And That's Why We Drink - E253 The Funcle Takeover and the Crimes of Christine

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

Who's guest hosting episode 253? Well, let's just say, it's very high and he doesn't like ladders... it's Uncle Xandy! We have the sorry fool who shares blood with America's Hircine Shifter here to tell us a true crime tale from his family's German hometown. But first Em brings us part one in a series on a personal urban legend from their own hometown: The Bunnyman Bridge of Virginia. Then Xandy covers serial killer Jürgen Bartsch and talks way more about castration than he planned. And thankfully we can confirm that Christine hangs curtains better than the Bunnyman... and that's why we drink!

Welcome to That's Why We Drink, where we do things three times, which means I have someone here who's related to Christine, who every now and then it's in the blood that you mess up. And we started recording and then something went wrong horribly. So we're back at it. Can you guess who it is? It is the one and only famous Uncle Zandy in the house. Welcome.

And also, did you like that intro where I kind of roasted you at the same time? Yes, thank you. It's not like I do this for a living either. That's the worst part. If it were someone else you think oh okay they're not used to podcasting this is all i do i appreciate that we are two podcasters who do nothing but um make oopsies all the time so i appreciate it um but oh i see i just almost knocked my microphone uh no but real quick shout out thank you again to eva for being here for the

last couple episodes uh she was a real trooper and now i've got another person in the hot seat to take the reins and assert dominance uh on will christine come back or is someone just going to be so funny we have to fire her i don't know you just revealed my plan to everybody what from your childhood bedroom you've had it planned all along if i pan my camera up a little you can see her name is still on the wall up there it says now you're gonna have to do it oh there it is in the corner she's branded you for life wow oh no and i couldn't get it back to where it was so now it'll be there the whole time. That's exactly what that was her plan. She had a whole baby just so your brand on your wall could show up on a show. Oh no. Oh no. Do you have a story for that? And also it looks like stickers. Can you not just take it down? I probably can. It's

very high and I don't like ladders. So that seems like a Christine was on a ladder dangerously situation. Yeah. So before we go any further, reminder to everybody, you're a brand new uncle and I would be remiss if, uh, I didn't ask you for an update on the baby slash Christine slash your life as an uncle. Yeah.

Uh, it's obviously been wonderful, but, there's not much to report other than she's really freaking cute, but yeah, very boring and a great way. Like you go over there and hang out and she's just chilling than she's really freaking cute. But yeah, very boring in a great way. Like you go over there and hang out and she's just chilling. She's just lying there.

You're like, hi, you're cute. And then you, oh, you give her your finger and then she like holds it. And it's so, it's amazing. It's lovely. It feels so great. But that's it. Like for me, because I don't do anything. I don't help.

Right. Well, I wouldn't either. I'm the uncle. I just go over there for fun whenever I want. That's the best part. You just get to kind of stare and then leave. Yeah. And marvel at all the different amazing technological baby things they have.

When I was at Christine's house, she had all these little robots that are going to do like half the job of like a mom in the 1800s, you know? Yeah, exactly. It's like they're just there now. That's crazy. No, but congratulations. She is wildly cute. I was just saying this, but I was nervous.

I didn't know what she'd look like just because, I don't know, babies come out looking like little raisins. And I was like, hopefully she grows out of the raisin stage. She didn't even have a raisin stage. She just showed up like a cute, precious little baby. It was very weird. It is so weird. I met her, I want to say two days or three days after she was born. And she looked like a cute little baby. It wasn't even like a,

oh, this is clearly a newborn. She literally was smiling like five seconds after she was born or something. Like every picture Christine sends me, it's like she already knows how to pose it's stupid it's it's like if if you saw that baby in a tv show playing a newborn you'd be like okay like they brought in an older ringer in this great actor but no she's an actual resume does this baby have three days in to life uh well anyway i do appreciate you coming on and we really booked you for a few episodes i was not expecting you to say yes to all those but i very much appreciate it so everyone buckle up for uh funko lemon uncle sandy taking over uh and that's where we drink yeah do you do you have a reason why you drink this week um other than nerves for this not really

okay um i have been drinking while playing runescape a lot i don't know if you're familiar Have a reason why you drink this week. Other than nerves for this? Not really. Okay. I have been drinking while playing RuneScape a lot. I don't know if you're familiar with RuneScape. I don't, but my cousin is a big RuneScape fan and has told me I would really like it. Okay. I play old school RuneScape. I don't know.

You might like it. There's new school? What's new school? So I'm not... This should be its own episode. So, there was a split, I think, in 2007 when they updated RuneScape and a lot of people got really upset because the graphics are technically much better,

but it feels like a completely different game. Right, it doesn't have the nostalgia, cozy feeling. Yeah, so some years later, they released old school RuneScape, which has the original, not the original original, but the 2006-2007 graphics. And they still add updates to it, add quests to do, so there's still a lot of content there. And I've been playing that a lot recently, and that's been my life for the past week. and um that's been my life for the past week so i you sound like how i probably sound about pokemon cards i every day i learn a new thing and i can't wait to tell allison about it just for her to roll her eyes and walk away but it's like i just realized yesterday that there's one pack that

i thought i had finished the collection and i found out there's a whole other secret expansion I was like I lost my mind I was so frustrated because I thought I finally accomplished something but um I think you and I could probably swap trivia on those things if there was ever a Pokemon card roomscape trivia situation I think we would be pretty good I think we'd do well I don't know anything about Pokemon cards, so I'm glad you're there. Except yesterday on my TikTok for you page, I saw a video on what the, one of the cards in a Pokemon pack, if it's a specific green, a dark green, it means there's nothing rare in it. But if it's a lighter green, it means there's a holographic card in there.

And I was blown away. I was, I thought, well, that's a spoiler. That kind of stinks. Our algorithms are starting to snuggle you know uh-oh uh-oh um no but uh anyway we really could get off on a tangent quickly your own sister who usually co-hosts this has already turned off the episode so that was the plan i know i know now we could say everything we want i am shocked that you're not telling a true crime just just, I mean, taking advantage of this moment and just saying all the awful things Christine could have done in her life. I mean, really, rat her out. You have a full platform. Believe it or not, I don't think she's committed any serious crimes. At least, okay. She's committed moral crimes, I'm sure i i'm certainly uncomfortable with some of her choices

have you seen how she hangs up curtains anyway no i don't think so is that a thing oh god it just i mean she's christine you could probably guess that it's like not right did you see how she deflates an air mattress she just lies on top and goes like like flops on top of it over it which is more of a universal thing. It's not just her. That woman. Okay, never mind. We're really.

Okay, maybe that'll be next episode. Okay. We've got some time. Okay, so I have a story for you. It's actually going to be a two-parter. So next week, everyone gets to hear how it ends. But I was just visiting you and or i was visiting christine i got to see you in your hometown and so i thought i would do a hometown

story for me i tried to find a cincinnati hometown story i hadn't covered yet and i couldn't find one so i made it about me i'm just going to tell you my personal urban legend that i've been waiting to do actually since we started the podcast but there was never really a lot of information i always thought it would be kind of a dud and when i looked it up this time apparently a lot of updates have happened since i last checked so we've actually got a whole now it's whole two-parter versus like a paragrapher. Anyway, this is the story of the Bunnyman Bridge. Bunnyman Bridge. That bridge is not a last name, is it? Is it an actual bridge?

