And That's Why We Drink - E261 Supernatural Roaches and Ghost Potatoes

Episode Date: February 6, 2022

Welcome to episode 261, the last episode before we get Christine back for good! And who better to close out Christine's parental leave than Leona's other parent... Blaise! This week Em tells Blaise a story close to his Connecticut hometown heart with the tale of the Curtis House Inn aka the 1754 House, and the least unhinged ghosts Em has ever reported on. Then Blaise answers a question Em and Christine asked ages ago and covers the wild story of Olympic athlete turned true crime tale Oscar Pistorius. And let us know how many minor league baseball hat costume changes you count this episode? ...and that's why we drink!

Everyone welcome to the finale of Christine's maternity leave tour where we have one last awesome guest and we thought that we should end it with arguably the closest person to Christine besides me and also a new baby. This is the other 50% of Leona's blood, the good half, as I like to say. And welcome, Mr. Schieffer, Blaze Lampagnalli. Hey, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for taking the role on. Oh, no worries. I mean, I'm nervous.

I wore a dark shirt to hide pit stains um you are the same we've got drinks ready to go what are you drinking blaze this i went and this is a new riff bourbon so new riff distillery is i think it's in bellevue which is the town next to it but this is a very close we're in kentucky so bourbon bourbon bourbon trust me we know we're in kentucky everyone still gets mad at christine triangulates where you live i don't know if you realize how close you are to having a million people in your doorstep every day that's true i mean that place has delivered to our house on the first day we moved here so um they've already we've already been found out they're in the know yep for sure so no so i did

bourbon on purpose though because beer i drink too fast and then but so this should go slow i'm not a native kentuckian so i'll probably shake a little bit as i drink it but and there's ice you know get at me whatever but uh the glass is glasses, thanks to Lisa, it says Dad Established 2021. So shout out to great Aunt Lisa on that one. Yeah. Do you know? So we did an Instagram Live with Lisa yesterday, although people will, it will be months from now when people hear this.

But so many people commented on the, I guess someone took a screenshot of when you and Leona were in the frame with Lisa. I don't think even I realized how much you look like Lisa. I think it might just be the really thick framed glasses. Oh, I mean, you know, she's my dad's sister. So it's, you know, I think I do think that there's some similarities there. Some of my other brothers definitely look even more like her. It never clicked for me. I guess they'll get more money in the will than I will.

I don't think so. She seems to have a very specific love for you and now Christine. I think the baby is going to steal your thunder there. That's okay. Do you have an update on the baby? Because this will be the last time we don't as a as an audience hear about christine talking about the baby all the time so this is the last time to give us honest feedback how are you feeling she's a baby um i think she behaves good she's like the first one

so i don't have a you know a comparator but um you know she sleeps po poops, pees, eats. She's been smiling more. She's apparently laughed multiple times today. Always when I'm out of the room, she saves this all for mom. She's like that fucking guy. He'll never know. I know. Are you overwhelmed? I have no idea what parent life is like.

Are you as tired as they say you are? I mean, Christine is so hard because Christine will just take all the hits. Like, I'll be like, okay, wake me up and I'll do something at night. And she goes, okay. And then I'll sleep for eight hours. And she's like, I didn't sleep. And I'm like, what the, I can't, I can't, I'm not, I can't feed the baby though, but we're getting there.

She's taking bottles now and like, was like an all-star at that so soon hopefully i could get in on the action and be sleep deprived myself so um but no we're enjoying it we are uh we're behind on photos i know funko m is is mad at that but i sent you one yesterday i think did you i it might have been during the live. If not, I'll send it later. It's Gio sitting on both of us at the same time, me and Leona. I did not see that. Pretty good.

Maybe it'll make it onto the Instagram. Well, I don't get to complain because I don't have a baby, but I find ways to sleep deprive myself, in which case people will tell me all the time, oh, I texted you. And I'm like, I actively ignored it i guess so i don't i didn't i see it like three days later and then people think i'm not getting to accident so i will go check my uh page later and then scream about it no worries that's that's what babies are for they're they're big excuses that's all they are i i like to think from across the country all of a sudden I've got an excuse from like, oh, this baby just taken over my life. All right. Well, I do you have a reason you drink, by the way?

From that's a baby. I don't like bad. I mean, everything. I mean, I do go back to work on Monday. So really, that's yeah. But I work from home now. So I'm not going to go out and complain too much. So but yeah, that'll be, you know, different. Um, so I'll just get those last days of drinking it. Now you'll get to see it

firsthand here. Look, that's all I've wanted. We haven't seen drinking on the show in quite a while. Oh, there's the picture. I just saw your picture come in. Oh, hang on. I got to take a little look. Oh, just. Oh, oh, it's my two favorite things, both in your lap. So sweet little babies. I know it was they they came in hot there.

Gio has. I guess that's the maybe if people haven't heard by the it's not my baby or Christine's baby. That's Gio's baby. He is taken to her smittenly from the moment she came home um we're a little nervous he didn't like cats at first he tried to actually kill your cats yeah pretty bad can't deny it but the baby was completely different he is like we we've taught him to lick only her feet to keep germs out of her face and hands but uh and uh he will if she's crying and christine's not in the room he runs to christine first and like lat lassies her like

just like tells her that there's something wrong and drags her to the other room so no geo is if for everyone concerned about geo he's very happy oh i'm so glad he still has untapped potential. We have yet to know. It's still coming out every now and then. Exactly. Okay, I have a story for you, and I tried to make it. I tried, please. At first, I was like, oh, hospitals.

Let's do a haunted hospital. And then I went, no, no, no, no. And then I'm going to look like a real asshole if I got this wrong. You are from Connecticut, right? Yeah, go goats. Okay, perfect. I didn't know if you were just a yard goat fan. Well, I mean, how could you not be?

But I actually lined up more minor league baseball hats to change into as we go here to prove my Connecticut-ism. Oh, perfect. Okay, well, as someone who, like, the only thing I think you and I could probably have a conversation about is minor league baseball, only because I got into it because of the mascots. The Fresnoburg Nats, yeah. I know. Well, we have the least interesting name, but you have the Yardgoats, which I'm very excited for. So I did a Connecticut story. Uh-oh.

Are you actually from Hartford? I don't actually know where in Connecticut you are. I was born in Hartford. We did not grow up in Hartford, but it's the closest city to where we grew up. I grew up in Marlborough, Connecticut. Super small town. But yeah, every one of my siblings was bored at St. Francis hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. So, um, shout out really triangulating

your, uh, the first moment of your life there. I know. I mean, you know, go guess my social security number if it hasn't been stolen already. Do you, is Hartford or Marlboro anywhere near Woodbury? I don't know about this i mean the nice thing about connecticut is nothing is more than two hours apart from each other so i i do know where woodbury is okay do you know what what i i know ghosts aren't your like thing but do you happen to know what building i'm about to talk about i mean i know isn't it no amnesty fill horrors in long island i just re-listened to that episode there's the haunting in connecticut house um that was what

i thought about doing but i think i've already covered it so yes yeah um you know ghost wise no i know christine wanted me to cover the melon heads but what the hell is that i'll give you that's for future i don't know what the melon heads are i didn't hear about them growing up my dad apparently scared the pants off of her telling a story about the melon heads they're on wikipedia weird um but also like it's weird that this has happened i have only been awake for like i don't know three hours but that's the second time i've heard the melonhead reference and it's kind of freaking me out like really what i mean well when i think of melonheads i don't know did you

play the backyard sports games at all the computer cd games like there was backyard baseball was the og i know i know what you're talking about but i never played it okay well the melonheads was a name choice you could have so a lot of mighty melon heads out there pablo sanchez fans everywhere you know get at me uh no i was on an i was on an actual little league team and we were called the grapes that's the closest fruit sport thing i can give you but no i it was it's just weird that you said melon head because i was i had just a completely different reference, but I very weird. So maybe you should have done it boys. I don't know.

Uh, maybe. Oh, well, well, you're the paranormal. Okay. Actually,

I needed a story for when Christine gets back. So I'm going to do that then. Uh, all right. And now everyone knows one of the stories, but, uh, okay.

Woodbury, Connecticut. This is apparently connecticut's oldest inn oldest continuously working in and is called the curtis inn or the curtis house in um and i guess since its time i think only a few years ago it changed hands and it's been the curtis inn since 19 or no since 1754 um so it has been renamed Curtis Inn since 1754. So it has been renamed the 1754 House, in case anyone's wondering if they're driving past it.

Lots of old shit in Connecticut. Which is why its motto is Every Modern Comfort, But Every Ancient Charm. Look at that. I would like to think wherever I live one day comes with a motto, but I'm kind of scared of what that motto would be.

I'd be like, don't come in here. That would be the motto. Okay, so it has always been an inn or a public house since 1754. It's been given the title Connecticut's Oldest Inn, and it was originally built in the mid-1730s. There's been given the title Connecticut's oldest in, and it was originally built in, uh,

the mid 1730s. There's a sign on it that apparently says built in 1736. So I feel like that should be the clear number, but I saw a bunch of sources online that said 1734 or 35. So apparently that sign isn't good enough for other people. So now it makes me paranoid that that's not the number. So the 1730s, and it was built by Reverend Anthony Stoddard for his son, Elkin, which we'll just move on quickly from that. That's a name. It's certainly, if you told me, if you brought me a little baby loon and you're like, this is Elkin, I'd be like, no, it's not. It was originally built for Elkin as a house. And then I guess very quickly they were like, no, no, no, we're going to turn this into an inn.

So Elkin ended up giving it to his grandson, also named Anthony Stoddard. And he turned it into, I think it's called the Ornog Inn. And ever since then, it has been that type of business so on the first floor there are guest rooms and on the second floor originally was the ballroom where they held event space um which is interesting you i would think it's reversed where the ballroom would be on the bottom real hard to sleep with the ballroom right above you hey i mean is that what happens above you is that a ballroom is that the you have you just haven't seen the inside of their apartment it's actually um burbank's oldest running in

and there's just an event space above me but the all the visitors all all the visitors are roaches by the way so um just tip tapping all night. That's supernatural. They'll never die. Actually, they are the closest thing to between realms in my mind. Makes sense to me. So in 1754, uh, was when it got renamed officially to the Curtis house in, uh, and then weirdly, I don't know. So there's two different backstories to this. And I think I know which one you and I both believe more, but in 1754, it was renamed the Curtis house.

And then after 1754 for the next 200 years, very oddly like five different families, all with the last name Curtis lived in this house and none of them were related. They just, it just happens to be a house full of people with the last name Curtis lived in this house and none of them were related. They just it just happens to be a house full of people with the last name Curtis. The other background story is that it was named the Curtis house in later after so many Curtis families had lived there, which I think we can both agree is probably more likely. Yeah, I mean, of course.

I mean, so Jamie Lee was there, too, right? Right. During the filming of Halloween. In that case, why don't they just name it the Jamie Lee was there, too, during the filming of Halloween. In that case, why don't they just name it the Jamie Lee house? You know? Yeah. I mean, that is that is like cash money right there. Yeah.

I mean, of course, it's L.A. So there's cockroaches. But I guess. Well, no, they're all here. They're actually all over here. They're all left. So anyway, there it's just weird that you mentioned that because I just found that out and I was like, oh, my God, God, now the house is like doubly cool.

Wow. So anyway, the Curtis house probably was named the Curtis house after so many Curtis families lived there, not the other way around. Gotcha. And renovations and additions are, it seems like they're pretty constant, including the first renovation, which was the second floor becoming more guest space versus event space. And then in the year 1900, the town was very excited because the trolleys were coming to town and they were going to bring in a lot more tourists. And that was when the owner named Levi Curtis, he funded renovations for a whole third floor, so that way there could be even more guest rooms for the people being brought in by the trolley service. And so he spent $400 at the time.

Do you want to guess how much that is today? What year is that? 1900. 1900. $1,200. Oh, $12,000. Oh, just a few decimal points. But I was shocked.

I actually thought it would be a completely different number. And then I double checked on West Egg. I don't know if anyone else uses that as their regular to-go inflation calculator, but I recommend it. And so now the, so after renovations, and now there's three floors of rooms, there are still only 14 rooms on the second and third floors of the main house. And then in the carriage house, there's four more. So there's 18 rooms. I don't know if it's changed since, but it feels like pretty recently, there are only eight of those rooms that were priced higher. Like, their amenities were like air conditioning and a bathroom. And I was, I was, it sounds like a

nightmare to me. As someone who prioritizes toilets and air conditioning over everything. It was very weird that only eight of the 14 offered that. So, uh, I hope it's changed. Yeah. Communal bathrooms, you know, dorm life. I had, so the only time I've ever enjoyed a communal bathroom was, uh, I did, I was one of the last people to do an overnight stay at the Lizzie Borden house before I changed hands. And that was a communal bathroom situation, but I was kind of glad to have it because it really feels so creepy in that house that it was nice to pass people on

my way. Like I'm good. Are you good? Um, and you saw all these same people the next day. It's not like the, Oh, who'd you see that guy in the top hat? Yeah. Oh my God. Can you imagine if the person I passed every time was just a one black shadow waving back at me? He I it was I guess it was still a bed and breakfast of people were staying the night. But a lot of people stay the night with the intention of staying up and investigating. But you have to. It was also a really weird situation because you could knock on people's doors in the middle of the night and be like, can I investigate in here? And they could be like, no, I'm sleeping or come on in we're doing a seance it was a very weird juxtaposition that's weird i mean you know airbnbs are already so weird whenever i do airbnb i always get the entire house i just i'm too scared of the fact that like we're going into someone's space

who could just have a key like what how do i know be locking the door is enough and so i always get the entire space and then that freaks me out too because i'm like if i hear one goddamn sound like i can't i can't give it to anyone that's just for sure that's true yep very yeah the tough times of airbnb so that's all the history and there's just uh ghosts now So and Blaze, dare I remind everybody that you are not as much of a believer as I am, although a few people are, to be fair. Not quite. But again, then again, I just don't mess around with it. You know, if Christine says there's a ghost in this room, you know, the haunted carousel over there, I just will be like i mean i'm just not gonna like it to i'm not going to disprove anything and so it's not really fair i'm not i'm not giving anyone a fair playing

field here like you say oh i think there's a ghost and i'm just gonna be like nah and then not not do anything i'm just like that guy who just says no so i mean i will say the creepiest room i experienced is that little offshoot room that you're next to that was a little odd but then my mother slept in there when she was here with the visiting the baby and i was like and she listens to your guys podcast she's like a super fan i was like mom did you listen to the new episode she goes no i haven't listened yet i'm like oh cool i'm like you just wait till you go home Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. I'm like,

you just wait till you go home. It's all good. There's nothing to worry about. It had to have been fun for her. I imagine like a feat, if there's a podcast, you're a huge fan of to be able to sleep overnight in their studio is like a fun little thing. Yeah.

