being able to just like, as an adult say, I'm gonna go do this fucking thing and like, see y'all. Yeah, I have to break out of that mindset where it's like, I'm a grown ass adult. And if I want to go do something my family doesn't want to, I just go do it. But I'm thinking in the headspace of like, mom already made plans for every day and so like you know anyway it's weird it's gonna be weird traveling at all especially uh out of the country it's going to be weird um seeing my family for that long i don't know what my mom and i are like after 10 days together i can i guess i can't wait for the text messages and facetimes though also we have uh officially smuggled Deirdre into the mix and so she'll be there so I was hoping I'm very excited

that was a last minute decision where I was like just buy a ticket and let's see how this goes so yeah so Deirdre's coming so I'm so excited I also haven't gotten out with Deirdre for 10 days in a row in a long time so that's the thing i'm probably most excited about that'll be fun well i am going on a so i am going on a baby moon with renee which i was like magic it's so romantic blaze was like i was like oh there's a thing called a baby moon and he's like well i'm going to a bachelor party at some point in august and i was like okay i'm going on a baby moon to palm springs with re Renee so I'm very excited um what are your plans to so I don't really understand like what there is to do these days in Palm Springs so I will be rather pregnant so I'm not going to be doing too much and like

I'm one of those people who when I vacation I know you and I are pretty opposite like I just love to like eat and chill and you know like I'm not a big like activities person but we do have some things planned I rented a really fun car that Renee doesn't know about I'm not a big like activities person but we do have some things planned I rented a really fun car that Renee doesn't know about so it's a surprise oh my god um and I'm really excited about that it's gonna be like our kind of like honeymoon like I'm it's I'm pretending it's like our honeymoon um no I would that's what I'm thinking we're taking it like to a next level and you know as an Aries and a Gemini it it's always chaotic. But so we're going to rent this really cute Airbnb with a pool and this weird lady named Carol, who yesterday sent Renee a bunch of pictures of her brother-in-law for like no reason.

So it's going to be a weird. It hasn't even begun and it's weird. Carol's already like causing some weird issues. But yeah, we're going to do like a drive because it's going to be 115 degrees so we're doing like a drive-through of joshua tree like my brother said it's kind of cool to drive through and look at it without like you know actually having to hike or anything i feel like something's going to happen where you're going to be pregnant and the car is going to overheat and now you're going to be in the desert with renee and stop it because renee already planned a whole thing she's like i know where the

nearest emergency room is i was like renee'm not, nothing's going to happen. Everybody's so like, I promise. She's like, well, so we're taking a thermometer and if your temperature goes above 102, we have to go to the emergency room. And I was like, that's not going to happen. Don't worry. I'll be fine. But we'll see. I was going to say, I am going to not place a lot of money on you suffering but I'm not going to not pay anything so I mean I feel like at least it's somewhere I've been before like maybe once or twice and it's it's at least we're flying into LAX it's not like I mean I know you're leaving the country but like I feel like it's at least a safer place like that I've been a lot of times

so at least we're going to crisscross the airwaves I know oh so anyway I guess all this to say is that we had to record I think like and then with bcc I'd record I think eight episodes this week which is just a lot um and we had to record like six or something so we have two today for y'all and it's gonna be a good time that's why it is chaotic because i feel like i haven't slept anytime i am awake i am like researching and like trying to like tired i just want to take a fucking nap man and like i still have i wrote out like minute by minute or hour by hour like all the things i need to do and how i need to get them done and like i'm still i think not sleeping for another two days it's not the most stressful thing when you like, I need to wake up at 830 to go to the

post office and then go straight to my appointment? Because you have no other option. There's no other time. Yeah. But it's going to be worth it when we're on the beach. It will be worth it when I'm carrying drunk Deirdre home. That's all I want. Deirdre, are you listening?

I need you to get fucking annihilated. I'm so excited for the Faceetime slash just text messages updates well also the last time i think we all went was so my mom always used to because you're allowed to drink at 18 there and so uh when we used to go in college we would drink even though we weren't 21 and then or you know my friends and uh and even oh speaking of which is dude calling you right now that was my mother calling oh now she's gonna call me three more times and be like why are you ignoring me i'm like yo i'm so busy excuse me my mother just texted me hello oh my god why are they doing this uh-oh they're probably like at the beach in high school a lot of times we had to like sneak alcohol away from our parents because we

weren't even 18 yet when we would go oh my god so this is gonna be fun to see like my friend and my mom like finally allowed to like both solidly openly just get drunk together booze it up on the beach so yeah anyway do you have any other reasons why you drink today or are you just sleepy like me listen i'm just like sleepy but like excited to to i don't know get this party started i'm in a good headspace but i'm in a very bad body space which maybe i think that might be a good combo because i feel like if we were in a bad headspace like that's when we get cranky and i feel like that doesn't bode well but i feel like if we're in a good headspace and physically we're a little bit off yep that sometimes turns into some fun time so usually

when we're off we're actually on you know that's exactly right whatever that means you get it you get it i get it okay so i do have a story for you today that is um oh it's it's a normal link i for a second i thought we had to rush okay so this i wanted to give you something because i know that we are doing two stories today and i wanted to kick it off with the right headspace and uh so we are doing a ufo story yes yes yes yes i'm very excited let's do it okay it is in melbourne which i know is not the appropriate way to say it but i also am trying to actively not say it in the Australian accent that I am so bad at.

Melbourne. There it is. Okay, I needed to hear it. It was, like, a thing. What? Yeah. I, like, wanted to say it in the Australian accent, but then I was trying to, like, not be, like, a classic, like,

I got to always say things in Australian accents. Like, just say it. Just do it. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. just don't think about it as an australian accent just say melbourne melbourne anyway it's also in a town called westall and uh westall is apparently the nickname for an area called Clayton South. So that's like the more specific area that we're talking about. But so it's called Clayton South, but it's just known, I think,

as Westall. And the main source that I used for this was a documentary called Westall 66, a suburban UFO mystery. So there also there was in the documentary, there was an interview by a UFO researcher where I think the footage like got hidden away or like went missing or they just couldn't find it. Or I don't even think they knew it existed. And in the documentary, they uncovered audio from Dr. James McDonald, who we'll talk about a little bit. And then a high school teacher who was a witness to this UFO named Mr. Greenwood. and then a high school teacher who was a witness to this ufo named mr green okay the thing that makes that footage special when i talk about it is that a lot of the event was mainly children witnesses and so and this was also in the 60s and so i guess to have like more quote legitimate testimonies they only really had children's accounts it's so it's it's so hard to prep but

basically they took a lot of um the government got involved and kept everyone very quiet so there's not a lot on record of what happened but the only witness testimonies they have are from children one because there were more of them and they like were convinced they saw it and were and there was only like a handful of teachers that saw it but also because a lot of the teachers have passed away so now there's no way to get those testimonies so the fact that they found an old recording is like really god awesome so it's the year is 1966 westall high school and it's 11 a.m and the students are hanging out outside and then i guess um some of them are hanging outside because they're coming back from like a gym class or recess or something.

Recess. And they run inside. Especially there's one kid that people remember. He sprinted inside and he was screaming his head off about flying saucers outside. Oh. And Mr. Greenwood, who they end up interviewing later he was the class he was one of the classrooms that this kid ran into and the kid was screaming about flying saucers it was complete frenzy apparently they thought everyone thought it was the end of the world um keep in mind this was also

like the 60s where like the whole thing like ufos were huge in pop culture right so kids were freaking out like in the documentary it actually like i was thinking about it in like kind of a funny lighthearted way of like ah you know i don't know i just thought about it like days yeah and but actually then i watched the documentary and i went oh like the kids were panic stricken people were jumping over fences people were climbing up in the trees people were looking for places to hide like people were like crying and screaming thinking like they were gonna die and so it's just like complete chaos oh my god the science teacher mr greenwood he goes outside to see what everyone else saw and sure enough there is a ufo floating by a power line coming towards the school oh scary and mr greenwood he ended up

describing the ufo as round silver car size and it had a metal rod sticking up okay and he also said eventually five different planes like actual planes all showed up trying to surround it while the kids were panicking oh my god and interestingly the westell ufo incident was mostly experienced by students but that makes sense because we're out of school but up to 300 to 350 people saw this wow so that makes it i think the country's uh most i wrote somewhere farther down so i'll say it again later, but it's like the most witnessed UFO incident. So evidence and corroborative documents have been lost or kept quiet. But witnesses that are still alive swear it happened. In the documentary, there was one student named Jeff who says that skeptics use this a lot as like a reason why UFOs don't exist because there's such little information.