Bunnyman is not a first name either. Well, I don't know. I thought it may be some folk singer. Bunnyman Bridge. Actually, that does sound like a vinyl you would buy. Yeah. Yeah. No, Bunnyman Bridge is an actual bridge that in high school i was always so mad at my mom she always told me if i ever went i'd be grounded and uh for some

reason i listened i went to every other abandoned haunted property but i listened to her on bunny man bridge but it was the legend of my town where well my version version is very much on par with what I'm going to tell you. So I'll keep it secret for now. But Bunnyman Bridge is in Clifton, Virginia, which is maybe 45 minutes away from my town. And if people want to learn more about it, there is a short story collection called Dark Woods Stories of Urban Legends and Folklore. There is a 2011 horror movie named Bunnyman, which apparently is a slasher film, which I'm sure is perfectly horrible. It was also discussed on Lore in season one. It was on Scariest Places on Earth, which I don't know if you remember that show, but the narrator was like a crazy little alien woman who's very

weird. Like actually? Her voice was crazy. I think she, well actually her voice was crazy i think she i will to be honest i think she's had a really thick southern accent and a really high-pitched voice but i my whole childhood i thought it was like a literal like someone landed out of a ufo to narrate the show okay now i need to watch it just because of that fact nothing else because i mean just i think it'll i want you if that person did audiobooks today i would not be able to listen to them in the dark it's still so terrifying to me um also i'm sure she's a lovely person but like um and then also the bunny man bridge has also been featured on the chris gethard show which i feel obligated to say because the last time i mentioned

the chris gethard show i had not heard of chris gethard and i called him chris get hard hard and he heard it um apparently or someone one of his people reached out and was like you need to redo whatever but i think we did an ad some sort of ad for his show. Oh. Or we were doing some sort of something. And I definitely said, Chris, get hard. And no one told me to change it. I mean, if I have an ad, if I release an ad, and my name is even, I think, easier. I don't know. It's still hard to pronounce just by reading it for some people.

But I would provide a pronunciation key for my last name name for that one i feel like you really should i feel like i certainly couldn't have been the first person to ever say that like especially like at least i said it unintentionally but i imagine like seventh grade locker rooms are really horrible for him oh god also like i don't know why I was the idiot and, like, didn't try intentionally to not say get hard. That was just what I, I chose to take the risky route. And then finally, Bunnyman Bridge has been featured most recently on Adult Swim during Family Guy. How they do, like, those little Adult Swim random commercial bumps that are like five seconds long. Bunnyman Bridge was featured on that. Weird. This is so, this is, I've never

heard of this, but it. It blew my mind. I had never, I would have never thought that Family Guy would pick that of all things, but it actually makes a lot of sense because one of the reasons I didn't cover this for a long time was because I felt like there was such scarce information, and then they picked it for a five-second commercial bump because that's all you really need to tell the whole story if you're doing a quick summary. So I'll read it really quick. What came up on the screen in between Family Guy episodes

was the classic black screen with the white font, and it just said, Obligatory October spooky thing. The legend of the bunny man in Fairfax County, Virginia. There were two separate reports of an axe-wielding man in a bunny suit yelling threats. That's the whole story. Adult swim.

So that's the log line. That's the log line. But I'm here to give you more information now. Please. I'm hooked already. If anyone was watching family guy that day and was like i need more about that fella you're about to get it so the bunny man bridge is actually called the fairfax station bridge or it's also called the colchester overpass again in clifton Virginia Google Maps uh takes the name as Colchester Overpass or Fairfax Station Bridge or the Bunnyman Bridge fun fact and versions of this legend vary um in terms

of what the Bunnyman himself looks like or who he is or what he does or who he kills or if he kills or how he kills every it seems like there's a million different versions of the legend sometimes he's just like a bunny and he kills people sometimes he kills bunnies sometimes he eats bunnies sometimes he hangs bunnies from the bridge so that you have to drive underneath the mangled bunnies sometimes instead of bunnies it's teenagers sometimes it's teenagers and bunnies i mean it's a little bit everything what is he does anyone ever think he's a bunny no he's always a human dressed as not like love and frog man or something no it's not that cool at all which by the way loveland frog man was going to be the thing i covered for you for but then i think we already covered it and i was

like that's the only cryptid I know locally. Yeah. Oh, excuse me. You're related to America's cursing shifter. Wow. You're really trying to keep that one under wraps. I understand the shame. That's okay. I'd be embarrassed too.

I'm related to it. It makes me uncomfortable. Honestly, I would hate to be the sorry fool who has to share blood with the shifter. Okay. who has to share blood with the shifter so um okay so yes it's never expected to be like a man-sized bunny or a bunny-sized man but it is always a man dressed as a bunny a bunny-sized man that would be one for the books i think i'd like that one the best i would also enjoy him i hope i hope there's a little versions of that one day. So anyway, whatever the version people have heard, it always boils down to the same basic points.

And the main story is that somewhere in the very early 1900s, the number I usually hear or the year I usually hear is 1904. But when I was in high school, we just said like, oh, a long time ago. Um, but anytime you ask for specific, your people have said 1904, there was a mental hospitals bus that was transferring patients from their hospital to the Lorton prison. And this was from the Fairfax, I don't know, asylum. I don't know what word they would use back then. So they're transferring the patients over to Lorton Prison. The bus crashes, it topples over and the doors fly open and all of the patients scatter. And the hospital staff try to gather everybody, but one escapes. And it's depending on the story or version you've heard.

Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's two. This patient's name was Douglas J. Griffin. And if you are a believer in the second, the two patients escaped version, then it's Douglas J. Griffin and Marcus Walster.

So I always heard the story of just douglas escaping i never knew about marcus until i did these notes and in the second person is that like an accomplice do people believe it's like an accomplice or he ends up being the first victim oh okay i'm getting ahead of myself i'm just like yeah also like let's take a moment for me to say like i'm very aware of like how this is like clearly a very old legend and not painting people in mental hospitals as um you know anything other than villains like let's just address that now um but anyway get ready for a really horrible trope about people checking in to mental hospitals. So it was Douglas and Marcus.

So Douglas apparently can't let anyone find him because he would obviously get sent back to the hospital. So he lives out his days in the woods. And I guess he picked an area that was very um rabbit heavy in terms of the wilderness and so he lived off the rabbits and during the winters to stay warm he would not only eat them but he would use their fur to stay warm which is by the way how he becomes he's in a bunny suit by christmas i guess or something um so it's a suit made of bunnies. Not because when I first heard it, I thought he went to,

um, like a party store or whatever and got a big costume and was just a walking bunny. When I first heard it, I thought it was like, like an Easter bunny gone mad or something. I was really confused, but no,

apparently it's just a bunch of multi multi bunny coat if you will it's like the the ed gein or leather face but instead of doing it with human bodies it's bunny bodies also i just remembered you're a very staunch vegan wow sorry about this okay so are you are you having fun i mean you're not you're not doing the skinning like in front of me like this is a so he is doing it privately he respects others practices so that's what it is so uh so he dresses like a bunny and oh and sometimes he's killing the bunnies for food and the part that i guess makes no sense to me but I guess we get away with the trope of like, oh, he was mentally ill,

so we don't need to have a reason for this. He would eat the bunnies and then he would hang their bodies on the bridge. My thought process, because I'm desperately trying to like do mental gymnastics to like figure out why that would have happened at all, is like maybe they dry out in the sun so he can get their fur faster i

don't know but he hangs them over the bridge so that way anyone going through the bridge has to drive under this little curtain of dead bunnies what's your common image are you having fun sandy this isn't even your last episode i'm sorry This is part one of the bunny hanging curtain. Great. I wonder how my sister would hang curtains, bunny curtains, because apparently she isn't too good at that. I didn't even put that together in my head.