She's just got full access to you guys. I mean, she could have done a lot of damage, but she slept next to the haunted sewing carousel. So, yep, that's it. Also, hi to Sherry. You are a peach. You're a dream.

And also, you're very brave because I was number one. So the spirits here are said to be former owners and employees who loved the inn and just never left. And often the guests here hear whispers at night by their bed. They see shadow figures in their rooms or in the lobby. They have captured EVPs or audio recordings of spirits

saying things. They have gotten pictures of orbs, which, okay, like I believe in a lot of things, but I don't necessarily believe in orbs. People hear strange music voices footsteps the tvs and the lights turn on and off by themselves and items will completely vanish and when you look everywhere for it and finally give up it'll be somewhere ridiculous hiding from you so just the old classics i guess and uh the owner one of the owners i think she's the former owner now, but her name was TJ Brennan and her and her brother,

Chris own owned the place for a long time. I guess it stayed in the family for a few generations. Yeah. Chris. And you probably actually, I'm not sure of the last name, but it could be Curtis for all we know. Uh,

and TJ is very vocal about how haunted this place is so most of the quotes i got were from interviews from her and tj said that uh the beds will look completely made and then you'll turn around five seconds later and it looks like someone's completely rolled all over them um i'll let you know yeah i'm glad we both thought the same thing. It's just the bed's just a fucking mess. So apparently there's also reports of a strong force that will knock people over. Even though there's no one behind them, it'll just feel like someone bumped into them. People's hair gets tugged in the attic. And then again, they catch orbs and EVPs up there too.

So these are ghosts that like the place, but they're pulling on people's hair. Yeah. I also don't understand. It seems like maybe they like the place, but not the people. I don't know. It's like, Oh,

we really love it. We got to tell you about this five star review right now. It's like, uh, uh, like, do you have a moment to talk about your cars? Extend warranty?

Like just like kind of like holding you there. Yeah. Here's a, I added this in, in honor um but coincidentally for as many ghosts as there seem to be here none of them ever will show up on camera they're very camera shy so i'm not saying that i don't even have to go disprove it i'm i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you have a point you haven't even said it and you have a point. But they're said to. But then here's the thing.

The paranormal freaks out there could be like, well, duh, they have to drain the energy out of the equipment and turn all the cameras off. And then they're active because they have restored some energy to them. So they can't do anything if the cameras are on because they have no energy. I don't know. We could really duke it out if you wanted to i mean so this is not paranormal it is but it's not ghosts but i i believe in ufos christine's gonna get mad at me and say you say you don't believe what i my my super hot take is that uh whatever aliens are out there are too far advanced for us to like perceive

what is going on but so like i don't think that you see things like unidentified flying objects i don't think that they're it'd be possible for us to see the flying object like they whatever they're doing is is beyond us they're right like it like we're it's pretty condescending of us to think that their technology is only as advanced as ours yeah they're not just like hovering next to airplanes to freak us out they're not crop circle they're not doing that they're whatever they're doing is outside of our uh realm of control so uh i i like to think there's at least like a couple like there's like just on every planet there's a handful of assholes though who think

oh let's go over to the planet next door and just ride out the cheapo vintage equipment yeah and have just like the use our grandpa's old UFO where people could still see it and just freak them out also

I appreciate that you were taking advantage of the fact that Christine is not here and yet the world and just freak them out. Also, I appreciate that you were taking advantage of the fact that Christine is not here and yet the world can hear you and you're like, let me set the record straight. UFOs do exist, regardless of what Christine's going to say. There's also a spirit in 17th, 18th century clothing who apparently doesn't like the renovations,

was very much a traditionalist and how the inn was and likes to bother the construction workers yeah it's like everyone needs to be a little humbled every now and then so uh but i guess like he likes to bother the construction workers and will steal their tools or move their ladders or whatever it is this is very sweet and also if all the spirits are employees or owners this is kind of an outlier but there's one spirit of an owner's brother-in-law where maybe he also worked here i'm unsure um but he apparently shows up to people in their dreams and calms them down when they're like in a bad mood that's pretty nice everyone could use that that's like

unpoltergeisty it's like a little angel it's like a casper the friendly ghost situation yeah and also it's very nice for him to only like be intruding upon your dreams and not actually make you feel physically in danger you know it's like whoa i'm just here and then i'm back away you know uh i think that is casper the friendly ghost not elkin the friendly ghost i don't think elkin the friendly ghost would have gone over very well you know i have thought like i wonder how they got the name casper because i like to think the writing room has sat down been like we've got to come up with the friendliest name but i wouldn't put casper i would pick something softer than casper like it was bobby you know like i don't know but not bobby i don't know what i would pick but it would be robert the friendly ghost but it could be like buddy or like you know yeah that's very yeah buddy is a good one that's but it's like a dog name there's no

dogs named casper other than they're being they're white and they're named after casper the friendly ghost yeah if you have a dog named casper who isn't white i do wonder about the backstory um yeah i feel like a writing room would have like the original casper the friendly ghost people casper hat oh actually i did cover casper the friendly ghost i wonder if i figured out the origin of the name i don't remember um i don't remember either i think i've listened to that episode it's nice and then christine talked about her trauma it sounds right which i mean hey that episode is very sad it's a pretty i i did watch it for research and i was like wow i didn't actually know that the like the pilot

episode of casper the friendly ghost everyone had to watch a dog die that was the fox it's old yellow oh yeah fox a fox well either way yeah you know canine like species yes no not cool i mean i guess it's stuck so they knew what they were doing but yeah again it's like old timey people had no concept of trauma, and they're like, wow, why are all the kids just really remembering this experience? They must love the show. It's like, no.

They're all thinking about their pets that are going to die one day. Kill more animals. Did that come out before or after Bambi? Did Disney steal Bambi from Casper? I don't know. I like to think it was was like a family business. It was a family business where they were all like,

let's just kill an animal and see how the kids react. Also, apparently during Christmas time, that's when the spirits are particularly active at this. Oh, okay. So again, the former owner, TJ Brennan, her family, I guess, has actually been involved with the incense the 50s, but I don't know when she herself took it over. But this is a quote from her. This inn is haunted. I would walk by a

table and two minutes later, a plate would fly off the table. I went to light the fireplace and then it blew up. Bobby and I got burned. We had a gentleman that worked here who would take an ashtray in the early morning and sit by the window and drink a cup of coffee and have a cigarette but after he passed away we would every once in a while find an ashtray with a cigarette butt in his favorite place which could be spooky or i am very aware skeptics that someone could have just literally put an ashtray there um with all of this though tj has reassured that she's never felt scared at the, at the end. But she and everyone that works there is very aware that room 16 is like the most haunted room. And it's best known for the bed covers getting tugged at or pulled off

completely when you're sleeping overnight. So one person, I guess was even shoved out of the bed. I don't know how accurate that is, but apparently whoever is in that room doesn't seem to like women because it will yank the covers off of them and women will feel stared at um i guess gross some sort of implication of like get out but guys once again blaze they get all the special attention and uh whatever spirit is there will like tuck them in like the

like the intense tuck where they'll like wake up feeling like really held in the blanket and they'll even feel something crawl into bed with them but somehow not in a creepy way just in like a hey i'm here next to you protecting you way uh-huh i know uh yeah not gonna not on board with no thanks uh tj said uh quote we had one gentleman say that he had the best night's sleep here because every time he would kick the blankets off they would be brought up and tucked back all around him he would always ask for that same room and he always felt the spirit was female but not dangerous just in a very nurturing way which that's nice of that guy but like i don't need to ever go back into a room who keeps going back into a room to get like the blankets put back on you like someone who wasn't touched and

held enough as a child please do we have to go down that road again about poor child development so apparently blaze if you and christine went to that hotel you would have a better time i think um also i the name had not been mentioned the name had not been mentioned anywhere but um i guess i'm ruining the end here but there is an episode not of ghost adventures on this but of a different favorite show of mine which is hotel hell and um they kept mentioning this ghost that's in room 16 that tucks people in named betty but nowhere on the internet is betty i feel like they just made the name up for the tv show so apparently i mean no gordon knows gordon believes in ghosts he won't take shit from him but he actually well i'll get it i'll get into that but they oh they

did do like the paranormal they plugged the ghosts on the show for sure i'll get to that so um there are four small to so how old is tj like when how recent is tj's ownership of this i feel like tj well so whenever hotel hell came out she was still running the place yeah and yeah because she was on the show with her brother chris and that's just interesting going back to the ghost or the potential ghost who leaves the cigarettes that like usually it's always old old ghosts and then all of a sudden there's this guy like just that people knew like someone knew oh there's stuff is still around there's a fave it's weird that you mentioned that because i'm gonna mention

one of those more recent ghosts because we do regularly i mean we as me and christine but also as like a paranormal community are always like why is everyone so like antiquated like where's like the the people who like it like music like us, like us, where's that person? Where's the nineties jams, right? Someone in the nineties has died now. Right. Yeah. Where are you?

That's what we call music. Uh, let me, we, I, I feel like you just said, cause that just adds to the thing that like something about the building or the property has something to do with it. Cause like,

he didn't like die mysteriously or uh like have a bad death there or something like that or a bad experience not based on these descriptions unless some giant headboard fell on his head that i don't know about i i don't know i nothing like i it, it's weird what people stayed in, which people didn't and why they stayed or how they died. It seems like no one also died in this hotel, which is weird because usually there's always like a woman in red and there's always like someone who like was waiting for her husband in the 1800s and he never showed. And so it's weird that this has no reason to be paranormal.

And there's just like a bunch of ghosts just coming on in. So I don't know. Just old. Just old. And there's four main spirits. There's one unnamed spirit who apparently is a matronly woman. Yikes. Can you imagine that being your descriptor?

My mom, that was always her. The two biggest insults you get from my mom is being called matronly or frumpy which mean the same thing to her by the way but if she used either of those words it was not she does not like you oh i was i was gonna say who the hell said that to linda about linda no she says she's given that heat i got behind closed doors she'd be like i don't know something just kind of frumpy and i'm like oh girl like i don't know who said that to you at some point and it really hit you and now that's like your biggest insult but it's it's a weird word to like really hang on to but anyway like the muppets from like fraggle rock they were pretty it sounds like it sounds like snow white's like eighth little person. It sounds like dopey and frumpy.

Because grumpy. Fun fact, if you ever hear my mom call anyone frumpy, it's not good. And she used to say it to me sometimes if I wasn't trying hard enough. And I was like, I see you're trying to hurt my feelings. I'm not going to let that happen. Damn. Okay, so a matronly woman, aka my mother's worst nightmare to become a ghost, just to be called matronly. I guess she's very particular about things at the inn, so that's why they assume she's also an ex-employee,

because she seems to oversee the dining room, and I guess, I'm assuming if things aren't going the way she likes, she'll help rearrange silverware or something. And she makes very overwhelmed employees feel very calm. I guess there are certain spaces where she they can go to and she makes them less stressed out. Also a lovely ghost between that person and the dream ghost. I like this place so far to be haunted. dream ghost.

I like this place so far to be haunted. During one Thanksgiving, there was, I guess a medium there who went to TJ and said like, Oh, I don't know if you know you have ghosts, but there's one woman here who quote, just wants you to know she's very content and her day is done. And it went very smoothly and she's very happy with the way her day went.

So I like that. She's giving status reports. Also, man, I know I want that she's giving status reports also. I know. I want that like tattooed on my chest and then to be like, I feel that way every day. I've never, that I've never felt that in my entire life.

Maybe you're just content with the day. You can always find one flaw. Especially like it was apparently such a good day that you cross dimensions to tell someone about it how are you a ghost if you have that if you're that content like i feel like ghosts are all full of anxious energy maybe i'm just full of anxious energy so i think of that i put that on them but if you're that content where are you what are you doing go go to the next plane i know stay there i would almost think that if that was how your day went then this is your last day on this side right like when you like elevate afterwards it's like i feel like all the

pharmaceutical companies that go there find this ghost and like capture it like 13 ghost style and like just extract this contentness and then give the drug some stupid long ass name afterwards and uh yeah cure anxiety this it really is like the the calmest nicest update i've heard but also it makes me wonder if she had such a good day that she was reporting it to the other side then like what are the other days like like are they that's true too how bad are they going that this one felt noteworthy you know yeah it's i guess it's all in perspective i don't know this ghost uh day to day but yeah that if that was her day then you know what i guess we could all hope for that yeah i let's all just strive to be that matronly woman on Thanksgiving night. So the second ghost is Sally, who I think is also

Betty. I think they just changed up her name for the TV show, which makes no sense to me, but she's especially seen in room 16. She likes to hang out on the second floor, and the staff literally call her a friend, which I feel like we're crossing lines here, but OK. And I guess there is a chair that's often seen rocking back and forth on the second floor, and they attribute that to Sally. She also doesn't like renovations. was more active on the second floor and they would come to work every day and see that there was a chair upstairs that would always be turned to face the wall as in like didn't want to look at the rest of the building and the drawers would get pulled out and there would just be more noise etc

and tj said quote we would go up there and say sally will you just give us some time if you just relax you're gonna like it like when the renovations are done and i guess after that she calmed down and then they i guess she liked it because after the renovations there was not as much activity anyway so they were right that is a very reasonable ghost i guess if you could you could uh like talk it down yeah that one needs to talk to the matronly woman who just couldn't be more happy so i mean it seems like they know how to go do their own thing just sit in a corner and stare i mean if only geo would do that when the mailman came i and you know i love that they are still self-regulating their emotions like they're still doing the work yeah after after the fact they're

like these are like the most like put together ghosts i mean they may be matronly and frumpy but i guess we're throwing frumpy at them but um i mean they're just they're killing it i mean what's wrong with this situation here they're the least stay in this house yeah they're the least unhinged for sure of all the ghosts i've ever reported on and i guess the staff are also really aware of that. And a lot of the sources I saw, they were all calling these spirits friends, which I guess if this is a family business of several generations, you do grow up with them or you're just like aware.

I think even TJ was saying like, I've heard of all these stories, but very, very few things happen to me because I'm just such a constant in their life i don't think they i think they do their thing i do my thing and we just kind of coexist so it's it's very weird that they really are just like other roommates um another spirit is lucius foot which sounds like some harry shit. And he apparently owned the inn in the 1850s. And he mysteriously died one night after winning quite a lot in a game of poker at the inn. The next day he was found in a nearby church's barn and all of his money had been taken from him.

