And That's Why We Drink - E26 Homo-cidal Birdman and the Confessions of Shauna K.

Episode Date: July 30, 2017

Welcome to episode 26, featuring Alcatraz and serial killer Mark Twitchell! Christine’s phobia of birds is tested when Em tells us about “Birdman” and his baby canaries. Meanwhile, some guy chops off his own fingers and another guy decides he’s the real-life version of Dexter. If you want to date him, he’s on a Canadian dating site for inmates and is into “chess and rain.”

All right, welcome to episode 26, which is my age. Oh, well, we didn't say that about the last episode, which was my age. Well, I thought you would, but... No, I use a battery reference instead. The iPhone, the iPhone reference. Well, happy... What is it? What would it be called?

You know how you have like your... Golden, golden birthday. Happy golden episode. Oh. Happy belated golden episode to you. It's a little too late for me. I was a little wrapped up in how to do math in the last episode your golden birthday though was the your fourth birthday yeah how'd that go you know it was one for the books

a real rager i'm pretty sure there was a slide involved. Oh, well, but I can't be sure. You know, I don't know why adult parties don't have slides now. They really should. I would love a good slide. If I went to a party and there was a slide there, I'd be like, well, this is about to get real weird. In a good way. Good to know. I'm just saying at your wedding, there should was a slide there i'd be like well this is about to get real weird and a good way good to know i'm just saying at your wedding there should be a slide oh is that what you're saying i was really actually what i was trying to say understood if i tried to go down a dress uh oh you don't have to be involved just champagne in my dress it would have been it'll be a fun time for everybody i'm gonna be in a suit so i i can totally rock a slide

yeah no one's gonna also a moon bounce would be ideal for me all right you just write your list of demands and uh get them to me and i'll see what i can do okay all right cool those are my top two also get the blank check ready because obviously you're fronting all of these things oh with my magical wallet of endless money right okay yeah that okay looking forward to it great so anyway what's the haps nothing dad what's up you know at work i don't know who's listening at work to this but some i won't say who i'll just say someone at work told me this week that their pet peeve is being asked what's up what what the hell am i supposed to ask you what what why someone how is that a pet peeve like i walked in and i was like oh what's up and they went can you not say that it's like it's really my pet peeve

to hear that and i was like what the wait are you what am i supposed to say what are you supposed to say like uh how's it going that sounds like it's awful as well yeah what if you say like um hello good madam yeah like how fare you yeah on this fine afternoon good morrow good morrow sir has there been any news from town i don't know anything about old words i uh i've just been avoiding her because i don't know how to start conversation can't speak to a person unless you're like what's up because that's a normal thing to say i could say hey and then when she says hey back it's like back on me and i don't know what to do it's like maybe you just start talking about yourself i don't know oh yeah that's it well

i said what's the haps so maybe you could try that okay i feel like it's unique yeah throw her off anyway what's up i um can you actually not say that to me because it actually does make me highly uncomfortable okay good um i'm currently drinking white wine today i thought you should know which is a rarity but it's it's it's really friggin hot out so i was just is white does white wine make you colder well because it's refrigerated oh right refrigerated i have just only proven again that i don't know what alcohol is apparently i mean i actually think that oh white wine makes it cooler why not listen it might as well that's your role on the podcast so own it i mean if you were really that hot you could just get a milkshake like me i could but it's cold you know hot off the press, but cold off the machine. Sure, that's really clever.

So what are you drinking? The same thing I drink all the time. All right, you just get mad when I don't ask, so... Yeah, as soon as I have a routine down, all of a sudden you start asking and now I feel it. I used to mix it up and have variety. Not anymore. All right, well... I thought if you weren't going to ask, why would I try?

And now you're asking. It's like, well, shit. That's why you gotta make something up. Okay, well then I'm drinking... I don't know. You should take improv classes with me. I don't want to. You failed real hard just now. Yeah, I know.

I felt it. Anyway, why are you drinking? Hmm. Well... I don't know. You know Well, I don't know. You know what? I don't know either. Uh-oh.

I forgot to prepare. Are we having a good week? Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. This can't be. Bring me back. Bring me back.

Oh, I'm still dating Allison, which is long distance. That's why I fucking drank. Just kidding. Oh. Love you guys. No. Long distance sucks distance long distance sucks but it won't be long distance forever it's just for right now yes but it does suck i i totally feel you on that um that's a legit reason i think so yeah i drink because what is wrong with us i don't know this are we growing up oh no oh no no oh that take it back

take it back i don't want it good the podcast is going to crumble the whole theme is self-sabotage what else can i be if not self-degradate degradating well you can aggregating what the fuck you cannot know how to talk what else can i be except self-degrading deprecating but like degradate degrade yourself right self-degrading for fuck's sake self-deprecating and degrading i could maybe that's why you drink um anyway uh do you have any announcements i do have a couple. I just wanted to say we're super excited. We set up our store officially. So we're selling merch online.

We have a wine glass. We have a t-shirt. We have some tote bags. You can be either Team Wine or Team Milkshake. And we're having a production meeting soon to come up with more merch. And a lot of people have requested Geo merch, which obviously is at the top of our list. But we want to make sure that before it goes out, it's, you know, a hundred percent. So we are prepping that.

Um, but you can go to, and that's why we drink.bigcartel.com or it also links from our website and you can pre-order some fun stuff. And if you're a Patreon donator, you also get a discount. So, Ooh, that's fun. Yeah, that's kind of fun. Um, and I wish I were a Patreon member. All of a sudden, do I get a discount on oh that's fun yeah it's kind of fun um and i wish i were a patreon member all of a sudden do i get a discount on my own shirt no you're gonna have to pay full price okay well duly noted give me your credit card oh um i also want to add that we created a new a lot of people

requested this a closed facebook group where everybody can go on Facebook and, you know, request. It's sort of like a secret group where you can go in. It's similar to the My Favorite Murder one, and people can discuss, like, episodes or, you know, submit suggestions or just talk with each other and get to know each other. So we created one of those, and we originally had one for Patreon donators. So we're going to we created one of those and we originally had one for Patreon donators. So instead, we're going to try and transition them, our patrons to other rewards like a monthly Facebook live chat and that kind of thing. And then make the group open to all our listeners just so everyone can, you know, engage and get to know each other. So mingle among us, mingle among us us and it was m's idea to do the

facebook live and that's going to be actually pretty fun so it is a nice q a per chance that could be fun because we get a lot of i don't know about you but on my twitter we get a lot of questions yes i know and it's hard to like keep up with all of it but so yeah so patreon donors will have a facebook live q a type thing um we are also where i don't want to say anything yet but we're in talks of doing some very interesting side projects that may or may not have anything to do with the podcast oh they're so good they're just they're just things that now that i have a platform i want to do some ridiculous shit so i feel like they both do they both i mean they have things they it's just not a podcast it'll just be a different

media you guys will love them. You will love them. So that's all in the works. It's honestly, I feel like, going to be a huge couple months upcoming for stuff that's happening. Buckle up. Buckle up. We're finally getting the funds to put all this together and create some really awesome new projects. And Patreon donators are also also we're adding new rewards for

two dollar donators and we're adding as many rewards as we can to keep you guys you know interested and engaged and we just love you so much i'm i'm pretty stoked about the things that we've talked about in private so far oh they're good they're real doozies so geo's involved geo's definitely involved he's he's crazy involved. He's crazy involved. So if you would like to be a Patreon donator and see some very interesting things coming out that probably make no sense to anyone else but me and Christine, but we're going to do it anyway. Then you can find our Patreon at That's Why We Drink.com. Yes. And also, last thing before we get to the stories regarding Patreon.

