And That's Why We Drink - E242 UFO Potholes and Our Collective Eyebrow

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

It's episode 242 and, as humans, we mustn't get too technologied, at least according to Em's UFO story! This week they're taking us to the Ariel school in Zimbabwe to cover a UFO sighting experienced by an entire playground of children. Then Christine brings us part one in a two part series on the infamous case of Laci and Scott Peterson. And did Christine have her baby during this episode? We wouldn't blame you for skipping to the end to find out... and that's why we drink! 

we're in it we're in it we're in the main frame we're in the main frame welcome welcome to the main frame uh that's it what's the main frame anyway um i okay well i don't like that you're quizzing me on things like i probably don't know the answer to but i at my last job at iss whenever you had to log in my boss every time she logged in i guess she felt like she was like in a spy movie and like she was hacking in because she would just literally type in her own username and password to get into the system and she'd go we're in the mainframe that's something i would do and everyone would be like stop doing that she's a fun boss every morning every morning i knew that's how i was gonna get a i was gonna hear it at least once when she logged on and she'd go i'm in the mainframe we're in the mainframe i

love that uh just you know spice up spice up your work day but yeah i am hi uh do you want to hear why i drink okay first of all there's there's a new marvel movie coming out tonight shang chi and i'm very excited about it um very exciting second of all um i was on i missed an early part of our phone call earlier we had a phone call with our manager and i was late to it because of this very stupid crisis that was going on in my apartment complex, which was, uh, our neighbor's dog got loose in the building and it was a bunch of people

trying to chase one dog. And for God's sake, this dog, by the way, so his name is Scooby. Oh, I thought it was Gio. That would have fit.

No, but Scooby and Gio, I think would actually hate each other because they're so alike um you know what i mean um too many scorpios in one room i got you too many fireballs he he really just runs as fast as geo and as is as sneaky as geo and geo wants to be that's not good and he is i hope they don't listen but um his training doesn't seem to be top-notch um but he's a very he's my favorite dog in the whole apartment complex he's very sweet every time he sees me he goes freaking ballistic but uh but he apparently got loose and he just

fucking bolted and so things to do my friends yeah and so uh that was why i was late to our phone call but anyway i got to i got to track down a puppy dog today well it was funny because you hopped on the call and you were like sorry i was dealing with a personal crisis and like i knew better so i was just like i'm not even gonna say anything because i was like i was trying to make it sound i will i don't even know what i was trying to make it sound i think i just said like oh sorry there was a crisis over here and it sounded a lot worse than it and I meant it to come off so I just like didn't say anything because I know Em and I was like oh probably a dog got loose or something and then poor Eva and our manager were like what happened are you okay it's like yeah even you

better even you better but it was our it was our manager who was like what kind of crisis are you all right and I was like are you all right it's a very dumb crisis please let's please let's move forward i almost was like can you tell us a little more um i wanted to put you on the spot what that was mean but um i'm glad i got i'm so glad you didn't but i i would have answered anyway anyway that's why i drink because i got to interact with the puppy dog so i love that though for you especially right like in the morning, first thing in the morning. I mean, that's kind of a nice little uplifting way to start the day.

It's also why I drink in a bad way because I was forced to exercise for the sake of being a good person. So your heart rate up a little too early in the day. I didn't like the Scooby cardio. No. Why do you drink? Which I already know why you drink. Okay. And I also, by by the way drink for this i was like i thought that's where you were going but um yeah so we hop on off the call

then we sit down to record and i'm just like i just make like a face i don't know i don't know i feel like i don't want it to sound as dramatic as it sounds. It's pretty fucking dramatic to me. It's considering I am the only person that has to deal with you currently. Basically, Christine showed on and she looked fucked up. Her face was winced to no end. And I was like, you good? And what's going on, Christine? Oh, I just was like, oh, sorry to no end and i was like you good and what what's going on oh i just was like oh sorry i'm having a contraction and i was like what i went what what what

i was like don't worry and i was like well are they braxton hicks and i was like i think so and i was like you think so and i was like well here's the thing i've been having them for a few days now and like i time them just to like see you know just to make sure and they're happening like every five to seven minutes for like hours on end which lest we forget the office episode where five to seven minutes five to seven minutes five to seven minutes we go to the hospital like literally and so I'm timing them and I'm like this is almost comical because I don't look at the timer I just hit it when and it's like every single time like five to seven minutes and yesterday, I had a scheduled doctor's appointment. So I went in,

they checked me, they're like, you're not going to labor, don't worry. But it's also not normal that you're having this many contractions. And I was like, well, fuck me. So then they said time them today. So I was like, Oh, just so you know, like, while we're recording, I'm just gonna like, time them. Just don't mind me if I like pick my phone up briefly don't mind me a baby might be here by the end of the episode but like you know like it's all you today you you carry the show we still have a few weeks left so I think I'm fine I really don't think it's anything and they're more uncomfortable like they're not painful they're just like really uncomfortable I try to describe it as like a charley horse in my stomach sort of I Chris

should be in case anyone is brand new here. Christine literally has a chronic illness and has a severe high tolerance for pain. In my tummy. That's the problem. It's like I don't have a good grasp. In the spot you're feeling pain, you have like a wild tolerance for pain. Just like used to it hurting. So yeah.

When you're like, when you do this and you go like, and you make a weird you're like that was uncomfortable i have a hunch if i were you this is what i would look like it's definitely freaky yeah it just feels it's not great i mean it's not great it's not fun so yeah i so i don't think it's anything but like and then poor eva was like wait i was gonna hop off to edit now like what if you go into labor on camera and i was like well don't think it's anything, but like, and then poor Eva was like, wait, I was going to hop off to edit now. Like, what if you go into labor on camera? And I was like, well, don't worry. We'll record it for posterity's sake. I don't know how this is true, but you, if your water broke on this show, it would really be a true full circle from the first episode when we knew nothing about each other.

Well, you imagine you are the only one in the world to live witness me like yeah i can't imagine it because it's just so possible any five to seven minutes that could be what happens to me okay well actually you know this is perfect segue sagu because we never talked about this which is that we found out the mothman Festival is freaking canceled this year. And we have big, big plans. I had big plans to get Christine's water broken. It's pretty tragic. I thought that would be the last hurrah. And that Emma and I would have a little scrapbook.

The little baby would flap their Mothman wings right out of you. Blowing red eyes. I mean, I thought it was going to be just perfect. And it's canceled. So we, because of COVID, which, you know, obviously you know obviously understandable but like it's just really kind of tragic so the last time i saw you in person you weren't even pregnant like let's put it that way and that's so freaky so i mean who would have thought you can still come visit if you want you're you're more than welcome i'm very terrified that the second i show up all of a sudden you're gonna be like hey this is really inconvenient like the baby's no either either the baby's about to show up or like this is my last week on earth to

sleep and you are wasting my time. If the baby showed up while you were here, that'd be great. You could watch Gia for me. So like I'd be thrilled. You know what I mean? Okay, wait a minute. Don't feel like you're an inconvenience. You're not because you will actually be a big help to me. It's also very useful that you live in a castle now and I could just be in a completely different room if I'm in your way. I live in a haunted ass fucking creepy building. Yeah, you could just enjoy yourself in the other room.

So anyway, but it's all kind of a bummer and all to say that if I do glance to my phone briefly, it's just because I'm hitting like start, stop. your doctor being like what do i do all of a sudden there'll be paramedics in the room while i'm telling my story and i'll be like wow it wasn't that bad guys okay pulling christine pulling at christine i'll be like hold on um i'm almost done let me just like hear the end of this because i don't want to inconvenience our listeners or you um but i will i also mentioned earlier that like before like last night because blaze switched to a new job long story but last night he said wow this is my first weekend off since june and i was like

well you just fucked us because now now the universe is like oh really yeah and i feel like this is just bad timing your your free weekend's about to be your busiest weekend the start of never a free weekend again yeah um so anyway that's all oh well that's why i drink good luck to you good luck to me everyone is like well the good news is i was gonna sit in that silence and see how long it took one of us to talk to say a good news the good news is. I was going to sit in that silence and see how long it took one of us to talk. To say a good news. The good news is, if the baby does come this weekend, I can have a glass of wine in a few days and I'll be thrilled. You know, I was going to say,

I wonder how many people have just fast forwarded all the way to the end to see if you're still pregnant at the end of this episode. Lucky for you, this story is... I mean first of all you'll like the story but also it is a little shorter than normal just so you know if the baby's here we can rush through the story faster mine's pretty long so um too bad that'll be really fun listening to you talk about like horrific stuff while also wincing in pain the whole time. And I just get to stare and smile. It'll add to the ambiance, I think. Oh, my God.

Okay, well, here is a story for you, Christine, which you will like. This is me ramping you up to enjoy it, whether or not you're going to. This is the Ariel School UFO sight sighting what's that so i thought in my head i was like oh an aerial school like for flights and that makes sense that a ufo would show up no no no aerial like the mermaid oh i thought you were gonna say i thought of that disney channel and i was like yeah classic m but no you thought no i actually had i was on to something for a second and then it was wrong um so it has nothing to do with flight at all it just happens to be a school named ariel um fun fact did you by the way speaking of the little mermaid did you know that ursula is her

aunt what was she supposed to be she's just like the local sea witch yeah i knew that i thought but she's like that was part of it oh then i am way behind i am way behind i thought that i thought i knew that but maybe i just i don't know i never really watched that movie as we talked about so oh my god no i just found out that ursula was like triton's sister yeah i feel like they talked about that in the movie also apparently hercules and ariel are like first cousins once removed or something oh my god okay also uh there somebody tagged us in a post on twitter that was really interesting i don't know if you saw that that all the sisters were named after the different C's like the seven C's.

Huh? Really? Yeah. And so like Ariel's like red C I forget. They described it all. I don't know if it's true, but it was like really interesting. Cause they're all named. They're all like,