But really, it was like because things were getting hidden or nobody trusted children's testimonies. Everyone just kind of gaslit them and thought they're like, oh, no, you just saw a plane. But Jeff is like, no, this fucking happened. The school captain, which I didn't know that was a thing. I love that. I guess it means like the president, like class president, this fucking happened. The school captain, which I didn't know that was a thing. I love that. I guess it means like the president, like class president or something. Sure. Graham Simmons.

He also swears it happened. He says, what I saw was something I've never seen before. Everyone started moving like a whole lot of zebras being terrified of crocodiles. Oh, sure. And Barb. I'm sure. You know. If I saw a crocodile, I don't know if you would call me a zebra um you would

just call me like a floundering human call you and yeah i know you'd call me a puff of dust because i wouldn't be there uh and graham says and barbara robbins who was the chemistry teacher just grabbed her camera and started clicking so there were pictures taken of this ufo okay uh smart barbara by the way to be like you know what overthrow overthrow graham and babs for president i'm gonna vote babs justice for barb right yes that's right and graham also said that the ufo was about 50 meters in the air it was hovering with lights surrounding it and there's another student named terry in the documentary who also said one of the kids looked up uh looked in the sky and said it's flying saucers and i remember we all looked up it was round a silver disc which seemed very low

over the school and i remember just kids screaming and running inside one article says that some kids who saw it actually quote collapsed and became ill with fright. Oh, jeez. So some people were just getting literally sick over this. Just panic attack on the ground. I think you, I wouldn't be surprised if someone just like ran to a trash can and started vomiting. Like out of just like complete nerves. I would probably have a full on panic attack. Yeah. And as you should, by the way.

So the UFO moved across the school and the way that it was described by all the kids who are still around and were interviewed to see it uh they said it kind of hovered by and then there was a this gathering of trees and it dropped below the trees so you couldn't see anything it's like wait let's hide real quick everyone's puking it was like oh i made them nervous let's let's play the long game here sorry we weren't trying to overwhelm you geez uh and so it went down behind the trees uh allegedly landed in a field and then it came back from up the trees and then shot away okay some say that there were actually like three ufos one person said there were two ufos there was at least one that we. One person said there were two UFOs.

There was at least one. That we can all agree on. There was at least one. There was one there. Got it. And it was then allegedly chased by like five, they think, military planes. Military. Got it. But only some witnesses say that they saw this.

Other people were like, I never saw the planes. Okay. So in James McDonald's interviews, here is a quote. The planes were doing everything possible to approach the object and how they all avoided collision no one will ever know every time they got too close to the object it would slowly accelerate then rapidly accelerate and then move away from them and stop so it's playing like cat and mouse oh with all of these planes and also yeah i can't imagine if all of these planes are trying to close in on each other how do you not crash in the air yeah that's scary too because they don't have this fun like back and forth situation these guys have it's like when you're chasing your dog who thinks it's a game

but actually you're trying to save them yes like the dog is having a good time and everyone else is like no no no no no we got the cars are part of the chase and it's like no no that's that's going to kill you actually oh horrific i am shocked that geo has made it this far uh don't say that knock on wood geez knock on wood but that dog really loves to run into traffic or at least he used cars oh yeah this game oh the quote keeps going uh this game reportedly went on for about 20 minutes and by the time and by this time mr greenwood said that 350 children and staff were watching on oh my god they're just like we have no nothing else to do but can you imagine

a kid just getting ill fainting and your friends are just watching like the military not be able to catch a ufo in the sky just like get made fun of practically in the air and then the teachers are gonna make you go back and like do homework after this like you've got i hope you get the fucking week off at least the day off hopefully the week off uh apparently it so when it darted off it flew away apparently it darted off into a field known as the grange and the grange for the westall students kind of knew it as where like the rebels hanged out it was like the smokers would go and stuff um funny enough as although all of these kids were panic stricken a lot of them took this opportunity since it was flying away all these kids started chasing it to see where it went because they wanted to like follow the ufo and be able to like tell everyone what happened next i

feel like that would be me like oh my god i'm puking i'm having i'm gonna die and then it goes away it's like wait wait wait i want to see what it actually where it goes you would be running and puking at the same time i would be having an episode on his fun run just i would also be eating alfredo it would be an episode indeed like i don't know how else to describe it um and so like a lot of kids were like they're a lot of kids reported seeing other kids like jumping fences and like trying to wriggle through fences oh i wouldn't be jumping anything to be clear but not even a lick no uh and so there was one student who chased it with her friends and apparently they ran off in front of her one of them her name was tanya and when she caught up

to them tanya had passed out like she was like they don't know what happened to tanya was she running too hard after eating a lot of alfredo was she like like did she interact with the ufo like no one so she caught up with her tanya was passed out and she didn't know what to do but she does know that the ufo must have landed um at some point and that she thinks because the ufo landed tanya and the ufo had some sort of like moment together and tanya passed out how cute but they they think that the ufo must have landed because uh when she got there there was this flattened swirly pattern in the grass where some of the grass was no longer green it had yellowed and brown crop circle a crop circle and uh then the students said i think her name was jacqueline i

i forgot to write it down i'm sorry but um let's call her jacqueline uh she says that she then saw the ufo herself quote turn on its side and disappear into thin air turn on its side so like it was flat and then it went was always still on the ground or it was up in the air now i think at this point she'd seen it because she when she got there the ground had this pattern so it was already back up yeah got it she thinks while it was on the ground and tanya was on the ground they had some sort of like maybe super weird something going on um weirdly enough i don't know it's when you start hearing more about like how there was like some cover-up to this it sounds fishier but the kids later they were like so what happened to tanya

and they're like we never saw her again what wait what they like they were like we remember an ambulance coming to get her no she never came back to school and it was the middle of the year so she could have just been fucking traumatized oh well okay yeah that i hope that's i mean i don't hope that's what happened but i hope at least like that's the least cover-up version yeah and then but then the other thought is maybe that like she got brought in somewhere for questioning and like couldn't return so yikes before it landed and tanya allegedly saw the ufo there was another student named victor who also saw it land and he says he even touched the ufo but he didn't pass out so i don't believe victor for a second

that sounds like a very victor kid thing to say especially when another kid got dragged out by an ambulance like i think there was like, well, I touched it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't believe him for a second. Victor says, quote, all the kids were hanging on a fence,

but I could hear somebody in the background say, stay away. Don't jump the fence. And so I thought, well, I'm going over to the fence. Okay. That part.

Okay. Christine, I can get behind. Well, I'm going over the fence and i got up to touch it and it was well you see you could feel heat about a meter away from it so even if he didn't touch it itself he got close enough to it it was pretty warm or hot and with warm or hot and within a minute it within a minute or so both of them because he says there were two both of them lifted at the same time wow it was breathtaking just watching that and then it

just gradually lifted up and went off towards the pines it had no seams and this is a separate quote but he actually drew um a sketch of it so he would never forget what it looked like and all he said about it was like it looked like a norm like a ufo disc shaped thing in the sky and vector said it had no seams it had no joints it was completely smooth metal oh interesting it's like it didn't like creepy i guess in my head a ufo would be like bolted together panels but he was like nope it was just that's creepy and just like something you'd see in the movies so so he's the one who says that there's two there is someone else who says there were three of them i don't know we can't ask tanya because girl's out of commission

tanya so sorry uh there's also a kid well i guess now he's a grown-ass man but there was a kid named sean matthews and he his family leased the land at the grange where the ufo landed yeah and so this is sean's memory of what happened he says quote i saw the thing come across the horizon and drop down behind the pine trees i couldn't tell you what it was it certainly wasn't a light aircraft or anything of that. I saw the thing drop down behind the pine trees and I saw it leave again. It went up and off very, very rapidly. I went over and there was a circle in the clearing. It looked like it had been cooked or boiled, but not burnt as I remember.