Another thing we're going to add is that you guys will get to be more involved in like making decisions so like submitting merch ideas or like voting on merch ideas voting on t-shirt designs um you know get like uh content or get not necessarily content but like news or info sooner than other people you'll get to tell us what you want and we'll do it exactly and chances to like access things earlier than other people so that's another thing we're adding so it's it's it's all in the mix all in the mix so thank you for everybody who's already a donator we cannot thank you enough for helping us make all this work and now we're gonna stop uh you know blabbing and oh okay get to this we going to make Em shut up because she keeps talking. By making me talk about ghosts?

Oh, that's right. Yeah. It's your turn. Shut me up and make me talk. Got it. All right. I can do both. We're going to make Christine stop talking so much.

Stop drinking, really. Kind of forgetting words everywhere, aren't you? I thought I sounded very coherent. Yeah, especially with your degradation all right you know english isn't my first language so okay throw that out there that was weird i thought i liked it it was soothing extremely charming it was it was soothing but in a way that i wasn't prepared for which made it uncomfortable definitely and i think all our listeners felt the same way that it was definitely not soothing uh who's theron schultz i don't know oh i thought they might be related to you they just pledged ten dollars to patreon

so it's almost like they ride the airwaves oh they're in schultz well they just heard me go i don't know like like an asshole well it's with a t2 and your name doesn't have a t oh thanks for knowing how to spell my name is it farron or taran or is it the ron well i only ask because oh like i only ask because i know a taran who spells like farron but my my brother-in-law his middle name is farron oh so it could be it could i'm gonna go with farron let's go with Schultz. Okay. Thanks, Schultz. I like that. Okay. Let's get into some stuff. So what knowledge are you raining on me today?

I'm going to bestow upon you a real treat. Oh, boy. Okay, so I've been here many times. It's like one of my favorite attractions. Oh, I thought you meant my house. I thought you were like, I've been here many times. It's one of my favorite. I was like, Oh, that's so sweet. Put your, your head's blowing up. Wow. I'm very, okay. I was talking about Alcatraz. Oh, that's, that's definitely not the same thing. Okay. Nope. At least I, at least I hope not.

I mean, I like your place a little better. Alcatraz is one of those places that I've always wanted to go. It's like my bucket list. I love Alcatraz. I've gone on the tour a bunch of times, but as far as I remember, I only vividly remember going at least three times on the tour. Wow. It's the same tour every time because it's self-guided. So it's like a recording and you put the headphones on, you just walk. That is so cool. It's like turn left here and then... But it's really good. So, just going to hit you with some knowledge first before we get into the ghosts. Because we're here to be educated, aren't we? We're here to teach you all about the things that you don't know that we are so smart about. The School of Schultz.

Yes. And the School of Schiefer. All three of those words are S-C-H. Schiefer-Schultz-School. Almost. In German, it's Schule, so we could be Schiefer-Schultz-Schule. Almost. In German, it's Schule, so we could be Schiefer-Schulz-Schule. We could. You're like, no.

I mean, the possibility is there. True. You want nothing to do with that. I see in your eyes. That's how I feel about that. So Alcatraz was open between 1934 and 1963. There, during the time, were up to 1,500 inmates, and it was not a place for rehabilitation. It was just punishment, minimal privilege, was not meant to be, like, it was just where all of the worst of the worst criminals go.

Right. And it actually started in, like, the 1840s when Alcatraz was first taken over by the U.S. military, which, what the fuck, isn't taken over by the U.S. military? Ba-dum-tsh. Political commentary. Wait, so it's an... Is that the name of the island, then? Alcatraz.

Right, so it's not just, like, the prison. It's, like, the name of the... You said it was built in the 30s, but then you said it existed in the 1800s, so I'm confused. Yeah, it was still called Alcatraz the Island. Oh, okay. Sorry. I literally don't know anything about it so okay sorry take you on a journey uh so it was taken over by the military and the first prisoners started all the way back then the 1840s that they were like court-martialed military convicts oh and then later on it was always they always put prisoners on there.

They always, it was always an island because it's, I guess you haven't been there, so I should probably explain. It's literally an island in the middle of the water that's too far away for anyone to escape from. Got it. So it's like a giant rock. Like when you go to San Francisco, you have to take a ferry to get there. And it was known as escape proof because it was in the middle of nowhere.

And so that's where they put the worst criminals because they couldn't get away. Even if they escaped, they couldn't get off the island because if they tried to swim, they would either drown or it'd be so cold. It was too far away. Okay. So it's always been kind of meant for that or used for that. Okay. And so it was originally court-martialed military convicts. And then over time, like during the Civil War and everything, there were also confederate soldiers southern sympathizers they also at one point had native

american leaders they had spanish prisoners during the spanish uh spanish-american war yeah i did i didn't write it so i freaked out and thought i wouldn't know what i was talking about even though it's pretty upfront and every prisoner that they took on they had no running water for them no heat no latrines there was disease there was infestations and this is like back in the 1800s so it's not like you know diseases you can just knock out sure with medicine later it's like oh you're gonna get you're in trouble also prisoners were bound just to keep them on the island and not trying to run away prisoners were bound by chains that were attached to actual iron balls and confined in sweat rooms, like sweat boxes. Oh, no.

Yeah. So that was the first litter of people before this was even an official jail. Got it. Okay. So then 1911 is when Alcatraz built, like, became Alcatraz. Gotcha. And it was officially named United States Disciplinary Barracks. So, like, it went back to just being, like, military prisoners.

It was the Army's first long-term prison, and it quickly gained a reputation for being super tough. There were strict rules, a restricted diet, hard labor, confinement, and they still had the ball and chains. The ball and chains. Like, that's just crazy to even think about that i thought that like i mean i know it was real at some point but it's weird to report on it be like oh this is the exact time period it was yeah it doesn't even seem like a

real thing anymore um okay so it was essentially escape proof and it was when they first started recruiting people to work there they had the best available guards from all the federal penal system like they went through the entire system in the country and found the best wardens and the best guards by best do you mean like most strict or like most strict most tough most wouldn't take shit from anyone okay because they were then going to go through all of the jail systems in the country and find the toughest hardest people and put them all on that island oh my god so uh the inmates only had five rights it was food clothing a cell a weekly shower and the right to see a doctor other than that christ nothing of anything oh my god the uh worst inmates in the country were moved here and a lot of them were even high profile inmates so like

famous bank robbers or like al capone sure um so it was pretty regular that when new shipments of prisoners were coming over there'd always be a quote celebrity oh my god like criminal celebrity criminal right and uh some of them were al capone uh george machine gun kelly not the rapper the kidnapper um floyd hamilton who was the driver for bonnie and clyde oh shit and uh robert stroud who's also known as bird man you want to know about him yeah the first bullet i have is an aggressive homosexual oh boy get him away from me and uh he was also like brilliant like a genius he was actually on like he had the iq of a genius but he was also a homicidal a homicidal oh i mean homosexual homidal. I know you're really homophobic. So it's like, homicidal. He was a homicidal sociopath.