I'm trying to think of the, cause I sang it in the last song, the last one, but they all start with A's. So I wonder if they like all mean something well i think they were meant to reference different um season and then someone at the it was like a tumblr post and then the next person commented is her mom the dead sea i was like oh actually like okay that's not funny but it was very clever it's fascinating

ariel sisters because there's like adrena adela alissa alana so like adriatic sea oh okay atina alana adela aquata arista and andrena listen i i don't know i could be making i mean this is just a tumblr post so i i don't really know if it's true uh bearing c apparently atina is the bearing c because she's the oldest black c it's true uh Bering Sea apparently Atina is the Bering Sea because she's the oldest Black Sea it's like based on their personalities and hair and I it could be made up it could be made up but that could that actually it's that would be a fun little nod also fun fact all of the sisters were voiced by two people really there yeah well it makes sense because I mean they were such background characters I just can't deal with how how much we talk about this movie that i've seen once in my life zero interest in but oh well oh

well okay moving on um oh wait no i'm not moving on one last thing about the little mermaid i know you know how everyone like well maybe not you but most people i know when they think of like who they thought the hottest prince was a lot of people think it was prince eric prince eric yeah and i who am not interested in men i was like oh well i like yeah prince eric is a cutie but like it's a shame that like he's like not a lady and then the and then little mermaid 2 came out and it was the daughter is a spitting image of prince eric and i was like now i can find now we get it now we're on the same page here anyway that's so melanie shout out okay so here here we go here we go um back to aliens so thank god this is basically a sequel to the uh the story i told in episode 229 which was the westall incident

where there was like a school of like 300 kids who saw yes ufos come down or aliens um so that was in 1966 and it was in where was westall wow i really should have prepped okay anyway go back to 229 if you want to listen to that episode this is basically a sequel is very similar in a lot of ways because it was at a school um it was in it was how many years later let's see 1966 and this one was actually september 16th which is like right around this time 1994 um this was in rua zambia zimbabwe um and it was the aerial school which was a private school in zimbabwe okay uh it was a private school but also a rural school and so that comes up later when people try to uh discredit what the kids saw because like oh it was a rural school they didn't

even have you know television but it's like it was a private school in the 90s like yeah at least a few had a tv like I'm pretty sure they had tvs so anyway that comes up later that it was a private school but also a rural school and people go back and forth on like the demographics of the children and if we can trust them we can trust them based on demographics great yeah so uh it was about 10 30 in the morning some sources said 10 15 in the morning but either way it was snack time as i call it um there were it was bedtime as we both call it don't lie to me uh it was there was about 250 kids at the school and I think there was um some sources said it was all 200 kids were outside at recess but some say there was only 110 of them at recess there was a

lot of kids at recess let's put it that way they were all between 6 and 12 and all of the faculty was inside having a staff meeting and so the person watching like all one or two hundred of these children was a volunteer slash mom of one of the kids i guess like a pta mom if you will her name was allison kirkman and she was at the like snack shack on the playground they had like a concessions booth i know i didn't have that yeah that immediately puts me in the camp of this was a private school private school like yeah i was like we had like a bowl of pretzel sticks and we could only have one we had we had a concessions booth out on our soccer field yeah like at the sports at the sports part yeah but um which by the way shout out to me in high school that was like one of the things one of my extracurriculars as i ran the the concessions

stand when i was for you thank you you're personable like that you could do that job i was very proud of it and it used to look like garbage and then uh me and a couple other kids in my grade we all like volunteered to like clean it out and like bring it back and i remember getting chased out of there by a rat oh and and i ran so fast i like um hydroplaned on some mud and and i like wiped out and like hit my head on the ground pretty hard what the hell when i think of a concessions booth I think of the time I thought I had a concussion so the time I thought I had a concussion wow well it was never confirmed but it definitely hurt it definitely hurt um so anyway there was uh so Allison Kirkman was running the snacks on the playground which would have made my recess a thousand times better by the way um Allison said that while she was working she saw a bunch of kids uh start

running over to her and screaming that they were freaked out by the man in black on the playground oh my god she's like this is above my pay grade which is zero because I'm a volunteer she was like do you or do you not want a bag of Doritos that's all i can that's literally all i can offer you oh my gosh i'm already scared yeah and so she ended up telling them like i think she either didn't believe them or she was like i have snacks to sell do you mind and so she basically told them to go run off and play and they were being silly i don't know so uh they ended up running back into the school instead i guess they were like yo your mom is not listening to us so we're gonna go talk seriously so uh there were 62 kids that were freaked out by this by the

fuck um which if this was 250 kids in total that's like a quarter of the kids at the school saw this thing um so 62 of the kids they all ran into the faculty meeting and like interrupted the meeting and told them that they just saw beings with big black eyes coming out of a ufo so the principal named colin mackie uh principal mackie told them to sit down and draw what they saw and just to like i don't know get an idea of what they or just like give them an activity to distract them i was gonna say maybe just to like entertain them while they finished up their meeting um so when combining their experiences it was so this is one of the issues with this story uh in terms of like people believing that it happened is because all of the kids 50 saw the same thing and 50

it was just like a fucking mixed bag of information uh they they a lot of them described the beings completely different some of them described the ufo completely different but they all had the same kind of general story but what they saw was different like one person said the ufo had black and green stripes one person said the ufo was red one person said that the beings had really long hair some so that it was bald and so like it's that you know a lot of people immediately say that they that it didn't happen or that it's not true. And so because there's 62 testimonies, I did not go through all of them. I did not. I'm not going to report on all of them. But I will give you like the general, you know, the general story is that some sort of silver spacecraft,

and some people even say, oh, there was one. Some people say there was up to like three or four. So when I say some sort of silver spacecraft, think like one to four, pick a number. And that's- Parentheses S and parentheses. Yes. So a silver spacecraft slash spacecrafts were in the sky moving towards a field near the school.

So this is the story already. I couldn't wrap my head around until I saw a visual of it. So imagine that it's like the recess playground is like a massive field and in the distance is a fence, which is like the barrier. So like if you're standing far away you still have all this space to run before you're before you go across any like boundaries so they were not near the fence so when i say oh the ufo landed behind the fence it still looked kind of far away i see if that makes sense but they but yes but if they wanted to they could run up to the fence and be a lot closer to the ufo got you okay i had a hard time with this because different people's stories were like, oh, I could run up right to them.

But also it threw me off. So just know that it landed next to a fence that they were allowed to run up to, but they were all far away from it. I got you. That makes sense. So it was moving towards a field near the school and they dropped down on the other side of the fence from the kids and men in black, uh, men in black clothes. A lot of people described it as a scuba suit. They telepathically told the kids that they need to take care of the earth and then vanished.

Like take care of the earth, peace sign or like take care of the earth like we'll be back no like um i'll i'll get more into it in a little bit but basically it was the same trope that we hear a lot of aliens coming in and like showing them like this up yeah like showing images of like natural disasters that i can understand yeah like yeah right you're not wrong i mean to be sure the kids didn't necessarily do it but like i like that that was almost it seems like it happened so quickly it feels like they were like just running an errand in this galaxy and they're like while we're at it let me pop over and just like right step in uh yeah get withdraw some money from the atm safe i'll be right back yeah it really apparently the

the whole experience itself feels like it maybe lasted a couple minutes so um here's the really vague description that i got from uh one of my sources just to give you an idea what we're working with here kids claim that they saw quote one or more either landed or hovered above the fields and anywhere between one or four men stood either atop the craft or beside the craft faced the children and communicated telepathically the need to take good care of the planet the craft either faded away flew away quickly or disappeared either leaving one or more of the men behind or taking them away so that's what we're dealing with here so it's like it really could be fucking anything i know but also i'm like i kind of get it as little kids like i feel like you kind of

blow things out of or or you don't necessarily remember it the same or if somebody can somebody might be able to influence your perspective based on what they saw. Like I get why they might have different rememberings of what happened, but I mean, so to be, to be fair on my, I 100% agree with you. And to,

uh, just so we know where I stand through this, I am team the kids just because I'll, I'll talk about it later. But a lot of them, I would say any of them who've been interviewed have no one's taken back their claim. They all still seem pretty rattled by this. So for that alone, I don't understand and I don't get it.

But like, I'm just going to roll with their experience. Yeah. And I'm with you. And I feel also like this is probably just me giving benefit of the doubt to kids, which it is. But also, you know, I mean, if these aliens have the power to mind control and speak to them through mind control, who knows, like, what, you know, we talk about black eyed kids and how maybe that's just how we perceive certain things. Like, maybe they have different perceptions of what they're seeing and it's all in their heads. I don't know. What's interesting, too, I actually didn't put this in the notes so thank you for getting me to talk

you're so welcome they um a few of them as adults even say like the best way i can describe what they were capable of is they could alter perception and so thank you that's exactly what i was saying so yeah like if one of them saw a ufo that was red or saw one with green and black stripes like maybe it was whatever made them feel safer or what they thought might cater to the kid. And they even, in that same, it's one woman named Emily, by the way, just to give her credit. Emily was saying that they alter perception and with the intention of making you feel more comfortable. Yes, which we've talked about. I feel like some spirits can do that.

Interesting. I've experienced that. Yes, exactly. If they want you to feel like you're in danger, they will let you know. And if they want you to feel safe, they will give that energy. Exactly.

So yeah, I'm not against the idea. What if I didn't notice stripes because I was busy freaking out that this man was talking to me in my brain? know what i mean i didn't see the green stripes i was busy trying to what if you're colorblind what if you don't know what if i'm colorblind what if you only see red and you needed a red ufo to be able to pay attention i don't know eating doritos and i got some cheese on my fingers and i got distracted and didn't see the stripes there's a lot of possibilities here you said it not me but also i agree um so uh

so yeah so they all claimed that they saw you know that vague description something or some or not they saw something maybe um and so um once it was time for pickup at the end of the day principal mackie saw that a lot of the kids were like getting their their parents like out of the car i guess or like tell it like and like making them walk around the property with them and the kids were like telling their story of like yeah and it's apparently he it and made principal mack also start wondering. So he investigated the school grounds, but he never found anything. But the next Monday, because that was a Friday, so then the weekend passed. And by Monday, he came back to school to several letters from parents asking what the fuck happened because all of their children were traumatized. Yeah, good point.

They're not sleeping, probably. traumatized yeah good point they're not sleeping probably yeah a bunch of people a bunch of parents were even like writing in like excusing their children from coming back to school for a few days like they were like they were like our kids are fucked up what happened so what have you done what did you do so uh so that's the main story of what happened right away but then months later uh the bbc finds out about this which i'll get into how that happened later uh the bbc finds out about this which i'll get into how that happened later but the bbc finds out about this and they even have their own like correspondent named tim leach and he goes to the school to report on it i think they were going to do a bigger piece on them or it never got edited properly or maybe it got produced forever ago and i just can't find

it on the internet anymore so i couldn't find the whole bbc segment but there is still footage that you can find online of the interviews from the kids it's just it's just like raw footage that's cool um so tim leach at this point he was a senior correspondent and he was like going out doing like really dangerous stuff for reports but apparently he said uh-huh quote i could handle war zones but i could not handle this but i'm picturing not the aliens but the children like oh my god no too many children they just swarmed me so um an investigator came at the same time as tim leach from bbc her name was cynthia hind and she was the apparently the african representative for mufon which um is the mutual ufo network wait we never talked about this mufon like moved to cincinnati didn't they or to ohio at least i think so I'm a member of MUFON which

means I should be able to give you that information but I don't read the emails so great well a bunch of people tagged us in that and I was like wow never I've never mentioned this but they're let me see they're in Cincinnati now I think they're either in Ohio uh yeah they moved back to Ohio I don't know where in Ohio but um just one more reason for you to come over here. Well, hey, I'm pretty sure I get a guest pass on any lectures. So if there's one when I come to visit you one day, we can go to a MUFON meeting together. May 19th of this year,

they moved their headquarters to Cincinnati. Fun. So hello. I'm behind. I'm behind. Anyway, I actually, speaking of MUFONufon i've been how did i know that and you didn't know that i don't know man i have no answer i don't know uh cynthia okay so cynthia hind is part of mufon and she uh came to investigate as well and she interviewed the kids while she was there so cynthia becomes a main character in this story she's kind of like the lead investigator and as far as i'm concerned like kind of the only

investigator that shows up um she i guess had her and this is another reason that people claim that the kids aren't telling the truth because uh cynthia definitely had like her own agenda here on she she had had her own alien encounters and it feels like she was investigating other cases from what she says to validate their experience but it feels like it was almost to like help validate her experiences with alien encounters and uh she wrote or she edited for a newsletter called the ufo afro news where she would like write about like um reports and sightings and things like that um but it feels like she came in definitely biased um well if you work for mufon i imagine you're kind of at least biased right like kind of bias and also writing for a ufo newsletter

and you've had your own experiences like it doesn't surprise me one bit yeah so when she so a lot of people will say like even if the like like even if there's nothing like quote wrong with her and like she loves ufos and aliens and wants to know all about that stuff her interviewing the kids might have been leading or something like that um the a person that came with her to investigate was a psychiatrist from harvard medical school and a pulitzer prize winner and a ufologist in his in his free time loved learning about ufos because you have so much free time as a harvard harvard psychologist and a pulitzer prize winner jesus uh so his name is dr john mack um and he also came to talk to the kids with cynthia so his uh interviews were mostly recorded and this is from a source called

male and guardian but they had two different transcripts of um they had transcripts of two of the interviews that were super quick so i'm just going to read them okay so dr john mack he was interviewing the kids during this and he in the first transcript he is talking to one little girl and the next transcript he's talking to another little girl so he says what was the feeling when you looked at the eyes of these aliens and the girl said it was scary he says, what was the feeling when you looked at the eyes of these aliens? And the girl said, it was scary. He says, scary why? What made it scary? And the girl said, the eyes looked evil.