So something had happened on the land, which makes sense with what the other students said. A heap of kids from westall came charging through to see what happened and they were saying look at this look at that we saw it as well that sort of thing it was a bit of a talking point for a couple days and the way this thing moved there is no way it could have been a weather balloon or a light aircraft a helicopter no way no noise wrong shape and it didn't move like that it came out of the distance it stopped and then just dropped it didn't just sort of cruise and then slightly descend at an angle it stopped dropped and then went straight back up oh so um super creepy i also like that

there's so many people at this point it wasn't just the school it was people nearby a heap of kids we could hear the we could see the kids running at us being like we saw it too we saw it too so everyone is like could like they are like we saw this fucking thing like we're all having some like different experiences with it but we're all seeing this thing and every person who um told the story of what they saw all say at least by the school that it floated through dropped down below the trees came back up and shot away and so it could have either i guess when it shot away that's when it went to the fields maybe landed and had the tanya thing did something to tanya who knows yeah yeah and uh and then it

went to the grange two people who one person whose family literally owns the grange and tanya weird things happened with it landing and then something in the grass afterwards. And then it shot off. Wow. So when the UFO vanished and the craziness eventually died down around town. And by died around town, I mean like that day. Like it wasn't like, oh, when the rumor mills kind of slowed down after a couple weeks. It was like that day after everyone had kind of been regathered at the school uh-huh the headmaster demanded everybody come back inside no but i think

he was just gonna like treat the day like fucking normal like that like don't make any fuss about that it was just apparently that the headmaster himself has passed now but in the documentary they interviewed his kids and the kids were like that guy was like not about ufo spiritual stuff he was like really like firm in his beliefs and like that would not have flown so like it makes sense why he was like you didn't see that like that you were all he's a skeptic very big skeptic soon military and uh police personnel showed up at the school and started threatening everyone into silence that's nice and so despite don't say we don't make fun of us for that game of chase we played earlier okay yeah ignore ignore the fact that you literally saw me five seconds ago in the sky embarrassing despite the kids in town insisting this happened and again there was like up to 350 people who saw

this fucking thing the principal was apparently or the headmaster was shaken i think by the events or that events happened but like refused to say that it was anything he was trying to just be stern about like yeah stand by his skepticism yeah and the kids say that he ended up holding an assembly i don't know if this was because the when the military and everyone came in they demanded that of him or if he did it himself but he held an assembly that day when the ufo was gone and all the kids were like coming back and he basically gaslit the fuck out of these kids he was like you saw nothing it was a weather balloon never talk about it again and then the teachers were basically told

shut up or lose your job i wonder what would you what you would do though because i bet if the military came and said like you cannot say anything or i mean i feel like you'd be in a position oh it would make sense i just don't know if the mill if he did the assembly before or after the military got there like i don't know if this was just like his assembly where he just decided to say these things to yell at everyone being instructed to yeah it makes sense if it happened after the military and like higher up people got there and they were like don't fucking yeah it sounded it sounded from what the kids were saying and maybe their memory of like the military showing up isn't really there.

But they were like, yeah, we all got back to school, and he was held in assembly and told us to shut up. And so we don't know if he had been spoken to before or after. Interesting. Mr. Greenwood, who saw it himself, he even asked the P.E. teacher, who was with the kids outside originally, to compare stories with him. And the P.E. teacher refused to speak and like was like didn't say anything so mr greenwood was like okay like i know you fucking saw something don't be shady um he later went to a couple students who he was like i know you saw something like what was that and i guess this was before the assembly and the students were able to detail by detail

corroborate what he'd seen but then 30 minutes later i guess the students had all had that assembly that he was unaware of and when he tried to talk to them about it again they were just like they were like we didn't see anything oh my god how weird and creepy the principal also had a teacher or the headmaster i always i don't know what they call them in australia headmaster we had both oh we only had a oh i guess we did too but it was like a it it changed like the principal was like the like the headmaster was the entire school and the principal was like for like the middle school or like the high school oh no we just i think the principal and the headmaster were the same thing at my school. Anyway, the person in charge.

They also had a, they got a teacher to monitor the school grounds to make sure no children were, like, going exploring or leaving class. That sucks to be the one teacher to start, like, roam around by himself outside or themselves. After a UFO just fucking got here and he knows what he saw and can't say anything. And an ambulance left with one child and you're like, um, I guess keep an eye out for something i don't know just one teacher not even the buddy system oh but yeah so i guess this was in theory so kids wouldn't go exploring when they should be in class but also i think it was because certain kids were being pulled out and questioned and they wanted to make sure nobody was seeing anything. So that teacher, when he was walking the school grounds, he saw through a window that there was the headmaster, Babs,

who took the pictures with her camera. Yes, Babs. And then someone in a police-like uniform, and they all seemed to be kind of arguing. And the guy in the uniform, who he had never seen before, was demanding that Barbarabara not only hand over her film but the entire camera damn if only if it were nowadays you could post that on snapchat before oh my god it would have been out to you a live stream that's true it wouldn't have even

yeah it would have been screenshotted by everybody before anyone even asks i'm making sure people see yeah and so the student uh students also reported seeing the headmaster or being sent to the headmaster's office. They reported being sent to the headmaster's office and meeting two well-dressed men who questioned them. Men in black. Oh, my God. So scary. And in hindsight, one student believes that they were from the government. And they said, quote, oh, and we suppose you think you saw a flying saucer and the student was like i didn't say that i just

said i saw an object and then they were like and we suppose you saw little green men like they were just being so fucking nasty calm down yo first of all it's a kid who just got traumatized i know we're in the 60s and you don't think like kids have like functional brains or something but like this child is going through it and you're just like god it's all like super gaslighting super just rude in general like not letting them even say what they saw like if you're gonna question them and you i don't understand that concept because like if you want to interrogate them to get answers to help you why would you make them feel bad and shame them into not giving they're probably just trying to they're probably not getting answers they're probably just trying to shut them up by making them feel stupid and like probably be like you

saw nothing yeah the same students said i think it was just their job to squash any idea at all right that some that we saw something so they were just trying to make us feel talk about gaslighting like you said i know yeah so you're saying this i'm literally not but oh let me guess you you're so wild you also think you saw green little men it's like i guess not damn also i didn't to begin with also like is tanya okay like what's happening where's where's t where is she and Where's Babs and where's Tanya? So journalists also showed up at the school. Of course.

And because they were like, we got to get the scoop. But cops immediately told them they had to leave the property. And some of the journalists were able to still get a hold of kids before they got kicked off the property. Or maybe they were like waiting after people got out of school if they could grab a kid. Grab a kid. Okay. Grab a kid. Okay. Grab a kid. That's just some interesting verbiage you used there. But yes.

Just scoop them into the car. And the kids were told not to talk to anybody. But one girl, she did speak to reporters. And every time it aired on TV or like it got reported back in public, she would get detention. And she was like, but it was worth it. Oh, she got detention. I thought you said attention. I was like, cool. Well in public she would get detention and she was like but it was worth it oh she got detention i think i said attention i was like cool well she got attention and detention i guess if it was worth it also if it's only detention like you know like i feel like she should have if like they were trying to be as scary about it as possible they would have like expelled her or something but also like it's not her fault like if they keep replaying the clip

it's not like that she has any control over it i don't know why they're giving her to like give detention to the journalists or whatever i know like it's not gonna help to put her in you would think the government would like have then gone to the journalists and then like pull that get rid of that yeah so uh fun fact when the journalists were doing research for the Amazon documentary specifically, they actually went to Channel 9 to find that footage that the kid went that the kids spoke on. But the Amazon documentary researcher, I think his name was Shane Ryan. And he so he went to Channel 9 and he went into the room where it was like all the film reels. Yeah. Of footage.

he went into the room where it was like all the film reels yeah of footage and he found the uh the can or the tin with that date on it and like that story on it but the can when he opened it was empty so they did pull it eventually wow so something happened um spooky yeah so as for hard copy sources there's one article called the it it's called Flying Saucer Mystery School Silent. And it was in the Dandenong Journal. But that was the only article that he could find. And not much else exists, which feels a lot like this was covered up. Because why weren't people talking about 350 children seeing a UFO flying by? Yeah, it seems like a

good news story to me it feels like at least if you've got nothing else to write about you should like throw that as like a side article like a little column um yeah but there was uh people did hear about it in fact there was the victorian flying saucer research society and they had even taken ads out in the paper for witnesses to come forward because they wanted to write about it or at least research it and nobody got back to them wow so these people were put in their like place by the powers that be they were scared yeah and many today in the area still dismiss it as like mass hysteria but anyone who was a student there who saw this they stand by their claims like that was a fucking ufo like don't let people trick you i get it if

like five kids were like we saw it and it's like okay maybe they just took after each other but like 350 kids yeah yeah yeah yeah and so um where are we okay so there was also one guy who came forward for the amazon doc named paul smith and he worked near the school at the time. And he says he also saw the UFO because he was on the property or he was nearby it. He says, quote, I looked up and I was facing the object in the sky. And I just thought, oh, somebody's got some way of projecting a film or something into the sky, because I didn't believe that this was really happening. because I didn't believe that this was really happening. But my boss turned around and saw it, and we stood there looking at it for several minutes. A few moments later, a bunch of children came over from the high school, and they noticed us, and they took some time to decide whether to come onto the property or not.