Okay, she hangs curtains better than the bunny man. That's like a good place to start. Good, phew. Okay. Okay. So again again sometimes he kills teenagers and also hangs them on the bridge and there's another version where he only shows up on halloween so like you're safe any other day of the year and i don't know about the bunnies are they safe every other day i don't know i don't know he like just a year kills a year supply of bunnies on halloween just a massacre um yeah what if maybe that's the day where like bunny's gonna break or maybe it's the day where humans get a break and that's that's where we are uh i feel like i keep mentioning that he's hanging

things up so let's just quickly go past that so there's a whole bunch of versions but the way that it basically ends is that either the cops gave up after a while of looking for him because he was a runaway um or they they gave up they just assumed he died out in the woods so they never looked for him again and it became like a cold case but the other version which i hadn't heard um was that the bunny man actually did almost get caught by the police eventually but as they were about to catch him they were all cornering around him or circling around him bam hit by a train they just apparently were cornering him on a train track don't do that on the track i was

hoping you'd say like the bunnies for some reason took his side and attacked like even though he's been killing them all these years or whatever they finally came to a an agreement they uh for that day only they had a stalemate it was like stockholm syndrome or something i don't know they they just felt bad for him he's clearly had a checkered past anyway so the that story goes that i guess he he got hit by a bus and now his ghost is what haunts the woods which i guess as time goes by it makes sense why he has not aged. But I guess that serves that explanation. There's usually someone around when they're telling you this legend to be like, Oh, and by the way, if you don't believe me, there's proof of it at the old Clifton Library.

And I say that because there's a lot of holes in this story. One is that the old Clifton Library does not exist um oh it just that's a pretty big hole it's it's clearly like someone just repeating what they've heard and it's like oh that's a big old gotcha also the so fairfax county never had a mental hospital to transfer people over to lorton prison and also that couldn't have happened because lorton prison wouldn't exist for like another 15 years or something plus it wasn't even in like virginia's jurisdiction it was like part of bc so that would have made no sense also there's no county records of either patient that escaped um douglas or marcus also 1904 i feel like buses like that was an early bus that

was i feel like the bus didn't have to crash for the doors to just open you know i feel like that i feel like they were made of wood or something you know so anyway all that to say there's some pretty big holes that were just completely disregarding but there's one guy out there named brianley, and he was the person who, like, cracked the case that, like, finally gave me a reason to be able to even cover this as a topic. Because before that, that was the whole story. That was just what we knew. But Brian Conley, he works at the Fairfax Public Library, and I guess a bunch of people kept coming in asking about the Bunny Man. And at some point, he just snapped, and he was like, I don't know.

No one knows. I don't know. It's a legend. He snapped and became the Bunny Man and came full circle. They're passing the torch. He's finally – they needed a new source. So he decided that he was going to figure it out once and for all for everybody what is going on, who the Bunnyman is, even if it exists, or at least where the urban legend comes from. So he actually wrote a paper called The Bunnyman Unmasked, The Real Life Origins of an Urban Legend.

And I guess this is like the smoking gun of like at least telling us where the inspiration for the story came from. So I guess when he did enough digging, he realized that there was really no mention of the lore of Bunny Man Bridge or even like a fake story about someone at an asylum or being, you know, this car crash that everyone escaped. He was like, there should definitely be newspapers

about that um so he didn't find anything until the 1970s about a man in a bunny suit and this is allegedly a story from 1904 so there's like 60 years where no one's talking about it so there's a pretty good chance that the origins of this started in the 70s, especially because he found two back-to-back incidents in the same area that had to do with a man in a bunny suit. So it was mid-October 1970, and one guy named Robert Bennett and his fiance were on the way back home from a football game and they were on the 5400 block of Guinea road. And I say that because they were on the 5400 block and the second incident was on the 5300 block. So it was literally one block away from each other that these things happened. So they were on their way home from a football game and they stopped by their uncles and they decided to park across the street from him in a field i am going to go

on record and say i don't think they were going to go see their uncle because it was midnight and they parked in a field so i think that was just a real nice cover when the cops wanted a like a witness of report or something but so yeah they were in the fields hanging out in the car. And shortly after, one of the windows is smashed in. And they look to see what happened. And there's a guy standing outside of their car in a white outfit. They're freaked out. But in terms of fight or flight, thank God he did not freeze. And Robert was able to drive them out of there.

But as they were driving away, they saw what smashed the window in, and there was a hatchet on the floor of their car. Which, like, if I were the bunny man, I'd be pissed that I lost a good hatchet. Yeah, that sucks. That's like $30 at Home Depot. Yeah, and then how do you kill all your bunnies? You got to go make another hatchet with what? Don't you need a hatchet to make a hatchet or something?

I feel like, hang on, how did he get the first hatchet? Was this the first hatchet with what you don't you need a hatchet to make a hatchet or something i feel like hang on how did he get the first hatchet was this the first hatchet was it like the 30th when he's throwing a car maybe he was just trying to like do some axe throwing before it was cool oh that's so he he drives off they see this hatchet in their car and they hear him screaming uh you're on private property i have your tag number which i was expecting something more festive and bunny themed but happy easter i don't like i have some carrots like i don't know what i was expecting but my whole life because i really did grow up with the story since i was at least 15 and i always thought like i never knew the bunny man could speak first of all but now i'm finally at almost 30 realizing he can speak

and those are the first fucking words i hear that's disappointing yeah it was really anti-climatic so it's just a guy dressed in white saying you're on private property a very unhinged guy but not unhinged enough like Like still needs some bunny beams. He's not rabbit looking enough for me. So when asked for a description by the police, Robert said that the guy was in a white suit and he had bunny ears on his head, which I guess he still swears by,

but his fiance was like, um, ixnay on the bunny ears. They were not there, but he was wearing a white cap caparote caparot which apparently is like one of those very tall cone-shaped like like religious hoods like kkk so no one said that in the notes but i certainly got the same thing because i'll send you a picture in the chat yeah of what these look like and i mean you tell me what that looks like especially the

white one right in the middle let's see oh yeah oh is that like a spanish thing it's apparently a spanish it's for people who are like um repenting it's like for like i think some ceremony where you're like actually intentionally repenting in a way where you hide your face from everybody so that way everyone's focused on god or something but it sure as heck looks like something else and in virginia why would and in virginia in the 70s in a very rural town yeah and it's and it's like i'm not to like i'm not trying to say that like all of a certain group are okay okay that's not what i'm saying but i am saying i imagine people who just throw axes into people's windows because they're on your property yeah are equally as you know disturbing to hang out with i will just say or

maybe not equally but still i don't want to hang out with either of them you know and this is such a niche item if you have one of these and you're in virginia in the state like if someone wore that in ohio i like in the 21st century i'd be like if someone wore that today i would be like do you know what's happening because i feel like we're in different worlds right now like you can't even get one on amazon like so how did this guy in virginia get one of these things and also i mean it really at the time it was definitely in in the sticks so weird it no one said that in the notes i'm so glad you said i'm so glad you offered that information or offered that thought up because i certainly was thinking it the whole time it's just interesting and also