Uh-oh. And then, like, imagine, like, an eight-year-old being like, it was evil. Yeah. Mac said, evil? What was evil about them? Say what you mean by evil. And the girl said said it looked evil because it was just staring at me uh as if it wanted to come and take us oh no so then the second

transcript was dr mac saying how did you how did those thoughts come to you because the aliens were communicating telepathically how did those thoughts come to you did they come to you from the craft or from what and the girl said from the man uh he never said anything it was just the eyes and dr max said what was the sense you got from those eyes and the girl said he was interested and i don't know what that means it's super vague but it's super creepy too that makes it creepy somehow yeah yeah i he was interested and his eyes were evil no thank you another girl said he wanted to take us oh no so uh like i said earlier the testimonies don't entirely line up with each others um the number of spaceships the number of people that were there that they saw the description of the spaceships the descriptions of the people that were there that they saw, the description of the spaceships, the descriptions of the people they saw, what happened to the UFO after the encounter,

because some people think the UFO didn't even they didn't even see it hover, they just saw it landing. Some people said that they saw the beings pacing on top of the UFO. Some people said they were pacing in front of the UFO. Some people said they weren't pacing at all. It was just like a real, a real mess of stories. Some people said they saw like flashes of light. Some people said they heard high-pitched sounds. Some people said they didn't hear anything. So it's really like just, a lot of people will say, oh, was kids wanting to be part of this like inside joke and they were coming up with their own story. I can get that too of like, oh, I saw it to be part of this, like, inside joke, and they were coming up with their own story. I can get that, too, of, like, oh, I saw it, too, and, like, getting swept up in the hysteria of it.

Or if you're a little kid, like, you don't, like, maybe you're afraid of, like, getting, like, bullied if you tattle or something. Yeah. And, like, maybe you have to, like, you think you're helping by keeping the story going so no one gets in trouble or, I don't know. Yeah. So, or maybe it just really fucking happened. So here are ways that the kids' stories did corroborate with each other okay so they all saw at least one silver ufo that was shining and had a bright glow around it that was in the trees near the

school grounds everyone agreed to that okay that's a big big one big piece of the puzzle most people saw the ufo already on the ground but others claim that they saw it floating beforehand and then land so you could always argue that those people just saw the ufo first right and just saw it in the process of landing right uh eventually many of the children were they saw how shiny this thing was and they knew it didn't belong near the trees and so they all started running towards the fence to get a closer look which really means the only thing in between them and the ofo was this fence yeah but they were running closer and closer to it and they

saw at least one being in a very form-fitting shiny black suit almost like a wet scuba suit based on how the sun reflected sexy and it came apparently they were very short they were only three feet tall or a meter tall and they came out of the ufo and many people at least say that they saw them pacing some of the beings walked closer to the kids and some say when they really pay attention to their feet, when they were walking closer, they were actually floating over instead of walking. This is when the kids all got a better look at the beings, quote, pale faces and huge, elongated black eyes that were angled inwards. So they look like greys. They look like greys. Terrifying. angled inwards so they look like grays they look like grays terrifying and even if they didn't have

malicious intent like no wonder those kids are like it was scary to look at their eyes because like yeah yeah exactly it would be even if they were trying to save the planet like that's yeah terrifying it's still like okay so at the very best case scenario if this is true there was a person in a grays alien mask and it's not comforting it's still creepy yeah um so here's what i think is the creepiest part is one of the girls said that two of these beings uh got closer up to her and got beside her and they imitated skipping like she was doing with her friend ew ew ew ew ew ew ew but the feet were floating so she they were just skipping in the air and then the being stopped eventually and stared at them they were

gonna become black eyed kids in a few years and they were practicing for like their off-putting childlike behavior i was gonna say like these are like black eyed kids in the making um they're gonna go to the concession stand and be like can i have ketchup for my doritos oh they were like they like those crunchy snacks in that box over there um so yeah imagine like imitating you and then stopping and just staring like yeah no absolutely not no no so all the kids uh said that they felt like they couldn't look away like their eyes were fixed on these beings and they couldn't turn away even if they wanted to some of the kids uh said that they felt like they couldn't look away like their eyes were fixed on these beings and they couldn't turn away even if they wanted to some of the kids said that they felt like these creatures were staring into their souls the kids said that they felt like they these beings were talking to them in their heads and some even had visions of natural disasters so one

saw a barren planet others others saw polluted waters. And these images, by the way, were like, it wasn't just like one image per child. Apparently there was like image, image, image, image, image, like a very fast montage of all these natural disasters. Oh no. And some of the kids felt like they heard the beings telling them to use technology uh wisely um including one girl who swears that she heard in her mind that quote humans mustn't get too technologed which sounds very black eyed kids to me by the way yeah and also like too late yeah humans mustn't get too technologed um Oh my god, what a weird, weird thing to hear.

Or technologed, I don't know how they pronounced it. Technologed. So they all said that time also felt like it was warped or manipulated in some way, and they had no awareness of time passing. They just said that it felt really slow or off while these creatures were looking into their souls and sending them these images into their head they just as quickly um just as quickly as they showed up apparently the beings vanished and so a lot of kids don't

even remember them leaving it's almost like they that memory was wiped away of how they left but some say they remember watching them get back into the ufo and it flying off some people say they just literally like disappeared um and the same girl who saw the being skipping said that when they disappeared it was right when the school bell began to ring and she came too wow so so like she kind of just like woke out of it i guess yeah like a trance and Yeah, like a trance. And I wonder if the school bell, like, freaked them out and they left, or if they planned that, or, like, I don't know what woke them up.

Yeah. Woke these kids up. Weird. So, anyway, that is. And, by the way, like, pro the kids are telling the truth is that a lot of, like, the descriptions of like the ufo don't line up but every one of them did say it was a ufo which to they all had that in common which i guess you could hear that through the halls of the school and make something up but

a lot of kids like seems to be able to say like i saw images of fucking cat catastrophe that's what i was actually gonna say next too is like that seems like a weird thing for multiple kids to make up like yeah i saw a barren planet and a wasteland of an ocean like what yeah it's just a weird thing to make up so i for me i feel like that's more convincing yeah i agree um so when cynthia hind and dr john mack talked to the teachers none of the teachers thought that it was true but they uh did believe that the fear from the kids was real so a lot of the teachers did think like the kids saw something but you know I don't know if it was a UFO um even principal Colin Mackey when he was asked he said I agree that it could be something that we are not common

with but to actually say that it was a ufo i would be reluctant to make a decision like that so but like a ufo again like i know jim harold always says this on his show but like it just means it's an unidentified like it's not saying like oh it's little green men or something like you're literally just yeah you don't know it's just i can't identify that i don't know what it is so yeah i by the definition of a ufo it sounds like they saw a ufo um so uh at least some of the teachers are open-minded to it and they're like i don't know what they saw but it freaked them out um when cynthia and dr john mack came to talk to the kids cynthia brought along gunter hoffer who i guess he's a german it seems

to be that way and uh he apparently brought his own ufo equipment to like test the area and see if like there were any anomalies but again the skeptics will say which this is true that all of the ufo equipment he brought was homemade so it doesn't feel like it was like accredited or like you know signed off on as like real alien equipment um how do you make homemade i mean that's right i don't know i don't know i don't know but so the equipment found nothing unusual not totally surprising surprising to me. But then they also sent off soil samples to the University of Zimbabwe. But that also turned up to not have anything like worth noting. Okay. So Hind and Mack, both of their research on the aerial school incident was never published as a formal report.

incident was never published as a formal report but when dr mack wrote his own report about it he did state that he believed the kids um cynthia hein definitely believed the kids um and their one of their big arguments was like why would 62 children lie about this and like i know that that has a point but there's also the point to like again again, I believe the kids. But like if we're being realistic with the information, 62 kids could definitely make up a rumor. Have we been to high school? Right, exactly. And I feel like there's also that whole psychological theory that's been proven that people who tell a story, every time you tell a story, you're like, it gets farther and farther from the truth because you're just retelling the story from the last time you told the story and so witness testimony is so likely to be skewed especially with kids you know who are telling the story over and over again to each other let's pretend that there was like five kids who like or i don't know let's say six kids

let's say there were six kids and they all came up with this little story together on the playground they each told 10 people or they each told like three people i don't know it very quickly with a game of telephone could spiral into a fucking ufo invasion you know yeah yeah yeah so uh many thought that this many skeptics at least thought that this uh whole case was just a bunch of mass hysteria um or kids all wanting to be on a joke or again having a fear of being excluded if they weren't a part of it and skeptics also believe that not only might it have been kids making up the story but the case actually only got so popular because of cynthia hind herself okay so um one a former student who's been interviewed who by the way says like this shit is real also did say quote i don't i doubt many people i doubt many people would have heard about us if uh cynthia

hind hadn't made such a fuss she was the first person to interview the kids and got the news out to all sorts of important people dr mack included so cynthia hind really it sounds like she heard about this like potential ufo sighting like a random ufo sighting at the school and like went there guns a blazing and just like blew this out of proportion it became a big story okay um and that probably just according to skeptics would have just reinforced the kids to keep this story alive right right anytime they got questioned about it so the reason cynthia hind was so adamant about this story is because uh in zimbabwe at the time, two nights before this UFO sighting, there was a rocket in the area called the Zenit 2. And it was from the Cosmos 2290 satellite. It had launched out and was in, at this time, two nights before the UFO sighting, it was reentering the atmosphere.

Oh. it was re-entering the atmosphere oh and during its re-entry there were burning streaks in the sky which caused the illusion of fireballs flying across the sky okay and many people called into local radios saying that they swore they were seeing ufos uh they were seeing like meteors flying through the sky it looked like it really quickly turned into like a frenzy of everyone writing and saying like, there are aliens in Zimbabwe. There's UFOs in Zimbabwe. No,

this was just two nights before everyone was just seeing fireballs in the sky and everyone was calling him being like, what the fuck is going on? Right. Right. Okay. And so because there was such an influx into local radio shows about all these sightings around the area of what looked like ufos the bbc heard about this and they reached out to

the community for more info or pictures so they could like write about and be like look doesn't this look like a ufo in the sky um and eventually they heard that there was one of many sightings by the aerial school and so uh that after the after a couple days passed they were like oh and a bunch of kids said they saw something by the school too so one of the people who happened to be in the area at the time was cynthia hind who heard on the radio the bbc, we heard there's a sighting at the school. Like, does anyone have any more information? And so I think Cynthia just heard that one on the radio and just ran with it and was like, oh, a bunch of kids say they saw something.