And people think that he could be the ghost in room one. So there is a ghost there that is also also described as a quote elegant confederate gentleman which what kind of oxymoron is that but okay yeah connecticut don't have a lot of confederates only elegant gentlemen um but so i guess some people think that the elegant confederate gentleman and lucius foot are separate beings some say that it's the same ghost in the room but they're both found in room one which was the innkeeper's quarters and i guess people will see this spirit um he'll just show up in your room and he is known to loudly stomp around and take off his boots which i feel like it's kind of stinky when he takes his boots off i just feel like if if you're taking your boots off that intensely,

it's because you had a long day, and now I have to deal with this. Smell-o-vision. I know. Native, right on there. Especially if the feet are like 300 years old. Are you kidding me? I'm so not interested. And your name is Lucius Foote.

That's an extra problem. Wait a minute. I didn't even put those together i'm gonna i'm deciding that this person is the same person that takes his boots off because he wants to show you his little feet his little lucius feet he's gonna replace john madden as like the spokesperson for like loterman af like he's he's got it right there athlete's foot has nothing on lucius foot also i'm now realizing is it like a like a a pen name for like luscious feet or i don't know like let me take off these boots so we can all get a good view i don't know the mystery deepens the plot thickens so some some reports even say that uh he's apparently after he kicks his boots off he says to them i've had a rough ride which like

i'd be like yeah i'm about to have a rough ride put your shoes back on um he also apparently fades into the wall for some people or he also will climb into bed with you these ghosts are way too friendly i don't like how how confident they are nope that is not like Connecticut. We do not like physical contact. It feels a little like deep south hospitality, but like to the extreme. The same spirit is also apparently seen in the dining room, and he became the most active once they opened up the pub, which, okay, maybe this is just the ghost of Christine the whole time,

because the spirit is most apparently famous for enjoying the liquor closet i don't know what that means but i'm guessing that means that either liquor goes missing which could just be an employee or like things are clinking around in there i don't know i don't know what's happening but apparently he likes the pub area um and then there is the final ghost which is joe hardesty and the hardesty is another family line that owned the inn for a while. He was a former dishwasher. He died in 1985. So pretty recent.

And he, I don't know why. What is going on at this inn that everyone loves it so much? Joe apparently asked to be buried on the property. So that would make sense why his ghost is here. Yeah. I'm actually a dishwasher and you are just fucking loving it so much. We were like, put my body to rest right here. Yeah, that is that is something.

I mean, you know, it's going to get a good crap. Not indeed. The other website. Zip recruiter. No, no. Glass door. Glass door. edit that uh make me look smart it's impossible wow welcome welcome place to what we're always begging even to do and she can't figure it out we always look dumb like it says christine it's christine who said it it says it

in the corner of my screen there um no yeah glass door like that you don't need it at that point like you just got like you just be like yo we're burying our employees out here in a non scary way like we're good i wonder if it's because if his family had worked there for several years and maybe he thought his family was going to continue to work there for several years that way he would like be with his family i don't know that's the best i can do any of these people get to live there is like they're also living and working there and like that's just such i mean or i mean even if they're just working there i think no only because if there's only like 18 rooms yeah i feel like there's not it's not a lot of space i think you me and everyone is gonna like this particular ghost So Joe, that dishwasher who has been buried under the property,

apparently he is a ghost that eats mashed potatoes. That I'm cool with. That I'm fine with. I'm so on board with that. Mashed potatoes are, I don't know. Can you call mashed potatoes underrated? I don't know. They're underrated and overrated.

Would you prefer mashed potatoes or stuffing at thanksgiving no potatoes yes okay that's yeah uh so tj i guess asked an employee to go downstairs and get some firewood at one point but the employee like came sprinting back and said i can't go down there there's a guy sitting on the stairs eating his mashed potatoes which like by the way if that's not a if you don't think that's a ghost then why can't you just go downstairs and like walk past the guy eating potatoes well whatever but now the only question is is it really mashed potatoes or can ghosts like conjure up better image like they're you like you said always a lady in white or a lady in red maybe you can only conjure up a

white looking substance and it's just you know what's crazy here's the next sentence oh tj flippantly went oh you saw joe just go get the firewood he's fine and then the employee said but you don't understand he had white pants and a white shirt he was not clean shaven and he was just sitting there eating mashed potatoes i like how this guy is talking frenetically like you don't understand this guy is eating potatoes it's crazy like like there's no threat sir like just go get like this is the laziest employee i've ever heard of where he's like ah that guy's on his lunch break and therefore i'm not gonna cross him um but also all i've learned from this is that there are ghost potatoes which means me in the afterlife has the ability to still

eat potatoes that's what i just yeah so there is one final ghost which apparently is uh anthony soldered himself who only showed up as a spirit to the hotel or to the inn when a distant relative donated a painting of him to the inn and i guess his energy came with the painting um once they hung it up, people had very intense, like overwhelming paranoia whenever they were near the painting. They always felt like they were being stared at or judged or just really uncomfortable in general to a point where I guess guests were also feeling that way. And the owners had to move the painting. They ended up moving it to a wall where it was all by itself on the wall. So it had all the attention and the activity seemed to die down.

But I guess while the painting was up, people also saw more activity on the first floor and the hallways. I don't know if they saw figures or something, but it all seemed to die down once the painting got moved away from the lobby. And I'm sorry, did you say what the painting is of? It's of him. It's of Anthony Starr. Oh, like a portrait. Yeah. It's of Anthony Starr. Oh, like a portrait. Yeah. It's very Gemini energy.

I wonder when he was born. He'd be like, I need a whole wall to my framed painting. Seriously. Yeah, move me. I guess where Gio will end up, his paintings. He already has like a regal painting done of him, doesn't he? Many. Fans are amazing.

Your fans are amazing artists. And we have so many Gio. He's going to just need a whole floor, I guess, of his paintings. That's how he'll carry on. He needs a fireplace mantle portrait. I want one right above the mailbox so that he could just stare at the mailbox. Wait a minute. Can you imagine a little framed regal painting just sticking on the back?

It's like his mantle. Wait a minute. That's very sweet. Oh, no. just stick it on the back and it's like his mantle wait that's very sweet oh no um so there is one uh i guess medium or sensitive named joni mayhand who wrote about uh their time at the inn they have a blog joni mayhand.com and they stayed the night immediately sensed an intimidating male presence but also a young curious woman that i guess they got the vibe of being like a maid from the 1800s. At the same time, Joni spent the entire night feeling icyolt her in pain like someone had reached into my eye socket and grabbed my eyeball.

And then the pain moved to my chest and it felt as though I was having a heart attack. The feeling eased and then moved to my leg. And pretty much all night, she, quote, woke up every few minutes to someone again grabbing my ankle. This would go on the entire night. The minute I'd fall asleep, several times the touch would come with a strong smell. Once I smelled cigarette smoke, and the other time, a very foul smell of a dirty animal nearly made me choke. What little sleep I managed to get was interlaced with dreams of people I didn't know trying to urgently tell me they wanted me to hear something uh when i woke up the next morning i felt as tired as i had when i got into the room

at midnight so that's a completely different twist on the experience i mean i'm glad that you that she was alive the next morning my emergency medicine brain only thinks of like an aortic dissection me like the big blood vessel off her heart ruptures it's it's a they call it a plus one you have like chest pain and like a headache or vision change yeah i don't i didn't like anything that she was done but don't don't talk to me when you have symptoms because i go to the worst place every time you and christine are really just kismet. It makes a lot of sense why the two of you can just compare paranoias.

Well, she always wants to stay home. I'm always trying to send her to the emergency room. She does have that creepy strength. She's got such a weird tolerance for all sorts of pain and stress. It blows my mind. I would be, if i lived in your house every second i'd be like blaze let's just go to the hospital who knows oh i learned that very quickly the number we would have been at the hospital five times if we went every time

and we did go once we went and it was i think it was the right decision it was wrong but not wrong oh it was wrong i look i'm not here to be right. I'm just here to actively throw my suggestion out. But I definitely was like, please take Christina to the hospital. She is about to have this baby. And I came back. I stopped watching football. Who would have thought?

I think we've all learned already that that means a lot coming from you. that means a lot coming from you uh so tj uh apparently i don't that was a weird like one hit wonder when it comes to like a bad experience at the hotel a lot of people seem to not have that experience eyeballs being pulled out don't not good it's enough to make me wonder if i should get a room there but uh it seems to have only happened to one person who was i think i don't know i don't know what was going on but it seems to have only happened to one person who was, I think, I don't know. I don't know what was going on, but it seems like maybe this sensitive brought other things with them to the end.

But TJ only lets choice respectful investigators come to the end to investigate because she's afraid of pissing off the spirit. So she only lets it happen kind of once in a blue moon. So she has let medium and investigator Donna Kent come, which I guess is kind of like one of the bigger psychics in the area. And then Lorraine and Ed Warren, which we've talked about a lot on the show. Oh yeah.

The Warrens have been there a few times and Lorraine has even said, quote, my husband and family have gone there. There's a bedroom upstairs. That first bedroom, that room always seems to be very active. Sometimes when people come out, out of state for visits, I always ask if they want to stay at a real haunted inn and then suggests the Curtis house in for them because they're from Monroe, Connecticut. Oh, yeah. So Lorraine has also stated

that the attic and the second floors are hots spots for ghosts and now hotel hell uh it is season two episode seven and gordon ramsey stayed there and the show tried to make it seem like i don't even know if the show tried to do it but a lot of the press around this episode tried to make it look like betty the ghost in room 16 who i've never heard of other than in the show uh was like locking him in and like making the door difficult to open but like he was just easier to say betty in a british accent i'm not even going to attempt british accents maybe i don't know how hard it is to say sally first betty i feel like i've heard gordon ramsay maybe say both at different times i think it's fine i don't know

what i mean he says bullshit a lot that's close to betty that gets bleeped though maybe he's not saying it right maybe he's always been saying betty i don't know maybe he doesn't betty shit maybe he doesn't know how to curse uh the apparently they he kept getting locked in his room and then the the press after the fact was like oh and the ghost betty kept locking him in first of all I've never heard of Betty. Second of all, he was literally on an episode of Hotel Hell where the hotel needs a drastic renovation. So the door could have just been getting stuck. And that's what the episode looked like. It looked like he just couldn't open the door because the hinges were fucked up. Or like the wood had warped or something.

But I will say within 30 seconds of the episode, you can find it on YouTube for free 99. Like 30 seconds after the theme song, the owner, TJ, is talking about how haunted the place is like went straight into the ghost factor. And at the end of the episode, during the renovations, I guess they've really decided that Betty really lives there because there's now after the renovations, decided that betty really lives there because there's now after the renovations pillows with betty's name on a chair in the room to like appease her so she doesn't bother people and they also put in a really creepy painting like that's supposed to spook you um where it's like one of those paintings with the eyes are like more hollow than the rest so it looks like it's following you everywhere it's like one of those like they make those yeah it was like and it looked like an antique an old school it looks like a haunted painting that is supposed to follow you around but i think it's like a play on the haunting i'm that's not good

i wonder if they've taken it down since but yeah maybe it's like you know it's like it's like the episodes of um kitchen nightmares where he and the the owner is just convinced that their food is so good and maybe she's just convinced that this place just needs to be haunted it's not a not a great look for the reputation of her haunting it's not a it's i i mean obviously i will immediately believe something is haunted and it wasn't originally a a great look that only i could only find interviews from her like no one else was talking about the ghost but interesting you said because my next bullet point is that um at the end of the show gordon ramsey actually hired a paranormal investigator to come in just to like oh like either prove or disprove everything

tj had been saying and the hotel is now officially, I don't know how you get on this registrar, but the hotel is certified haunted and it was added to the membership of haunted Connecticut tours. So now it's, that's actually in terms of haunted hotel, hell it's probably drawing in people and helping the hotel out now that they're part of

the haunted connecticut tours um in 2018 2019 i guess tj finally gave up the hotel or the end which i guess that means hotel help didn't help i'm unsure yeah but uh usually they resold it and re and the new people who bought it renamed it the Evergreen Inn and Tavern. So it's the first time it's had a name change since the 1700s. But then I think it switched hands again very quickly. And it's now owned by like a very big name chef, Michael Bates Walsh. And he bought the inn and renamed it the 1754 House. And today it is still an inn. It is still a restaurant and it is still a tavern.

And that is a story of the Curtis Inn. Nice. Curtis House Inn. So anyway, there you go. There's your Connecticut story, please. I thank you so much for bringing Connecticut.

You give me plenty of, plenty of fodder to speak about Connecticut. So I'll take it. I liked it. It's better than Melonheads probably, or at least my rendition of the Melonheads. I will probably be reaching out to you for, for a statement on the Melonheads when I cover that topic. Yeah. You'll have to get it from my father. I've never heard of them. So I'll hook you up. Good, good, good, good. I can't wait. Lenny's a good storyteller.

I can't wait. Lenny's a good storyteller. Do you have a story for us? I do have a story. I am not as professional as you. I didn't put my notes on the computer, so I have to get my paper notes. No worries. So, I mean, this one I wanted to do, but then I just felt like it might hit a little too close to home. Uh-oh.

Why? What's it about? Oh, no. I deleted it whoops anyways uh so it was a yahoo article because i you know i'm an old man and i get most of my articles from from yahoo um is your email does it end in hotmail.com or something thankfully i've graduated to gmail so i will cite my sources but it's not going to be like professional citing i'm going to switch hats though too since i said i would do that earlier okay all right i have so this connecticut minor league team number two very fun

i know can you guess what this logo is i don't think i can see it close i don't think i have it close enough to me is that the way that's not the whalers the whalers are oh no that's a good guess though no that's also connected so that the yard goats use the same color as the whalers so you're on it there this team is called the sea unicorns yeah that one i did not or the sea puppy wait isn't it the sea puppies no no there there is a team that's like the sea wolves or something but this no these are the sea unicorns um because they're named after like the uh the uh crap what is this what is this whale the whale with the horn uh uh uh the guy that goes

narwhal yes yes i was gonna say the guy that goes bye buddy hope you find your dad so i apologize i know i've already lost track of the and i lost the title anyways there was a yahoo article going back to yahoo oh right yeah see at least i could do tangents like christine you sure can now i see how uh how she probably fell for you so i'm clearly not quoting it anymore but the title was um uh georgia man arrested for spending covid relief money on 45 000 pokemon cards i saw this like i was the you stole my joke i was gonna be like oh i can't talk about the co-host of this podcast uh so that actually i i do you know how many people have sent me that link because apparently just like everyone has screamed and that i mean like it's like i could go find a

45 000 baseball hat that would be the only other thing I could think of to, to match him. So my thing is if I ever had, if I was ever willing to spend that kind of money, I've already committed to the lookalike back to the future part two DeLorean. So I can't even convince my first. And also the Charizard is now like bumping up to like, yeah,

like 50 grand. I'm like, if I, at least I can drive the other one versus just like hold this thing you know so yeah it was not in case anyone's wondering yeah the practicality of this small piece of paper is is a tough tough call i i actually can't even buy a pokemon card that's over like 30 bucks without feeling really gross because i'm like it's just paper that i'm gonna put in a binder no one on earth cares about so like when i think of people who actually do spend that much money

on cards i'm like just blown away every time but that's okay like 30 bucks is the same as a hat like it's okay that's true i usually yeah i usually say if i wouldn't or like a funko yeah or like a like a t-shirt or something yeah exactly. It's still within the realm of other things I buy, so I feel safe in it. Yeah, we're just like canceling out a few zeros. You could just pretend you didn't see those last three zeros and say it was $45. Yeah, that's exactly how I do all my paying. I'm like, just ignore the other zeros. So that was one option.