i would be so fucking upset if all i ever wanted to do is go to the bunny man bridge just for the bunny man to like be a white supremacist i can't take it i can't do it, Sandy. The only thing worse than just being boring is being a white supremacist. I mean, in terms of like Beach Too Sandy, like if I'm writing my hometown legend now, like it's certainly not a five like I thought it was. Anyway, he's wearing, I kind of now really hope that Robert's right and he was wearing bunny ears, but it would make sense because he thought they were long bunny ears, but it could have been like that hood flopped over or something. And he said he was in all white. It really, honestly, I was so excited to do these notes. And then when I read that sentence and I looked at the picture, I went,

oh, fuck. I was like, that's not the direction I was hoping this would go. I wanted to find out he was a literal animated bunny. That was all I wanted. So the cops never found out who it was, as far as we know. But they did. This is a fun fact out of all of it. Because they never found out who the person was.

They never, they just gave them the hatchet. They were like, you can have this. So they actually kept the hatchet fun fact and they have it like on a mount like they're like this is the hatchet that got thrown at us and that was the very first incident of someone in a bunny maybe suit or a very racist suit one of the two and a week and a half later there's now a second incident where this guy named paul phillips he was patrolling a building that was under construction so he was part of the security team and he saw a man in a bunny costume with a hatchet walk onto the property

and he apparently this guy was about 20 years old he pa Paul said that this guy looked like he was 5'8". And he had a hatchet. And as soon as Paul tried to tell him to leave, he started chopping at part of the porch with the hatchet. Oh, no. Which I like that he, now he has a second ax, at least. We figured out that mystery. And again, as soon as he says, like, you need to get off the property this bunny guy he starts chopping at the porch and screaming you are trespassing if you come any closer to me i'll chop off your head

oh god which like a quick a quick decline from even just throwing a hatchet and saying i have your tag number now it's i'll behead you yeah and like walking up to their house and doing this especially when like you're also trespassing to even be here to tell the patrolman that he's trespassing so this is where i started to think okay this guy ironic that the storyline goes that someone that was part of like a mental institution ended up breaking away when like i don't even know if they knew they like that was a story that they made up before we even had this information and it seems like this person is not mentally well i mean literally throwing axes at people like i mean something's not unpacked there but it's just a weird likeshadowing, but also hindsight kind of situation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this was found out so much later, but about the past, so long in the past. What are the odds that the story was not right, but it had a thing to it that was not totally wrong? So anyway, he's just watching this guy chop on a porch. Which, by the way, not only is he trespassing, but he's now vandalizing other people's property. And Paul, as a security guy, went to go grab his gun. But as soon as he went for it, the bunny man ran off. Both cases led to nothing.

There was no solid evidence. But the story obviously spread like wildfire because there's two people saying that a guy in a bunny outfit and a hatchet are running around chopping on things. Everyone wanted in on the story and the cops ended up getting bombarded with calls about bunny man sightings, not knowing if they're true. Maybe people just wanted to be involved. Newspapers were starting to cover it nonstop. And here were some of the first articles that came out about the bunny man they were titled man and bunny suit sought in fairfax the rabbit reappears bunny man scene bunny reports are multiplying so

it's just i appreciate the attempt on the pun there and robert and his fiancee the people who had the first incident there was never an official record of it happening but to this day they still say it's true i guess the the guy from the library who was fed up with not knowing the information literally tracked them down and was like can you confirm that you're actually like your part of the story is valid that's wild imagine not talking about that for probably years if no one knows it really they didn't talk about it for years they said that he said that they still seemed really bothered by it but then again it's like i wonder i mean i totally get if like the situation genuinely happened and they were bothered by it but i also wonder like maybe people found out they were part of the story and they just got bombarded their whole life and

it's the last thing they want to talk about now but um for the second incident though there actually was a report on file of vandalism which good and i guess when this guy was going around trying to get as much information as he could about the bunny man ended up getting a hold of a redacted copy of the vandalism report which does confirm the general storyline of, a subject dressed as a rabbit with an axe. Wild. So we at least know in the 70s, a rabbit with an axe was going around. And the case, after that vandalism incident, the case ended up getting handed off to a detective named Detective Johnson.

And when he was going around the area and interviewing people, seeing if they had if they had any insight or if they'd seen anything he ended up at this construction company and they said that they saw nothing but as soon as the detective left they called him back and they said um you're not going to believe this but the ax man just called us and so which freaks me out too because like back then i didn't have like like caller id or anything or they didn't have um like for all we know if unless they check the phone records which i don't know about this guy could have totally been making it

up and just wanted to like be part of it and so he just decided oh when he leaves i'll just pretend the guy called me but anyway he so he allegedly called this construction worker immediately after a detective was there questioning about it. And the ax man said, quote, Mr., you have been messing up my property by dumping tree stumps, limbs and brush and other things on the property. And you can make everything right by meeting me tonight and talking about the situation okay very convenient that people are looking for you and now you want to meet up so the cops arranged like a sting operation but the guy never showed

so that makes me feel like this phone call it was like very convenient that all of a sudden he had information right when the guy left but It's so funny how boring the problem here is. You've been dumping some stumps around. It does seem like it was the original guy if he's still complaining about people's properties. Yeah, yeah. That at least lines up. And weirdly, I wouldn't be surprised if that's actually just the issue. It's like, hey, I feel like i have the rights to this place so i'm gonna dress up as a

bunny and also in a small town anything is news so like if your big issue that week is that someone put their trees on your lawn everyone's gonna hear about it my dad just texted me two days ago and he his best friend who i don't even think he talks to all that much anymore like he's like one of his longest friends but they don't really talk they just kind of know that they're you know they miss each other and they'll call if there's an emergency apparently his son he was was uh given the title Homecoming King. And my dad, who lives in a very small town, like when I used to live there, there was 400 people in that town.

And they know everybody, blah, blah, blah. He texted me a picture of this random kid I've never met as Homecoming King. And he texted me with, you got a call soon, so much to talk about. And I was like, no, there's nothing to talk about. I couldn't care less about this. You've missed so much.