This has to mean something. And she already had acts. She was already friends with, I think, Dr. John Mack, who was like literally someone from the U.S. at Harvard and a Pulitzer Prize winner who believes in aliens a lot of skeptics say that she just called a bunch of her contacts through MUFON and had them come and it had so much um they all looked so credible that if they were vouching that aliens were seen here the story just kind of blew up that this UFO report was real interesting does

that make sense yes it totally makes sense and i also just like side note too and again like i do like i'm on the side of like i want to believe the kids but oh sorry junie's here now but i also can see how if you were a kid and you're like say that weekend or a couple days earlier like you heard that your uncle saw something in the sky or whatever that that could have spurred some kids to be like yeah i want to see a ufo and then kind of blow it out of like i can see why that would get in some a kid's head like if or like what if what if you're a kid walking down the hall and like you're hearing all this like all this like kerfuffle about like oh

my gosh like there's like someone coming from like out of the country and he's like he believes in aliens and he's like huge in the alien world and he's going to interview all of us about this thing like maybe you didn't even know there was a ufo sighting but now like you're being told like hey professionals are coming in to talk to you like they want to interview us yeah maybe you feel like you need to yeah have a story or like when because the bbc came with their cameras maybe kids like just wanted to be on tv like it could be a lot of things again i am with the kids that something happened but i do see all of the like potholes in this story i agree completely so like i can see why it would have even been like from the beginning where the

story could have even stemmed from of like a couple days earlier you heard like your neighbor saw something in the sky and you thought that was really cool and you came to school said i also saw something in the sky you know that becomes part they write about cases in a purely skeptical fashion. Snopes, but for aliens. Like a Snopes. Yeah, like a paranormal Snopes. In my head, this was like a cartoon character named Skeptoid. He could be like Dr. Skeptoid where there's like lightning that flashes behind him.

Oh, for sure. He has a cape and everything. It's great. Dr. Skeptoid where there's like lightning that flashes behind him for sure he has a cape and everything it's great so uh according to uh Skeptoid the source not the evil character on Disney Channel um when Cynthia actually went to the school because she heard about this story went to the school and it now kind of makes sense too why no one else was investigating this because there were so many sightings in the area that none of them were like really none of them had any like real meat to it yeah but she like held on to this one went to the school by

herself and she apparently is the one who uh she saw a bunch of the drawings that principal mackie had the kids do she took the drawings and made photocopies of them and she was showing like the best quote the best ones to the public and the best ones all just looked like your average run-of-the-mill ufo i mean in which like any kid could have seen on a television show or in a comic book and so at least 22 of the drawings she pulled from were all like very obviously could have gotten them from any cartoon. Like kind of cliche. Yeah. Okay. And this is where Cynthia was claiming that the craziest part about the kids drawing all these UFOs is that none of them would know what a UFO looked like

because they didn't have access to TVs or movie theaters. And everyone else is like, it was 1994. And like they lived in a concession stand at recess. And they lived in a privileged or stand at recess. And they lived in a privileged, or they were at a privileged school. Also, I will note for just to make the case that demographically, it was a mixed bag of the kids that saw this UFO and swear the story up and down happened. There were kids of color. There were white kids. There was like actually

at one point cynthia wrote a whole little article uh and one of the one of the first parts in a paragraph was she was listing all types of kids who saw this which yikes but also like like that shouldn't matter but also it does let you know that like it wasn't just like privileged you know shitty white kids trying to like like, be cool or something. I don't know. Who, like, saw a certain or had some access to something that, yeah. Yeah. So it really was a mixed bag of everyone who saw it.

It was 1994. They were all at this privileged school. At least someone had one television and at least one person had heard of an alien in 1994. And also, like, you don't need a television like there's books that have a like in the 90s like there were comic books there were exact cartoons you go to the library i'm sure you could find a picture of a ufo and also again like let's remember this is the 90s like all these kids are being raised by all the all their parents who went through the ufo craze like someone's talked about ufos with these kids um and so yeah i think that's a silly argument to say like they don't know what ufos look like

i'm leaning into the tv thing because that was the main argument yeah yeah she was like oh well they didn't have access to television because they were in a rural area and it's like okay but even places that are rural have a fucking tv sometimes like that doesn't make sense yeah so uh the so the aerial school they the argument was like okay someone knew what a ufo was like and also to your point too like they knew what they probably knew what a ufo was they've at least heard of one or at least heard of an alien but like on top of it anyone who had a newspaper let alone a tv in the last week with all of these sightings in the area like any kid could have been like i was one of the people who saw ufo yeah my neighbor saw it and my uncle saw it now i want to see it like who knows

exactly so this is a quote from the bbc and they said in all of the pro ufo i like how it's called pro ufo like i'm team like this happened so uh in all the pro ufo reporting of this event you'll read that these rural african children were unfamiliar with popular media and you certainly will not read that they'd all heard the day before on every radio and TV station that spaceships were saturating the skies, all stemming from that Zenit 2 rocket reentry. The UFO community misrepresents the children's background in an effort to persuade you that their stories deserve more credibility than they do. So shout out to BBC for being like low-key racist.

Like it's like not a cute look, everyone. Like kids can just maybe be telling the fucking truth so um some also say that not only was cynthia hind like really like grasping for there to be like a pro ufo stance at the end of this case um they say that john dr john mac who came with her and interviewed the kids um that he also was super biased in investigating this and the two of them could have been working together to try to make the case seem like there was like the alien story was true right it's so weird because like i don't want to say that they're like the antagonists of this story at all, because like, if they're both really interested in aliens and they think

this is going to be the case that proves to everybody that, you know, UFOs exist and aliens exist. I, I almost, I feel like I sound like I'm siding against them, even though I'm on the same side where I think that the kids are telling the truth. But I also do think that they have blinders on, and I just want to establish that. But the two of them, skeptics will say, oh, they were working together because they both really wanted aliens

to be proven true after this. And here is how Dr. John Mack comes across as biased in all of this. He was the Harvard professor professor he even had tenure um but he apparently left his job to become a full-time alien investigator oh um so like that's interesting yeah um and before quitting he wrote a book called abduction human encounters with aliens and harvard even had to do an investigation on him for gaslighting people into thinking that they saw UFOs so he could use their witness testimonies in the book.

Oh, no. Yikes. Allegedly. There was an investigation. There was an investigation because, like, the way that he was getting his information was not... That was the accusation is that he was gaslighting people yeah okay it didn't seem ethical or that the stories were true or how was he getting his information so a colleague from harvard even said

that john mack was quote a brilliant fellow who occasionally loses it but this time he's lost it big time occasionally loses it you know occasionally is fine but this time but this time he's lost it big time occasionally loses it you know occasionally he's fine but this time but this time it's not an occasion anymore wow so cynthia heine potentially uh brought mac in because again he was you know he had the name harvard behind him he had pulitzer behind him he had like he had all these um he was an academic with a lot of credibility in a lot of places and for him to uh also have risked his job in theory by having come out and like been such a fervent believer in aliens it's she seemed like he was a good fit to come and be a part of this with her yeah yeah i could see um and like it was phrased in the in the sources like risked his credibility

but it's like he also actively quit so like i don't really yeah yeah yeah he's risked that already he like took the risk he like he agreed with the risk so um he and the risk got eloped i think and yeah yes so uh it just probably wasn't a good look that the two people who first came and pretty much only came to check out the scene were likely hoping to find UFO abductees for their own satisfaction in some way. Skeptoid, Dr. Skeptoid, his name is, the guy who wrote this article, his name was Brian Dunning. And he said about Cynthia Hine and john mack he said quote when multiple witnesses are involved in something they should be interviewed as soon as possible and separately to avoid any cross-contamination between their stories but mack did the opposite and gave the students two

months to talk amongst themselves before before they even came to the school he like they only showed up two months after so the kids had already created all these stories that's where the problem yeah that i can see why that would be a big problem and cynthia heinz own interviews were even worse because she interviewed the children in groups of four to six while the other children were allowed to watch and listen to each group and every single child's story was necessarily cross necessarily cross contaminated with the others there is little wonder why she always reported that all the students told the exact same story so right so

they're watching each other tell the stories and they're not going to go completely off the right and so it could have been like a just a big case of peer pressure yeah yeah or even just being influenced subconsciously like hearing other and saying yeah yeah, I guess I did see that. Right, yeah. And, or, like, there were even kids at the school where, like, two siblings were there at the same time. So, like, if one believes it, maybe you want to, like, look up to the other sibling or, so who knows. Like I said earlier, Principal Colin Mackey, he said that, like, they saw, they definitely saw something. It could have been something, quote, that we are not common with. But he didn't want to fully blanket statement say that it was a UFO.

Even though it was a UFO by definition. Even though technically, yeah. John Mack, when he was asked about whether or not he believed the children, it was pretty much a resounding yes. But he, this is a quote from him. I would never say, say yes there are aliens taking people but i would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that i can't account for in any other way i can't know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper further inquiry okay okay okay so just say yes uh yeah yeah yeah yeah get it so cynthia hind uh actually passed in 2000

so six years later and john mack died in 2004 which was 10 years later um supporters have founded the john mack institute in his honor um and then i i want to give a shout out to reddit because this was like a last minute i'd already done my notes but i just wanted to see if there's anything on reddit there's a whole like category called aerial school event 1994 like a subreddit i don't know if it's a subreddit it was in the subreddit of like ufo believers but there was like a tab there was like a tab or maybe a flare i don't know i don't know what the right words are but you could click on a bubble that says aerial school of incident or aerial school event 1994 and it led to all things tagged under that so um in there which i'd already done my notes so watching all this was kind of um

redundant for me but if you are interested in this there is a lot of good footage in that tab um there are videos of kids today uh the kids back then adults today being in being interviewed about what they saw they all seem to still believe it 100 a lot of them have spoken for other former students who say like a lot of them never even told their parents about this or never tell their families about it like but they you know so they they're kind of hiding but the few of us who are willing to speak are very happy to talk on it um some of the witnesses have even i don't know if they've made real careers about it over it but they at least do like public events they go to speaking engagements they are very open about what they saw um they're on a bunch of media platforms and a lot of their

videos are also in this tab on on reddit um some of them have said they've even had experiences since um with aliens almost as if like that was the first one to like tap them into this connection because i believe that theory that if you're if you see something or experiencing you're more likely to re-experience it with aliens so a lot of them think that they have this weird connection now with them um one of them even said that they've had experiences where now they've seen the the greys like morphing into other creatures in front of them no thank you i don't know if that's like a fear tactic or something but that sounds horrible where it's like oh now i don't even know what i'm looking at i can't trust my own eyes no so another former student said you want to know the real

message here the real message is that this stuff can brand you for life it undermined max credibility became this huge unending thing for others and it certainly fucked me up i mean try telling people that you live in permanent fear of these things returning one day try telling them that you can actually sense when they're back in our atmosphere and they'll think you're a kook sense when they're back oh yeah so like another confirmation that you they have a weird connection now where you can feel them come back into our planet terrible so um it's almost like you would want to like you'd want to know because it's like well at least i have preparation but then also but then like the heightened fear when you've said something and and it's like now what what do you you know but like what are you gonna do if they show up

full goose cam man no they're here doesn't like help you ah that's so scary on this reddit tab they also have um there was at least a half hour when you combine all the videos of raw interview footage of the kids. I think it was them being interviewed by Cynthia for BBC. Okay. Or either by Cynthia or by BBC. There are other interviews. There's testimonies. And they, a lot of the testimonies were so similar that um i mean it was pretty much what i already described

a lot they were so similar but some of them were so different that's why i didn't write all of them down but if you want to listen to all of them there's at least a nice chunk of them on reddit for you there's apparently a documentary called the aerial school phenomenon um which is quote coming soon and has been coming soon since 2018 so it's like um that office clip where they go on the website and it says under construction yes coming to christmas 2006 or whatever yeah so apparently the filmmaker was hired by so when john mack died they made that uh foundation after him and they hired a filmmaker named Randall Nickerson to make a documentary out of all the for all footage or um to do something with it and then I guess they just haven't had the funding to be able to push it through right