And then they headed to the market. Then army trucks turned up, and about 20 guys in khaki uniform or in camo trucks got out and it was only 20 minutes after the object had appeared in the trees which was a very quick amount of time wow so he saw it with his buddy thought it was fake and then all these kids came over started talking about it with him and then not even 20 minutes after he saw it the military was on site and like 20 trucks like there was like and uh so in the oh i got chills because there's um in the documentary in the documentary there was also

lieutenant colonel smith who says that he was like i guess like the military the voice of the military the guy someone who at least knew what he was talking about to give us some intel uh lieutenant colonel smith says that the main units around this town at that time were logistics and reserves but they wouldn't have been able to respond that quickly so so the first responders if like if there really were this many people in that many trucks in those uniforms with those types of trucks that were able to respond that quickly despite them not really supposed to have been in the area those people were most likely quote quasi civilians who were working in the defense department of defense or the department of supply or the department of research and

development oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god he says camo uniforms at that time would have actually been the u.s air force and not australian government okay well and a little chills and then you think about it because they already had all the airplanes in the sky so it's like they knew about this as it was happening before anybody even reported it so like they would have been there yep oh so at the time uh the uniforms sound more like u.s air force which makes sense because there was u.s military in australia at the time uh so they could have been the first ones on the scene love that the u.s is like hold on we're getting involved we got it hello apparently the so one of the reasons people were especially so panicky about ufos is because the cold war was in full swing space race was a huge influence in pop culture the sky was a scary

place at that the world was primed to like have a ufo attack at some point to like look up and see something dangerous coming at you whether it be a bomb or a ufo yeah so a lot of uh skeptics have said like oh it's mass hysteria during the space race era and it was a bunch of kids like you see something in the sky you can't recognize and you don't know like certain military aircraft and like of course you're gonna think it's a ufo it's not a big deal but okay but also all these fucking military people are involved you're literally being told not to talk about it yeah like channel nine footage is completely missing a lieutenant colonel is like this does not make sense unless they're from the department of defense which is horrific which makes it worse yeah which makes it worse and a

lot of people do argue also on this side that they've let that the school was right next to an airport so people and the kids were used to seeing aircrafts all the time yeah so they were like this is not what we're used to seeing this is different it's not some like country place that never sees an airplane out in the middle of nowhere yeah exactly um also interesting days before this incident the same type of ufo was reportedly seen in the area two different times oh so it was that wasn't like its first day in westall it was like yeah it's just zooming around um and each of these cases were known about uh but none of them were ever officially documented so like there are like in both of those other circumstances where someone

saw the ufo it was reported about but it was removed from public record. Whoa. Spooky. So in the 1960s, so there's the, quote, summary of unidentified aerial sightings reported to Department of Air, which is basically like every decade they put on a new volume. And it's just the entire, like, encyclopedia of every report that has ever come through about a ufo sighting and none of those sightings although all were reported never made it into that book so they were like wiped clean from ever being see that's there's something wrong with that even though they were investigated yeah so there's no documentation of any of them anywhere fishy uh so there's one ufo researcher named bill chalker and he uh has been also researching the westall ufo incident and this is a quote from him from the documentary given that there seemed to be literally at least hundreds of people involved with this it had media attention at the time it appeared to have evidence that

there was a military investigation at the time there There was no Westall file. And then another UFO researcher named Keith Basterfield, he says in the documentary, quote, we were looking through hundreds and hundreds of file titles, maybe even thousands in the end. Along the way, we were always looking for files on the Westall incident from 1966. We started off with the Air Force and also within the Department of Defense. We checked out files belonging to the Air Board. We checked out unit files from Air Force bases, from former Department of Civil Radiation, from the Air Safety Bureau, the CSIRO, the intelligence files, the AGO. But the net result was we found nothing in this mammoth volume of

government documentation which would be even begin to hint that there was something about westall in government files that is so weird so that was no sense air force department of defense air board air force bases former department of civil radiation air safety bureau that's i'm trying to that's 10 that's 10 different massive volumes they were looking at for an inkling. Something's up. So one witness named Kevin, who also saw the UFO back in the day when he when it was flying through, he remembers it going out. He remembered seeing it go out to the field and he tried to go see it the next day after

everything had happened, because I think he was like, yo, I am being told left and right he remembered seeing it go out to the field and he tried to go see it the next day after everything had happened because i think he was like yo i am being told left and right that i didn't see this thing i want to go to the field and see what the fuck happened like did i really see this when he got to the grange the next day so like within 24 hours of the ufo incident he this is a quote from him when we came through the area the air force of the and the army stopped us from going through they said don't come near this area there were vehicles and they had some sort of instrument which at the time i thought looked like gardening cans and he was just turned away he was like do not come to this area see yeah and they're trying to pretend like oh nothing

happened i mean not very good at it a week later he went back again thinking that the military would be gone and when he went to the spot that they were blocking off because he wanted to see the landing patterns all of the earth had been completely burned away like all evidence was so they just destroyed oh my god so the same lieutenant colonel earlier who was able to give us some intel. He, yes, Lieutenant Colonel Smith. He was asked, would a military research and development establishment destroy evidence like that? And he said very plainly, of course they would. So he's like, yeah. At least he's honest.

He's like, they were there destroying evidence of something they didn't want people to know. He's nothing if not honest, that Colonel Smith. He's on it. He seemed like he was like team aliens yeah in the interview with uh this researcher dr mcdonald at who interviewed mr greenwood that file that they ended up finding later mr greenwood had also uh been spoken to by a well-dressed man okay apparently uh this is a quote that two officers came to his home and threatened him under the official secrets act it's always the two officers it's the men in black dressed well from the government sketchy af no thank you they said that they couldn't have seen a flying saucer over wessel because there was no such thing as flying saucers so just gaslighting the shit why are you at my house weirdo right exactly what are you doing they threatened

to tell people that Mr. Greenwood was an alcoholic even though he wasn't what a rude thing to do and as a first year teacher with a career ahead of him he feared his career would be jeopardized out so he didn't so that's why he fucked up i mean like so it doesn't exist and i have nothing to worry about but also you're on my front porch you're from the government and you're threatening my career you're calling me a booze hound for no reason yeah uh so mr greenwood also said quote i knew what i saw it wasn't an aircraft by any stretch of the imagination and it certainly was not a weather balloon like they were saying it was my god james mcdonald who interviewed him said that or he also interviewed a bunch of other people

and they had all said similar things that basically the men in black had come to see them and told them to stay quiet and they said quote you saw something experimental and there's nothing to worry about do not talk about it anymore. What the fuck? Dude, I can't wait for the day you cover the men in black. That is such a scary topic to me. I'm so overwhelmed. It really freaks me out. I feel like we're going to get visited if we talk about it.

Of course. Westall is still one of the biggest unexplained UFO cases in Australia, and it's Australia's largest mass UFO sightinging to date that's what it is and the ufo had quote a large number of credible witnesses it was viewed in daylight and attracted a forceful response from the police and the raf some of the explanations given for the ufo were that it was an experimental aircraft mass hysteria shoddy memory the space race uh priming everybody to think they saw ufo it was a classified top secret aircraft and the most used theory is that it was weather balloons and also everyone's an alcoholic probably and also everyone's an alcoholic including tanya who's in the ambulance including the children um but so

most people say it was a weather balloon but a weather balloon does not move that quickly and the government wouldn't care about a weather balloon they wouldn't be coming over being like you didn't see anything like that doesn't track i also like i i wish that someone was brave enough to go up to the men in black when they were there to be like then why are you here just like how you asked but i think that's when you get killed that's probably a dangerous move yeah i would be like you got it sunny yep i am a drunk all the time it's all good i was being just silly i was just not even here silly old me so uh also i said earlier the school was near an air an airport so people were so people were familiar with common aircraft flying by. But this one that everyone saw, quote, everyone said straight away that this was not a plane.