I'm not even going to be able to remember all the details if you don't call me right now. So all I'm saying is if this guy was so peeved about his trees or trees on his property, if my dad is texting me that kind of bullshit, this guy is for sure telling someone that kind of bullshit this guy's for sure telling someone that kind of bullshit anyway also fun fact he calls himself the axe man not the bunny man which is interesting i wonder if he's insulted by the bunny man i mean it does make him seem

kind of fluffy and fun it's not even rabbit man like it's a little little baby bitch rabbit like i've got an axe don't you see that come on i can kill you he's like really trying to butch it up and he's still bunny man you know so anyway the cops arranged a staying operation he never shows it could have been a prank call but if it was him the voice at this point does uh the voice apparently sounded very much like a late teens or an early 20s which corroborates with the other incident where the guy was like he was in his 20s okay no um weird because yeah when i first hear about bunny man i think like i don't know 50s 60s really gruff kind of person i don't know this is weird interesting yeah so he's apparently could just be like a guy trying to

make a name for himself. Or maybe he's just bored as hell in this town where like someone's homecoming king and I got to hear about it from across the country. So, yeah. So in his 20s. And plus, not only are the cops trying to find leads for who the bunny man is. But now because it's such a small town, it's getting spread like crazy. And there's parents that are worried sending their kids home or like this was like the era where kids would just walk home and no one paid attention to that and now they're like oh someone with a fucking axe is in

our woods so uh there were a lot of kids hearing about it at school and everyone wanted to one up each other i'm sure and so all of them started telling their parents that they knew the bunny man or they were gonna go see the bunny man. And so now the cops are also dealing with like all these false reports because all these kids say, oh, I know the bunny man. And I guess it leaked that he was in his twenties. So maybe it could have been someone's older brother. And then, so it just became the talk of the town. Yeah. When I'm thinking back to my time in middle school, I'm sure there are plenty of my friends,

older siblings that I would think would be the bunny man. Oh, I already know in my, in my childhood, who the bunny man would have been if I knew him. Yeah. That was like, and also I hope that person knows that's what I think of them,

you know? Yes, that's true too. Anyway, that is the first half of the bunnyman Bridge and we'll find out more next week. Lovely. Oh my gosh.

That's exciting. Um, yeah, no, I'm, I'm excited for part two now. I'm, look,

I am so stoked that I finally, I've been wanting to talk about this one for so long and I just kept putting it off. And when I ended up seeing how much information there was at all of a sudden, I was like, Oh, I finally get to do

this and also i i feel like you were a prime candidate to hear the story not because you're a vegan and it's about dead bunnies but i feel like it's silly enough i feel like you know it's a good good gabber you know yeah it was a very good gabber and then i have a really i don't know nothing like good comes out of these true crime ones i don't know what the hell i'm doing here it's yeah well but i guess it puts pressure on you that puts pressure i feel like that puts pressure on you to like thank you forcing some finally saying it yeah well i it really does i have to have a je ne sais quoi when it comes to somehow making true crime that are real people's lives. The trick is you've got to find the jokes that have nothing to do with the story.

You've got to find, like, when Christine says Zeptember instead of September, I'm going to ride that way for as long as I can. Because it has nothing to do with, like, someone's, like, horrific story. And I don't want to, you know, fuck that up at all. So as long as you maybe mess up a word, I was going to say, I'll probably mispronounce some things. Perfect. Well, it's funny because I was going to start by mentioning that this is something that happened in Germany. Um, and my sister probably always tries to pronounce things very German. Um, I will say when we, when we coerce her enough. Yes. Yeah. Well, I, um, I will go in and out there. It's funny. There's certain things

that I'm going to be American about, but then the other ones I'm like, I don't even know how I would say that in as an American. So I'm just going to say the more German. And I actually, I've never heard you speak German. I've heard Christine do it, it but not you i don't know if i'll actually do it it'll just be like towns and things like his name this person by the okay dun dun dun is jurgen barch which is not how you say it in german but i'm gonna say it that way because i don't want to have to you know um so uh jurgen barch and i looked i found him because i lived in essen germany uh which is a town it's like an industrial area of Germany it's um like western in the in the west somewhat close to the Netherlands and I googled serial killer Essen Germany because I thought oh I want something your hometown

it is where my dad was born and my grandpa on my mom's side was born. So there's a lot of family history there. So I found him and my mom knows about him. My dad knows about him because the murders that he committed took place in the 60s. So it was between 1962 and 1966. And it was one of the more the first high profile cases uh because of the media involvement in germany well specifically west germany here but east germans were also like obviously invested in this yeah so here we go the story of jürgen barch do we do we find out at the end that like

you're accidentally related to him or something shoot i didn't think about that i don't think so no when your parents are bernie and renata anything's possible it's just always get nervous and then you're bringing it to their hometown oh no oh no you're right you're right my dad does say things like oh yeah you're related to this uh this distant uh bastard son of this prince in spain i'm like okay okay, dad. I saw your dad for like 30 seconds when I was in town and the things that came out of his mouth just blew me away. I was like, I, it's, it's too early in the day. I was like, you gotta go. I talked to him about this yesterday. I brought it up again. I said, oh, you know how I'm doing that one case? And I forgot

Jurgen's name. Cause I was just blanking. And he started singing a song. And I was like, that's not the name of the guy I'm doing. And he was like, oh, yeah, that's just another serial killer that I know about. And they had a song to him. Is that not Christine in like 30 years? Yeah, exactly. I get it now. I sat there and I thought, I get it.

You know, now that she's a parent, it's going to be a lot easier to compare them. Just saying. That's so true. Oh, God. Oh, God. Sorry, Christine. Sorry. I didn't mean it.

I just meant it. Okay. Take it away. Okay. So first, I'm going to give a little bit of background on him and the murders, but then get into some other meaty things about the case that I really enjoyed. Is that the right word? Enjoyed researching. The research was fun, but it was not, not fun at the same time. So yeah, he was a West German serial killer. He was born Carl Heinz Sadrzinski, uh, November 6th, 1946

in Essen, Germany. His mother, uh, was sick in the hospital after giving birth and died five months later she had tuberculosis yeah so he spent his first 11 months of his life in the hospital without a mother um there's no there was no mention of a father so then a family a butcher and uh his wife adopted him and renamed him jurgen Barch and brought him to their town of Langenberg. Wow. That's like Langenberries? Not quite. I'm not trying to be funny.

That sounds like that would be where Langenberries come from. I think those are like a Swedish thing, Langenberry. But yeah, Langenberry. I don't know if it's famous. I think now it's not even a town. I think it's technically just a region that has the name Langenberg or combined with another town. But so I don't think there's anything too interesting. I appreciate your really solid answer there, though. Not what I was expecting. Well, that's maybe the last time I

give a solid answer to anything, but we'll see. So growing up, his parents were very strict and also abusive uh one of his friends described them as quote completely overprotective and emotionally withdrawn his mother sexually abused him as did his cousin oh shit his mom bathed him until he was 15 while he was in school the parents thought that the school wasn't strict enough, so they sent him to a Catholic boarding school. And while he was there, he was sexually abused by a priest. God, oh my God. Yeah. So, and then meanwhile, his dad, his main focus was his work and his butcher shop. So there was a time later during the trial where the dad said that he couldn't testify as a witness because he was too busy with the shop and didn't want to close it for a day. So even after his son is on trial and he would have been a witness on this trial, he was like, oh, sorry, I've got work. And then this is and like.

Hmm. I don't mean it. I don't mean it. It's more European, though, to not be super emotional. Right. But that's still, I don't know anything about that, that world. That's still like super fucked up even there. Right. Yeah. I'd say, Oh yeah, definitely. It was definitely. And a lot of that, that I know that is because, you know, there was this, there's a lot of media around this case and a lot of people, uh, were very upset with how the parents raised okay um raised him so there

was a lot of outcry about that but uh so jurgen also worked in the butcher shop and hated it but he said the reason why was because he didn't really know what else to do with his life he was like this is a family butcher shop um making some money uh and he said butcher's world i'm just living in it yeah exactly and i don't think there's too much else to do in in lung and bag so uh but he said that the actual slaughtering of the animals he didn't like so he worked the register uh which meant he could steal money very easily from said register. And he used that money for things like taxis to get around to find his victims. I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. I thought you were trying to make the word taxes sound cute. Oh. I thought you were little taxis. He paid his little taxis. He paid his little taxis. And I was like, good for him. Good for him. I'm so sorry.