Oh, that's not good. Who had a very Jekyll and Hyde personality where he would just snap out of nowhere. So, good. You know, good. We could analyze that further if we wanted to, but I'm just going to go with what's on the paper. Why was his name Birdman? Do we know? I'll let you know.

Okay. Because before they brought him to Alcatraz, he staying in leavenworth prison leavenworth leavenworth leavenworth and while he was there he was allowed to have birds in his cell well uh because he was like he was big in the bird world like he had like no no no hey calm down hang on i knew i was gonna say it and i knew you were gonna get weird he had like a phd in like no, no. Calm down. Hang on. I knew I was going to say it and I knew you were going to get weird. He had like a PhD in like aviary. Isn't it ornithology? Sure. Okay.

Why are you looking at me like that? I don't know. I'm trying to think. I think it's ornithology. Yeah, it is. Right? Yes. Okay.

I know you don't believe me. No, no, no. I do. I do. Ornithology. Yes. Yes. Yes.

He, uh, so while he was in jail at leavenworth he found baby canaries and he raised them and started like a breeding program and so because he was helping um other prisoners they allowed him to have birds in his cell and it got to a point where he had he had so many birds that they took up two cells i don't know how the they were able to, like, they just had free cells to, like, offer up to birds. Like, just like, were new inmates where they were like, we'd move you in there, but there's birds and they take priority. I don't like birds. Okay, well, maybe that's a proper punishment for some people then. Maybe they'd put me in that cell.

people then maybe they'd put me in that cell um uh he was doing research while he was in prison about birds and actually came up with cures for canary diseases and wrote a bunch of books and actually i'm sorry i don't know how it's canary some people actually do this job believe me my stepmom was like this huge bird watcher and bought me all these books and stuff so now i can't take it seriously oh okay good i mean i know it's a very real thing but so he actually made a lot of contributions to like the ornithology world but he was also a terrible person right yes he was also homo homo cytole associate i guess we found our title and so i know i already mentally noted it okay so wait why did he care so much about birds like i don't know i just like birds i know but don't sociopathic people like i mean it's like if i went to jail i still like

back to the future you know okay okay that's not a living thing i mean no why do you like dogs yeah but you're not a sociopath oh i understand like if you're a sociopath who's like yeah like one of the main things of a sociopath is you hurt animals. No empathy and you hurt animals. But I guess maybe it's just like a hobby type thing. Maybe. Also, there are sociopaths out there who are aware of their impulses. Sure. Who are like lesser on the...

Maybe he's like, I don't want to kill animals. I just want to kill people. Sure. Because he did actually get out of jail and then he uh murdered a person and then he ended up going to alcatraz got it where he was not allowed any birds oh sad so i guess not really sad but also it's weird that they called him bird man of alcatraz when he had no birds at alcatraz maybe all he did was talk about birds you know i bet he was that weird guy at the mess hall must have been nobody sat with him oh do you want to talk about dodo's?

No, no. Nobody wants to talk about that. No, no to the dodo. Bird man. You're such a homicidal sociopath. Okay. Ready for the next bullet? I mean, no, but go ahead.

I'll try to steal myself. So at Alcatraz, there were in its entirety which was let's say 30 almost 30 years or 29 years that alcatraz was open um there were 14 escape attempts of 36 inmates and only five ever made it out but of the five that were able to escape alcatraz they it doesn't actually mean that they escaped like we, we don't, they just don't know where they went. Oh, they just disappeared? There's a source that suggests that they got to Brazil. Okay. Which is, I mean, you could have just gone to shore on San Francisco,

but I guess they headed for Brazil. Brazil? What, did they, like, swim there? It's actually one of the more famous breakouts. I mean, they only had, like, five breakouts or something. Sure. One of the main breakouts i mean they only had like five breakouts sure one of the main breakouts that happened that's actually like a really big story when you go on the tour right is there were

three guys two of them are brothers and they wanted to break out and so they stole spoons from the mess hall and then for like months they were slowly they had like a like a metal vent in their wall yeah uh in each of their cells and so they like pulled it out and they were scraping out the inside of the walls with spoons until they got to the vents and then they uh there's like a barber like a barber shop kind of like how in orange is new black there's like a hair cutting area right they were stealing um cut up hair from the ground and they were working with another like work area and made fake heads with the fake hair on it and everything to make it look real and one night they dug through the entire wall and climbed up through the vents and

left the fake head in the in the bed so it looked like oh my god when When the cops went by and when the guards would do, like, a head count... Yeah. They saw the head, and then by the time that they had escaped, they'd already escaped, and they had been working also with another work task, like, another shift... Sure. Where they were making, slowly, a raft. Oh, my God. And so they snuck out, and then by the time it was morning um even like the the

guards were like why aren't you standing and like poked the guy that was sleeping and the head rolled off the bed and realized that everyone they were gone oh my god and then they never got found but in theory it's um they got to brazil wow so they really vanished like they didn't them and then there was another group of two men who also got away andzil wow so they really vanished like they didn't them and then there was another group of two men who also got away and nobody knows where they were so only five people ever escaped and it we don't even know for all we know all five of those people like the raft broke and they just drowned like oh sure so they just but they got out without getting caught they got out somehow yeah in total there were 36 people who tried to get out, and only five were successful.

So 36. Oh, wow. That's crazy. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And successful, we don't even know if that was successful. The other, well, this one wasn't successful, but it's the most famous escape plot, at least, of Alcatraz.

It's called the Battle of Alcatraz. And it happened in 1946. And these six inmates, there were like, if you, because, okay, so if you look in the prison, if you look up, you can see the second floor and the third floor, like the tiers of cells.

And there were, on the second and third floors, there were spots where the cops and the guards would stand with gun racks so if anyone tried to escape they'd just shoot them down sure so there i don't remember exactly how they escaped or how they plotted to but they needed to steal this tool that would bend the bars and then they needed to steal the keys off the cop so they could jump up there and grab a gun and then hold everyone hostage until they could get out okay so there were six inmates that pulled pulled that together and

actually grabbed the keys and in like such an like coincidental way the cop who had those keys forgot to put back the gun key at one point so it was somewhere else so they had the keys and didn't have the right one to grab the guns oh my god so they ended up i don't know how but they ended up getting a hold of different guns and they ended up shooting down like a bunch of the cops really they killed three of the cops but they wounded 11 they also wounded a bunch of inmates who were just in the way during the gunfire um it was really messed up. Two of the cops, they just locked in a cell and then just shot them in cold blood. Oh.