The Melonheads was another. But so then I was listening your guys episode that released i think it was the second to last episode from today um christine mentioned a mickey pistorius do you remember mickey pistorius oh it was in relation to the south african strangler okay so mickey pistorius christine mentioned was used in that she was the she's a like internationally known uh forensic psychologist okay and at one point you guys christine mentioned she goes oh yeah and her nephew is oscar pastoreus and you're like oh okay and you asked does that of course this is great blaze doing quote uh you know play by play of your previous

episodes hey i need it because i don't remember what you asked like oh was he a murderer Is that, of course, this is great, Blaze doing, quote, you know, play-by-play of your previous episodes. Hey, I need it because I don't remember what any of those conversations were. You asked, like, oh, was he a murderer before she became a criminal psychologist? And Christine goes, oh, yeah, I think so. And I'm sitting in the car, like, waving my hand up in the air, being like, pick me, pick me. I know the answer for the first time ever because Oscarcar pastoreus is related to sports and when i go and play trivia with christine alexander and his friends and christine's friends i'm there when i give up if i don't know the answer i it's it's probably annoying to them that like i just sit in silence and drink until i it was but they bring me for medicine and sports, uh, Marvel and sports.

All right. Long way around the back to, so my story is about Oscar Pistorius, right? Okay. Sports guy. Yes. The nephew of Mickey Pistorius.

And so the majority of my resource, my resources are, there is two documentaries done on this one by Amazon which was a four-part documentary then espn has their own four-part documentary uh when i say then i don't know which one was released first i should have looked it up but um and then the wikipedia page um so it's you know there might be things there that are errors it may not be perfect but no one's asking to be perfect you're good i really like that and so um i started with the mickey pastoreus uh wikipedia page which is much shorter than the oscar pastoreus one but so they're in in the introduction and mentioned nowhere else is that mickey pastoreus

claims that she has cryptesthesia which do you have a guess as to what the definition of cryptesthesia is hmm it's i feel like this is a trap because it sounds a lot like cryptid yeah oh no it's probably supposed to sound like that i mean it doesn't it's not cryptids i will say that. Crypt. Cryptesthesia. Anesthesia is the medicine where they're trying to eliminate feelings or eliminate thought and sensation. And is crypt supposed to be imaginary? I don't know.

I don't know. What is it? No, no, no. You're on it. On Wikipedia, it listed as an extra sensory perception for killers oh so she claims that she has cryptesthesia um whoa okay i've never heard of that that's that we could deep dive on eventually which i mentioned to christine and stuff like that she's like is it real i'm like i don't think so because as i'll pro i'll mention at some point you know this takes place in south africa and you know just from the jump south africa um i didn't do like a deep dive and research into this part but multiple journalists in these documentaries and multiple resources did say that, you know, South Africa has like an extremely high rate of like both domestic violence and like gun related violence, like stabbings.

There's a lot of break ins. And so a lot of it stems from apartheid. And so a lot of it stems from apartheid. And so it's, you know, it's a, it definitely sets a base for this, but it, maybe I shouldn't make a joke about this, but if Mickey Pistorius lives in South Africa, pretty good chance that she's around people and she's a, she's a forensic psychologist. Sure. Like she's definitely like in the hot zone to be able to. It's probably more likely than

not if she thinks someone's a killer they probably are and so like there's at least a higher rate of like her being correct versus other places yes exactly so i mean no one needs to go study if she's right or wrong like it's cool i'm just i just that was my my quick take on that um so oscar pastoreus though this is her nephew and so and you don't know about him right not even a little bit which christine also had no idea and i'm glad that i mentioned it to other people and they're like oh yeah oscar pastoreus but this like story is just more in depth than i thought it was at least when i because my memory of it is because he's related to sports so it definitely entered my sphere sure and it's rather recent so i'm going to start with his early life and stuff so he was born oscar leonard carl pastoreus and he was born on november 22nd 1986 i should have written a star sign but i didn't't. I think he's a Sagittarius. Okay. I'll take your word for it.

I straight up didn't look it up. He was very close to Scorpio territory, and I am glad that that's not the case. Except he's a killer, so I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I guess he's not solid in different ways in my mind. He's not good for whatever star sign it is, unfortunately. Yeah.

It's not a good look no matter where he falls he puts a bad name on all the rest of them um and so his parents his father's name was hanky and his mother's name is sheila um and he's the middle of three children so he has his older brother carl and his younger sister amy which i think i'm i hope i'm not i don't know being weird with how i pronounce it that's how like they pronounced it with the south african accent okay so it could be like it's spelled a i m e with an accent e okay so i don't think that i could pronounce it correctly on most times but um so i will refrain from pronouncing her name for the rest of the show.

But she's not like a major character, but, you know, he's a middle child. Okay. But when he was born, he was born with fibular hemimelia, which basically just means that he had no fibula in his lower leg. So your lower leg has two bones,

the tibia and the fibula. And on both sides, bilateral, he had no fibula in his lower leg. So your lower leg has two bones, the tibia and the fibula. And on both sides, bilateral, he had no fibula. And he was missing the outer half of both of his feet. So if you looked at him when he was born, he had just two toes. Like his great toe and the toe next to it. And he was missing a lot of bones in his feet. And then one of the two bones in his shin. I feel like this is the first time. And that's why I drink history. You didn't have to look up. Like you just said something medical and just knew what it was.

I did practice pronouncing it a couple of times because it was it's definitely a joke in PA school and medical school that, you know, the people who didn't study by if they can pronounce medical terms correctly. So I'm not even going to say it a second time. I'm just going to hope that my buzzed self got it right the first time. And so but this was not known before he was born. Like they couldn't see it on ultrasounds and stuff like that, like in a in a baby in utero like that is those are small bones. They're not going to know that beforehand so it was a surprise to the family okay and so his mother she took him to multiple

doctors after he was born and she recorded the sessions with each doctor to try and figure out like what the best thing for him going forward would be and they eventually went with an orthopedic surgeon who decided that they thought the best option would be to amputate his feet oh and then use the excess skin from the heel and create stumps from that and that is the term they use throughout all the episodes so i apologize if stump maybe seems insensitive but that is that is what they call and what he called it himself um and so they and they decided to do it when he was 11 months old because that's around the time just before most infants will start to walk uh with the goal that he would never learn how to walk without in any other way like that this would just be normal for him to walk

on like with amputated feet but this guy becomes like a sports guy oh yeah wow okay so very impressive athlete so um yeah and so it's you know he overcomes a lot um and one of the things that they mention a lot and then he like his family mentions and there's interviews with him where he both his mother and his father were both like you are not disabled they really didn't like that term i may use it intermittently throughout when i'm describing things but they just said you can do whatever you want to do um and so from a very early age that was instilled in him right um and as a kid like they have they show like home videos and stuff like that that he's just running around you know he's doing

everything with he could do and he had prosthetic legs um but he also would would just walk around on his stumps and he was just an active kid he was a normal kid when he went to middle school and high school, people didn't even know that he had prosthetic legs for a long time because based on what clothes he was wearing, and he would participate in all sorts of sports like wrestling and rugby and things like that. So he later was quoted as saying that his sporting motto was,

you're not disabled by the disabilities you have. You are able by the disabilities you have you are able by the abilities you have oh um so that was just you know what was instilled in him and he he you'll i'll get to it but he does like put that out into the world for sure during his like athletic career now his father uh did leave the family when he was six years old um and it wasn't like uh it was portrayed like he there's interviews with his like his brother and sister and it wasn't like the dad wasn't a great guy i can't pinpoint things that are like super bad but they they weren't a fan of his so when he left it wasn't like a really traumatic devastating blow

to the family well it was in a sense of that now it's this now it's his mother sheila with three kids in south africa in the 90s which so apartheid had ended but things are still there's still high rates of crime she was like i got she was hyper vigilant about being like being exposed and being like a single mother and the father had traveled extensively for business so it it kind of like was based on i mean from what i could tell this was like happening in slow motion but when he left it like wasn't great like he just abandoned family. It wasn't like an amicable divorce of some kind. So they and so then he doesn't have a father figure in his life starting from like the age of six years old. Got it. He is a wealthy businessman and he does help support the family financially.

But he lives with his mom and his two siblings. And so his mom is a single mother in South Africa. And I mentioned like these high rates of like violence break ins are very common. And so there was journalists who in these documentaries who spoke about how the mother had a reputation, one for and I don't want it because there wasn't direct stuff about this anywhere. So I can't directly attribute some of this. But it was they did mention that. Well, one, she she ends up dying when Oscar is 15 years old. And the family describes it was very sudden. years old um and the family describes it was very sudden um the family describes it as that she was very jaundiced and yellow when it happened um it happened really quickly like much faster than

anyone expected like they were all very shocked by her death she was only 43 years old do you as a as a medical professional do you know at all what that looks like or what sounds like it was jaundice is generally and I mean, it's very common in liver failure. It's, you know, alcoholic or not alcoholic, you know, is tough to determine. But it was also she was also known to police because she would call the police very frequently with reports that there were people in her house or she heard noises around her house that she was concerned about it. They would arrive. Sometimes they believe that she was like, like you know under a state of being drunk or under the influence of alcohol um oftentimes she'd have the gun either on her or right very close to her um and it was just no and she would do it much more frequently they would expect of anyone else um so it's it's it there's an implication that it was alcoholism. Yeah. And so with the being like that, it seems that she died from some something at least happening with her liver that that probably contributed made. I can't say whether it was the direct cause, but, you know, so now he's left without his his dad is like, you know, a no show dad.

left without is his dad is like you know a no-show dad his mother dies when he's 15 years old and he's got his uncle who helps support him and he's he actually is in like a boarding school called um pretoria boys high school okay and there like i said there's a lot of people there like like classmates and students or roommates who don't even know that he like has like like that he's had these amputations of his feet um because of his participation in sports and things like that he just acts like a normal guy um and so he he has a rugby injury and he while rehabbing from it the coach who's helping like at the school who's helped notice like he says in both documentaries i noted like that he had exceptional leg speed that he would just move his legs very very quickly and and you know and this is like

a teenage boy at this point he's like 17 years old and so he's like i could train this guy and so in january of 2004 he starts training to become a sprinter and a runner and they first go to like in south africa they go to like a couple of people to make him running they call them blades because and he later becomes known as the blade runner because for prosthetic legs they don't look like like nor like feet and stuff like that they don't they have like is it the does it look like the ones that still that exist today where it's like they're very yeah they're almost identical the l-shaped spring kind of thing yes exactly and those have been around for like over 15 years before he ever used something like that um now it varies person to person based on like their

leg length and things like that and their stride length but they all have the same general shape like you described there sure um and so but the the ones he was getting in south africa kept breaking and he ends up getting in contact his coach contacts um his name is brian frazier um and he is a known para oic Paralympic athlete at that time who also has a leg amputation and runs on a blade like that. And in the ESPN documentary, Brian Frazier actually is like he watched a video of him and thought, oh, as an athlete, I'm in trouble. Oh, really? He could see like the potential in him at that point. He's like 17 years old.

And so he actually said he felt like he had mixed feelings about helping design blades for him. Right, because it was hindering his own career. Yes, because Brian Frazier, while he's both a Paralympic athlete, he's also like a prosthetist. But he does agree to make blades for him. And so it's basically signing off like you're like the chance that you'll never have your own championship. Yeah. Against that guy. Yeah.

I mean, he's definitely put he's definitely giving to someone who is a competitor against him and he knows it. And so so he only started running again so he only started running. Again, Oscar only started running in January of 2004. He gets these new blades and he qualifies for the Olympics in Athens in 2004. So like. Wow. And I know, you know, you live with RJ and stuff like that. To qualify for, you know, these are the Paralympic.

But to do that so quickly is very important these are the paralytic but to do that so quickly is very just the fact that he's there oh i mean rj rj's been working at this since i mean he just got in at 20 he was 28 when he got in and he's been working at it since high school so i mean for this guy to just be there is really crazy yeah and so he makes it and they even show the espn one they show in his first heat they shoot the starting gun and he's like either so amped they can't exactly pinpoint but he's just like frozen everyone else is going and he's like just there he forgets to run and so then he starts running and he makes it to the finals and he he actually wins gold in the 200 meter in that 2004 paralympics in athens what even in the

one that he froze in he like everyone else had a head start and he still got gold yeah that was so it was the early heat so like you have like multiple like you you go step by step in the finals he doesn't freeze but he he wins gold in the finals wow and he beats brian frazier um and another american athlete at the same time so he wins gold after only training for like six months um that's insane that's yeah so he's he's 17 years old he wins this paralympic gold medal he has braces in all the video like he he's like a young lad yeah no like he's just like a kid still and so now he comes back to south africa and he's like kind of a celebrity you know because like he like this is rarely very impressive and it's like it's just a good story

you know they have different brackets in the paralympics based on again you know this is just how it's termed throughout all of it so like based on the type of disability you have so he's a double amputee but there were not enough double amputees for him to run against so he has to run against the single leg amputees. But he wins, you know, he wins that that category. And so almost immediately after that, and he has there's there's video of him. He's like, I want to compete in the Olympics. Like he's like the Paralympics. These are amazing athletes. Like, well, I mean, like only six months in and he's already won gold. He's like, OK, on to the next thing like yeah yeah and just but just like i just want to get out there like you know the paralympics are not like some lesser olympics like these are these are all amazing athletes

like that are overcoming like crazy things like yeah he's running and yet he has both of his feet are amputated and he's out there running, winning gold medals. It's like 100 years ago, medical marvel. Like it's just the fact that that could even be an option. Yeah. And they do these Olympics with every almost every event that happens in the Olympics. So like you, it's amazing what these athletes do, despite, you know, whatever they have had to overcome in their lives. So like he's all but he's like i want

to compete against the what they call able-bodied athletes he's like okay he's like i'm setting these times and he does throughout the years like it's not that he just wants to compete just be i don't want to say just be he didn't try to compete just because he's a double amputee right he wanted to compete because his times are competitive like if he could he's like i could like race just as fast as these other people i want to give it a shot yeah yeah and so really from that point he gets an agent and he sets his that's i don't know like like time wise how that happened but he does set his sights he's like i want to be in the 2008 he sets his goal to be in the 2008 beijing olympics and the paralympics wow um and so it as early as

2005 he starts competing in like non-disabled um competitions and most of those are in south africa he does eventually get invited to events internationally, and that's how he's able to potentially qualify for the Olympics if he has times during those races. And so it comes basically the people who intervene, intervene, maybe not the right word, but the next people he encounters to try and reach this goal of getting to the Olympics is the International Association of Athletic Federations. They are now known as the World Athletics, but at the time that was their name and their abbreviation, IAAF. And so he goes for testing in November of 2007 at the German Sports University in Cologne. The testing was done by a Dr. Peter Brueggemann and Elio Locatelli.