Like, so right away, that's 350 people saying, okay, I literally am next to an airport all the time. I know what's going on. Wow. In 2006, there was a 40th anniversary held for the witnesses. They had a reunion at the westall tennis club hall and in 2011 which was 45 years later the amazon documentary and investigator shane bryan they interviewed 30 to 100 of the 300 alleged witnesses i say 30 to 100 because different websites gave me different answers oh my god it feels like it was closer to probably sorry my butler's here with my iced tea thank you blaze oh uh oh he opened it for me thank you that's so

sweet it's the little things little things uh so yeah so he interviewed probably close to like 30 50 people um that said they were witnesses to the incident and shane ryan the investigator he says it was clear that quote people saw something very strange and unusual and somebody in the government didn't really want the story to get out and he said quote i'm so frustrated that after all these years i can't get an official answer about why the powers that be were there that day and why they didn't want the students to talk about what they saw yep that adds so much creepiness to it. He said,

quote, with its undercurrent of cold war paranoia, secret us air bases, and a strong military relationship with Australia and America. This raises questions about the acceptability of coverups delivered by the government and the interests of national security. And in fact, this leads us to our most likely explanation for what the ufo was if it

was not a ufo although i'm team ufo for sure so i talked about keith basterfield earlier he's one of the ufo researchers who went through all those fucking files so in 2014 he thinks that if anything the ufo could have been a secret radiation testing blimp for the highball program highball hibble i don't know what that is so it's a program in the 60s where quote u.s australia it was a sorry it was a quote u.s australian initiative to monitor atmospheric radiation levels using large silver balloons equipped with sensors which this was confirmed that these were that exist and so i guess it was also during like cold war nuclear testing paranoia we had some sort of program where we were testing radiation in the air i mean that would explain why

the u.s air force was involved too right because maybe they so National Archives say that one of those balloons, which I think was called Flight 292, it may have blown off of its course in the middle of it trying to test radiation in the air, and it blew off course towards Westall. military would have been so worried about that is because a lot well some of the files suggest that there was government concern about how dangerous these balloons were if they got near a populated area since they were literally testing radiation filled with children and literally it's going towards a school of like 400 oh my god so if the balloon did go off course towards a city it makes sense that the military would be chasing after it and demanding silence because they didn't want the government. They didn't want people knowing. Like, probably that they were. Please don't tell on us.

Don't tell on us that we fucked up. And also don't tell that we're testing radiation anyway. Also that. Yeah. Like, they don't. Because I think they were already so. The world was already so scared about, like, nuclear bombs at any moment. So they were probably trying to keep it hush hush and then

a bunch of kids were gonna like describe a big bomb the exact thing they saw yeah so keith basterfield he found records of several uh highball flights but interestingly enough the documentation for flight 292 those launch uh the launch paperwork for that cannot be found so i don't know if they just completely wrote that off i don't know if it's because it has to do with an alien story i don't know if it's because they didn't want their own bosses finding out that something went off course like maybe they were just covering themselves up not like a whole alien secret yeah but anyway they never found out what it is the best guess is that it was just a secret radiation testing blimp i think that's fascinating too though i mean i love when

it's because i feel like government secrets and cover-ups are almost sometimes just as creepy as yeah alien stories like oh god gave you a little bit of both but uh today uh at the site of the encounter which like let's be clear though like there was still something that like burnt into the ground they destroyed the evidence well if it's covered in radiation maybe the the footage went missing so like who knows what it could have been oh you're right if it had radiation on it maybe i don't know but uh where the where it is said to have landed today um on the grange reserve there is now a memorial ufo park with ufo themed play equipment to honor the yes i love that they embraced it for recess time like

complete full circle so uh that is the story of the westall ufo incident oh i love it oh my gosh that's so creepy and i love that it ended with like oh they just saw like not with like oh they just saw something but like they might have seen a secret government project that the men in black did try to cover up like it's still creepy i mean even if that is what happened oh spooky stuff i just did a guest spot on lady to lady podcast um on the exactly right network and they do like a they do like sleepover games and one of them was um who's your favorite alien and i was like so taken aback and i didn't know what to say you were i like how of all people like not only were you taken aback but also like that was your moment and i felt so stupid i was like i don't even know i'm so overwhelmed by this question who did you say i i literally was like

can somebody just list aliens and then like we couldn't really do it like i don't know it was it's like they were gonna give you a question they were not prepared to answer yeah i was like i mean the only one i can think of is et and that's such a boring answer so i was like i i think like um like if i had to pick something right away i would pick like if i were going the classic route i'd say marvin the martian if i were going the creative route i'd say flubber, Flubber was not an alien. He was a creation. He was an invention. I guess I'd say Marvin the Martian.

I said the only ones I can think of are Marvin the Martian and E.T. And then, I mean, see, like the real answer I would have given was like the Pleiadians. But I was like, I don't need to go there. I don't need to say, oh, by the way, I'm pretty sure. The lizard people. Yeah. I was like, I'm pretty sure nobody needs to know how like uh an akashic record reader told me that my ancestors were from an alien race like they don't need that right now you should it would

have been funny though if like they thought they were really throwing a curveball at you and you just like said something like that and then also like ripped your human face off to show your reptilian body it's actually me i'm a play alien is myself welcome to gemini season oh welcome it's me um anyway yeah i just thought that was so funny i was like because i was saying how much i love ufo stories so it's great timing um very wonderful christine i forgot to tell you when uh where did we go oh one of the things I did for my um birthday sorry okay one of the things we did for my birthday was Allison and I went to the outlet mall and at the outlet mall was five below have you ever been to a Five Below? Yes, we've talked about this every time we go on tour. I fucking love Five Below.

Well, I forgot about their pieces of candy for $1 situation. Yes. Do you know what was one of the options for the vat of candy? You could get 10 pieces for $1. Do you know what one of them was? You did mention Charleston Chews, I think. Yes. Yes, you texted me about it that night

i love a good charleston too that's funny it's renee's and my favorite candy we're stocking up for our baby moon oh my god i love charleston chews my dad used to eat them all the time and i used to think like wow what an old man candy and it is and have you had them frozen yes we would always freeze them so good okay that's so funny i love charleston shoes and like nobody ever gets it so i don't know why they like why are those not bigger or like hi june when did someone oh when did someone decide that like you know what we don't need to sell that everywhere anymore like instead we need like a mars ball well i feel like they're not moon june that's not food that's a fake plant um i feel like they're not uh popular because they're kind of weird texture like they're not the classic like

just a sugar bar i don't know i don't know it's a chocolate covered marshmallow how can you not want that i know they're delicious every time renee and i would have like a bad day at school or like have like i don't know relationship troubles we would always sit in a parking lot and like eat Charleston shoes. Where would you get Charleston shoes though? Because I feel like today- I don't think they have them anymore at CVS, do they? Oh, we used to get them at CVS.

I don't know. Hi, Jennifer. Interesting. I feel like- You need such a cuddle bug. He's- It's my time to shine. He really wants to eat this fake plant, actually.

I, uh, no, I used to think of- I used to think they were more accessible but now i'm pretty sure like that's an amazon purchase i'm trying to get the camera here because he's really he has things to say ow okay he was just saying i fucking hate charleston shoes can we get back to our regular programming he also kicked me in the boob ouch okay well this was our classic candy break. Welcome back, everybody. We have now for you a crime story. We do? Oh my god. We do. We are

changing things up, Christine. It's crazy. Listen, I like to keep it spicy for you. So, you're welcome. Thank you. I like the spice. June is over there biting into a piece of tape, so... Everyone's having a good time. He's causing some problems all right this is the story it's a bummer i have a bummer for you today but it was gonna be the second can

i win when can i win and you should know that by now i it was gonna be the second story that because we're recording two episodes and then i switched them because i was like i'd rather end on a they're both bummers obviously but I feel like this one just kind of ends on more of a bummer. So we're going to go with this one first. It's just more worse. I know. It's hard to say which one's worse, worse, but we're going to start with this one. And this is the story of Ronnie Long.

Okay. Okay. And it takes place back in the 70s. So we're doing an old timey episode today, I guess. All right. So we're in Charlotte, North Carolina. April 25th, 1976. A call comes into the police at 9.30 p.m.

On the other end of the line is white 50-year-old widow Sarah Bost. And she's reporting a traumatizing forced entry into her home. Dun, dun, dun. I feel like it only gets more terrible now after this because that also bad that alone was my the only gasp i i could muster and now i end i used it up way too early oh i wish it ended with and it turns out it was just a surprise party and sarah had a great time and sarah said mind. And she was no longer a widow because her husband came back from the dead. Yeah. Perfect.

Okay. But no, it's just bummer central. So. Great. Juniper, stop it. What year is this again? Sorry. 76.