They couldn't even hurt you anymore. That's so fucked, dude. They ended up, so out of those six, three of them, it was such a wild riot that they ended up calling in the Marines, the Coast Guard, the Navy, the Army, like everyone. And the Marines ended up having to drill into the ceilings of the jail and like throw grenades down there like it got wild just to because they could just hear everyone on the island being held hostage and getting shot up so it's literally a battle yeah it's like yeah a violent battle and so um they three of the men

realized oh the they're about to get us so well let's just go like wander off and pretend we're part of the mix of hostages and so that way when they come in here we won't look like we've done anything and the other three decided to hide in this corridor like this little passageway um so the marines found the three of them and shot them on site so those three died in the corridor the out of the other three two of them were executed and one was given um a sentence of a hundred years because they decided to spare him because he actually was trying to help the wounded people okay but so those were the two main wow breakout stories and both of them are told on the tour wow and like you can actually see the things

like they'll they'll say now look up there is where they tried to bend the bar and it's kind of creepy because the bar is still bent that's super creepy you can it's like they didn't change it and they have a key hanging which was the key that they were trying to find and that's chilling and you can you walk by the actual cell like if you stuck your arm in like they don't have it glassed off you can really put your arm inside the cell and see where like they have like a fake head lying in the bed and you can see the vent that's still open and like the spoons that's wild it's really cool it's so cool and i want to go so bad okay let's go let's go let's go it's like a what a six hour drive yes i'm already excited okay okay uh so in 19 okay so this is where i'm gonna start talking about like the

the gruel gruel i was gonna say gruesome and i was gonna say cool it's kind of like mean girls gruel yeah i thought you were gonna talk about the food they served i was like no no i'm not gonna tell me everything no it wasn't that great i'm sure i looked it up literal gruel probably yeah so in 1937 alone just that one year 14 of the prisoners went insane and not just because they were stir crazycrazy from being locked in a cell. They, like, went insane. So, just to give you an idea. Oh, also, fun fact, mental illness at this prison, they, like, didn't tolerate it.

They thought it was just an excuse to get out of work. Ugh. Because they were so tough. Sure. So, this one's really sad. One inmate was getting his hair cut by the another inmate who was a barber whose like job was to work in the barbershop they were also lovers and the barber had just like a weird trigger and with the scissors stabbed him

while he was sitting in the chair and killed him so So that was one guy. One inmate was at work. Ooh, this is my favorite. He was at work where he was in the kitchen, took a butcher knife, threw his hand on the table, and while laughing maniacally chopped all of his fingers off. What? And then he threw the butcher knife on the table, put his other hand on the table, and then looked at the cop and begged him to chop the rest of his fingers off. Oh my god. Because he couldn't do it with the other hand anymore. Oh my god.

The whole time laughing maniacally. What the fuck? Yep. And also spurting blood out of his hand. Spurting blood. Okay, so that guy's name was Perseful. He was apparently a gangster and a bank robber. Perseval?

Perseful. Perseful? P-E-R-S. F-U-L. What a apparently a gangster and a bankrupt. Percival? Percival. Percival? P-E-R-S. F-U-L. What a weird name. Mm-hmm. Another inmate slashed his own throat with a pair of broken eyeglasses. Oh, no, no, no, no.

And then he tried to scale a chain link fence because he knew if he knew like one of the rules is if you try to scale the fence, they'll shoot you down. So he intentionally like slashed his throat and then tried to climb up and then they shot him down um that's so fucked up another guy sliced through his jugular vein with a blade from a pencil sharpener so it was believed that more men in alcatraz by percentage it was believed that more men suffered mental breakdowns at this jail than any other federal prison to date. Oh, that's so sad. Although I don't necessarily believe that because a lot of prisons have more than, I guess maybe it's based on like an annual, I don't know how it would be based, but there was only 1,500 inmates in 29 years.

There's a lot of jails that have, like, I'm sure Rikers or. Sure, sure. And how they determined mental breakdown from the 1800s or 1900s. So I don't know how that stat is these days, but it was worth mentioning. Yowch. So the first years of Alcatraz were known as the silent years because one of the main rules at the time was no prisoners could speak, sing, hum, whistle, do anything that involved communicating with each other.

What in God's name? So inmates were allowed to talk for three minutes in the morning and two hours on weekends al capone was uh regularly put in solitary confinement because he always tried to talk anyway of course he did this reminds me of was it eastern state penitentiary he was also there yeah and also they had the talking rule yeah oh my god okay um so capone also went insane during his stay here but that was because of his syphilis syphilis right all right uh so guards reported that he this was like when he really was starting to lose it like they knew he was he was losing it right he would refuse to leave his cell to go eat he would uh be found crouched down in a corner of

the cell like an animal and he'd be mumbling to himself or babble and baby talk and he or sometimes he would just sit on his bed and just stare or he would strum the same chord over and over again on his banjo i like that he gets a banjo because he's al capone yeah uh he would mumble oh yeah he would mumble to himself he'd play banjo he would stay in his cell and just make his bunk over and over again until the sunset oh my god and he also it hit him to a point where he feared for his life to do anything with other people and so they gave him approval to just sit in the shower during rec time and he would bring his banjo sometime and just play in the shower oh no so he just was losing it um but one

of the ghostly things now is people will if they they're ever in the bathroom by themselves, they'll hear a banjo playing. Whoa. So here are the different cell blocks and the interesting things that happened in them. So block A. Okay, I wrote the notes a certain way, but I actually just want to explain it without looking at my notes. There's, underneath the cells in the basement there are dungeons so last time i went i went with cap and she told me that when she had gone the time before we were going together she knew someone who went on the tour and made friends with one of the tour guides

and was like can you show us anything that isn't on the normal tour? And then they said that they got brought down to these dungeons. Oh, no. So when Cap and I went, Cap did like went up to someone. I was like, can you show us something that hasn't been on the tour? So I have seen these dungeons, even though they're not part of the tour. Shut up. Pretty cool. They're really actually we only got to be there for like 30 seconds because we were the last tour of the week.

And they were like, we're trying to shut down. And we're like, take us somewhere. So I got got a glimpse but i'll describe it to the best of my knowledge okay so when you're on like the main hall and you're looking around and you're in the jail block a right in front of block a there's a staircase that you kind of have to walk around okay and it doesn't go up it goes down it's like when they don't want anyone to use the stairs they can just slam a door and so you just see like the railing of the stairs but there's a door that covers you actually being able to go down okay does that make sense kind of like um like a city street you know how those things that you don't walk on because they might always fall through

ah yes kind of like that it's like just like a metal slab got you and if you wanted to lift it up and go down you could um so down there are the dungeons and uh basically they're it's a steel door and then when you get down there it looks like a catacomb like it has like a lot of corridors and um there's like stone archways and it's they used to be when it was in a like a a military fort it was where all the gun ports were oh okay and there's also fireplaces down there but they weren't actually used to like to stay warm or anything it was actually to heat up the cannonballs so that during war they could shoot cannonballs at people and the cannon would be the cannonball would be so hot that whenever it landed it would also catch things on fire oh my god so they would make the cannonballs like white hot and then shoot them and then things would catch on fire okay um and prisoners

at the time used to be chained naked to the walls in a standing position for like 10 hours to 12 hours a day and so um that was that sounds like torture to me. Yeah. Um, they also, there was only one toilet down there that everyone had to share and it was only emptied once a week. Ugh. And you only got two cups of water and a slice of bread each day. So you were basically in pain and tortured the entire time. But because it was down in the basement, um, no one could hear your screams. Oh no.