but in 2018 there was an AMA and ask me anything um on reddit by Randall Nickerson and the title of it if you want to go looking for it on reddit is i am randall nickerson director of documentary of the documentary on aerial school ufo sightings here with salma a student witness to the event so very very long but there you go if you want to type in um and apparently he the last we heard from him he was still looking for former students to interview but across the board none of their stories had changed according to him and he said quote not what you would expect if they had all made it up okay i'm interested one of them even

literally two or three days ago by the time this comes out it'll have been like a week ago but very weird that i was researching this and only 48 hours before uh a new video was posted in that thread and it was of the girl emily um she was telling her story and like just go watch her video and like you really believe these kids because she was still really fucking rattled um uh she was the one who was spoken to by she was one of the kids who was spoken to by the beings about technology and apparently in her head they told her there's a good way to use technology in a bad way and we can be doing better um and the way that she really finalized it was saying it a lot of people still ask us about the ship or the beings or what they look like or what the ship looked like but none of that matters what we should be paying attention to is what

they're saying to us yes very good point and i am apparently pro ufo and that like these kids i think are telling the truth i think there are like an insane amount of uh i want to say potholes again like like plot holes potholes potholes potholes or but like i mean there's like clearly a bunch of like spaces for a skeptic to have a fair fight in this but i do still think that the kids are telling the truth like there might be some okay i was gonna say holes but like we've already said that 10 times yeah i get what you're saying black holes maybe a ufo themed ufo themed pothole um anyway so there's the uh ufo sighting from the aerial school in zimbabwe nice work okay wow that's spooky and i i think it does add some credibility, or there's something to be said, at least, for the people who are still, who are now adults, and saying, like, yo, I didn't make that shit up. Yeah, and for all of them.

I feel like it's hard to be taken seriously as a kid, so, like, it must have been tough if you really did see something, and people are like, they're full of it, they're making it up, but if they're still saying. thing and people are like they're full of it they're making it up but if they're still saying i would say most of the information today is coming from two of the students one named emily who i was talking about and then the other one who got mentioned for a second salma yeah i want to give credit to both of them because like they have not stopped telling their story they are like this happened like and are so sure of it so um if you do find a video of the kids being interviewed or the adults now being interviewed you'll probably run into one of the two of them and um but i just wanted to give them a shout out because a lot of my information came from sources that showed video good for them for standing up for themselves because i bet they've

gotten a lot of shit over the years yeah yeah wow that's a great story um do you have to go pee do you have to go have a baby where are you oh no yeah the baby's right here no oh there's actually a juniper on my lap so i can't really move right now you've got a lot of things going on on your body that's the thing is like the cat i know we talked about this in the listeners episode but if you're one of those big meanies who doesn't listen to our listener episodes first of all you should they're a good time. Second of all, we talked about how Juniper's the last couple of days has been like weirdly obsessed with me. You know, it's obsessed with me.

Oh, my God. He's like so obsessed. It's also, oh, you never told anybody that the baby is not upside down or sideways or something. Oh, my God. You're sideways or something. Yeah. Diagonal. I don't know

allegedly according to the midwife is now head down which is a good thing because it means they're not sideways which would have a c-section yeah which is fine but you know ideally i'd rather not go straight into so we'll see but um i do allegedly the baby is now head down which is less painful um less painful except now you're having contractions so which is it i prefer this over the fucking like really any limbs going sideways into all my organs fun fact contractions aren't the worst part of having a baby oh i want to say that especially because these are braxton hicks contractions, which are not real, quote unquote.

So I'm sure once the real ones show up, I'll have something different to say. I'm very excited for you to be able to rank an actual contraction because I do think of your stomach as like Iron Man, like, like nose, no bounds and pain, like just impossible to feel anything. So I'm very excited yeah i'm curious because i always googled like you know everyone wants to know like well not everyone but you know i always want to know like everyone's actually i think so right everyone thinks that everyone thinks everyone wonders and so i always and people like em earlier said too like people

always describe it as like really intense period cramps and like for me right now that's not at all what it feels like so i don't know if it's going to be different when they're like real i feel like the way that people that haven't had a baby who are able to have periods i feel like the only way they can think about it is like it must feel like a horrible period yeah that's what i would have always imagined but it to me at least it doesn't feel at all like that feels like ev suggested, like, a Charlie horse in my stomach. Which is fun. But, I mean, I'd kind of prefer this over a really bad period cramp.

But maybe it'll get to that. Ugh. Ooh, sorry. I'm trying. Is it happening right now? Yeah. It's almost over. Ah!

Oh, my God. So, wait. How many times did you have contractions while i was telling the story was it every five to seven minutes um how were you able to listen during that i'm really good at multi-task well because i was just oh i don't know listen i'm in pain a lot in my life i'm used to i guess so every five to seven minutes you would have heard me go christine hang the fuck on oh my god hold on it wasn't bad it really is just like kind of uncomfortable but like i guess at this point when you're this late in a pregnancy you're just uncomfortable that's just your state of being so

you know it's not like it's anything shockingly new to my system but still sorry all good listen i have a cat on my lap i have a box of cheese that's over here I'm living the dream I'm excited because I'm telling you a story that I have always wanted to tell you and I'm what you know it's shocking because we have been doing this for how long now a long time and then you tell me I've always wanted to cover this and And I'm like, it has been four years. That's the thing is there are so many fucking true crime stories that like every time I'm like, wow, that was a big one. I've always wanted to cover. It's like, well, now there's there's just another one lined up. You know, it's just and now that I have this Discovery Plus obsession, I just get endless, endless content.

endless content um but this one is what i actually talked about on instagram when i was doing my little discovery plus promo thing um which is the story of lacy and scott peterson oh i have heard of this one yay lacy and scott peterson i don't know the story though okay shockingly except not at all but that's a name i know that one is that one was topical for a while it was very topical it's a hard hitter okay so we're gonna get right into it christmas eve 2002 26 year old lacey peterson vanishes done done done this immediately one sentence in christine i'm an expert so it feels like oh great all right everybody sit down we're done i've already solved it um so scott did it as far as i know three words in um but also i i remember this story being as topical as Casey Anthony and always getting them confused. Me too.

Okay. Okay. So I'm not crazy. No, I always did too. And I don't, they're different. They're like seven years apart, but in my head. They're the same story in my head. I don't know why.

Casey Anthony and then the other one. There's one more. And then this one in my head, they all got so much media coverage that I got them all jumbled in my head i think of the chris watts story yeah and the chris what okay it's very similar to that to that case too yeah i feel like well that makes sense because they're both they happened within the last like in my mind 10 years even though 2002 was 20 years ago yikes but they feel like they happened recently and they were both a couple and they were both very relevant and topical and talked about so like a lot of parallels yeah yeah that to me is why i confuse it with the watt story i remember hearing the chris watts story in like

little pieces at one point and i remember thinking it was like with no knowledge i was like oh so it's basically the scott and lacey peterson story it's really no they're really similar like okay i was gonna actually maybe that's fine maybe they were compared a lot and they probably were compared you know what i think you're right because there are some like i'll get to the actual parallels but like they're very similar okay when you get down to like the bare bones of it and then um and they and casey Anthony, just because I think, oh, and not Elizabeth Smart, but like in terms of like it being as topical at the same time in my mind, they all were. They all smattered together. Developmental stages, what was going on in the news. Yeah.

Yeah. No, for sure. There are some cases that like it just the name. I remember being everywhere and not necessarily having known what was going on. Yeah. Yeah, so exactly. So you're already way ahead of the game here, man.

Ah, okay, fine. Look at you. Look at me go. So we're at Christmas Eve 2002. Lacey Peterson goes missing. Uh-huh. She had woken that morning next to her husband, Scott, at their home in Modesto, California.

They had had breakfast, watched some TV, and Scott, who had originally wanted to go golfing but decided it was too cold to go golfing, left to go fishing at 9.30 a.m. at the Berkeley Marina. If it's too cold to go golfing, it's too cold to do anything. To go under the water? Yeah, like, hmm, let me go be near water where I could fall in and freeze to death. That already sounds bad. Listen, outdoor sporty people are not my jam. So I don't get it. Not that the people aren't, but I don't have the same interests.

So I can't. I also don't get the people to be fair. I have, I have one friend. I don't know if I, I mean, my friend Reno, but she, that woman loves being sporty and has not seemed to grasp that like when you text me and ask if i want to come with you i will always say no i will fake a reason i will deliberately tell you no i'm not going but i don't understand those people what kind of sporty events like hiking everything anything anything anything they're like oh well also to be fair she is a

literal model and actress and so i think she just has to always keep her body moving sporty right and she's like oh let's just like i don't know it's usually hiking kayaking it could be kayaking it could be anything that involves sweating and i'm like reena we are in two different sides of entertainment my friend like i right i get to sit here i'm literally not wearing pants right now so like I don't I don't need I don't need to go be hiking and everything to make my podcast work I'm good yeah yeah that's not really relevant to our career path no yeah no I'm the same way obviously that's why we're friends yeah um but yeah so he goes fishing which I guess is what people do when they have boats uh so sure i guess he hops in his car says hi to a neighbor goes to his warehouse where he keeps his boat and answered a few emails

and the warehouse was also scott's work base because he was a salesman for a subsidiary of a european fertilizer company called trade corp usa so it's sort of his workplace and where he keeps his boat so after sending some emails he hooks his boat up to his car and drives off meanwhile lacy is watching her favorite show martha stewart oh and i know which is just like it puts it so into perspective like 2002 martha stewart's on cable like i love it i'm already team lacy i'm already like she's not going out and doing sports she's staying inside when it's cold and she's watching Martha Stewart. It was funny.

They like are a golfing couple and stuff. And I'm like, wow, I just totally don't get that. But you know, I know Allison and I are a mini golf couple. Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. That's as far as we go. Yeah. It's like you had one word and it's a completely different scenario.

Like we like country club involved. Like it's a totally different scenario. We like mini golf. We like disc golf, but you just leave us with golf and we are not. The golf Like it's a totally different scenario. We like mini golf. We like disc golf, but you just leave us with golf and we are not. The golf part is not the greatest. Yeah. And,

and mini golf, you know, especially nowadays they sometimes add bars for millennials like me. That's fun. You know, dark. There's some, it's like the reverse barcade because you're always like,

Oh, I want to drink, but like, Hey, there's an arcade piece here for you. But for me, it's like, Hey,

I want to go mini golfing, but Hey, now they provide drinks. Like that's the perfect scenario here for you but for me it's like hey i want to go mini golfing but hey now they provide drinks like that's the perfect scenario for you and me because it's like we both get priority access to what we want yes bingo combination activity it's genius um so anyway so he goes golfing she's watching martha stewart it's christmas eve so she has plans to relax big gingerbread cookies and clean and walk her dog they have a golden retriever named mckenzie so poor sweetheart mckenzie he gets really roped into this whole story and it becomes like a nothing bad happens to him but he just becomes like a time like a an integral piece to this timeline if that makes sense like he becomes a piece of evidence for like the timeline also are they very like are they like bougie wealthy yes white people they're upper middle

class they were pretty conservative folks um they were kind of in that like central california like they belong to a country club i mean you said golfing fishing they have a boat and a golden retriever named mckenzie so i was like these sound exactly they're watching martha stewart on christmas even baking gingerbread cookies yeah they're pretty they're pretty they've got the trope going for them yes yes it's very much like white upper class middle upper class america you know got it exactly like well you can picture i don't know if they lived on a cul-de-sac but that's kind of what I imagine as part of their on top of a fairway yeah yeah right exactly because he would talk about like the club and I was like okay so clearly I get the vibe here um yeah so they have this golden retriever named Mackenzie and he becomes kind of an integral part of this

timeline so she has plans to bake cookies, watch TV, walk the dog. And strangely, just a few hours later at 10, 18 a.m., a neighbor spotted Mackenzie, the dog, walking around the neighborhood covered in mud and dragging her leash with no lacy in sight. Oh, shit. Big red flag. So the neighbor who spotted Mackenzie returned her to the Petersons' backyard and shut the gate and just went on with her day and apparently that's because this sometimes happened

where if Lacey was out gardening or they were in the backyard and left the gate open sometimes Mackenzie would wander out so it wasn't like a huge red flag it was sort of like oh sometimes the dog gets out and everyone knows each other so she just puts the dog back in the backyard does that make sense yeah no that makes sense okay so by 12 54 p.m scott had arrived at the marina he parked his car and went off in his boat and at 2 15 p.m he calls lacy she doesn't pick up so he leaves her a message that says hey beautiful it's 2 15 i'm leaving berkeley now at30, he arrives back at his warehouse, drops off his boat, and heads home. So Scott returns from his fishing trip, and Lacey is nowhere to be found. Her car's in the driveway, and so of course he thinks, oh, maybe she's out walking the dog. Hold on, the dog's in the backyard with his leash on.