Okay. Okay. So she described how a man entered the home, put a knife to her throat, and demanded money from her. When she told him she didn't have any money the man became angry cursed her threw her to the ground ripped her clothes off beat her and raped her oh my god oh my god 10 minutes into the attack bost got a phone call which alarmed the intruder and he fled leaving bost unclothed and terrified she didn't think it was safe to stay in the house

so she darted to a neighbor's house and the neighbor called 9-1-1 for her she explains then and there to her neighbor that quote an african-american man had just raped me as the police arrived she's quickly rushed off to the cabarrus memorial hospital and the concord police department gets involved and the investigation begins as to who this intruder slash rapist was so they start by searching her house as well as interviewing her at the hospital and she gives a specific and detailed description of her attacker outlining his ethnicity saying the man was quote yellow or a really light-skinned black male giving his height his facial hair and what he was wearing the rep uh the report the report records her having said that the man's height was five foot five five five foot five sorry this is so confusing five foot five five foot jesus five foot five five foot five to five

foot nine sorry i don't know why that was so hard for me in between five and six feet let's just sleep in between five five five nine okay wow slender build slim hips subject was plain spoken used correct english and it which like yikes oh my god also like what is this being called yellow yeah that's not good either i know this is all not first i was like this was in the police report and then i was like i mean 76 not that that's any better but like it's i guess less makes more sense than today that it was said yeah yeah so um plain spoken no uh correct english yikes and a time spoke very softly no speech defect accent or noticeable

brogue evident subject was wearing a dark waist-length leather jacket blue jeans with a dark toboggan pulled over his head could possibly have been wearing gloves okay that was the description so while boss was still at the hospital two police officers presented her with a series of 13 photographs of 13 black men aged between 20 and 30. Boss didn't recognize any of them to be her attacker. Meanwhile, they're investigating her house, like just searching the crime scene, and two pieces of evidence have been discovered. They find burned out matches on the bedroom floor near a window ledge

and a shoe print found on the banister, which they are able to lift an impression of. Really? Always a shoe print. Interesting. Also, so do the matches imply that this person was waiting for her to get home um yes or at least was smoking like there yeah okay so meanwhile and that ends up coming back later yeah okay so uh several weeks later boss is back at her house and is contacted by officers inviting her to attend district court. They have a picture of the man that they think might be her attacker, but they don't want to show her the picture.

They decide instead to invite her to the courthouse and tell her, somebody who's coming into the courthouse today for a different court case may be your attacker. If you see someone who's familiar, let us know. Which is fascinating and weird approach i was gonna say am i allowed to be really uh skeeved out by that like it's like i think you're allowed to be whatever whatever you want um i'm not gonna stop any emotions it feels i feel it feels icky but also innovative like it's like it's weird right like it feels really like not cool but also it's like i guess showing a photo and being like is this the guy is also not really yeah it feels like she was accident like she didn't know she was part of like a new mind hunter test of like yes see how psychologically you actually find the person in the wild it's like being primed for

this i mean it feels like a tactic in like svu where they walk somebody through uh-huh the police station knowing that the other person is there to see their reaction or it seems very like test yeah like a test so they say he might be there if he is let us know obviously she's nervous because she doesn't know if her attacker is going to be there so she she hesitantly agrees to go, but only if she's allowed to wear a disguise. So on May 10th, 1976, Boss, wearing a red wig and sunglasses, heads to the courthouse with police. Okay.

Nice disguise, by the way. Yeah, red wig. I'm into it. Why not? Yeah. A man named Ronnie Long, who's a 20- a 20 year old cement mason is called to the stand about an hour into bost arriving he's wearing a flowered leisure shirt very 70s in my mind yeah a medium length brown leather jacket and is being seen for a case of trespassing so he'd actually

been arrested on april 29th in relation to him trespassing in the public park near his home which turned out to be a mile away from boss's home so when they arrested him um and saw his leather jacket they were basically like maybe this is the guy because it's the same area same night we're bringing him in for an arrest right and uh when they were taking pictures and fingerprinting him they noticed they noted the uh leather jacket and they also noticed black gloves so they were taking pictures and fingerprinting him, they noticed they noted the leather jacket and they also noticed black gloves. So they were like, well, maybe this is the same guy. Also, like kudos to the department who was able to be thinking of so many cases all at once and find little commonalities to be like, oh, yeah, to like connect them. I feel like if I were at first, I'd be a terrible detective detective but i would be so focused on like one case at a time i wouldn't even realize that they might be like to the same person like this guy trespassed in a park we gotta focus on this case yeah yeah no like i i would not even

think like oh maybe he's also the guy who did this other thing with the other case for paying attention to so i appreciate that they uh were overlapping and seeing if there was any commonalities well you won't appreciate it for long but i'm glad you appreciate it for now never mind um after police had arrested him they noted his leather jacket black gloves did the kind of thing of like oh maybe it's the same guy so they when they brought him into court they brought sarah bost along to look and see if maybe she recognized anyone. So he, Ronnie, had been a suspect in an investigation a year earlier in 1975 when his Social Security card had been found at another rape and burglary crime scene in D.C. However, it turns out he had actually been innocent because his wallet had been stolen

and someone had taken his Social Security card, which I'm learning now, maybe I shouldn't carry my Social security card around in my wallet. Took 30 years. Should have learned that a long time ago. 30 years. It took me until now. And so someone had taken his social security card and then committed a crime. And so he ended up being innocent of that.

So he had nothing to do with it. Okay, never mind. I feel awful. Why? Just because I was like, oh, wow. was just so ready to like get this guy in jail well we don't know what's happening yet or i know i as the story goes so far i'm i i don't know just keep going just keep going well i think i also primed you to say uh you'll regret it so it's my fault so anyway he had been a suspect in investigation now he's being arrested for this trespassing case and a disguised boss points him out to the police and says it's him she later

explained there was no doubt in my mind that this person ronnie w long was the person who entered my house so returning to the police station police allegedly put ronnie long's picture amongst a series of other suspects. And again, Boss chose his picture out of the lineup. It's worth noting, though, that Ronnie Long was the only one in the images who was wearing a leather jacket. Okay. So I feel like that also kind of... You know how when... I don't know how much crime TV you watch, but you know how when they do those lineups...

I watch none. Okay. You are my crime source and that's it. Okay. Well, fun fact. know how much crime tv you watch but you know how when they do i watch those lineups okay you are my crime source and that's it okay well fun fact a lot of times in the crime show lineups uh i say crime show because i don't know how real this is to how true this is in real life but if the victim describes say like in a tattoo on the person's wrist they will put it on everybody's wrist so it's not like oh that's the you know what i'm saying like i mean i don't know if that's true but i just saw an episode where that happened so in my mind i'm like they should have put everyone in a leather jacket because you can't just say right because if you know the attacker had a

leather jacket and then you're looking at 13 guys and only one's wearing a leather jacket like you're primed to be like well that's the guy right like it just doesn't exactly track to me that that would be a fair way to go about it but whatever so she says that's definitely him she is fully convinced and ronnie long quickly becomes suspect number one in the investigation however he had an alibi so on the night of april 25th he was at home with his mom speaking to his girlfriend and his young son on the phone his attorneys also pointed out to investigators there was a lack of any evidence tying him to the crime scene basically the only evidence that prosecution had to work with was boss adamant certainty that that was her attacker that was

like the only real piece of evidence they had so So there are a few red flags already, but here is the first big one. So the initial statement, remember, you noted it too, at the hospital, she said her attacker was, quote, yellow or a really light skinned black male. Well, Ronnie had very, very dark skin. And so that was the first kind of like, this doesn't fit her description. Wow, this whole time I was really just imagining that he at least looked like yeah he at least looked wow okay fit the description nope so exactly that was the first like big red flag of like wait wait wait this doesn't even fit her description you just saw leather jacket and fucking went for it yeah yeah exactly um but her accusation was enough for him to be trialed for the attack

so a date was set for september 27th 1976 and there's a website uh written by with an article written by ken otterberg and it outlines how the summer before the trial was like a big mess basically so it was full of demonstrations and protests surrounding his arrest uh the cabarrus county sheriff and other members of law enforcement reviewed a list of potential jurors and they kept disqualifying people for from being called for jury duty but they never kept a record of why they would just kind of dismiss people and they didn't say why but the 49 person jury pool only contained two black residents and an all-white jury ended up being seated for the trial wow and at the time cabarrus county was approximately 20 black so it was like

totally not no completely just a big big shit show to begin with wow okay okay so the protest saw 300 people rallying outside the courthouse. Protesters shouted, we're going to let them rich white folks that run this town know they're going to free Ronnie Long. Another warned, we're going to let this Klansman judge get an idea. We're going to start dealing with all these racists. It just was a huge mess. A huge mess. Protests. Just very controversial from day one.

And that was even before the all-white jury was announced so when that was announced obviously more fuel was added to the fire and it almost felt like ronnie long was being like persecuted before the trial even begun so wow as the trial began courthouse tension was like super high um on the side of the defense all the spectators were black and on the side of the prosecution all the spectators were black. And on the side of the prosecution, all the spectators were white. It was just like very heated, heated, split down the middle. And then again, on top of that, the jurors were also all white. And in court, Boss testified to the jury that she was certain that Long was her attacker.