So hopefully I got both those right. Get a little Christine on the Brueggemann. You should have just had her just scream from downstairs, that one word. She's screaming at me saying how wrong I did it. Don't worry. Somewhere in the future, she's yelling at me. And so i did it don't worry somewhere in the future she's yelling at me um and so they performed two days of testing in germany they'd actually done some testing at

some earlier races where like they'd set up cameras and he actually later was like i didn't know they set up cameras testing me so that's like yeah um i basically i'll tell you i'm not gonna look fondly on the i double af in this they they look pretty sketchy and in this part of it so maybe i shouldn't maybe i'm just like messing it up and like in the storytelling and like now everyone's gonna think that they're bad too but um so well exactly oops so they focus their testing. They do this different, like this testing that they decide is needed. And they have a lot of focus on like the fact that his blades lose less energy when he's running.

And I'm not going to put the exact quotes. They do have quotes and like put out a report. And they also had a big focus in both the documentaries that they focus on that. Like the actual actual these two, like one of them is a doctor and then Elio Locatelli is a former speed skater. And he works with the he works with the IAAF at the time he's he's since passed. But at that time, he was like to interpret the rules basically of like based on the testing that was his role and they they had a big issue with the fact that that oscar so typically it's like a 400 meter race is all the way around a track okay thank you for telling me that i literally would have never known that yeah i

wouldn't know if i hadn't had to run the mile a couple of times. So they would focus on the fact most people, like most able-bodied runners, as they describe them, run the first 200 faster than they run their second 200. The first half of a race, most people will run faster than the second half in that distance. But Oscar would run the first half technically slower than he would run the second half got it in that distance but oscar would run the first half technically slower than he would run the second half he would gain speed as he went he would like do the full sprint to like once everyone else was slowing down yeah and they were they were

very concerned that his prosthetic legs constituted cheating of some some sort they wouldn't they wouldn't word it that way but there's really no other way to interpret it it was like his blades are more aerodynamic than human flesh legs and their their testing said that he was getting more energy return or or alternatively less energy lost every time he took a step, um, because of the blades and because they were made from this material and the shape that they were made of versus a, you know, a,

a biologic leg. Um, and at the same time, so like you could interpret that in a couple of ways, right? Like you could say like, Oh, he runs faster in the second half.

That's an advantage, but that, that completely ignores that he's slower in the first half because for a very good reason he has prosthetic legs and can't he has to get up to speed right you know it's not this it's it's very it's just so it's like they basically, I mean, I don't know. I felt like they focused a lot on the potential advantages while completely ignoring all the disadvantages that are happening at the same time. And there's a lot, there had a lot of Paralympic athletes being like, you know, we run on, like even just having prosthetic legs puts you at risk for like infections, cuts, wounds, healing, all these things that happen to your legs because they have because you have to wear prosthetics. Right. And then, you know, you take one wrong step on a press and you're running at full speed.

You fall. You lose the race when you fall. If you get up and run fast, maybe not. But like, you know, in terms of Olympic and Paralympic qualifying, you're going to lose if you fall. Maybe if you get up and run fast, maybe not, but like, you know, in terms of Olympic and Paralympic qualifying, you're going to lose if you fall and it's so much easier to fall. I have, I mean, I, I don't want to like totally speak for him, but I have one of my neighbors growing up. He, or one of my neighbors growing up is, is married to a Paralympian who has, he's an amputee who does snowboarding and I follow them

on Instagram. And I guess there have been, there's a lot of complications where like, he's still years after his, uh, amputation is going back in for new surgeries because I guess there's like either cysts will show up or something on his leg or like, or just like sores. I don't totally understand, but like there's, it's an ongoing thing that like i'm imagining that he has to keep getting his prosthetics refit and all that so yeah there's it's not like there's there's like bad with the good it's yeah i totally get what you mean of like there's a it's probably he's probably breaking even yeah and like i mean i was gonna save this quote for like after something I was going to say in a little bit. But like it just on face value, you're separating these competitions to Olympics versus Paralympics.

value that i see on that is that you're creating the paralympics to give these to give someone a chance to show exactly what they can do because if they if there was a like they they don't have the same advantages that a olympic athlete would have to say that like all like oh never mind that's a that's a competitive advantage but but you're in the, this one. Yeah. This bucket is, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. It didn't make a lot of sense, but regardless on January 14th, that's my sister's birthday. Um, 2018, the IAAF, uh, ruled that Pistorius's prostheses were ineligible for competition. So this is 2000,

January, 2008, the Beijing Olympics are the same year, the summer Olympics. And this quote, which this Locatelli, Elio Locatelli in the ESPN documentary during his interview, it's a long quote,

but I really think I have to read it. And I'm going to apologize in advance that I'm going to give like an M During his interview, it's a long quote, but I really think I have to read it. And I'm going to apologize in advance that I'm going to give like an M at the end and go on a rant about it because this quote makes me so mad. There is no doubt he was a true athlete. He trained hard. There is absolutely no doubt about that oh sorry before i finish the quote i mean he speaks this in italian so it's a translator so maybe something gets mistranslated here maybe it's not as infuriating as it's about yeah but i i mean they're professional translators

i'm assuming i guess you should never assume but i'm going to take it at face value that this quote overall is what he meant. Okay, got it. No doubt about that he is an athlete that trained, and I'm going to cut out of the quote again. He trains five to six hours a day and is setting times that people have not set on these same blades that have been around for 15 plus years. Okay. Anyways, back to the same quote. for 15 plus years okay anyways back to the same quote but you also have to think about the reality of the situation and of an outcome that could prove tough to deal with for the entire sports community because eventually we could witness the paradox of people amputating their legs to break a world record what it's a paradox but why not and why not uh

what that's pretty darn ridiculous so so but i think people are just gonna go chop their legs off to be an olympian and also that's so degrading to actual amputees thinking like oh you're only good because you're an amputee not because you just have fucking skill oh look at you you're still so i'll go i'll jump forward a little bit only because an expert witness in his appeal later who was he's also a double amputee he he then became he's like a doctor and an expert in um biomechanics. He does rock climbing. He actually ended up having the education due to an accident while rock climbing. Wow.

And then he said, so that guy's quote was, how could someone without limbs be an extraordinary athlete? And what he was saying, though, is that that's, so like when he would start rock climbing again after the accident yeah first people were like oh you're a hero you're so brave for doing this and then when he starts getting when someone starts getting more competitive and their times or whatever scoring system they're dealing with in their sport starts approaching that of abled body athletes then people are like oh you must be cheating which right it goes from pity to like weird jealousy or something yes yes i mean you stole the words out of my mouth when you're like

oh what people are just gonna cut like i mean that is all right one and i think when he said paradox is in there twice one paradox yes it's a villain from like the worst uh superhero movie ever made sorry ryan reynolds like you know i have great fondness for ryan reynolds i made out with a girl while watching Van Wilder for the first time. Good for you. That's a great movie to make. Yeah, I know,

you know, hot tea right there because you know, the London fog society, you guys will have that dirt for, for a lot, you know, I wish I could say it was Christine, but yeah,

you guys will know like more about my sexual history than Christine for, you know, a little bit of time. I don't thinkine would want to make out to van wilder though to be fair i think it would have to be ghost adventures no damn yeah you're right there you know she's much more of a zach bagans uh kind of girl that are right does ryan reynolds have tattoos who knows no he's a pretty boy he's got his little his clean get up zach is a bad boy i hate to break it to you but christine

loves a bad wait a minute all right we gotta call it zach the bad boy to ryan reynolds like he's deadpool like yeah but okay here's the thing they're they're exact inverses of each other because zach wants to look bad and probably isn't zach wants to be ryan and ryan like i don't know if he wants to look good but everyone knows on the inside he's a bad boy they're like they're flip-flopped yeah this is this is a this is a that is a paradox so paradox is when two seemingly completely contradictory things or two things that can't seem like they can coexist do yeah what's not a paradox and what is i'm gonna call it a straw man argument i should have really looked up the definition of that to like sure like that i'm

getting that nailed but no but like you just call it bullshit it's just bullshit yeah that's what i wrote bullshit rant um is that yo if someone cuts off their legs and then says, I'm doing this or even appears to be doing it to break a world record. Yeah, you can go tell that person to fuck off and they can't race in the Olympics or the Paralympics. But that is not what this case was, nor any case of a Paralympic athlete known to man. You see this. I mean, I'm sorry if I'm going to do a COVID rant. You see this shitload on Twitter about masks

and COVID like oh, if we have to wear masks now then I'm going to have to wear masks in my house or in my car. And it's like I mean, that's the lowest of like what I'm talking. It's just like straw man arguments are stupid. And that's what this is

i mean just because i'm someone who likes to make things about myself i could find a way to also like come i won't compare it on the same they're not really in the same category except in terms of ridiculousness of hearing like whether or not trans people should be able to compete in their preferred sport or their i'm so glad you said it because I was going to say it too. It's like there are parallels here in the real like obviously this is real world. But there's parallels throughout sports life. Like the Target bathroom issue. Yeah.

Someone's going to dress up like a woman and watch my son pee. Yeah. It's like if you're worried about. If that happens, that person gets in trouble yeah it's like what is the preemptive it's also like fun fact if you're worried about men dressing up as women so they can pretend to be women and then assault people you're worried about rapists not yeah people so shut the fuck up like yeah like actually define what you're worried about yeah and i don't know what loka sorry i was worried about i turned this into the wrong

no you didn't you straight up didn't because i was going to say the same things because this does have like this is a thought like straw man arguments do persist in so many things in our world sorry for the soapbox everyone but like you came to the right place for a soapbox on if you hear an argument that's this stupid and it's similar it's it's but it's in a different situation just think like wow that's really stupid this person just has an agenda because that's all i'm getting out of this is that like if this is your argument that someone is going to cut off their legs to break a world record you're you're full of it because if it hasn't happened it won't happen if it does you can penalize them like yeah like you can also send that person to a mental

hospital they need a therapist like there's so many options if it happens but maybe wait for it to happen like right like and he literally said at the end of that quote he said like uh it hasn't something like oh it has it's a paradox but why not why not it's like i can tell you a lot of reasons why not for him to be saying like oh well it has it's not even an actual fear but let's call it an actual fear so my argument is valid and it takes the ability away from everyone no that is a hundred percent right and if you want to just like cave to the argument fine but anyways i do have good news in that you know he did take it to arbitration with the court of arbitration for sport uh cas they also had a

two-day hearing um just briefly in the espn documentary the german doctor gets back on there and says i did not understand he's i'm doing a english like a german english accent but he said it in german so there's subtext it's not i'm being okay anyways he says that like i didn't understand the vitriol from like they were fuming at the mouth these american um yeah people giving testimony and it's like no dude your argument is just stupid um yeah and but the arbitrator does reverse the decision and they revoke the IAAF's decision immediately. They say that it is OK for him to run on these blades. Good.

This is part of the story of Oscar, though, is that he really he's an inspiration for people like amputees or Paralympic anyone who could potentially be in this realm. He's an inspiration in the espn documentary there is a straight up adorable photo of he befriended so this icelandic woman gave birth to a child who had a very similar disability i don't think it was the same one but the child also ended up with like an amputation of his feet and oscar so his the company that makes his blades oser um i might be pronouncing it wrong oss you are they make they're an icelandic company and so he's going to iceland pretty frequently to like you know work on his blades and to he gets sponsored by them so he's there and he meets this family and they like befriend him he's like very friendly with the family um and he meets the the

kid at there's one point where the white or the mother asked like hey do you think you could take your prosthetics off so he could see like because the kid is kids only like he's like between a year to two years old right oscar who is this like you know he's this like over six foot tall athlete and like like this kid loves him like i mean i mean love my nut but this kid like definitely is like fond of him yeah and he sees him take off his prosthetics and there's the photo of the kid looking and then like just smiling like it's adorable and incredible. And like, so he's an inspiration for people around the world. Sure. Straight up.

Yeah. And there's no other way around that. And so, but he's not, so he's not able to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cause like this arbitration happened in between January and then the summer Olympics. So like he really didn't have enough time to train for the beijing olympics now there was i mean there it also could just be that he didn't actually have the right times to qualify and he was but so he doesn't and he does compete in the paralympics though in beijing and wins the 100 meter the 200 meter the 400 meter which is like

the trifecta of sprinter races so the 100 meter the winner of that race is the fastest man alive um the 200 meter is like in between the one and four obviously but um you know for a runner a sprinter to win all three of those races is really incredible like that's a big deal like usain bolt like does that type of shit like that's you know that's a that's an like a athletic feat to win those three sprinting races wow i feel like kind of shitty that i had never heard of this person before you're really really like hyping this person up i mean that's 2008 that's when i graduated high school not to like pinpoint things but so like you know if you're not into sport it's not that you know it's not that out of the realm um but so you know fast forward in time you know

stuff does happen in the next 40 years but i don't think of much like enough for this podcast um but he does qualify for the 2012 summer Olympics. So not the Paralympics. These are the Olympics in London. Wow. So he got, so he got what he wanted. Yeah. He made, he, he accomplished his goal of qualifying for the Olympics and he competes in the Paralympics too.

So he's in London for this whole month. They usually the Paralympics, they always happen in the same city. Um, usually the two weeks after the Olympics. They always happen in the same city, usually the two weeks after the Olympics. So he's going to be in London for like a month versus most athletes there for two weeks. And so he makes it to the semifinals. He comes in second in his first heat. And they have video in both these documentaries. The stadiums are full.