Yeah, his victims were all tax collectors. Taxi collectors. Oh, little taxi collectors. Well, speaking of which, okay. So the murders now. At the age of 15, he was 15 when he committed his first murder and it was an eight-year-old uh klaus jung yeah and then his second victim was 13 uh peter fuchs and then a 12-year-old ulrich kahlweiss and then finally when he was 19 he committed his final murder which was killing

12 year old manfred grossman gross whoa so he was so in those four years he killed four minors yes so he was a he was a minor himself when he started the murders at 15 but he killed an eight-year-old boy then a 13-year-old boy a 12-year-old boy, then a 13-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy, and then another 12-year-old boy after that. Holy crap. And that's interesting because I remember you saying that the slaughtering animals did not appeal to him. Yeah, yeah. And that's what he talked about. And then yet here he is.

And they were brutal, too. So he first found the victims uh either within his town or he'd go to these parish festivals so another name for him is actually like the carnival killer because he'd go to these parish festivals and give tickets to the boys to uh kind of win over their favor oh gross and then he'd tell them that he was a detective and uh or that he worked for an insurance company because he said there was a suitcase that was full of diamonds in a tunnel and he needed a witness to be there and that he would pay them so um wow he would then invite them to uh a pub like i think on the outskirts of town uh give him some apple juice buy him an apple juice which

very i like how i was gonna say through all of this like the kid can't have a beer before he's about to like go down to a tunnel with you okay whatever i'm glad he has his values yeah right whatever and then he'd give them 50 deutschmark um to come with him to the tunnel and it was also within the tunnel it was it was very confusing because I used multiple sources, but within there, I think was an unused air raid shelter, which is where he'd actually commit the murders. So this was a few miles outside of town. It was near a cloister. And once he lured the boys there, he would beat them up, tie them up. Uh, then he would sexually abuse them. Um, he sexually abused all of his victims uh then he tortured them to death dismember them and then bury them in the tunnel oh my god holy so it was a very control thing he would always

and he stated that he wanted to torture his goal was to torture them to death he wanted them to suffer until they died also i imagined if he was already doing that on the first try like he had been thinking about this for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a, let's see what happens situation. Yeah.

Yeah. No, exactly. And he was, it was just, yeah, it's awful. And then there was an intended fifth victim,

uh, Peter, Peter freeze, who barely escaped. Uh, he was tied up in the air raid shelter and barge every, um, night at 7.

PM would go to watch tv with his parents i'm so sorry right because he's a child i forgot yeah yeah and so that was part of the thing he'd go home watch tv with the parents and then come back so 7 p.m hits we had to go but uh peter said hey i'm like really scared of the. Please don't leave me here. It's too dark. So he left two candles behind. And so Peter went up to the first candle with his ropes. He was tied up with ropes to burn the candle, but the candle went out. So thankfully, though, he was able to burn the second,

sorry, burn his ropes with the second candle and escape. And that's how he ended up getting caught, was Peter went and told the authorities wow and uh barge confessed to everything um yeah so that's uh that's like the the murders there are a lot of details that i left out because i'm like i'm reading these it's just brutal some of this stuff i obviously and i felt weird because i didn't want to downplay what these victims, what happened to these victims. At the same time, I'm like, this is too much. I felt sick reading it.

It's a fine line. It's a, it's like a shitty fine line. Like there shouldn't even be the fine line of like, like it's also, it's their story. So you want to honor it, but also like it's, it's, it's rough. Yeah. I get it. Especially if it's super brutal. It's like, are you telling it because it's entertainment or because it's like valuable to the story?

Yeah. And I think what a lot of the value to the story comes after the fact. Because, and that's what I'm going to go into now. Because this was, like I said, a very high profile case. And it had a huge impact on the German justice system. Really? Yeah. Because at its first trial, so there were multiple trials,

the first trial he was tried as an adult. This was at this point, December of 1967. He was found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison because there was no death penalty. So that wasn't an option, but he was sentenced to life in prison. I think it was five actually consecutive life in prison terms however the sentence ended up being appealed because his lawyers argued that he was a minor and oh and they couldn't do that well it was it was because not just that he was a minor but

that wasn't really an aspect of the first trial. They didn't consider his age and they didn't consider his psychological, they didn't do any sort of psychological evaluation. And they specifically complained about the experts, that there were no expert witnesses to testify about his psychological state. So they felt, and at the time during all this, there was so much media around this case.

So they said that had also a major impact because it was a very quick first trial um and sure enough a federal court of justice in west germany ruled that the original court uh hadn't gotten the proper experts to make the most informed decision uh so then four years later he was tried a second time. That was 1971. But between 1967 and 1971, the courts, the police, Bartsch himself, and then his lawyers, and lawyers on the prosecution received hundreds of letters from all Germans. And they gave quite a few different opinions. And there was this whole research article detailing these letters, some, they had some excerpts from these letters. And it was fascinating to read what these people

at the time thought about the case, because these were all also published in the newspaper. So you could just go read the newspaper and see, oh, this person in Munich thinks that Bartsch should be hanged in the streets. It was like the original Reddit, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's just a forum, just a random forum of people. You can just say what you want, basically. So I'm going to go into some of the examples of these

letters. So first, on the subject of expert witnesses, here's a direct quote. Someone said, What will the expert witnesses who want to examine the brain his brain and his cock cost so the main i'm sorry like his penis yeah yeah because it was because of the sexual uh nature of the of the crime too there are a lot of people worried about that just picking that out of nowhere okay yeah so they wanted they wanted these they were wondering

though what they would cost and how much the taxpayers would have to pay. And there was a women's association that said, quote, he is a murderer and remains a murderer despite expert witnesses who just want to make money. Oh. So people didn't want them to go too in-depth and just kind of toss him away and say, hey, like, they were just like, look, he's a murderer. Just treat him as such.

Right. And speaking of which, a lot of times people would write in about the Nazi party because... Would they? Why? Yes. So this was the late 60s, early 70s. And people would link it to Adolf Hitler and say,

hey, if Hitler were here, we wouldn't be going through all this. He'd be dealt with really swiftly. So people were praising how Hitler would treat this case. And people also would point to Nazi laws for sterilization. They would say that he deserves to go into a concentration camp. Whoa. Kill him by firing squad. Oof.

Yeah. And that was actually 5% of the letters that were written in mentioned Nazis. So. Fascinating. Yeah. Horrible, but really interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

And there was a, there was someone, a soldier, who wrote in saying, I was a soldier for eight years and in four areas of war, but I never saw such a sadistic child murderer. Which, for this research paper I read, they basically said, yeah, they're downplaying what the Nazis did, if this is the worst that they've seen, because of how the atrocities that the Nazis committed. Good point.

So a lot of people were trying to bring up the Nazis, but weirdly in a way against, sorry, weird. Yeah. And against the murderer and like pro Nazi, it was, it's bizarre.