However, oddly enough, she once again changed her testimony from her original statement by saying her attacker definitely had a mustache which is something she never said in the original statement okay sorry of course ronnie had a mustache so it's like okay where did that detail come from that wasn't even part of the original statement but so i'm torn also i'm eating a jolly rancher so sorry no go for it live your dream but i'm torn because it's like i understand when you're traumatized and something horrible's happened to you you may not know all the details you may not remember everything and you're just trying to piece it together but also this is feeling a little too coincidental on the side of ronnie as well of like yeah i mean so i feel i feel for her but also i feel for him in very different ways. It seems like this is being taken advantage of by the powers that be. And it seems like they led her into this situation to be, they said, he might be here.

He's wearing a leather jacket. Is this him? She said yes. I mean, they should have just said, this is the initial statement. We should stick with that. Witness testimony, as we know, is like so not reliable. It also feels like they should have just ran with original protocol at this point. Like just.

Yes. Yeah. So. It's just like not reliable to be adding details later on once you already have somebody in mind that you're saying oh yeah you definitely had a mustache it's like since when since you saw ronnie like that doesn't that just doesn't fit so according to clclt.com which is like a local charlotte publication ronnie's girlfriend and the mother of their two-year-old son took the stand testifying that ronnie had called her just after 9 p.m and spoke to her for about 45 minutes, ending the call around 9.45, which was the time the victim said the attack took place.

And apparently Long's mother also recalled interacting with him during that time frame, testifying that he came home around 8.30, went upstairs to his room, talked to his girlfriend, then his son was on the phone, and his mother even picked up the phone and talked to her grandson for a few minutes. son was on the phone and his mother even picked up the phone and talked to her grandson for a few minutes and uh he stayed on the phone a little while longer and he came downstairs about 10 25 and told her he was heading to a party in charlotte so like basically according to both of their testimonies there was no way he could have gotten out of the house in that time for sure and attacked somebody by 9 45 and gotten back into the house it just didn't fit okay so during the trial ronnie's defense team brought up that hospital records indicated that the victim fought

off her attacker again we should go back to the hospital records the day this happened when everything was written down her testimony was taken like that's the most reliable months or years later that's not the time to be like yeah you have a statement from what just happened and like yes exactly when he did not have a mustache and also he was like yellow and also light-skinned but also dark-skinned later like and grew a mustache sometime yeah just like the it's just all over the place yes so again hospital records indicated that the victim had fought off her attacker even bending back her okay sorry bending back her fingernails

trying to scratch i get it i get why you have to say it though but witnesses testified that long was completely unscathed when they saw him they saw no scratches no bruises no blood on his body but unfortunately none of this amounted to anything because despite ronnie's alibi the key points made by the defense and the fluctuation in boss statement uh the fact that boss had identified him in a courtroom was a clincher for the jury and on october 1st of 76 ronnie long was found guilty fuck of the crimes i told it's a bummer uh against sarah bost and was this was his was like his defense just not good enough because it was all hearsay or because it was like like because no just the jury just decided it's not good enough i mean they made all the above points they said she's changing her testimony they said

he has a full alibi he had no scratches on him he there's nothing tying him to the scene but because she said that's the guy they just kind of i mean it sounds so like salem witch trial like you can't talk your way out of it you know what i mean like it sounds so impossible wow to win you're right this was a bummer sorry is there did we well you just go ahead first don't ask me any questions because i don't want to answer them now and just make it worse for everybody perfect i get it does that answer your question okay sure does so actually sure does yeah so on october 1st he was found guilty of the crimes against sarahost. The spectators erupted. One half was relieved.

The other was pissed, obviously. As James Fuller, Ronnie Long's defense attorney, would comment, whites cheered, blacks jeered, and cried in outrage. So Ronnie Long was sentenced to two life sentences and was quickly sped off to the Harnett Correctional Institution in Lillington, North Carolina. And as we can probably guess by now he wasn't going there thinking like oh shit i got caught he was thinking i had nothing to do with

this i'm innocent i know it two life sentences two life sentences you know it'd be a fun game am i fun i mean literally so terrible just like fun and fun fact it's just every time you cover a story that's like clearly uh clearly based in racism you should just also talk about a white person who got the same charge and how little time they did in jail oh yeah absolutely there's a lot of those examples of like drug charges and marijuana possession i have a hunch a white man would have not gotten two life sentences with no zero evidence that they were there with an all-white jury yeah probably not so because of his innocence and the belief that the real truth would be revealed eventually he assumed like i'm gonna be in jail for a little while but we'll we'll work our way out of this

but as we know the american justice system isn't quite all it's cracked up to be. It's not. What? I know. I need you to sit down for this. Oh, wait, you're already sitting.

Oh my God. I don't want you to choke on your Jolly Rancher, but I have some big news for you. My Jolly Rancher is an anti Jolly Rancher, by the way. I am. The last thing I'm feeling right now is Jolly. It's not doing its job.

It's not working. Oh, I thought you meant you finished it, but no, it's just not doing its task. It's working oh i thought you meant you finished it but no it's just not doing its its task it's just a rancher just a sad rancher it is kind of a weird a rancher we don't need another candy break i'm sorry um well well to make this happy at the end we'll look up the etymology of jolly rancher how about actually that's a fun idea okay good idea yeah so

um he thinks oh it'll be a few years and hopefully we can work our way out of this well nope because ronnie basically spent several decades of his life behind bars wait so it never even got so just i'll tell you i'll tell you oh Christine. So, outraged and wanting to seek, obviously, real justice, Ronnie Long's team worked to file petitions for the court to re-examine the evidence, but no matter how much he and his lawyers continued to fight for his innocence and freedom, no one was having it, no one took it seriously. The first breakthrough that happened was in 2005, 30 years after his trial. Oh my god, that's the first.

The first step mother fuck okay sorry i keep hitting my microphone oh well i mean out of anger i just want anyone can blame you for that yeah so in 2005 first step a petition was submitted to review the biological evidence from the crime scene because we got dna testing now so thankfully the judge in charge of that petition granted the review of all the evidence and investigators got looking into like anything that could have been preserved that would have dna evidence on it and might exonerate him um interestingly there was a whole lot of evidence filed by a detective van eisenhower that huh fun fact hadn't been flagged at the original trial oh my god for example there were hair samples collected the crime scene that didn't match Long's. Oh my god.

Wow. So it's just blatant racism. It's just bad news. It's not even like you didn't have evidence. It's that evidence countered the entire argument. Exactly. Like they wanted to put him away for this. Whether the evidence proved it or not.

Okay. There was also clothing fibers that didn't match long's and fun fact the burned matches i mentioned did not match any of long's matchbooks which he had on his person and they looked at and none of them matched up whoa so oh my god wow it just got you're right so much worse darker yeah uh none of this evidence had ever been shared with the jury um in fact when detective van eisenhower took the stand in the trial he said he had only taken long shoes and shoe impressions so like blatantly lying on the stand um so again the protocol was just completely ignored in a very totally totally thrown in the

trash uh it was also flagged that originally there was existence of a rape kit that also wasn't presented at the trial um but unlike the evidence this just kind of had vanished which not shocking to me that a rape kit just never resurfaced and disappeared and was never tested so that's the least shocking of all this i guess um but according to clclt.com in a pretty incredible turn of events the original prosecutor who had been working for Bost to put Ronnie Long away now made a point to testify on Long's behalf. And he admitted that he didn't remember seeing Eisenhower's reports saying if he had seen them,

he would have turned them over to the defense, even though it worked against him. So seemingly if he's telling the truth, this was the police just not sharing the evidence with the prosecutors or anybody just hiding it oh my god so when long found out about all this which turns my stomach to think 30 years later you find out that all along they had somebody else's hair and clothing fibers not yours uh he said i wish i had known this in 76 lord i wish i had known this in 76 it's just heartbreaking um but even with all this new evidence the courts were still

just rejecting his petition to appeal this uh the county superior court ruled that it didn't matter about the new items they wouldn't have changed the jury's mind they said okay what wait who said that the county superior court it wouldn't have changed so that's a racist person right there well yeah i mean i'm just like in case anyone didn't catch that like oh so it wouldn't have mattered no matter even if there was evidence proving it was not him they're just basically saying oh it wouldn't have made a difference just throwing it out i just keep wanting to blame this this whole story on one racist person who like didn't hand over evidence no it's the system we all know i know i know unfortunately um i just keep wanting there to be like someone someone to blame not like a whole fucking thing to blame it's just welcome to you know america i know i know um yep so however one

judge stephanie d thacker decided to open an appeal to the entire fourth circuit so at least we got steph on our side of course a woman shocking however so long's case was then returned to the district court for a retrial and at this point it was now 2016 so this is 11 years later that finally they're getting this they've petitioned to re-examine the evidence and it took 11 years to get it back on trial um so in 2016 oh my god yeah it's disgusting okay um in 2016 stephanie d thacker wrote that evidence has now trickled out revealing the truth truth that Mr. Long has declared for decades. He should not have been found guilty. Today, the court remands to give the state yet another opportunity to disclose the evidence it should have disclosed nearly half a century ago. Based on the record in this case over the last 15 years, I would not be surprised if more evidence does turn up.