And people are chanting his name when he's announced um he comes in second in that first heat um in the second the semi-finals he doesn't qualify for the finals but like the guy who wins the race exchanges name tags with him which is like you know exchanging jerseys and soccer and so like he's it's a big deal people are going nuts like it's like the crowds are huge and then the paralympics have the biggest crowds ever by far when for him like they have a sold-out stadium when he's racing which has never happened before and so um you know these are record crowds he ends up winning gold in the four by 100 meter relay at those 2012 olympics um or paralympics sorry um and then in the he gets silver medal though in the uh 200 meter race so halfway around the track and he gets silver medal to the gold medalist alan olivera um and right after the race his coach in one of

the documentaries talks about he was like i knew something was gonna happen and he tried to get to him first but you know they're in the stands and he's on the track and he it's it it's bad he gives a quote saying that he's concerned about olivera's the length of his blades um and he thinks that he's cheating essentially by the length of his blades he thinks that he's he's getting a stride length advantage based on the side of his the size of his blades versus oscars i feel like i don't know enough about. The science behind the blades. But I would feel like there's like. In an Olympic. Regulated blade.

Everyone has to wear. So everyone's equal. But is that not really how it works. Because you have to have. You said stride length and height and all that. They can't really do that in the Paralympics. Because not everyone has the same legs. Right or the same needs.

Yeah. So it's okay. That that's true it is a tough call i mean he to be fair to like in oscar's pastores is like team's argument they had filed petitions like months before saying that they weren't they were suspicious of the length of the blades that olivera was using. Um, it, but at the same time, it was definitely the wrong time. And he actually came out later and said,

like apologized for the timing of his comments. It was like the guy just won gold medal in he's shitting on it. And his whole, like not his whole, it's not his whole persona. He's a very complex person and, you know, got a lot, but his whole it's not his whole persona he's a very complex person and you know got a lot but like it's it's really not in the competitive nature to like immediately be like oh he cheated um and especially for that reason but he he actually never apologized

for saying that he cheated he only apologizes for the timing of his comments. Oh. But he does get a silver medal in that 200 meter event. But at the same time. So like these are the. So he's. He competes in the Olympics in 2012. He competes in the Paralympics.

And he is at like peak fame at this point. He's named Time Magazine's one of their 100 most influential people. There's, I already mentioned like that stuff with like the S Icelandic boy. And so, but there's so many people around the world who like aspire to be Oscar or like, just are like inspired by his, his story. He's named GQ South Africa's like sexiest man alive. Um, he has a number of sponsors. He has a two million dollar sponsorship with oser who makes his blades but he's also wow sponsored by nike and oakley are like big names that everyone knows and you know he attends the south african sports awards ceremony with a Riva Sten camp. So Riva Sten camp is,

she was born in England. Her family then moves to Port Elizabeth, South Africa. They're like middle income there. But she ends up graduating with a law degree. But she's really beautiful. She works as a model. She was on television. She did a whole bunch of TV commercials in South Africa.

And they're dating now. Yes, they're dating now. He's got made in the shade. Yeah, she's on this BBC lifestyle show called Baking Made Easy. So she's beautiful and she can bake. I mean, ding, ding, ding. And she tapes three episodes of a tv show called tropica island of treasure um and the series is set to air on february 16th 2013

okay and so then this is where oscar pastorius we go back to like oh murder like why we're on this podcast oh right okay yeah for some reason i thought i i was very um happy thinking that the crime was just that like the the a double a f almost yeah just me talking about random sports agencies and arbitrators and federations i yeah this whole time i i forgot that we were on a crime show okay i wish thank you for making me feel safe up until now please now i take my christine turn on everything um and so this and so the the crime aspect of this all really boils down to valentine's day of 2013 and so the reason why i mentioned the data for show airing on february 16th is it ends up being two days after this okay so very early in

the morning on february 14th of 2013 and these are like undisputed facts riva is shot and killed by oscar at his home in pretoria south africa and so she is shot uh it's actually it was kind of some sources said four times some said three but it is known that oscar fired the gun four times that is like taken as fact okay and so he's taken into custody like a news story part of this it spread so fast like well sure they they showed all the stuff like it internationally it was like it was on the today show in the u.s that morning which i should have looked up which way the globe goes in terms of timing wise but like matt lauer is talking about this like the same day that it happens. Wow. And so there's a lot. So because of that.

So they have the journalist who sent the first tweet about it. Like he was contacted by a by like I don't want to say informant, but someone who knew what was going on, like through the police or something like that. And so he showed up and tweets about it and then there was like a like a lot of rumors started very quickly there was a story that was played that she was sneaking into the apartment because it was valentine's day she was going to surprise him by being there and then he just like out of defense, like shot her. Okay. Yeah. And her, like her aunt is interviewed in a lot of these documentaries and she's like, she didn't find out about until hearing about it on the radio. And she actually talks about how hearing that story about her sneaking in, she's like, oh, that does sound like something Reva would have done.

Um, and so there was a And so there was also other things. There was a steroid rumor, which I will get into a little bit more, too. So like a ton of like it from the go, there's rumors and tabloids like stuff happening from the get go on this because of because of who he is really for sure i mean if usain bolt or some other like very well-known olympian did this of course it would be all over the news immediately yeah and that's exact i mean that definitely plays a role so the the shooting is said at very early morning around 3.m. in the morning is like the initial stories. And then a police representative gives a press conference at around 7 a.m. that morning. And I maybe shouldn't say 7 a.m. because I didn't write down the exact time.

But, you know, Sun had come out. They're giving this morning report. This is like the first official statement that people are getting about this. And they do say that you know that riva stenkamp is deceased um that oscar pastorius they're taking him into custody for questioning and i you know at the end of her comments she goes you know there have been multiple i'm not this is not a quote but she she ends it by saying there's been um they've been called to the house for complaints of domestic nature previously oh okay so then the news cycle

gets all gets on that um and the lead detective is his name is hilton batha um and you know just a you know he is he was also the lead detective for what that representative talked about with the previous domestic complaints and this part one documentary really played into this the other not so much okay um but i think you know the one that played it made a lot of sense um this scene was not handled well so there's some similarities between south africa and the u.s just listen to the uh the burger chef murders yeah um not quite that bad okay pretty effing close oh okay multiple police organizations respond to this in terms of like that there's the like there's the municipal police and then and i forget the exact names but like the national

police force is also there because he's like this. And so they estimated 70 plus people were on the scene that day, which is not good. You want as few people as possible. You want some like as like just as many as you need assigned to taking photos, gathering evidence. The less the less hands hands the less potential for damaging evidence yeah you've heard over 200 of these stories you get it like i get mad every time blaze you don't understand yeah and you're probably going to get mad at some of these parts so among the evidence that they gather you know they recover the gun that was used they recover a cricket bat they get two cell phones one from

riva one from that is oscar's phone okay um there's also a wrapped kitchen present in the kitchen or christmas valentine's day because this was sure this happened early morning valentine's there's a there's a present wrapped and with a letter on top um they gather that they also take the entire i guess i didn't tell this part yet so revo they the house that had a so there's the bedroom hallway bathroom but then there's a separate door for the toilet area. Okay. And there's that door was locked. Oh, they take the whole door off the hinges and take it with them for evidence. Okay.

Yeah. It's like, it kind of feels like, it feels like the evidence was already there by it being locked and hinged. Yeah. It feels very unnecessary. And the defense will tell you, yeah, that was unnecessary to take down the whole. I'll just skip to it because I'll forget later.

They not only took the whole door, they bring it back. And they try to reset it up. And and like take photos like they're and like there's video of them doing it and it breaks while they're doing it um it's just bad police work i i'm not a police officer officer it's a hard job but it still makes no sense especially when they were like okay now bring it back put it as it was or yeah i imagine they were like oh let's reset up so we can see how it might have planned out. I feel like all that should have happened first. Or dust for fingerprints.

They have an actual forensic scientist specialist who says there's nothing they tested at the facility that they couldn't have done there. So they fuck up the scene. End of story. It ends up that oscar is charged with premeditated murder wow like the highest degree of murder that you could charge someone with in south africa it's like murder one in the u.s wow i really i was really hoping that it was a situation

where she tried sneaking in and then based on you know his history of break-ins when he was a kid he just like was trigger happy and thought he was hurting an invader i don't know i was hoping it was not premeditated and so south africa does not have a jury system no grand jury nothing and that's that's basically stems from the apartheid era uh where uh if they they could have either had all white juries which the black south africans would have they were not cool with that at all and very reasonably but if you were to have a jury system in south africa during apartheid it would have meant that you were acknowledging that black people had the i don't there's definitely no right word for this because they're the ones in the wrong, of the wherewithal or the, you know, the wherewithal to be on a jury. So, and they would not acknowledge that during apartheid.

So it's a jury system only. A judge decides cases in South Africa. jury system only a judge decides cases in south africa okay you know really the the prosecutor's story is that like they say at that time based on the testimony of hilton both again that lead detective um and the lead prosecutor's name is jerry nell and their story their claim is that Oscar put on his prosthetic legs, walked to the bathroom and intentionally shot Reva through the door. What? Based on based on testimony from neighbors that they heard an argument going on throughout the night and right before. And then they heard women's screams. night and right before and then they heard women's screams um and batha during his testimony talks about how there were steroids in the house and he doesn't say directly that it's roid rage

but he's like there are steroids he's very clear about that and there's need i guess i'm sorry i keep backtracking maybe you could delete some of this but um you know it's he says though that there are steroids that they found in that house um the defense attorney barry rue does not take kindly to hilton batha um he gets hilton gets ripped apart One, let's just start with the best part and then go from there. Hilton is also convicted, or is on, like, not on trial, but he is a current murderer.

Like, he's been accused of murder while he's investigating. I guess while is not the right word. He is accused of murder from 2011 for attempted murder for drunkenly shooting at a taxi with seven passengers in it. And Barry Rue just like is like, wait, so you're the lead detective on this murder trial. And you it. So technically, 10 days before the trial, Hilton batha was dismissed from this attempted murder

trial and reinstated to the police force wow and in hilton batha's in his interview in the amazon documentary goes if those people this is not a direct quote but he says if those people wanted to be dead if i wanted those people dead they would be dead okay that's not helping so this kind of goes back to and i guess i didn't say the word corruption in that first part where like south africa has a big problem with like with crime and violent crime and domestic but corruption is a big deal in south africa at the same time that this oscar pastore's trial was going on the president of south africa was on trial for corruption and and the and jerry nell the lead prosecutor for against um like the lead prosecutor bringing

the case against oscar pastoreius he had already done a trial against the police commissioner in south africa for corruption so there's not it's not a good look and they did such a bad job at the scene barry rue also does a really you know it's not hard but he like eviscerates hilton ba about you know why was the scene handled so poorly like right hilton botha has quotes saying that like the neighbor one of the neighbors he quoting lived like this close to the house like really close to the house and then it turns out she lived really far from the house okay so like he just seems like all around uh a little bit of the problem yeah he's a huge problem and they actually like fire him like i mean he resigns three like two days later from the police

force um and i tried so hard to look up if you like what happened with his attempted murder trial it's nowhere on the first two pages of google wow and i didn't check yahoo my most reliable source but well everyone would have laughed at you so it's fine let's see exactly but so it's just it's what it's not a good look for the defense or for the prosecutors but uh so that so basically with that though the judge rules that yeah oscar pesore is and so that was actually one last thing before i move on from this from the bail hearings because he's accused of murder he has a high burden of proof to get bail otherwise they're going to put him in jail until the trial so um in the espn documentary specifically one of the legal experts says it was a bad decision from his legal team to let him do this.

But Oscar Pistorius ends up getting a very detailed description of what he thinks happened that night, like his account. And it gives their reasoning for why it was a bad move is it gives prosecutors plenty of time to find holes in it and find a reason why he's guilty yeah but at the same time you know if you to get bail this was necessary and you're only in the wrong if you're lying this is true you know if you can tell the truth and get through it it's not going to be a problem so the general theme these are not quotes from anything there all of this ended up being on tv so these are not quotes but the general bullet points that i have and i'm sorry this episode is going so long i guess fans like it when it's christine and you they might not like it if it's honestly this is the only time they'll ever get

blazed so i feel like this is like a special it's like when when disney would have those crossover events or something and it was like you never know april fools might come again honestly if you two have another baby i'm sure there'll be high demand for another blaze episode that was my idea by the way i came up with the idea of the april's episode, which I've been told was liked fondly or had good reviews. I don't listen to my own voice, so I will never listen to that episode or read the comments. It was it was 100 percent your I we got to give you credit for that April Fool's episode where you and Zandy and everyone came on. So perfect genius. And it was my favorite episode because we got to just

watch bob's burgers downstairs which is what you usually do when we record that's what christine's doing downstairs right now yeah so here's oscar's account of what happened that night so again these are not quotes go look it up if you want the real quotes around 10 p.m he goes to bed without his prosthetics they have these they have a balcony that with like sliding doors and there are fans there he has a bad reaction to air conditioning they use the fans to bring cold air in he also talks about how he can't sleep without like total darkness okay um and so he he recalls waking up or in the early morning to move the fans and close the door. And he places these jeans that are in the room over a light on an amplifier.

Like it's like the time, like a green light is going in the room. So he moves these fans. Also, just to set the scene a little bit. One of these fans also just to set the scene a little bit. So the bed, he's sitting on the far side from the window and the fans. She's closer to it. Okay. And he's closer to the bathroom, but she's farther from the bathroom.

Got it. So he says he gets up without his prosthesis. So he's walking on his stumps, moves the fans, puts this, these jeans over the light. And then he hears a noise from the bathroom down the hall. Oh, OK. He retrieves his gun. He tells Reva to call the police, but he doesn't wait for a response from her. He goes to the bathroom again on his stumps, yelling at the intruder to get out of the house he sees that the bathroom window is open but that the toilet door is closed he hears a noise coming

from inside the toilet room and with that noise he fires four shots into the door okay he walks backwards down the hallway into the bedroom feeling behind him for riva and realizes she's not in the bed okay i see now it then dawns on him that riva could have been in the bathroom he goes back on his stumps he tries to open the door but it's locked so he goes back to the bedroom it goes out on the balcony and screams for help yeah he then puts his prosthetic legs back on and not back he puts them on and he gets a cricket bat that he keeps by the bed for defense purposes and he breaks down a panel on the door and when he breaks it down after three to four hits with the cricket bat he sees that it's riva in there covered in blood and she's still breathing at that time and he carries her downstairs and, you know, she she passes away, you know, in the house there. OK.