Um, one employee actually walked past the door in the last couple years that is just one of the ghost stories to throw in one employee walked past the door to the dungeons and heard a loud scream like someone down there in pain and she ran the other way and then when her boss was like why didn't you report that she said because yesterday someone tried to report someone getting screamed at and when they went to go check no one was down there oh great um but so when i went down there also i wasn't gonna throw this in but just real short um kind of like bookends at the very beginning of this island ever being used and lived on um native americans were on there oh okay and then at the very end after aquatraz closed native americans were like we want to take back our property and tried to live there for literally like six months and then realized they couldn't do it because it's an island and you can't get food.

Right. Like it's a cement island. It's not like it's like, oh, there's a tree. Like a lush island. Right, right, right. So when, I don't know if, I'm assuming it was after the fact, but when I went down there, it still has like markings from when like the Native Americans took back the land. And so what it looks like, it looks like you're in, imagine like a 10 foot tall fireplace. Like it's just like a cement hole.

Like there was no fireplace to it, but it was just like it was big and it looked like a giant chimney that you could stand in. Right. And each of those little holes had metal hooks in the ceiling and that's where the handcuffs used to be so people would just have their hands cuffed to the ceiling and they'd stand there for 12 hours and each chimney looking thing was essentially a cell for someone to stand in god but when i went down there and you could walk around and see there's like little drawings from like like children living down there there's like tic-tac-toe on the wall and there's like little kids stick figure drawings on there no and they're old they're outdated like as if like they look they've been

sitting there for a while or a handprint could have smeared them a little bit but it looks like after it was abandoned it looked like squatters lived there but it it was tribal families oh my god like using the space and it looks like they were each little chimney area was used as a room essentially how crazy then there's cell block c i didn't really find anything about cell block b so if anyone knows anything about cell block b let me know boo cell block c b let's skip it so cell block and i'm doing this in order by the way well i was waiting and i was kind of i was like there, there's A through D, so let's start with F. I was surprised.

Okay, so cell block C is a corridor. That's the corridor where the three convicts had tried to hide in a passageway and got shot down during the breakout. Okay, that's why I told that whole story. So that happened in the 40s. And ever since then, you can still close off the corridor with like a giant door and anytime you close it you will hear like like it sounds like bullets being shot back there and you'll hear like clanging like something's hitting the door and if you open it there's nothing there and it'll go totally silent and then if you close the door again the sounds will come

back oh my god so people will regularly hear men screaming. They'll hear, like, guards saying, get down. They'll hear clanging, like, bullets are hitting the metal door. And then there's nothing there every time they open it. There are also reports of a couple of men wearing, like, prison fatigues and, like, walking around in there. So, like, if the door is open, you'll see them walking in there. And supposedly it's those three men that died in there. Oh convicts that tried to break out and prisoners in cell block c would also rattle their chains to signify if a guard was beating someone because at the time you in the silent years when you couldn't talk they had to find other ways to communicate to each

other so if you saw your cellmate getting beaten people would shake their chains to let you know that they were getting hurt and um and so now sometimes you'll hear chains as if someone's getting beaten in there but nobody actually would be there at all oh no oh no also in cell block c is a laundry room and there's a smell of smoke um as if something's on fire but it's a deserted laundry room no one's used it in a long time but guards will still go in and investigate and a couple times they'll find this thick black smoke that's so overpowering that it drives them out of the room oh my god and they'll go get

help when they come back not only is there no smoke but nothing's has the smell of fire it just it just totally vanishes. Oh, God. So sometimes you'll see, like, a billowing cloud of fire smoke and nothing's there. Right. That's also because in 1970, after they closed, some of the natives were still there, and somehow a fire happened and actually destroyed a lot of the property. So a lot of it still looks like it's like it's rubble from a fire oh my god um one psychic actually went on a tour of um the jail and got to the laundry room and sensed that there was a fire and then also uh sensed that in the same laundry room someone

who was bald with um beady eyes like was standing there saying that he had been killed there oh god so the cool thing about this is she went because she got paid by like cbs or some news show to go investigate this place like put her powers to the test and they also brought a former convict from alcatraz to go with her to confirm or deny anything that she said the fuck so when she said oh there was a guy that got murdered in here and like she described what he looked like yeah the ex-convict was like oh yeah that was butcher and she he was like his name was abby maldowitz okay but i guess they called him butcher because he was a hitman before they caught him and they said yeah he was murdered in the cell block, the C block laundry room.

Oh, my God. And then described him away from her and their identities matched up. Oh, no. So people have been touched and grabbed on the back of the neck. This is all over the jail. I'm going to get to the D block last because it's most interesting. But throughout the jail, people have been touched, grabbed by the back of the neck. They've heard disturbing things whispered to them.

Investigators have gone in there and asked for names and have gotten full names of inmates. So one of them was Harry Burnett, who was an actual on-record convict. They asked, where do you think you are and he wrote i know where i am this is my hell oh fuck and by wrote i mean said and by said i mean evp picked it up but like but it said it said i know where i am this is my hell what the fuck and then one spirit tried to grab a female investigator and said, I want you. And she, like, remembers feeling someone grab her on the butt. One spirit in the basement said that he feels too guilty to leave.

And shadows are often seen walking in the catwalk, like, up in the top tiers. And they'll also see them behind the bar so instead of thinking oh maybe there's like a shadow casted from the windows they can see the bars one color and they'll see a human shaped shadow behind the bars walking back and forth oh no and one of them is bird man who regularly walks around his cell and will walk through the wall towards the library which would be where he was doing all of his bird research. Bird research. One warden could also hear sobbing from inside the walls. And whenever he said, like, stop making that sound, this cold wind would, like, hit him

in the face. Banjo music came from the shower and also came from prison walls. There'd be apparitions of Native Americans, military inmates, and guards. A man will appear wearing a gray suit with a brimmed cap and mutton chop sideburns. prison walls there'd be apparitions of native americans military inmates and guards uh a man will appear wearing a gray suit with a brimmed cap and mutton chop sideburns sure and when you see him the temperature will drop and the power will go out oh no and there have been a couple times where the guards were doing overnight patrolling and they had a flashlight and like a movie the flashlights would turn off and their radios wouldn't work and they would just be stuck

there with a guy nope standing there with his mutton chop sideburns and then he vanishes oh my god um they're also a lighthouse that isn't there anymore will appear out of nowhere if you're far away enough you'll just see the lighthouse as if it never crumbled and it will glow like have like this beacon light that's bright green. Yeah. And once the light goes around once, when you, like, the second you look away or blink, the whole lighthouse is gone. Oh, my God. You'll also hear this weird sound with it, and that sound will go away when the lighthouse fades away.

There's phantom gunshot sounds. There's phantom screams. The screams sometimes are so real that they would send in, like, the seasoned guards, because they were too afraid to find out what was going on. The screams were so scary that people who heard them thought that prisoners must have broken out and had weapons and were shooting down the place. They were that real of screams. Night patrolmen will hear people running around on the upper tiers. Night patrolmen will hear people running around on the upper tiers.