But since the evidence is sufficient today to grant Mr. Long the relief he has so long pursued. I would not wait for further proceedings on remand. 44 years is an unconscionably long period to wait for justice. It is time. So Ronnie was released from prison on August 27th, 2020. So like not even a year ago. Yeah. He exited the prison wearing a three-piece suit and a covid mask that read free ronnie long so that alone is just such a jarring description he went into prison in 76 and came out when we

walked out using covid mask like near the end of the year you know i mean it's dare i ask how old he was oh i'll tell you so his and supporters, whom Long described as his inspiration, were there to greet him after, I mean, decades. So he told reporters that for his first meal out of prison, he wanted macaroni and cheese, beef ribs, a salad, and some lemonade. I'm like, get this man a bottle of your finest champagne, please. Oh my god, give him Dom Perignon and then also literally like a house house made of mac and cheese are you kidding oh yeah also that yeah it's made of mac and cheese oh my god so long also commented on how the justice system failed him he said i'm

disappointed really in a system that is supposed to be about right and wrong one day i believed i would be standing where i'm standing right now and i never gave up that hope never give up that's so unfortunately sad yeah it gets worse so unfortunately so it's it's like his story well i'll just tell you unfortunately during the 44 years he had been incarcerated his grandmother two sisters and father had all died uh his mother elizabeth also died six weeks prior to his release. And her last words were, is Ronnie home yet? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm in trouble now. I'm sorry. Christine, it's just so sad. It's just so sad. It is. Long commented on this saying, I wanted her to be a part of this i hated that she's not here hopefully she's watching down on me she can tell my dad and my sisters that

i made it out and he didn't do anything he trespassed in a park quote unquote trespass in a public park whatever that even means like literally whatever that means he walked in a park at dark that's it i can and his wallet was stolen and how many how many white people do you know who have trespassed through a park well yeah me literally me raising my hand yeah who carries their social security card in their wallet me to jesus so long's release came on a special day for his wife, Ashley. It was actually her birthday. Interestingly, the couple had originally met in October of 2013. Ashley was a criminal justice and criminology student at the University of North Carolina

and had written to Ronnie wanting to help and included her phone number in her letter. And after multiple letters back and forth, she realized she was developing feelings for him so she remembers that a few months after their meeting while she was sat in mcdonald's using the free wi-fi to work on long's case okay fair call it tell me you're in college you're a broke college student yeah um so she was working on the case at a mcdonald's and her phone rang it was him on the other line and she blurted out i think i'm falling in love with you and it's weird can you imagine yo okay but can you imagine a phone call like that that'd be so nice and then he responded i'm like the old man had some game i guess oh my gosh uh she suggested they get married so uh what a suggestion what a suggestion like at the mcdonald's hey i'm at mcdonald's also i love you also marriage what do you think also my free wi-fi

is running out you need to answer now this is the most romantic proposal at the mcdonald's um it's a mcmarriage jesus christ oh that's bad oh oh god okay so they got mcmurrayed uh even though nobody in either of their families or attorneys supported this um and they were married on august they were sorry they were mcmurrayed on august 18 2014 uh her devotion has no bounds apparently because she even has tattoos that say the following free ronnie long ronnie's prisoner number and may 10th 1976 which is the date that he was pointed out by bost in court wow his floral shirt that's a homie though like that's she is oh yeah that's committed i'm so glad that he found somebody yeah she's fucking committed and and she helped him get out which is

the coolest part. Ronnie's release was considered by Ashley as the best birthday present in the world and she said, I think I'm still dreaming. And now they live together in Durham, North Carolina. How nice is that? How old is he? I just want to get mad

again that he was... He's 65. Wow. that he was he's 65. Wow. And he was in prison for 44 years. I mean, I know 44 isn't your technically your whole life, but you're 20. He was 21 when he was incarcerated. Now he's 65. Much of your life was taken from you because so for what he he quotes about it.

Actually, the exact in a very eloquent way that i probably couldn't do so i'll just read that to you um he he's still of course uh battling a major injustice which is that despite being wrongfully imprisoned for 44 years on a rape conviction north carolina is only compensating him for 15 of those years they don't even give him the macaroni house oh my god i mean that's i mean that's crisis one i think no i'm just kidding that's first of all yeah that's at least they could fucking do number three i think at least it's crisis it's a it's a crisis jeez 15 out of so not even all like not even half a third barely a third barely a third so

by north carolina anyone wrongfully convicted of a crime can receive fifty thousand dollars for each year they were in prison but the catch is that it caps at 750 000 so that means that long who is 65 will not be compensated for 29 years of his time in prison oh my god and wait i'm sorry hang on he so the rule is if you are wrongfully imprisoned yes i maybe i'm just like stupid when it comes to the economy but why on earth should there be a cap to that why like you'd think there shouldn't be but just legally they put one on there so legally they should take it off i don't know legally they should take it but legally he

shouldn't be there to begin with so i don't there you go i don't think legally changes anything but long told usa today you took my 20s my 30s my 40s and my 50s and you're still talking about how this is worth that oh my god although what happened to sarah on april 25th 1976 sarah bost it should not have happened obviously it was horribly traumatic something nobody should ever go through um what happened to ronnie Long also should not have happened. No. In reference to the National Registry of Exonerations, black Americans make up 40% of known exonerations. And black folks are also seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white folks.

And this wasn't even a murder trial. Just fun fact. Nope. So that's that horrible bummer of a story i mean i'm very happy he's out clearly this is a recent update um but it just makes me think of all the people who are still makes my stomach turn imprisoned i feel ill that's really awful it's disgusting uh and it just makes you think like how often does this happen a lot and there's nothing you can do to make up for it i mean when someone loses like i can't even there's no way you could process

what he's gone through and what he's lost yeah wow so wow that's that fun fact great i'm sorry thank god we've got a whole other story for you to potentially bum me out after we record this and what's a jelly rancher tell me quickly uh well i did find out that um i found out something also disgusting about jelly ranchers as it was in my mouth which freaks me out is that it is not vegan what's in it oh because it's gelatin okay so that so you know it's in gelatin oh i know it's i mean it's still disgusting yeah yeah um a lot of candy and apparently there is a whole crisis about the fact that the lemon jolly ranchers have been discontinued a couple years ago is a lemon jolly rancher i don't even know that existed i don't know i thought you'd care

because of lemon but uh so the reason it's called Jolly Rancher is because it's meant to suggest a friendly Western company. Oh, kind of like the Jolly. Isn't Jolly? Jolly Green Giant? Jolly Roger. But Jolly Rogers. Jolly Roger is like the pirate symbol. No.

I'm thinking of Roy Rogers. Never mind. Stop it. Jolly Roger is like the flag that a pirate ship has oh with the little uh the skull yes skull and crossbows does this imply that they're friendly pirates who won't steal all of your stuff and kill you well that's what i don't totally get well apparently that's what a jolly rancher is about to attack it's a happy cowboy and that's what you should feel like when you eat it apparently i felt like neither of those things by the way while that was happening you're eating horse hooves and also listening to like just the worst

the worst thing that ever happened yeah racist story of the day um cool cool cool cool well wherever you are what was his name again? Ronnie Long? Ronnie Long. I hope you're well. I don't know if you'll ever hear this. Probably not. But I hope you don't ever have to think about this case again. I hope that everybody who is listening sends you the best energy in the whole world. And I'm so, so sorry.

Yep. And also maybe some Jolly Ranchers, I guess. I don't know. No, don't. Let's find you something better. Maybe like some mac and cheese. Oreos are vegan. They are. I know know so are twizzlers oh fun okay well anyway now that we've completely derailed uh thank you everyone for listening and also um please go give yourself some comfort food

or something after that story um yep enjoy your day and that's why we drink for sure okay bye everybody