It's bizarre. But yeah, and that speaks to the politics at the time, West and East Germany. It was very, not that I know too much about it. I've taken some courses, but yeah, it's politically, it was a very weird time for Germany. But yeah, so then, like I said, people wrote in saying, oh, just hang him, even though that wasn't

even an option because there's no death penalty. And then, so instead of there, since there's no death penalty, people would write in and say, actually release him to us. We will deal with him. We will handle it. him we will oh my god the public will uh give him what's coming to him wow so this is like just the most polarizing like this is like everyone's in a everyone is in a position yeah first is as of opinion yeah they they and they all think that they know what's best most of the time um and one thing that he said was that he was a magician by hot like that was one of his hobbies was magic and he was actually a member of a magician's guild or something and they had to revoke his status because of the press they

didn't want him to be a part of their organization which fair fair enough i don't blame them and yeah i mean if yeah oh i was gonna say nothing continue i was just gonna go off on a tangent Sure enough. I don't blame them. Yeah. I mean, if... Yeah. Oh, I was going to say... Nothing. Continue. I was just going to go off on a tangent, as I usually do, and you said magic, and my brain magically forgot that we were doing a podcast. So, anyway, keep going. Well, because of the reports of the magic, a lot of Christians would write in, because

they think magic, they think the supernatural. Didn't even think about that. They talked about that this was the work of supernatural demonic forces. Right, like it's obvious that this is satanic behavior. They said there must have been hypnosis involved. They talked about superstitions. And then, yes, like you said, some people thought that it was a battle that he was waging between God and the devil. And so then they'd write in and say, oh, I'll help you.

I'm a Christian. I can help you find salvation, basically. But the Catholic thing gets even worse because, and I didn't find this out until I was reading about these letters. It turns out that Barch confessed his first murder to a priest. Oh, like the eight-year-old um yeah yeah so he killed this eight-year-old and then told a catholic priest and said hey i did this and the priest said go tell the police but of course the priest did not tell the police himself because that

according to the catholic church would be grounds for excommunication you are not what a silly little thing that is isn't that it's awful so there were a mix of letters about that a lot of them because once that was reported people a lot of people were rightfully very upset saying that the priest should be charged for this because if he had told the police it could have saved three boys lives and and almost could like thank god the fifth one escaped but like he really he could have just let this he could not it's not his fault in total but yeah if that one guy hadn't escaped later on there could have been 10 deaths exactly yeah so true and so the fact this guy, this priest knew and didn't do anything. And weirdly, like, yeah, of course, I think it's wrong that he didn't tell the authorities.

But at the same time, it's because his church told him that he will basically lose everything that he's worked for in his entire livelihood and his life, what he's devoted his life to, if he goes and tells the authorities. It's quite a system they've built themselves yeah and of course there are some people writing in who said actually i'm so glad to know that this sacred oath is still intact yay and it's it's just so messed up and also like what was that guy sorry what was that guy doing like what was the priest up to when he kept reading the news and finding out people were dying the exact same way? Like, he wasn't thinking, like, uh-oh, like, this doesn't feel like God's work anymore, keeping a secret. I can't imagine what kind of justification you'd have to go through, like you mentioned earlier, the mental gymnastics to try to justify not saving more lives.

It feels very anti-pro-life, if you're asking me. Oh, interesting, interesting. Interesting. And there's actually a recent case, 2014 in Louisiana, because I was curious about this, if that were still the case. And sure enough, the Catholic Church still, no matter what it is, if you even treat someone differently

because they confess something to you, if you even tell someone that that person confessed something, even if you're vague or don't say what it is, you can be excommunicated. And in 2014, there was a sexual abuse case where the priest was in this position where either he testify and be excommunicated or he not testify and be put in jail for contempt of court but then the court ended up ruling that a priest has no duty to report confidential information heard during a sacramental confession so even in 2014 the court said you know what actually like you're good priest you don't have to tell us anything. So it sounds like those where I feel like we're in 2021. Things, you know, things are so different than they used to be. And then it's like, hmm.

Yeah, exactly. That's why I looked it up because I thought, I thought, oh, people are going to listen to this and think and tell, tell me or something, DM me and say, well, actually, nowadays, but sure enough, they're still doing it. I don't know. That's just wild. It's bananas. So then some of the letters were about his childhood and growing up. And I think one of the most poignant letters, I have the actual full thing written out here, was from just a man who wrote in about his childhood and was somewhat trying to relate his past to Jürgen's past. So he said this, I'm able to recall very clearly that when I was the same age, starting at the age of 15, these hideous sadistic fantasies started, which I thought of every night in my imagination and then printed on paper. Who knows whether these fantasies would have remained imaginary

if I had not had a safe and sound family full of love. Going through puberty, these fantasies totally stopped, and now I am not a habitual criminal, but a respected middle-class academic through and through. I am convinced that the criminal acts of Barch are the result of a coinciding of many unfortunate circumstances, which allowed him to act on his sadistic urges, which are more or less a side effect of the sexual development of any human being or any male human being,

but which can be overcome with care and security and which will go away all on its own. So it was like this argument at the time of like nature versus nurture, where like, was he born this way and no matter what he would have uh but then obviously people like this are like well his past didn't help him his situation that he was in didn't help him so oh it's just very i feel like anytime nurture versus nature gets brought up you can always lean on well like oh well i wasn't you know yeah it's the same kind of argument it's it's i could talk about nature versus nurture forever it's so fun but i i do notice the trend there's a you know

the common thread yeah and um people in this case specifically talked about his work as a butcher because some there was a mother who wrote in and said this is awful that he had to work for his family in this butcher shop which many people wrote totally primed him into this yeah yeah and they like maybe taught him skills there that he ended up using um and then he got really comfortable around blood and yep yeah and said that that must have had a very big psychological impact on him plus if he's doing magic he's used to throw that together. You got a blood sacrifice. There you go.

There you go. It's all combined. And so, yeah, so then people, there was one person who said, for the sake of justice, you should put a class of students between the ages of 6 and 14 and train them as butchers and then to see how they react and their sensitivity levels to different things. And so they wanted to conduct these experiments when, I don't know, I feel like you can just say, hey, yeah, that has potential to mess someone up.

Not every time maybe, but yeah, I could see how that could mess you up. It's an expensive study when you kind of already could just find the point. And it's like, okay, we've got one really fucked up childhood let's make some let's make a handful more why not just just for the sake of science you know but yeah so uh this case showed a major like psychological shift in germany and it showed like how like how um the changes are to like the way people viewed serial killers, the justice system, and then it ended up the justice system has been geared more towards rehabilitation rather than punishment. And people credit this case as one of the causes for that, where this is where the whole attitude about punishment or rehabilitation, um, where it shifted in Germany.

So interesting. Yeah. Because sure enough, after the second trial, he was, instead of being sentenced to multiple life sentences, he was sentenced to 10 years of juvenile detention and then placed in psychiatric care. Whoa, what? Yeah. Major change.