And the hospital ward and mess hall, you'll both hear screams of inmates because in the hospital ward and the mess hall, they used to handcuff some people to the table until they finished their food. Or until, like, if they were having a mental breakdown, they'd be cuffed down until they could calm down. So you can hear them screaming still and there's also unexplainable crashing sounds screams cell doors that close on their own cold spots dramatic temperature drops moans chains rattling and the constant fear and feeling of being watched oh god um last thing i want to say is uh d block um it's called the strip cell okay and it was also known as the treatment union unit treatment unit i don't like the sound of that because it was made for the hard to handle inmates so the ones with mental illness bad attitudes violent tendencies etc and the they were dark

steel cells that when you close the door behind it was pitch black um the inmates would be stripped down to wearing nothing they'd be given water and bread once daily and a mattress only at night in the morning they would take the mattress away so you're just sitting in a cement cell oh my god the toilet was a hole in the floor with no sink i'm assuming no toilet paper so do what you will with that information yuck um convicts had no contact with others and would spend their time entirely in pitch dark solitude and they were allowed they were not allowed time in the yard they were not allowed shower time and they were not given reading materials as if that's going to help anyone with a mental illness i know for god's sakes um inmates could be sentenced to as

long as 19 days there and one convict was so dangerous that he actually stayed for three years straight. Every 19th day, they would have to reassign him. Oh, no. They would, nowadays, if you go in there, they make sounds on their own as if someone's still in there. Like, you can stand. as if someone's still in there like you can stand you can so one of the things on the tour is they will let you the recording has like a paused section or you can pause it yourself if you want a longer time but the solitary confinement cells are open and you can close them behind you no thanks so i've done that where no um so there's one that i haven't gone to yet

it's cell block 14d which is the most haunted room in the whole jail and it's the solitary confinement that the like the darkest stuff has happened and the people with the wildest energies have been in there and it's open for you to like if you want to put your phone flashlight on and look around you can it's really depressing looking or you can stay in there by yourself with the door open if you want or if you want you can even ask one of the tour guides to close the door and keep you in there for 10 minutes which i've done why i want to know what it's like i like i wanted to know for the um the paranormal feeling sure and the second you go in there it's like there's a hundred people

staring at you like i've never felt such heavy eyes on me and i'm in literally pitch black but yeah it's like it's the creepiest feeling and also on the tour i didn't put this in my notes but on the tour they tell you that the way that they would keep themselves entertained in there is they would bite one of the buttons off their uniform and they would throw it and cover their ears so they couldn't hear where it landed and they would just spend all day trying to find the button and then just keep playing that game for 19 days and uh but it is the weirdest feeling you absolutely do not feel alone in that room no like it's guaranteed i've like everyone that i've seen go in there and come out looks creeped out like they just felt a million hands on them so one of the things that they would also do is they would make noises like bang on the bars um for other prisoners to know what was going on so like they had like a tap

code essentially so they could try to communicate with each other right um and but so these cells also happened to face the golden gate bridge which had like fierce cold winds so during the winter it was even worse because like this winter wind would be shooting into them all day and they're naked they're in a dark cellar with no mattress nothing to warm them whatsoever and some of the wardens were dicks enough that they would also put on the ac and so fucked up uh so there was a lot of psychological torture but um on top of people having to be admitted to the hospital ward later for insanity, it was also like pneumonia and arthritis from just being on cold cement for weeks. Right. Convicts would also get sent there.

Convicts who did get sent there would also regularly get beaten up by the guards and there was nothing anyone could do. get beaten up by the guards and there was nothing anyone could do um when they whenever someone heard you know how if someone like drops a tray at a restaurant everyone claps even though it's like the dickish thing to do yeah it's horrible to do um in alcatraz if someone was getting beaten up all of the other inmates would scream and like rattle their chains like i don't know if it's to amp up the of the guard or i don't know what's the most terrifying thing well the terrifying thing is people have said that when the beatings were really bad and all the other prisoners would start like the prisoners who see it are making noise then it starts growing and growing and the entire jail is doing it that you could hear it off of the island

you could hear like just a full oh my god my God. Just men chanting and chains rattling. Oh, my fucking God. So, cell 14D was the cell I was just talking about. A ghost in there one time, an inmate went in there, and maybe he was losing it, but he saw a ghost in there that said that his legs had been broken by guards and he was left there in solitary confinement to die, which, on record, did happen. And he had never talked to this guy before because he can't talk at Alcatraz so how would he have known that um also in the 1940s an inmate was in there and he was screaming to get out because a thing

with glowing eyes was trying to kill him and they heard him scream all night and they ignored him and then the next morning it was silent in there so they went to go check and he was dead and they found out that he was strangled. But the marks on his neck suggested that he didn't do it. What the fuck? Because like, you know, if you like if you tried to strangle yourself, your hands are going to be a different position than if someone else did it. And and he didn't strangle himself, but he was definitely strangled by something. The fuck? And so now people in there will say that they see the thing, like the thing was glowing eyes.

No, no, no. And also the weird thing is when that guy died, the next week after that, the guards were doing head counts and would regularly count too many prisoners. And they would keep seeing him in the crowd when they were doing head counts. And then when they would do a a double take he'd vanish but they kept seeing him and getting their numbers wrong when they would try to count the prisoners oh fuck so now in the cell like i said there's just like this gloom intensity um that someone's always staring at you an apparition of a man dressed in late 1800s prison attire will show up the cell is always cold so even in the summer if you go and the entire jail is really hot even the other solitary confinements

on that block are really hot you go into 14d and it's always cold oh and that's that so then alcatraz closed in 1963 started doing tours pretty quick after that. Yeah. Ouch. And that's that. That is gives me the heebie-jeebies. My turn. Your turn. I'm going to tell you about, uh, Oh,

so this actually, I want to give credit. Um, this was sent to us via email a while ago, uh, by Rhonda C. Hey, Rhonda C. Hey, Rhonda C. She's also a while ago uh by ronda c hey ronda c hey ronda c she's also a patreon uh supporter and she sent this a long time back and i had had it saved in like a suggestions holder and i went through it today i thought this would be a fun one to do um so this is uh the story of

mark twitchell um i'm just gonna oh he's also known as the dexter copycat killer i like that so in 2008 a man named gilles tetreault met a woman named sheena on the dating at the dating website plenty of fish which blaze was on before we started dating. My mom and her boyfriend met on OurTime.com. I was on OkCupid for a hot minute. Yeah, so he was on Plenty of Fish, and he met a woman named Sheena. So after a couple of days, Sheena invited him on a date. She asked him to come over to her house, but use the back garage entrance because it was the easiest way to get to her suite.