So that's odd. That's fishy, yeah. Fishy. So he assumes maybe Lacey went to her mom's house. So he'd gotten wet on his fishing trip he takes a quick shower when he hops out he still has not heard from lacy so he calls lacy's mom sharon to check in but sharon says i haven't heard from or seen lacy either so now alarm bells start going off and it was especially alarming that lacy is missing because which i have not mentioned yet

she's eight months pregnant. Oh, my. Okay. So here's another parallel to the Chris Watts story. Right. Because she was having her second baby or third baby or something. Yes, exactly. With her third. Yeah.

So Sharon's family grows nervous. It's Christmas Eve. Where else would she be? They make a few calls. They call Lacey's friends who know nothing of where she is. And eventually Lacey's stepfather decides to call 9-1-1 and in some of the documentaries you can hear the 9-1-1 call where he basically says the dog came home without without my stepdaughter like that she went to take her dog for a walk and the dog came home and she didn't which is

i mean horror movie like terrifying that's, yeah. So the police respond immediately. They meet with Scott in East La Loma Park, where Lacey usually walked Mackenzie. And the lead detective was a guy named Al Brocchini, and he becomes a major player in this story as well. What's his name? Al Brocchini. Brocchini, okay.

Brocchini. So he asks Scott if they can return with him to the house to, like, look around. Scott says okay. They go to the house. They don around Scott says okay they go to the house they don't notice any forced entry there's no sign of a struggle no blood and like obviously that's a good thing but also it just adds more confusion as to where Lacey is so Scott voluntarily sits down at the police station between 12 a.m and 1 a.. for a one-hour interview with Detective Brocchini and Scott takes them through

the timeline of this day and he describes everything including the Martha Stewart special and when they ask like oh do you remember what was on the Martha Stewart special he says on the episode they discussed what to do with meringue so So, okay. He had picked that up from the show. So they write all this down and, um, that just remember that basically what to do with meringue. So the next morning, still no sign of Lacey and police noticed that Scott wasn't particularly

concerned in asking police, like how, what they'd done, they had how they if they had found anything yeah any leads yeah and to them they kind of described his attitude as disinterest and although in his initial interview he agreed to take a polygraph he now refused to take one and i want to mention here that there's a six-part documentary series called The Murder of Lacey Peterson. I watched it once on Hulu like two years ago or whenever it came out. And I watched it recently again on Discovery Plus, but it's also on Amazon Prime.

And it's really, really in-depth. It's literally six parts, like six full hour-long, hour-and-a-half-long episodes. So it's really, really in-depth. hour and a half long episodes um so it's really really in depth but it's kind of controversial because it takes a different approach than a lot of the other pieces of media it's more pro scott or not necessarily i don't know how to describe it it's more it it has a different angle i feel like a lot of it shows some like black holes in the case some uh some potholes in the case if you will some potholes some black holes yeah yeah different kinds of holes in the case some uh some pot holes in the case if you will some pot holes some black holes yeah yeah different kinds of holes in the case and it kind of shines a light on that which makes you

at least have a little bit of like huh and question the whole thing but i think it does shine a lot of light on the flaws of the case and is extremely thorough um and in the documentary scott's father explains that he was the one who told his son not to do a polygraph because if anything comes up from the interview, like police and media would latch onto it and immediately make him look guilty. But obviously now that he's refusing to take a polygraph, that doesn't help his image either. That also makes him look suspicious. So by December 26, the story is picked up by the media and it blows up. Even the headline was a cliffhanger. An eight-month pregnant woman has gone missing on Christmas Eve.

You know, it's just like the perfect, I don't know, media spectacle. Storm? Yeah. A storm? I don't know. Yeah. Because, I mean, an eight-month pregnant woman goes missing Christmas Eve. Like, it's just, like, you know, she's the girl next door, yada, yada.

So the Modesto community responded in droves. Hundreds of volunteers turned up to help with the search parties. Some people were hanging up flyers. It was like a huge community gathering. They opened a volunteer center at the local Red Lion Hotel so everyone could join together and have a meeting spot. And local restaurants were supplying food for free to the volunteers. And while all this is going on, everyone has one eye on Scott to just see how he's acting.

And he's acting slightly fishy. So in the days that follow the disappearance of his wife and unborn child scott didn't seem let's say let's see how should i put it he didn't seem particularly perturbed by the situation this does sound a lot like chris watson that he's just like kind of not responding but then did he use that in his case of like well you don't know how people are going to respond well it's like such a hard thing to pin on someone like it's it's sort of like how no like again nobody knows how they would respond in a situation like this unless it happens to you um but like distraught is a fair word to use like or like like for some people grieving or like maybe being like kind of sad

is one way but like when i think of grieving i feel like at least chris watson him it seems like just a not at all reaction or not even asking questions yeah it's sort of like they just step away from the whole situation yeah yeah and i'm not to like you know judge anyone for how they grieve but i feel like even people who are maybe showing less emotion are still at least like what at least a little information or want to know like what's going on it's just it is just odd compared to what how i think i would probably handle something yeah it's definitely fishy and it definitely got people raising their eyebrow eyebrows eyebrow i don't know and it depends on if they have one or two collective eyebrow

um so he didn't seem particularly perturbed uh a man so this here's one example a man named ed steel had been assigned to be scott peterson's bodyguard during this time and he remembers one day he went to the volunteer center everyone else is like frenzied trying to work and trying to like uh you know figure out next steps and meanwhile scott is sitting at a table like tucking into a plate full of ribs and like like, chowing down. And he gleefully shouted, hey, Ed, come check this out. And, like, picks up a huge rib and is like, look at this rib. And he's, like, super amused by this, like, rib.

See, but that's the other weird thing. Like, sorry. That's the other weird thing of, like, he should have, I would think. And, again, I could be a complete asshole right now judging people for how they grieve but i feel like at least some people would know that to not be so joyful that's what throws me is like he's not even trying to be like he should at least be trying to be discreet you know what i mean like you'd yeah like you'd at least realize what how this looks or maybe that was part of his like tactic of like oh maybe if i act like i'm just so fucking in denial then like that in

itself looks like i'm really struggling yeah i don't know i don't know and it's sort of like really yeah like he he everyone else and and i think it's also in relation to everyone else in the room which makes it so jarring because to everyone else in the room which makes it so jarring because like everyone else in the room is like you know frantic doing everything they can to find your wife on the phone on maps like writing shit down on whiteboards it just feels i mean again i'm not trying to be an asshole i'm not trying to be an asshole it does come across for at first glance a little disrespectful to all the people putting in the work to save your wife and you're not even like 100 aware of your surroundings

and like whether or not like he was grieving in some way or whatever it's like it didn't look good to the media it didn't look good to anybody else it doesn't look good to me it doesn't look good yeah at the very least it does not look good so even his bodyguard was like yeah that was a little weird like what do you say like cool what a nice rib you have like you know anyway back to trying to save your wife anyway like everyone else is here trying to put together like a search plan but whatever so which is odd and um it just didn't look great while everyone else is really upset what was happening he wasn't showing any negative emotions whatsoever and so now i'll give you a little background on lacy and scott so they had met while studying at california polytechnic and scott was working at a restaurant and one of his co-workers would sometimes be visited by a friend named lacy denise rocha

who's another student and she was studying ornamental horticulture ornamental horticulture what is that so that's uh like do you know what horticulture is uh is that it's not ornithology as birds horticulture is gardening yes like plants yeah gardening and so ornamental horticulture is like how to use plants for landscape or decor or ornaments. But like, you know, ornament like design, basically, like landscape design, that kind of thing. Fun. So as the Modesto Bee reported, when they first met at the restaurant in mid-94, Lacey made the first move, sending him her phone number. And immediately after meeting, Lacey told her mother she had met her phone number and immediately after meeting Lacey told

her mother she had met the man that she would marry someday oh that makes it extra sad I know I know so Peterson called Lacey they began dating they married in 1997 they opened a sports bar in San Luis Obispo called the shack and a few years later they closed it and moved to lacy's hometown in modesto to start a family in 2000 and in 2002 she announced she was pregnant to her family with a boy and they were going to name him connor oh i know so now if with all this perspective when police couldn't find his wife and his unborn child people are wondering why is he so amused by this plate of ribs and he's not worried about he's not panicked where's my unborn child, people are wondering, why is he so amused by this plate of ribs? And he's not worried about, he's not panicked. Where's my unborn son? He's eight, you know, eight months in the womb.

Unless he was saying, like, check out this plate of ribs and on the ribs was, like, his wife that had gone missing. Like, he really should not be that excited, right? Yeah, and, like, you know, you wonder, I feel like if something like this happened to me, I have no clue how I would react, but I imagine I would demand, like, you know, you wonder, I feel like if something like this happened to me, I have no clue how I would react. But I imagine I would demand like some Valium or something.

Like, I imagine I would want to like tamp down my feelings. And honestly, once I was on Valium, if I had something to say about the ribs, that would make sense. Right. So I do wonder sometimes, like, maybe there's some sort of like, maybe you're drinking. Self-medication happening. Right. Like, who knows?

And so I hesitate. maybe you're drinking medication happening right like who knows and so i hesitate but again like i feel like at the very least you haven't under you wouldn't be happy i imagine like you wouldn't be like gleeful unless you just unless you just had so much ambient like you're like not even a person anymore you're on a different plane of existence yeah yeah i don't know i don't know right and i mean again this is all with a grain of salt because I just don't know. But it just wasn't a good look. So that becomes very clear. So December 26th, the day after Christmas at 5 p.m., police show up at Scott's house with a search warrant. And from a police point of view, yeah, they're there to look for clues, but they're also there to gaugeott's behavior and keep an eye on him and see

how he reacts so according to a rolling stone article quote once again scott was hesitant to cooperate with the police in ways that might prove his innocence like taking a polygraph test but he seemed more concerned with protecting himself it was more strange behavior from a man who supposedly had nothing to hide to hide And one detective told People in 2005 that during the search warrant, Scott's major concerns were not Lacey. His major concerns were making sure when a police officer opened his car door, it wasn't hitting his other car door in the driveway. Ooh, not a good look.