And, you know, there are some more details. And again, these are not the quotes from Oscar. This is just the general timeline that he lays out in his affidavit. And he is granted bail because he's given this this account the prosecutor's case while they they could definitely say it's not like even oscar says that he shot her right yeah it's just at this point the whole case comes about intent right right yeah i mean it's that's a pretty to me without knowing any more information i feel like that's a pretty believable solid side of the story on first listen that's

exactly what the judge says that this is a but this is a reasonable potential explanation yeah and you so you can get bail and i they don't deem him a flight risk, which is like some people find that controversial. But, you know, ultimately of no consequence because he doesn't flight do anything. OK. And so and he never goes back to that house. He goes immediately to his uncle Arnold's house. This is his uncle who would help provide for him you know as a kid yeah and that's where he stays for the next year um so now it's like you know they're you know the the media coverage is again insane like it's it had yeah it never

actually stops it seems like i mean there's you know it goes the trial doesn't start again until march of 2014 but you know this was in february of 2013 so it's about a year until the actual trial starts but you know this bail hearing was just supposed to be you know procedural and it had all this news coverage and you know the lead detective gets fired because of his shitty ass testimony and and he's just doesn't i mean for good reason but like the whole like like when i looked on google to try and find what happened with hilton batha's like attempted murder trial thing all the stories are from 2013 still about how bad he was like it's like i mean those first two pages are only articles about how shitty he was and how he

fucked up the state's case just from the get-go wow um so and people are going crazy over it there's this steroid allegation they found Turns out they were not steroids. Okay. I was going to say. Couldn't you just test his blood. And see if he had any in his system. Maybe. I mean. That's like a.

Maybe. But if they were like actual steroids. You can just say he had steroids. They weren't steroids. They just weren't. And. You know. They mentioned that the previous domestic incidents.

This comes out in the trial. They're really just referring to a 2009 incident that happened at his house where people were there drinking. A female who was there was drunk. They thought she was too drunk and causing like a scene or something like that. They removed her from the house. causing like a scene or something like that. They removed her from the house. It's,

it's questionable whether she banged on the door and caused a panel to fall off, or it was because Oscar slammed the door and a panel fell off, but a panel from the door fell and hit her leg and just caused some like minor scratches. But they're using that as, the panel was already fallen off. Well, I mean,

basically the police came a few days later she filed a police report i'm not trying to dismiss anyone's story but like whatever happened even her story is that he slammed the door and it fell off his story is she banged on the door and it fell off regardless he didn't initiate the contact like the worst, it's an he slammed the door too hard. I'm not trying to like paint him in this beautiful light or anything. But for the the police representative at that first incident, like when that when this like actual like someone was shot and killed to say there were domestic incidents this home was like an exaggeration and uh guess who was the lead detective when he was from that 2009 incident uh yeah it was hilton yeah yeah okay it was hilton so you know you know madman hilton's a douchebag this guy's clearly a douchebag um so it's just not good for the

state's case at all um but it's but it's like so much tabloid energy like there's so many like that story that she was sneaking in it was never a thing no one ever said that so it was just conjecture and they so in south africa they actually created a 24 7 tv channel called the oscar pastoreus trial channel oh my god shut up that's so cool well you know what i mean that's like that's like pretty monumental i mean he's their oj i mean that's just what it comes down to is it's sports and like all this stuff coming together. And, you know, she's a model and on TV. And it really is there, OJ. I'm sure there's.

Yeah. Maybe the lawyers, you know, daughters later had a massive reality show or something. Mm hmm. Well, like his ex-girlfriend. I'll bring this up. She she's brought up by the prosecutors. She writes a book. And his ex-girlfriend, his book is called It Could Have Been Me.

This stuff is just sensationalized. And it probably felt more so in South Africa where they have this 24-7 channel. But it's not like people were like, it's not like the channel was there and no one was watching it. The lead journalist who led the discussions on the channel – so they would – during the trial, they'd show the trial. Both the defense and the prosecutor said they did not want it to be on TV. But the judge decided it could be taped live, which I found interesting. Yeah, it was only mentioned in the ESPN documentary. And I found that interesting.

But they're they. So all the journalists that got interviewed were like, yeah, this should be on TV because then it shows, you know, how the legal system works and that people can trust it which i get it but of course they have motive behind that like underneath of that yeah um so but it ended up on tv so they would show the live trial and then at like 6 p.m they would bring on these experts to like discuss what happened and it was getting double the ratings of everything else on satellite tv in south africa so it sucks that it's about something so horrible because you kind of want to pat them on the back and be like look at what you're capable of but it's like you know it's only because you killed somebody yeah so it's not great but you know people were invested in this and there was

definitely sides taken i don't even want to get into some of the stuff that i saw about but like people had opinions like straight up uh they just did they just had opinions about what whether he was guilty or not guilty from the get-go were there also like conspiracy theories about like what actually happened like i feel like with with oj there's always these like pocket theories so i i imagine it's the same over there yeah i mean i guess it's less so now because like if you don't think oj did it i don't know what you you know you're not in a rational realm um but like yeah i mean like the steroid stuff like it's it you know it's hard because like there was definitely things that got put out

there that just ended up being so fake um there is even a scene of trump at the end of this trial who where trump is like he's only they're not putting him in jail. This is like crazy. And it's like and this is 20, 2013, 2014. So Trump was the president. This is pre Trump. Yeah. Where he his voice should have mattered and he's ranting about it. So go figure.

I know. So, God, I hate him so much. Anyways. So the trial starts on March 3rd, 2014. So the judge, I wish I hadn't drank before I said it, is Thokolizi Masipia. And she's a she's a black woman, which is a big deal in South Africa. She was the second black woman ever to be appointed a judge in south africa again no jury um she was a journalist during apartheid and you know you know so she's very well respected and when respected for being like not i don't want to say correct

in her judgments but like that she just that she was she was well respected amongst her peers and in like the country as a whole gotcha and so the first people that prosecutors call is like neighbors now the first neighbor they call based on the documentaries and the order they presented things so i can't be a hundred percent sure this is the actual order but like both showed the first person as this woman who lived 177 meters away which is 580 feet okay and they showed on a map her house is pretty far from his house and just to set the scene again a lot of break-ins in south africa a lot of like you know a lot of uh violent crime he lived in a gated community where he had to come

through the gate with multiple security and then there were like really pretty big walls with cameras everywhere this is where you would live in south africa if you had the resources to live there sure um and so but this so she lives you know 580 feet away and her testimony is that she heard a female screaming she was very specific that she didn't think it could i mean again these are quotes, but the the the way the prosecutors got everything out of her was that it shared female screaming. Then she calls security and then she heard gunshots. Wow. That's the testimony that this neighbor gives.

testimony that this neighbor gives then they call up another neighbor who lives much closer but still not the immediate houses like right next to where oscar pastoreus lived and he testifies hearing three bangs then a female screaming and he went to the house. So he's a radiologist, which means he looks at x-rays and CT scans, MRIs. So like that, but he's still medically trained. And he said he comes to the house and he offers his help. And Oscar, he sees Oscar there with Reva.

Like Reva has been shot. He, Oscar has walked her down the stairs and she's oscar stated to him i shot her i thought she was a burglar oh okay now the defense and i'll bring i meant to bring this up later but i'll just do it the defense is like we don't think that it was a female screaming here we think you heard oscar screaming oh okay and that the three bangs he heard were the cricket bat on the door we don't think that it was a female screaming here. We think you heard Oscar screaming. Oh, okay.

And that the three bangs he heard were the cricket bat on the door. Oh, okay. And Barry Rue, the defense attorney, like became famous in South Africa. He was already like a major defense attorney, but he became like t-shirt famous. Like people wore,

he would, he would say to people, I will put it to you. That was like his way of like prompting questions. Yeah. And people were just wearing those T-shirts around. I will put it to you. Yeah. So he became his own celebrity at this point.

Oh, okay. And then this one was so like one, the ESPN documentary ignored. Like I can't put any of it they ignored that his car or oscar's ex-girlfriend samantha taylor testified from for the prosecution okay and she was interviewed in the espn documentary pretty extensively like she's featured a lot in the interviews this was the sorry who is this again? Her name is Samantha Taylor. I haven't mentioned her before, so you just shouldn't.

And she's Oscar's ex girlfriend. Okay. So like they're, they're looking to her for any like history of domestic violence or something. Yeah. You're a hundred. You're on it.

So you, you sniffed it out. That's me. The old, the old sniffer. And, you you sniffed it out that's me the old the old sniffer and but she's not interviewed in the amazon documentary where they show parts of her testimony um now she know like she describes that she would have arguments with oscar she described like they at one point they questioned her like when did you break up and she goes well the first time or second time.

And, you know, implying they broke up multiple times. They're like on and on again, off again. silver medal in london for the 200 meter race where he then complained about the the other olivera's length of his blades yeah uh she didn't go to london oscar's like grandmother went to london all these other people she was his girlfriend at the time but didn't go to london with him she was um questionably involved with a billionaire quentin vanderberg who is like i mean straight up billionaire south african like tv producer wow okay who was taking her on like vacations to like different islands and things like that so so she was somewhere else yeah and she was like it was a little it was not made very clear but clearly there was relationship strife going on and she i think i believe it that oscar didn't want to go out to accept his silver medal because he was too he was like having

relationship arguments with her on the phone. And she had to convince a crying Oscar Pistorius to go and take, to accept his silver medal. Wow. So there's relationship drama happening in this. Sounds like something I want to know more about, yeah. Yeah, exactly. This is the tea section here. This is the London Fog Society.

Yeah. So he comes back from the 2020, or 2012 olympics and paralympics and they decide to get back together but and so oscar pastore is you know he's very famous he he does all these different activities you know one of the things that he likes is fast cars he goes to this racetrack and this is where she testifies that well at the racetrack he gets in the quentin vanderberg is there the billionaire guy who oscar like she was like with potentially while oscar was at the olympics and paralympics and oscar gets in a verbal argument with him and vanderberg there's also a ex south african soccer player there named mark bachelor who he's an ex soccer player for like the south af first south africa and but he's also now like a gangster straight up what he doesn't he doesn't seem to hide it at all that he is like in the

underground of south africa and like a gangster and so vanderberg is friends with this guy even samantha later in interviews says that like bachelor was like a protector for her okay also it's a fact that she was like 17 when her and Oscar started dating. Oh, OK. And I don't know what age she was when she started having these extra relationship things with Quentin Vanderberg. But she's young, younger than both of these men. And then this Mark Batchelor guy who's much older is like her protector okay um like it's slash how is he that i don't know where is she finding all these relationships

like yeah it's weird that they're also all kind of showing up in the same spaces yeah it's very you know yeah you're it's very t society stuff here and this is in the trial this should be a television show i know there's documentaries on it but this feels like it's very tea society stuff here. And this is in the trial. This should be a television show. I know there's documentaries on it, but this feels like there's multi parts to it. Like that you could dive into each part on its own episode. Yes. And that's why these are multiple four part documentaries.

And I watched them all. I promise I should have taken better notes the whole time no i think they're great what are you talking about so mark bachelor though then kind of intervenes in this verbal argument and that he's quoted he and he testifies in the trial too that um oscar pastore said he was going to break both of his legs oh and then okay yeah and i don't honestly i don't i didn't get this part exactly right again it should take a notes while i watched um but she samantha testifies that oscar pastore shot a gun through the sunroof oh that sounds very toxic yeah i'm pretty sure but again i'm not perfect and i could be getting

this wrong that this happened right after that argument okay but it could have happened separately so okay don't quote me still either way shooting a gun through a sunroof like doesn't sound like boyfriend material you know yeah and he denies this there's really no other witnesses that approve that say he did this uh this is the same woman that wrote the book later that's saying um that's saying it could have been me like that's the literal title of the book um and so but then after this verbal argument she and oscar get back together and then when oscar showed up i mentioned earlier they showed up at these sports awards with riva stenkamp and she um she testifies that she thought they were still together when that happened that she was supposed to go with him to these sports awards they got in some sort of argument and then she turns on the tv and

there's oscar with riva oh shit wow that's a that's a bad way to find out yeah she said i mean her testimony is that they were together when that part happened so it's like so just briefly because there's like you said this could be so many tv shows and so many patterns so this mark bachelor guy he ain't great one guy that's in the underground potential yeah the ex-soccer player underground dude he ends up getting assassinated in 2018. I can't do this anymore. Are you kidding me? These things were just glossed over. And that one was only in one of the two documentaries.

They didn't mention it in the second one. I'm like, guys, this seems weird. This seems important. My voice is going octaves higher. I feel like there's a lot of like boyfriend girlfriend drama and then on top of it like people are finding out through the tv that they're actually not in relationships anymore and now someone's assassinated all on top of this murder trial by the way yeah and to like add the credibility is probably not the right word but to add credibility that

mark bachelor was like oh there's like he's doesn't deny being like friends with this other character mikey schultz uh surprise surprise that that's the name i know also i i like your uh you definitely are hitting bad territory when you're like he's fellas with this other character but this is schultz with a t okay yeah i don't claim him i don't claim him but he is a self-confessed hitman he's gone to jail for being a hitman and like his like and their friends certainly don't claim him basically it doesn't sound like a go figure like a hitman and someone in the underground world were friends and one of them mysteriously gets assassinated yeah no interesting yeah and this is it so so basically this timeline and this didn't actually so like parts of this get brought up in the trial but the actual defense

doesn't bring these arguments because so carl oscar's, says they discussed bringing this up at the trial but said for various reasons they could not. This was in an interview on the Amazon documentary, which Carl is featured much less on. Carl is heavily in the ESPN documentary, mostly as a sympathy type of situation, I will say, from my interpretation. But they but also in the Amazon one was also the only one that mentioned I'll just do the whole Mark Batchelor, Mikey Short stuff now. Mark Batchelor and Mikey Schultz were so like Schultz is a known hitman bachelor is his known friend the picture that was painted is that this argument happens at the racetrack with the billionaire vanderberg okay oscar threatens the mark bachelor the ex-soccer player he's gonna right break both his legs and then is that is it's after this incident that oscar starts carrying a gun on him like all the time oh so he probably knew that that

guy was there's underground or involved to be carrying around a gun oh he knew he knew okay okay and they they imply that oscar was doing it again, this didn't bring up get brought up in court. Oscar is not in these documentaries. He doesn't talk about this stuff. They bring up, though, that it's like this is why Oscar was that they they play it up in the documentaries, not in the trial. but that Oscar was so nervous and carrying a gun on him at all times because he thought there was a theory that Vanderberg had initially hired or told Bachelor to intimidate him. Gotcha.