So he was kind of like, that's a little weird. I see see some red flags but he also said he was trying to get himself out there and meet new people so he went anyway uh when tetro arrived at the garage uh he was violently attacked by a man in a hockey mask oh my god the man prodded him with a stun gun and threatened to shoot him and he said his first thought was is this sheena playing a trick on me or something because at this point he had been talking to her so regularly that he just assumed yeah she was still in the picture um so he turned around he saw a man in a hockey mask hovering over him um at first he thought you know maybe this guy's trying to mug me um but then he saw the attacker's gun

and realized i'm in big fucking trouble and this is not about sheena so he lunged at the gun realized it was fake which is when he started to actually fight the guy back um so he actually managed to escape and the man who had lured him there was 29-year-old Mark Twitchell, an amateur horror filmmaker. Oh, my God. So Mark Twitchell was born on July 4th of 19... I did not write the year. I believe it was 1978, but I'm not sure, so we're going to go with that. Okay.

He lived in Alberta, Canada. Oh, Canada. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh, to be canadian anyway um yeah so mark twichell was an amateur horror filmmaker he had made a short film in his garage a couple weeks prior i'm sure that was it a good movie that's as much of an amateur horror filmmaker as he was so probably not okay a week later after um tetro escaped a 38 year old johnny altinger who worked at an oil field equipment manufacturer told his friends he was meeting a woman that he had met on plenty of fish.com his friends started to get worried when they received weird calls from him

explaining that he had met a woman who wanted to take him on a long trip to costa rica no dot com his friends started to get worried when they received weird calls from him explaining that he had met a woman who wanted to take him on a long trip to costa rica no his boss then received a resignation email but when the boss uh requested a forwarding address for his final paycheck he never heard back which is a big red flag because you're gonna get that final paycheck i mean you quit a job i want that final paycheck give it to me as a hashtag millennial give me the final paycheck no as a hashtag well give me the fucking paycheck give it to me and if i give me that if i don't ask for it i'm probably dead yeah exactly just know that um so his friends were worried obviously and they decided to break into

his condo to see if if he was all right they found his passport dirty dishes and no indication that he had packed anything for a trip to costa rica uh so they contacted the police and a homicide investigation was launched um it turns out that all tinger thought he was meeting a woman that he'd met online sheena when he showed up at the garage when he arrived arrived he was ambushed by twitchell who hit him on the head with a pipe and used a hunting knife to stab him to death oh before dismembering his body and disposing of his remains down a city sewer no i know so twitchell was arrested on october 31st of 2008 and charged with the first degree murder of Altinger. So Tetro, who was the first guy, right, the guy who escaped, testified in court during this trial.

And Twitchell admitted to attacking him, but explained that he had staged the attack as part of an elaborate hoax for a book, movie, and online entertainment project that he was creating. Oh, Jesus. He was hoping that Tetreault would write about the experience in the garage on the internet to generate buzz for his horror film. This guy, Tetreault, actually ended up, many years later, writing a book about his experiences called The One Who Got Away as a way to kind of process the trauma and all that.

So during the trial itself, the key piece of evidence that investigators used was a document they found in Twitchell's home called S.K. Confessions. Oh, my. Oh, my. Twitchell admitted to killing Altinger and also to writing the document,

but he claimed the document was mostly fictionalized and that he had acted in self-defense so do you want to guess what sk stood for sk confessions i wasn't gonna say it was shauna something but is it serial killer it is serial killer is it wait oh you mean sheena the sheena that's true i didn't even think of that i know if her last name start with a k oh i wonder if it did maybe sheena k confessions yeah the confessions of sheena k it sounds like a like it sounds like uh the secret world of alex mack yeah it reminds me of like a beach read you know like a romantic written by stephanie meyer no oh maybe maybe

though it has another he said it stands for serial killer and one other thing um is it something i could guess or is it too far out there i think so it's a person's name um no i don't know it's his favorite author oh stephen king yeah i was thinking son of sam or something like that but yeah that was you were on the right track it was it was his favorite author so he explained that the s case did for stephen king his idol or serial killer you know whatever you prefer um and the opening paragraph was as follows quote this story is based on true events the names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty this is the story no no no this is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer oh okay you know what he had the right idea

of an original story though sure it was interesting until it was real it sounded like an svu opening like dun dun this story is based on true events but um so it turns out that twitchell an amateur horror director as i said was infatuated with the premise of the show dexter and saw himself as as dexter um he and i don't know if any i watched the first episode of that show and i couldn't deal with it but it's a show where dexter kills he's a serial killer of people who quote unquote deserve to be killed right it's sort of like he kills people who are bad guys right right um basically he believed he was dexter and he followed his own movie script in killing and dismembering his victim so he wrote the script before he ever did anything and then was like oh this makes sense yeah like this is my script oh good um so a lot of the the info in the document was deemed too difficult to read in court and too upsetting.

But I'm going to tell you. By all means. You know, it might be too upsetting for a jury, but. I told you the LaLaurie mansion, so I kind of had it coming. Right. You can never complain ever again. Nope. Plus you gave me a girlfriend and a dog and a podcast.

So you can say whatever the fuck you want to me. We need to start writing all this down yeah i owe you every good reason i'm in la you know that this is recorded and i can play this back for you anytime you ever feel like you're gonna make it into a ringtone oh for sure every time i text you thank you for everything you've ever given me you know what's gonna be my first dance at my wedding oh good i'm gonna come out and blaze and i are gonna have to dance to that um i'm gonna read some quotes from the book okay to uh so just warning everybody it's pretty fucked up okay so supposedly um twitchell played with altinger's head as a hand puppet oh quote i grabbed his jaw with my gloved hand and moved it while making a funny voice to make it look like it was talking and chuckled to myself at the total silliness of it all.

He said the murders were pranks and he said it was a prank to try and get, you know, buzz for his horror movie out there on the Internet. Right. Good PR. his horror movie out there on the internet right good pr yeah but um twitchell testified that altinger got angry when he learned of the quote prank and attacked him so in self-defense twitchell knifed him in the heart then panicked cut up the body and dumped it down the sewer okay sure uh he talked about this is awful too he talked about cutting open the torso of the victim and watching the organs slowly collapse. Oh, my. He said, if I had a sense of smell, this might be disgusting for me, but I only find it fascinating. Ugh.

So I guess he didn't have a sense of smell. He also said, as far as killing goes, most people fantasize about killing and it only ever stays a fantasy. They don't have the disposition or the stomach to go all the way with their dark urges. But I do. I do not have any reservations about disposing of the negative people in this world who deserve a one-way ticket to the afterlife if such a thing exists. So wait, what was so horrible about these people? He just picked them off the street and was like, oh, they're bad, so this makes it okay. He just wanted to kill them.

Kill somebody. But actually, there was one person he wanted to specifically kill who was a former boss. Who he said was a twisted old fart who hated life and everything in it. I owed it to the world to remove him from its glorious surface and would take my chance when I was ready. But again, he was arrested before he could. Boss better think his lucky stars.

Seriously. So he had, I mean, as far as I can tell, he was practicing for more. I mean, he messed up the first one, managed to kill the second one,

got caught, but I'm sure it would have continued down the road. Right. Eventually he would have been seamless. A bad path. He self-diagnosed himself as mentally unstable, writing... Well, he's not wrong. Yeah, he's not wrong.