Okay, so they talk about this in the documentary, and alongside that, apparently, while they're all meeting to discuss what to do and search for clues one of the officers puts a glass of water down and scott runs out of the room to go grab a coaster to like put under the glass and it's sort of like time and place buddy you know and read the room read the room like why why is everyone here today like yeah and the whole point of them being there too was like to watch his behavior. And so he's not putting on a good show here for himself. Like, so there's like the TikTok trend of like, I don't know if it's not like one of the bigger trends, but it is a video that's been circulating of like, what's one thing you've learned from like watching true crime TV?

And like, at the very least that the police show up, like be on your best fucking behavior. But like, take a guess what they're here for you know because they're like even if they can't prove anything with like oh you put a coaster there sure that doesn't prove you murdered anyone but it's like they're not they can turn on you they can decide we want to pin you for this yeah and they can change their attitude about you so yeah even if like you real quick and so even if it's not necessarily proof of anything like you want them on your side if you don't do it this is your time this is your if you want an alliance you're not going to get a better shot than right now so yeah exactly and so he's like don't scratch my car. He's like, don't get water stains on my table. You know, like, clearly he's not, his priorities are kind of skewed.

So it was this police search of the Peterson household that tipped off the media to the seriousness of the investigation. According to Rolling Stone, all of a sudden, the handsome, charming husband was a viable suspect. was a viable suspect. So by December 27th, the media had gone cuckoo bananas for the story. And news trucks swarmed outside the Peterson house on the regular. And with this ferocious media attention, people were able to watch Scott's behavior really closely. A lot of the news anchors found that he didn't seem to be grieving, nor did he ever want to speak to them, like speak on the news to get his wife home. And this was the opposite of what we were getting from lacy's family like lacy's dad for example collapsed at a press conference and like started sobbing and begging for his daughter i mean it was really god that's so horrible i mean i'm stating the obvious here but like jesus like

it's really heavy and awful and you see like her parents are having like meltdowns and going on every and it does make it quite a contrast because their parents are going on i was gonna say channel it's like a like a stark difference stark contrast and they're going on every channel and they're saying like anything anybody can tell us like blah blah blah you know and they're like sobbing on camera they don't they don't care about their pride or anything they're just they're like damn like crash into my car door a million times just let me have my kid back 100 100 and so when he refuses to talk to anybody or even like you know leave his house or whatever people are like not getting a good vibe about it um and one person who had huge suspicions from day one about scott peterson was our pal nancy grace i love nancy grace so if you are some so if you're someone who doesn't necessarily know who she is or

maybe need a refresher on who she is um rolling stone gave a great descriptor uh saying she's a former prosecutor making a name for herself as a bombastic legal analyst on cable news and i think that's probably the best way to describe her she's like a southern like she's a pistol i stole yeah firecracker nancy grace was on in my house all the time i'll never be able to not hear that accent in my head just oh my god her acts she is like she does not give a shit she does not give a shit her and judge judy i think could be really good friends yeah either friends or like two mortal enemies or like geo and scooby who are just too close too close so do you actually know because i didn't know this until this documentary like nancy grace's background and like why she does what she does i no i don't i had no clue my mind was blown by this

so i guess in the docu docu series she gave like a little blurb about like her background this is how in-depth this fucking thing was we're getting nancy grace's backstory in the i know wait did we get martha stewart's in episode three what hang on. We saw clips of her. She was in the documentary. I was like, wow, this is a very layered series. No stone left unturned. The meringue. Did we find out what the meringue? But wait, is there a recipe for meringue near anywhere in this? You know, great question. I'll get to that. Actually, I do have the answer for you. Interestingly enough. So Nancy Grace, apparently apparently which i didn't know it's really tragic so she and her husband when they were really young or her her boyfriend they planned to elope and uh one day she got a call at work and her husband had been killed in a workplace

shooting oh my god her fiance i guess so he had been at work and somebody had been let go and the guy came back for revenge and like shot her husband holy shit and so obviously that sent her down a really dark hole and she decided to instead of pursue the path she was taking she decided to go to law school and become a prosecutor wow that's how everything kind of built into what she does now which is like crime reporting on cable news i feel like prosecutors like i feel like there's a probably a large amount of prosecutors that have a really like like there's a motivation behind why motivation that's a good point yeah i bet and so i just had no idea so it does add kind of to her story of like why she's so bombastic and like in your face and like ready

to just fucking call you out if you do something wrong yeah and she said like i was a victim second hand of a crime and so like i take it very seriously when people are victimized and so you know she if she thinks someone's guilty she will tell you and she and so you know there have been times where i think you know she maybe took it too far or she was on the wrong side of things so you know she is very controversial but um in this case she was like scott peterson did it from day one so uh she features prominently in the six-part documentary um she says from the get-go she said something was off about scott she didn't know what but she knew something wasn't right um on december 30th of 2002 more shocking news came through. So this is where there's the first big break or potential break in the case. So Detective George Stow of the Modesto Police reports that on Christmas Eve morning, the same morning that Lacey vanished, across the street from the Peterson household, there had been a burglary, a home invasion.

That's convenient. Okay. invasion that's convenient okay and so he described that a witness by the name of diane jackson had seen a suspicious vehicle and suspicious people in front of the residence at 11 40 a.m on that tuesday morning and the reason they didn't know about it until december 30th is because the family who had been robbed was on vacation so they came home on the 30th and found out their house had been broken into and so they obviously told the police so now there was like a whole new piece to this that on christmas eve there had been a burglary across literally across the street from her house um that morning that she vanished and you know what

that sounds a lot like it's not identical but it sounds a lot like the chris watt story because there were like people across the way who saw like a weird van parked in the in their driveway or something i remember there being like some additional testimony later of like oh but it didn't make sense how he would be like bringing garbage in at a certain time or bring the car to that side of the house yeah yeah yeah yeah like it's like a totally different angle like a brand new angle that has like nothing to do with anything so far um and so this had obviously just been only reported and so now it adds a brand new angle that has like nothing to do with anything so far um and so this had obviously just been only reported and so now it adds a whole new element um however the theory was quickly dismissed because police reported that the burglary so this is where things get a

little fishy for me um okay which i hate to say but police reported that instead of the burglary happening on christmas eve when lacy had gone missing it had actually happened on the 26th of december but there is an issue with this line of thinking because nobody can really prove when the burglary happened and there were local reporters outside the outside lacy's house on the 26th like oh morning and they were who could have broken in and the reporters were like i was there at 5 a.m or three like starting at 3 a.m there was nobody this is like a dead end street like there's nobody i would have seen a burglary happening across the street right so it's a little bit fishy and it's still debated like because if the burglary did happen on the 24th

that's a huge deal like if she was literally walking the dog and a burglary did happen on the 24th, that's a huge deal. Like, if she was literally walking the dog and a burglary happened, like, that's a big deal. But they dismissed it and said, oh, it happened the 26th. But all the reporters were like, we were here. We did not see it happen the 26th. But I mean, like, so what's the argument supposed to be, though? Because I'm reading it as if there was a burglary. I guess you could say, like well then maybe like a burglar is the one that did this to her but i feel like it would have been scott planting a burglary so

people would think that so there was a burglary they arrested the suspects um like it was fully it happened they have the suspects they went to prison um and the first thing the suspects or the not the suspect the burglars said was like we had nothing to do with that pregnant girl so they were already like we know about this story and we don't want to be pinned for it obviously they're going to say that either way um sure but they were very much there was very much a burglary it's just debated when it happened okay and some people actually some witnesses say they saw her interacting with the burglars yeah and somebody one of her sister-in-laws says like if somebody were burglarizing

the house and she saw it she would have done she would have gone over there and like something she was the type of person who would have gone over and said like what are you doing and so there's some controversy there of like if there was a burary, it's not unlikely that she would have gotten involved or tried to step in. OK, there. And maybe that's why the dog was walking loose. And another neighbor says, oh, I saw her talking to two men. And so maybe that was the. But again, if this happened on the 26th, then it's all moot. It doesn't matter. Got it. Okay. So it's really kind of a big controversial point.

Do you have a side that you follow more? Not really, because I have a really hard time grasping the facts of it. I feel like nobody has a real fact on it. Like the police just said it happened the 26th. Okay. And it's like, but why? Why? Like, why why like why did it how do we who can prove that especially if the reporters are saying no we were here there was nobody here i don't know i'm really flummoxed i guess by that no no gotcha okay no problem i don't know i don't know i did not mean to put you on the spot there no i

mean it just ticks me off because i'm like if if we knew that would be a huge deal it would be a huge breaking point yeah so who knows um on december 31st of 2002 the town of modesto held a public vigil in honor of lacey and connor and now this is an important note here okay sc. Scott declined to speak at the vigil, but he was there. Okay. He was in attendance. That's fine. And unfortunately for him, press photographers were also in attendance and captured him in two damning photographs that would haunt him through the rest of the case. One of them is with his niece.

They're lighting a candle, but he's like smiling at something she said. And so he's like grinning and holding this candle the other picture is of scott standing around with a group of people laughing and obviously yeah we don't want to be assholes after amanda knocks really yeah it's a skewed perspective because it's like sure if if you're like at a thing crying and someone says remember that time lacy did this and you smile about it and someone yeah you're smiling at the vigil it's like but it does it does it does imply i get like i don't want to make any wild assumptions but it does imply that like the hey check out these big ribs on my plate yes is a consistent personality trait right now you're completely right i think it's this combined with all the other shit that just like the media was like here he is again if he

didn't already if he wasn't already acting so weird then i think the two pictures of him smiling would have not been that made such a such a an impact splash yeah i completely agree i completely agree um so these are the pictures that kind of obviously get splashed all over the fucking news and they're like look he's laughing and he's smiling um especially because meanwhile lacy's family all spoke at the vigil he was the only one who did it um like begging for the return of their daughter and grandson um and so at this point the police are like okay we need the public's help to figure out where the hell scott peterson was leading up to christmas to like verify his timeline right so

according to abc news police start their search combing the waters near the berkeley marina where scott allegedly went fishing that day because it was too cold to golf right so on january 5th divers using sonar equipment searched the Berkeley Marina. And over the next couple of weeks, volunteers and family continue searching for Lacey. And then there is a massive, massive plot twist. That, in my opinion, is the nail in the coffin. Okay. What?

A mermaid comes up and says, Scott did it. Like, what? Like, basically. Okay. So not quite. Well, let's just put it this way there was a press conference january 24th and the whole country was like prepared for this because or was like on edge for this because nobody knew what the hell this was going to be about because a lot of the reporters at the time had sources that were releasing details to them regularly but this press press conference came out of the blue at the time had sources that were releasing details to them regularly. But this press press conference came out of the blue.

Not one reporter had any clue what was being announced or what the big deal was. And they were about to find out. So as the press conference began, a woman with blonde hair nervously walks up to the podium and introduces herself as Amber Fry. She tells the audience that for the last five weeks, she and Scott have been engaged in a romantic relationship, and she had no idea he was married. So Amber Frye. So this. So, okay.