So they, because they thought that... Wow, complete 180. Because they thought after all these expert testimonies, they thought, you know what? Maybe there is actually a chance for rehabilitation. Wow. Yeah, and the story doesn't quite end there. While he was in psychiatric care, he started to receive plenty of love letters, which I'm sure you've heard about plenty of times on this show, of people writing into serial killers. It's like the Ted bundy effect or whatever yeah expressing their love and uh he actually married one of the women

while he was in psychiatric care oh no gisella ike i think is her name yeah gisella gisella and that was in 1974 and so then while he was there, there was another letter. This letter was about, again, a person writing in about their own experience. This was someone who had been convicted of sexual abuse. They withheld their name to protect their family. But what they said was that the only way to help him would be castration because the person writing in went through castration himself. because the person writing in went through castration himself. And he said, quote, I am a happy human being, live like all the others and participate in the economic rise. So he basically put this idea out there that castration would be the only option for him to actually be to reintegrate into society to stop any urges that he has wow there's you know there's a uh i and i it was

like one of those things where i like it was like next in my queue or something i wasn't really paying attention and eventually i watched it i looked up at the tv and i was like what the fuck am i watching it was like a whole documentary about castration and like the controversy behind it and people it was i still don't necessarily like my opinion does not matter on that but i remember watching him being like i've never thought this much about castration yeah i was like yeah i i it's just very interesting if you ever need to watch it was definitely kept my attention once i knew what was going on so i honestly have become more interested in it after reading about this case because yeah i did not know anything about it.

I still don't know that much. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a very strange thing to think of as a medical solution. Yes. It was, it was odd. It was a really well done documentary though, in terms of like, I feel like I learned a lot. And at the same time, I feel like something like that just kind of keeps your interest.

So I was like fungication but anyway if if you get bored tonight go watch a castration documentary i weirdly might um so in sure enough in 1976 he said okay like i want to do this so he asked that he be medically castrated and this was not something that they often allowed people to do. So they actually were normally not for this as a solution at the time, but the hospital said, okay, we'll do it. And then on April 28th, 1976, during the surgery, a mistake was made and Bartsch died of halothane overdose. Oh my gosh. Wow. I did not see it going that way. And the doctor had also killed other patients the same way and ended up being suspended for nine months for the mistakes.

They ruled it as a mistake. For nine months and a bunch of deaths? Yeah, killing multiple people with the same mistake gets you nine months suspension. Wow. But yeah, so basically to sum it up, this was the first case in Germany that includes psychosocial factors in the ruling. Wow, that's so cool. Now it's more focused on rehabilitation instead of punishment, like the court system.

Wow. What a wide gamut of stories we told today. Because we started with bunnies and we ended at castration. And in between was a lot of other horrible stuff. Yeah, I do have a fun fact. Okay, fun is not the right word. This is a little thing that I couldn't throw in, I think, but I found a little bit, let's just say telling. You'll see. I found a little bit, let's just say telling, you'll see. So at one point while he was in prison, I read the letter. He wrote a letter to the police saying how much respect he has for them and what they do. And if he hadn't ended up as a killer in prison,

he could see himself as a police officer. Oh, I'm just, okay. Which is not the least surprising thing ever. I know. I, okay. police officer oh i'm just okay which is not the least surprising thing ever i know i okay i i actually it's so weird i have a fun fact for you next week oh it's a real good one i think it's good i did not see it coming as as in terms of the bunnyman bridge i never heard of this and i have let's just say i have some homework because i'm not going to just tell you the fun fact. I got to give you a personal account of it. Okay. So homework for me to do?

No, I'm going to do it for you. I'll let you know how it goes. My homework is castration video. Yes, a thousand percent. It's graded too. I shouldn't call it castration video uh castration documentary it was definitely uh an educational film um speaking of educational films here's another thing that you should watch if you really want to get into the educational spirit i have really

i went through this phase a while ago and then it died down and it always comes back eventually but on youtube if you ever go and watch the old um 1950s 1960s psas about like how to be a popular kid and homosexuality and uh like dating do's and don'ts they're disgustingly funny now in today's world but it's like there's a there's like a two-parter psa about the homosexual and how you really need to watch out because they're coming for you. Oh, no. Anyway. What if it convinces me of something? Then you know what?

It was meant to be. Yeah, there was something wrong with me to begin with. I think if that's the way it's going to show itself to you, that's the problem. That's where we need to have a conversation. Oh, no. that's where we need to have a conversation oh no um but if you need like a palate cleanser after your castration documentary you can go ahead and watch everything about the homosexual of 1960s sounds amazing for for maybe the wrong reasons uh depending on i can't imagine saying anything that i'll agree with but um no that's the best part because everyone can circle together

and just watch how wrong it is and just cringe together. It's very delightful. Perfect. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you, Zandy. I'm so, I'm so happy you're here. And, uh, first episode in the books, how are you feeling? Less nervous? Less nervous. I feel good. I feel really good. I, it was lots of fun. Um, I knew it was going to be fun. That was not the part I was worried about, but, um, I, yeah, I feel good. I'll feel good until all the comments come in about it and how terrible it was. So everyone's like, you talked about castration a lot. Like, we really need to simmer down. My next whole next topic is just castration.

I was going to say, it sounds like it could be a two-parter to that doctor who was just hurting everyone during the castrations. Where can people find you? Because you've got your own podcasts. Yeah, I do. So my podcasts are Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet. You might know my co-host. And then... The shifter.

The Hercene shifter. And then my other show is Human Seeking Human. And I host that with my co-host Liz. And we read things from old newspapers to look at the ways people make connections. We look about personal ads mainly as our focus. And it actually helped a lot for my next topic because I went in a deep newspaper rabbit hole because that's what we did. We just read in newspapers. So I went in this deep newspaper rabbit hole for my next topic. So I'm very excited about that. And yeah, so then you can find me personally.

I stream on Twitch. I'm on Twitter. Not much. Instagram, TikTok, everything at Xandy Schieffer. X-A-N-D-Y-S-C-H-I-E-F-E-R. If you don't know how to spell Schieffer by now, that's how you do it. But yeah, so this was amazing though this was lots of fun i'm so excited for more very happy you're here i'll have to

either go check out runescape or we'll teach each other a fun fact about our each other's interest by next week i guess perfect that's fun homework even more yeah because five minutes after we hang up i'm gonna be on playing again. So. Okay, cool. Well, everyone goes, I guess watch you play that on Twitch.

That I'm, I'm on like 24 seven and I don't stream it because it's just like very boring, grindy stuff. And I like, I'll have to focus a lot of time, but yes, I stream fun things on Twitch. And,

uh, and you'll come back next week and then you're here for another few episodes so everyone hope you're hope you're having fun because this is what you get yeah and if not just skip ahead a month if you're just catching up here you know if you're yeah don't do that don't do that that's not there could be another there could be another guest or you could go back to like christine at least at least listen to m's part you know like like i i just realized i'm telling people to skip your podcast like i do that on my podcast all the time but i'm like oh no that's not okay christine and i are aware we we see people all the time saying like who their favorites are there's a lot of

people who skip my part for a true crime but then there's other people who are only here for paranormal it's a real mixed bag i'm sure people just hear our voices and just go, never mind. So anyway, yes, you can find Zanny pretty much everywhere on the internet. And OnlyFans? No? A fan and a Twitch viewer actually created an OnlyFans for me. Oh, that worked out better than I was expecting it to. Yeah, it actually exists. So I don't know if it actually exists anymore, though.

It was a whole fake OnlyFans page. It was amazing. And you can also find me and Zandy as Sims. I don't know if you knew that, but people have built families and we are Sims in like the gallery or whatever it's called where everyone can share the access. Oh, I'm in the gallery? I didn't know that. You're in there, I think. So anyway, everyone go check out our sims and it's the only

place you should find me forget everything else just go get my sim and usually we end where we say and that's why we drink uh i say the first word then you say the next word you ready and yes that's why we drink do we both say drink sure we let's say it one two three drink