Mail on the head. He wrote, I had found out through introspection and discussions with therapists that I am, in fact, a psychopath in almost every clinically defined sense. Oh. Well, as long as he's in the know. And they didn't use that in court because they said, like, he can't diagnose himself. Like, that's just not proper. I think that's the one diagnosis I would allow. Right. Well, that's why they were kind of, like, conflicted. But then they said, you know, if he said, i'm i'm perfectly healthy and normal it wouldn't be

acceptable but he was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years on april 12 2011 um he's currently incarcerated in saskatchewan penitentiary and he actually has i found his dating profile um on a site called connect for canadian inmates what yeah that exists yep no how wait what technology are they using to be able to do this if they don't have a phone the internet so they're a lot of just google whatever they want talk to whoever they want actually i think the way it works is i don't know if they get to use the internet but they get to pay 35 a year for a profile and then it's supposed to set them up with pen pals so i think it's they get this account this profile i don't think they technically use the internet themselves

and then they get matched with outside people who are interested in writing letters to them as pen pals i'm sure there's like a like a non-digital version you know paper and pencils cheaper than 35 a year when you're living off commissary but they get those profiles so that a bunch of people can write can find them online you know what i mean i feel like if you have like once you've hit a certain level of criminal act you should not be allowed like well that's oh you can't have parole but we can give you the internet but that's the big debate about it is that like some i was reading an article about because this has existed in america for a while but this is the canadian version was instituted a few years ago um and the big debate is obviously like are we harming the general public by letting these people interact but at the same time like

there are people who there was one man who was in prison for drug charges like having marijuana and so he was able to make relationships outside of prison with people so that when he was um you know freed that he had relationships to like help build up a normal life so it's very i feel like that's different though than being a murderer i mean sure so it's hard to draw the line between like who's allowed to be have access to the outside world and who's not right right right but yeah so it's very controversial it's very controversial but you know i mean there are like prisoners are allowed to write to people outside that's true anyway so that's true but so his profile um as of january 2017 he still has one and And I got a little excerpt for you.

It says, I'm looking for an interesting, intelligent, open-minded, delightfully imperfect woman to relate to and share amusing observations with, as well as potentially a long weekend every few months if it gets there naturally. It also says, my crime doesn't define who I am or represent me at all. My creative engine never slows, so I produce artwork constantly and craft novels or screenplays to manifest my relentless imagination. I'm insightful, passionate, and philosophical with a great sense of humor. I enjoy tennis, chess, and clever storytelling. I love the rain and the music of artists like Sia, Jackie Evancho, and Arcade Fire. You know what? Him and I have a lot in common. Me too, right? That kind of creeps me out. A little weird.

Um, but that's where you can take advantage of people, you know? Yeah, I guess also thinking about it, if it were, like, old school letters, at least no one's giving their direct address anymore. You know? What do you mean? Like, if they were writing letters to someone, they would be writing to a personal address and could like know where someone lives later well this is like it

sets you up with a pen pal like our handwritten pen pal is what i mean so like they don't use they get this profile i'm just to match up and then you guys do it old school it just i'm pretty sure i'm not positive but i think it gives them access to people who want to write to them. I got you. I got you. His profile, I mean, you know, better than my Tinder. It's probably why I didn't get anywhere. I mean, you should take a tip from this guy. I'm into clever storytelling. I'm into chess and rain. the investigators who who helped with his case are extremely against it because they're like

this man should not be able to because there are like vulnerable people out there and gullible people who will say oh i can rehabilitate him i can fix him and you know if he gets off parole in 10 years you know who knows what's going to. He was only 31 when he was sent to jail and he had a 25 year, you know, no parole. So who knows, but it's, it's just one thing to think about. Um, anyway, so as I said, he thought he was kind of the Dexter of the real world. So in December 2012, Michael C. Hall, who plays Dexter Morgangan on dexter was interviewed um on the canadian radio show q about you know what he thought about this whole thing because this guy um twitchell claimed like he was inspired by dexter and um dexter i'm sorry michael c hall said he does not

think dexter supports a lifestyle of serial killers and that he hopes people's appreciation was more than some sort of fetishization with the kill scenes. He said, quote, I wouldn't stop making Dexter because someone was fascinated by it only in that way. I try to tell myself that their fixated nature would have done it one way or the other. But it seems that Dexter had something to do with it. It's horrifying. So I think he was struggling with that too about i mean think about us imagine if not the worst popular is dexter but can you imagine if we had someone listen to us and then like go do something right like that's if anyone's listening don't do anything in our name the pressure unless it's unless it's crazy

because there are so many like unstable people in the world who misread or attach to things. I mean, even on My Favorite Murder, sometimes they were like, we don't condone. Yeah. Don't do anything bad. Don't do anything. Please don't do anything bad. Just drink milkshakes and wine and pet dogs. Please.

That's all. And don't come near us or our loved ones. Just drink some wine. Don't come near us. Just stay away. Stay away from my P.O. box. Stay away from... Just don't hurt anyone. Unless you have gifts. Don from my p.o box stay away from just don't hurt anyone unless you have gifts don't be a dick that should just be the yeah don't be a dick just don't

be a dick just be an undick what's the opposite of dick a vagina be a vagina oh god help me okay last line in may 2013 twitchell purchased a television for his prison cell he stated that he has seen every dexter episode that he missed since he was arrested and convicted of first degree murder and still watches the series to this day no i feel like that's something where like if you're an alcoholic you just once you admit you're an alcoholic you stay away from alcohol if you watch dexter and it the fantasies are so strong it makes you do some things that end you up in jail. Don't watch Dexter anymore. Yeah, but if you're an sociopath, you don't give a shit whether it harms people.

I guess also if you're already in jail, like what's Dexter going to do now? Oh, right. Sure. Might as well watch it really hard now. Definitely. You're like confirming your own actions. Yeah. So I feel like if I were any sort of TV show, like I I would either take after, like, SpongeBob or Bob's Burgers.

Like, I don't think that I would. I mean, you have already taken over Bob's Burgers. You're Linda Belcher to the T. See, exactly. You've already done it. Exactly. So there are better shows out there to emulate. Hmm.

All right, guys. Thanks for staying on board with us and not jumping off to your death while we were talking if you would like to uh submit any final last minute stories maybe they could get into the next episode of our listener stories but if not then you have a whole month to get out on the september listeners episode fall is almost here here here you know that means we only have four left after the one coming out we only have four more listeners episodes for the year you're making my chest hurt we've been doing this for so long christine you know what that means no we only have six more until we've been doing this for a year oh my lord what oh my freaking god that's so crazy

let's hope we make it knock on wood oh wait 26 we're halfway there this is our six month episode 26 times two oh shit high five this is our halfway six months happy half a year thank you all this will probably get cut it will so if you'd like to follow us anywhere you can find us at at wwd podcast on twitter instagram facebook uh you can find our patreon on our website at and that's why we drink.com we also have a shop yes and that's why we drink.bigcartel.com that's right we also have our audio boom page give that a whirl and also we have um our email you can email us your stories that's the best way for us to actually read them and make sure we can hold on to them for future episodes or suggestions or you know love letters to me because i know that a lot of you are burning to do that so that email is and that's why we

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