He's having an affair. Uh-huh. He's having an affair. Not a good fucking look. And he's engaged. Now he's engaged to someone else as if he, like he got rid of her so he could get married well he's not engaged to her sorry i meant like he's they've been engaged in a romantic

relationship but like they're not engaged engaged but still he's with somebody and now a different woman in theory got rid of lacy so he could be with her one of them's out of the picture precisely couldn't just fucking break up with her but okay so amber fry is a massage therapist and single mother who was introduced by to scott by a friend in november okay so the timeline is very important here so lacy vanishes december 24th amber fry meets scott november of 2002 so well before lacy vanished does that make sense yes so lacy is seven months pregnant also so fucked lacy's seven months pregnant with their first child and he starts an affair with somebody jesus christ like really fucked up like all the other stuff aside really fucked up so also like every

time that he's been like smiling and happy and everything like one i would be i feel like you and i are on the same page here we're like i wouldn't even be able to smile one because i'd be distraught but like two if i'm guilty i would at least be really fucking guilty and paranoid and like not even able to smile but two like so amber was seeing him in the press this whole time and like so amber was seeing him in the press this whole time and like maybe you're about to tell yeah you're about to find out exactly the timeline because that's i mean it was bound to happen right like he's all over the fucking news i'd be like first of all you're with somebody else and second of all like you're like acting happy and your behavior is weird and like 100 that was like the order of events like she didn't even know he was married

and now all of a sudden it's like wait wait you're you're not only married but like plus all these other things baby along the way uh potential murder suspect not even acting afraid about it yep yep yep so they met in november and when they first met he told amber that like her he was looking for the one oh my god yikes Amber had no idea she was being introduced to a married man um and in early December around the same time so early December a couple weeks in they were photographed at one of her work Christmas parties um and like they're like holding on to each other like they're clearly in a relationship in this photograph and like even during the trial they put that photograph up next to a photo of what lacy was doing at the exact same time and

she was with her family and was like super pregnant and was sitting on the couch in like a little christmas sweater oh my god it's so fucked like he's with her at her work christmas party telling her telling lacy like oh i'm busy at work or whatever. And meanwhile, Lacey's like seven months pregnant at home. It's just like, what are you doing, guy? So around this time, Scott told Amber he had something to tell her. Now, this is important for the timeline. This is early December. Okay.

Early December. So he tells Amber, I have something to tell you he tells amber i actually have been married but my wife died and this will be my first christmas without her did and he did he say how recently she had died or how and this is the like first week of december it's oh she's not even dead yet she's vanishes december 24th so he had plans he tells her my wife is gone and this is my first christmas season without her and i'm really sad and it's like um excuse me so that is for sure like he had been thinking about her dead for a while before actually doing it. How fucking stupidly twisted is that?

And also, like, does that mean that he was, was he, he already had the plan in motion? Or do you think he just, like, came up with a reason? I don't know. If he found out, if she found out he was married and then he realized he had to follow through on it? You know, I don't know and later amber asked like calls him out on it on a phone call and she says why would you tell me your wife was gone before she ever even vanished and he says well amber there are different ways for people to be gone out of your life or something like he makes some stupid comment saying like well she was gone in my like really like in a oh you know he's

trying to insinuate like oh she was just out of my life emotionally but it's like that's not what you said you said she was not dead this was your first christmas without her like uh-huh it's so stupid like fucking a it gets worse okay so it does i know so he says this is gonna be my first christmas daughter he didn't really go into more details but obviously she was like wow that's terrible his wife has passed and yada yada and he says amber i promise i'll explain more to you when i get back from my christmas travels in europe probably with that wife that vanished huh yeah my wife well he says i'll i'll tell you more when i get back from europe is he in europe no he's not in fucking europe we know he's not in europe okay yeah that's right

like this is december when she's okay so we'll get to that but amber hadn't really been following the news much but then on december 30th a friend was like hey girl um hey best, bestie? Girly pop? Hey, girly pop, are you busy? Happy New Year. I have something to show you. So this friend shows her this newspaper clipping. I hope it's the friend who introduced them, by the way, because that's super awkward. Needs to be a full circle.

Needs to be a full circle. You got to step up, bud, whoever you are. So this friend shows her and is like, is this your Scott Peterson? And she reads the article, like um is this your scott peterson and she reads the article like obviously is fucking horrified and is like yeah this sounds a lot like my scott peterson and is pretty quickly like fuck that's him so she immediately uh calls the police and is like hey fun fact i'm actually in a relationship with this guy so of course they're like ding ding ding

this is a huge break in the case uh-huh and they're like how would you like to do a press conference in five minutes yeah literally this poor woman got sucked right into the fucking headlines of course god um and you know she could have just ignored all of it and but she did the right thing and stepped up and said i have something to say and before actually uh this press conference they said okay you talk to scott a lot on the phone we're gonna run to radio shack literally and pull some some equipment so we can record your phone calls and she's like all right let's do it and this poor woman is like petrified because now she's like talking to a potential murder suspect about his dead wife and he doesn't know she's recording their calls

and he doesn't even know she knows who he is and she has to lie like also like how would he think like why doesn't he think if he's fucking like if you're in the press and you're in the headlines and you're like a huge case right now why wouldn't you think your girlfriend would eventually find out you'd think so you think he'd at least be like so paranoid around her like you'd think and he just like went with it and she for the time being pretended she had no clue who he was you know in reality so she calls or so he calls her so they set this like radio shack situation up and within minutes he calls her and this poor woman has to like just try to bait him into saying something but also act like totally normal you know um so she takes a call the police are all

right there gathered around her she records over 29 hours of phone calls with god over like wow a week or two so this wasn't just a one call thing. This was a, we're going to get a lot of information out of him. 29 hours. Um, and so this whole time, every time she calls, he goes, she's like,

where are you? And he's like, oh, I'm, I'm in Paris right now. Um, I'm in Rome right now. Oh my God.

On December 31st, Scott called Amber and told her he was ringing in the new Year in Paris with his friends Pasquale and Francois. This guy just loves to make up a story, huh? Pasquale and Francois. He goes, oh, Pasquale's here. And you can hear all these people in the background. Guess where he fucking was? Ruby Tuesdays.

Lacey's Candlelight Vigil. Oh, no. ruby tuesdays lacy's candlelight vigil oh no it was new year's eve the one where he didn't speak and her whole family spoke and he got captured like smiling and laughing and whatever wow well done well done christine by the way on the storytelling that just i mean every time i hear that my jaw drops it's like he was at her fucking vigil for his dead or potentially dead wife and son. And he's literally calling her and you can hear him go, oh, Pasquale is here. Like, what are you doing? Do you think the pictures that they got of him acting all happy?

Are there any pictures of him on the phone? He's not on the phone in those pictures so you do wonder like if he just stepped away to the bathroom and called her and said oh i'm at the eiffel tower the by the way the fireworks are beautiful he's literally at his yo imagine vigil imagine being someone at that vigil next to him though and hearing him so happily on a phone go like i'm at the eiffel tower i'd be like that man is suffering like that man has really lost his marbles man needs some help right i'd be like he's like hit that poor thing he lost his wife and he lost his mind like everything yeah

little did you know he's lying to his fucking mistress girlfriend saying he's like uh with his friend pasquale i mean it's so insane it's no to self if you go to a vigil and you hear someone from now on saying that they're in europe like maybe listen to the rest of the phone call just maybe yeah take it for what it's what it is and tell somebody yeah so just so and and by the way amber knew this which is also horrible because she's on the phone pretending like wow is it beautiful and she like knows because she sees the news that he's at this fucking vigil well i'm sure the cops too were like let's call him right now and see what he would do yes like yes that makes sense and so he's just like falling right into this fucking trap and saying he's in europe with his friend Francois what on earth um and so it's just batshit crazy so Scott had no idea the police were aware

of his affair or that Amber was recording their calls um poor Lacey's family had or Scott's family had no clue about this affair at all um so and by the way i want to add to that lacy's family this whole time has been defending scott and has been like oh my god like they like they are in love they love each other he would never do anything to hurt her like when the media is like going after scott the whole time her family's like no that he would never and so it's like extra heartbreaking because they're on his side this whole time and meanwhile he's in the background talking to his girlfriend it's just really sad um do we find out maybe i mean maybe this is too early to ask but do we find out later if he did this purely so he could have a relationship with his current girlfriend so that's one of the theories but

we actually don't know oh my god that's so frustrating i know it's it's this is i think the what sent him what what put him in the camp of guilty for most people but again it's not like outright proof of anything it's just a bad look so again we don't have like full proof but he's not painting himself into a good light let's just put it that way um so in mid january of 2003 police learned that the national inquirer had found a photograph of amber and scott together and intended to publish it and so the police were like now we want to tell lacy's family about this before it gets leaked to the media and they have to find out through the news so apparently according to the documentary when she was shown the image of scott and his girlfriend and told what was

happening lacy's mom sharon like basically dropped down put her head in her hands and said for the first time after defending her son-in-law through everything why did he have to kill her that's just like what she blurted out and this whole time she's been like scott would never do anything he's our family he's our son i mean hey once you've got like proof that like he is at least a little bit not who you thought he was like it's probably really easy for that like the floodgates to open and completely because like at this point you're trying every everything in your power to defend him despite despite everybody else pointing fingers. And all you want to do is defend him. And it's like, how far can you go? I mean, at this point, she's eight months pregnant and he has a relationship. What else is he lying about? You know? Yeah.

The Rocha family, which is Lacey's family, completely turned on Scott. Understandably. So the family turns on Scott. Scott's family finds out also about this affair. And they're heartbroken because they had no, I mean, and also like Scott and Lacey were really close. Their families were really close. And now both their families are finding out Scott has been cheating on her. Even in the best of times, this would be like a really,

really horrible discovery. Like if both people were alive, this would not be good. Especially with the baby on the way. Like it's really a betrayal on both sides of families. Um, so on that note, since I have so many pages left,

I think I'm going to do a part two of this next week because I don't want to like rush through like four more pages. And we're already over two hours here. Oh, my goodness. So I'm going to save this next part for a part two, Emothy. And if you are one of those people who fast forwarded all the way to the end to see if Christine's baby made it. Surprise! No, I'm just kidding. Not yet. Not yet. people who fast forwarded all the way to the end to see if christine's baby made it uh surprise no i'm just kidding not yet not yet well uh until then i guess uh do we know do you even need an app anymore to tell you how big this baby is because i'm pretty sure it's the size of a baby

it's too big i can tell you that much um let me see because i think it was something fun this week um uh so we're several weeks ahead because of because we're recording in advance but when this comes out it'll be the size of bruiser from legally blonde if you have a literal chihuahua isn't that funny um and then uh 80s and 90s nostalgia is a McDonald's Happy Meal from the 80s. Fun. And now I combine the two and I'm like, was that Chihuahua really as small as the size of a Happy Meal? I know. I wonder.

Well, the picture they have is like this one. Can you see the red picture? Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh, I remember the box. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, plastic um i don't

know why they ever got rid of those those bags by the way like that you wanted a happy meal just for that probably because they were it was cheaper to just give shitty oily paper out i know i know back in my day um so that's that yeah and sorry i didn't know this is going to be a two-parter but i feel like this is just there's still so much um to discuss very excited to hear about it so many more pages that i don't want to have to rush through so that's that on that no worries well story i uh hope you and the little babe are well uh hope you, Em. Hope your contractions don't get any worse. Me too. One day they will,

but then they won't happen ever again. How? Yeah, one day they will and I will call you to be like, fuck what I said the other day. I'm going to be in a total... I bet you everyone who's listening who has had a baby is like, girl, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.

You're literally talking through this. You're fine. You're fine right now. So I have a feeling that's exactly how it's going to go. I don't have any doubts that I'm going to be suffering. So you'll hear about it. You'll hear very loudly about it. I'm sure we will have to have a whole special episode dedicated to you telling us why you drink because you can drink because i can finally drink oh my god we should have a patreon special that's

just like first happy hour back all right well uh we'll see y'all next week yeah and that's why we drink