That makes total sense. I don't know why I didn't put that together at all yet. And then Mark Bachelor and Mikey Schultz were like no we're gonna kill him unless you pay us more money oh shit okay oscar knew about this is there is this this gets floated around in the documentaries like you know in between the two this is this is what gets floated around as to why oscar was like extra scared of stuff sure so then oscar's friend also testifies for the prosecution um because there was an incident that's known that oscar accidentally shot a gun in a restaurant um he's shooting guns everywhere what is going on it's not great look

the friend says that he had his gun. Oscar asked to see it. The friend who his friend was both Oscar and Reva. He's like better friends with Reva. Okay. Says that he told him there's one in the chamber. Don't quote me up, but he says there's one. Right.

I think is the exact quote. Okay. Oscar goes to, he takes out the magazine. He's supposed to, he's trying to get the bullet out of the chamber, accidentally pulls the trigger and a bullet goes, you know, he shoots a bullet in the restaurant. Holy shit. Okay.

No one gets hurt. You know, there's, there's like photographic evidence of a bullet hole in the floor. Um, and the friend testifies that Oscar tellscar tells him hey i'm under a lot of heat right now from other things from this argument with vanderberg like yeah just can you cover for me or something yeah he said if anyone asked you shot the gun and the guy that's a big ask at that time he says yeah i'll do it i don't care yeah but But then Reva gets murdered and he doesn't do that anymore. Gotcha. He testifies for the prosecution.

They also have a police expert who reviewed his WhatsApp messages. Again, I know it's a long time ago, but I mentioned that there were two phones. Reva's phone, Oscar's phone. And they go through the WhatsApp messages. Overall, there's like somewhere around 1700 messages between the two of them. OK. And the prosecution highlights four conversations with arguments in them. Not going to quote them.

Yeah, they don't sound great. She says things like I don't feel safe. yeah that don't sound great she says things like i don't feel safe i mean again these are not quotes but they're not the worst things ever and they were just used as additional backup yeah the defense like basically goes what's the next message say and the next message is like hi angel um they're not they're really not the most incriminating evidence of all time okay and it's definitely not like a burden from my read on these documentaries not a burden of proof type of thing gotcha um funny story about the phones they did later find out that oscar had a second phone oh that's pretty fishy yeah and what was on that well we'll never know because the data

was cleared by a computer whose name on the computer was titanium hulk okay aka oscar's brother carl deleted all the data on the phone so that does not uncle and brother were at the house before police uh before 9-1-1 and that does not that's not a good look for carl no it's not a good look for carl and the only doc the amazon documentary talks about this carl was minimally interviewed in that one and he's heavy in the ESPN one. Right. But it just wasn't in court. They said it's not admissible. All this phone data was deleted. But this ultimately goes back to the police doing a shit job at the scene.

Gotcha. And so, you know, prosecution basically at the end of it, they're still there. What they're trying to portray is that there's an argument. Neighbors say they heard there was arguing their gunshots. And then Reva is, you know, found dead. So their conclusion is premeditated murder. Wow. So prosecution rests their case.

Defense. I don't know what order all of this happened in but the defense calls up first they call it more neighbors because yeah if you remember i mentioned like the distance of the prosecution's neighbors right they ignored the closest neighbors who the defense immediately call up. They only talk, they only talk to the people who heard a scream forever away. They talk to everyone, but they only chose to call up certain people. Gotcha. And so the defense immediately calls up the exact next door neighbors who they mentioned are both black and also,

and say that they heard banging like two sets of banging and they both described male screaming okay then a second set of bangs okay and then they also bring up like forensic experts that like they take oscar's story and create like stuff so it like shows that it's plausible that his story is real now so like the whole thing with the original back to the bail hearing where he was on his um his prosthetics when he shot yeah they they disproved that very quickly like it was okay it was proven that he could not have been as on his prosthetics and he's very they showed that he is very imbalanced when he's just on his stumps because one of the stumps is not as equal as the other and he has to hold on to things at that point in

his life to stay balanced and for him to shoot a gun would require him to be holding a wall which they they basically just proved that those four shots had to be fired while he was on his stumps and he couldn't have been on his prosthetics okay got it um but oscar as like but based on those other points i told earlier that this is like self-defense he thinks that there was an intruder in his house yeah again it still sounds like a believable story this yeah he heard that window open he sees the open window in the bathroom he thinks it's an intruder that is his defense that this was self-defense and so but because of self-defense trial he has to like get

on the stand you can't do self-defense and not talk about yourself. Exactly. Not talk about what you felt that night or what you experienced. And so the defense, you know, gets there first, they go first with him and it's, you know, he tells not like an exact replica. Cause you know,

if someone tells the exact same words, he does look scripted. Yeah. It doesn't sound scripted to me when I listened to it. It doesn't sound like a reasonable me when i listen to it sound like a reasonable explanation of the events that happen so then jerry nell the prosecutor gets up there the first thing he asks him is if he knows what a zombie stopper is i don't yeah what is that that's what oscar says i've never heard the term and i don't know what

it could mean and jerry nell goes you've never said it or heard that term before and he goes nope i mean these are again not quotes but so then he shows a video where it is oscar pastore shooting a gun at a watermelon at a gun range and he shoots it watermelon blows up and he goes yeah that's you know that's something that's a i'd call that a zombie stopper it's oscar calling it that oh so you know that could have been enough right there to you know put the seed of doubt and so but so one thing i learned about south african court at that time is uh you don't have to ask to put evidence on the board or to show you can do whatever you want oh yeah and jerry nell immediately goes so you like you that you don't know that what about this and he espn doesn't show it amazon

does so you know trigger warning he just shows a photo of riva's head with the gunshot wound oh you know you know it's it's graphic yeah it is put on a big screen and so part of the thing because this was on tv oscar is giving testimony but he's not on camera the judge doesn't let him or many other witnesses be on camera right but there's a screen where he can so it's just shoved in his face her head with this gunshot wound and jerry now is like you know you said that you did the same thing to that watermelon that you did to her head oh shit very rude stands up is like i don't think it's fair to equate reefer this to a watermelon right right so and then Oscar, so another part of the trial is Oscar gets very emotional a lot of the time. But it's, but so they actually have to adjourn court because he just like, he can't compose himself to finish his testimony that day.

Sure, yeah. And Oscar ends up on, in the witness stand for like five days. And so, and that's actually the second time they adjourned it. The first time when he first got on the stand, he apologized to Reva's family and, you know, became too emotional and they had to adjourn it at that time. Um,

so, but that was like, Jerry Nell talks about how that was like his strategy to like, he wants to like get him uncomfortable. Yeah. Like really see if his story is the truth that's a very um hmm bold but good tactic i think i think that would like it got a little extreme there with the picture but yeah like rattle them up and see if they can keep up the story he does say that he actually told the he told the family beforehand that he was gonna do it um oh god it but uh yeah i don't know it

was a lot for sure i think it's a good i think it is a good tactic to like get someone kind of like flustered just to see if their story remains consistent but that holy crap that's a very graphic way to do it and this is so like we're heavy in like the legal you know like legal assessment aspect or legal theory i don't know not theory but like we're in it you know so this is like and this is him on trial at this point and so he also doesn't do a great job on the stand after that. Um, at one point, Jerry now is asking him, so you say you shot the gun.

And so his defense again is self-defense. And he, and he says, do you know what it means to accidentally shoot a gun? And Oscar gives like this answer. And he's like, no, no,

no. Like, did you pull the trigger and what was your intention and oscar just kind of keep he it's not good he keeps bouncing back and forth he basically destroys his self-defense um you know tactic not a tactics not the right word but his self-defense defense of what happened because he he basically describes pulling the trigger knowing that what he was doing like he didn't accidentally hit the trigger and he admits he was intentionally killing what he thought was an intruder yes he says that

he thought he's convinced it's in a play um and that comes back to bite him because now he has two defenses one is that it was self-defense and that you back to bite him because now he has two defenses one is that it was self-defense and that you know he thought it was an intruder and the other hand is that he accidentally shot the gun but he and he's telling he ends up telling both with this like prop like with this cross-examination and so it really it doesn't end up looking good on him also they bring up the restaurant incident where he shot the gun and so jerry nil's like so who shot the gun at the restaurant and oscar just says i don't know he's like what do you mean you don't know like he's like how did the trick he's like how does a gun get shot yeah and it doesn't it doesn't

look good it does not look good that he's also like kind of like evading answering the question yes there is he has a he says during his testimony um of course i'm thinking about what i'm saying this is my life on the line yeah which i don't blame him it's the truth but it's not a good truth you know especially when everyone is there to when everyone's there to pick apart every word you're gonna say you want to be careful with every single word yeah and barry ruined the espn documentary uh calls his testimony about the accidental discharge like where he says not not the restaurant where he's talking about if he pulled the trigger or not in the house um he just says i would like to call that unfortunate and don't want to say

anything else about it like as a defense attorney he knows it's bad so it's not good and so but at the same time with the with all the people the defense bring up and things like that, they establish a pretty clear timeline that the gunshots happened around 3.12 in the morning. The screaming that is heard, they pretty convincingly say it was Oscar screaming. These neighbors who are further away who thought it was a female screaming, you know, the direct neighbors say it was a male. And it's all the neighbors who had even contradicting things. It was like impossible because they're the phone call or the banging that they heard was closer to 317 in the morning, which is when Oscar reports hitting the door with the cricket bat. OK. which is when oscar reports hitting the door with the cricket bat okay and ultimately the judge agrees with the defense's timeline of things um there's like a i mean i can't describe i mean

this was you know months of trial there's so much more stuff that went on but the judge and her decision talks about how she agrees with the defense's timeline of events. That at around 3.12 in the morning, gunshots were fired. Screaming was heard in between 3.12 and 3.17. And it's impossible because... So with the gunshots, they were mortal wounds. Okay. You can't hear two sets of bangs and like this

and her screaming in between because one of those bullets went through her head there's no way she could have been screaming right so wow holy shit so yeah the defense arrested their case on july 8th closing closing arguments on August 7th and 8th. And then on September 12th, 2014, the judge finds Oscar guilty of culpable homicide. Culpable homicide. In the U.S. is equivalent to manslaughter. Okay. Got it. And she reads her whole reason because, again, there's no jury, so she has to explain everything.

Right. because again it's a no jury so she has to explain everything right and so she these are not quotes but she notes that while he's not he was not a good witness and did not help his case by getting on the stand right um that the prosecutors did not prove rihanna reasonable doubt that his actions were premeditated and that she agreed with the timeline of the defense more than the timeline the prosecutors were trying to put forward gotcha um and he's sentenced to five years in prison and awesome yeah and he becomes emotional during it but he had also mentioned multiple sides that his goal was to be deemed not a murderer. Right. So this is deemed kind of a win because he never denied that he shot the gun.

Right. But it was intentional. There's questionable parts of that. But he took blame for shooting the gun, but he didn't want to be considered a murderer. Right. That this was intentional. There was some argument and that's why he shot her but in but they're like basically people were not happy with it there was the people who thought he was he was guilty of murder there was also the african national women congress who were like they're they defend a lot of domestic violence they are like support a lot of cases domestic violence it gets pretty controversial in the

documentary so i don't want to go too hard on it sure but um people weren't super thrilled um and so he the prosecutors did appeal to the supreme court of appeal in south africa and they started in november 2014 and then it was november 3rd of 2015 that they overruled the conviction wow under the legal uh precedent of dolus eventualis and that is basically in layman's terms is whether an accused did not actually foresee the outcome of their actions rather than whether they should have gotcha okay so the judge states pretty clearly after like the Supreme Court judge says that like by shooting at a locked door without knowing who's behind it, without doing other things to try and prevent shooting at the door, that he would have known by shooting he was going to kill someone. Right. And he's guilty of murder because of that. Regardless of who was regardless of who he thought was behind

the door he had the intent to kill just not yeah just a different person yeah if it was an intruder he still would have been guilty of murder is what they were saying oh okay and so the case actually has to go back to the same judge judge mississippi uh for re-sentencing and in july 2016 she sentenced him to six years in prison rather than the five years he got for the cobalt homicide which is a little weird because they mentioned multiple times that the minimum sentence was 15 i feel like she probably empathized with him or something yeah there was definitely and it was kind of like people were not nice to her after that first ruling because they were like they thought that this was this

trial was sort of like it was there was definitely a layer of like so oscar pastores is white uh that like he had white privilege and getting this sentence of culpable homicide and then when he got this second resentencing that was less than the minimum people were really not happy um small note on that mark bachelor and mikey schultz they just can't stay out of this they came to that resentencing and sat next to the pistorius family and caused the scene um to the point like where like they threatened the family they threatened his sister like just to like rile up the rest of the crowd or something or it's it's hard to know like there's not like microphones on it but when you watch the video these guys they're douchebags so they probably did something douchey and like honestly could

have threatened them and they got like restraining orders against them um and then it's two years later that mark bachelor gets assassinated um i don't know what happened to mikey schultz but just the small like this is like so much drama around everything that happens and it feels like there can't ever just be one storyline and this feels like there's always something extra wild going on on the side. Yeah. And then like, yeah, I mean, it even goes back to like to his parents and his mother. Like people were like, oh, you know, he's hyper vigilant because his mom was always scared of this stuff.

And it's like, yeah, but what's where's the line drawn? So, yeah. And not all of this even came out in court. Not all of it even could come out in court. I mean, it's sketchy that his brother deleted messages on one of his phones. Like one of the, one of the sketchy.

Yeah. One of the extra court, like one of the outside of court theories is that he was texting an ex girlfriend and that led to an argument. And then he shot riva and it's like okay but like we'll never you can't prove that yeah and if you extra can't but it's it's worse when you can't prove it because not because but like it becomes it gets a little bit more credibility when his brother deletes the messages from a phone yeah also he's now dating that ex-girlfriend so what prison i know so much okay well maybe not currently the last thing i read somewhere was that that was happening at that future date from

the trial oh my god okay oh yeah uh but so then in November of 2017, the Supreme Court of Appeals increased his jail sentence to 15 years. Oh, wow. OK. Did they have more more evidence or something? No, they just they can take the evidence that was there. Same way they changed his conviction from culpable homicide to murder. They could change a sentence if they think the the lower court judge got it wrong wow that's i mean maybe that's not the right legalese but that's that's how i so what does he get out then he was sentenced and he's eligible for parole in 2023 wow and how old would he do you know how old he would be now no that's a good question

young still though he was only 29 when this all happened oh wow okay so he's like not even 40 yet yeah so he's still a young guy um and you know this like took over south african media took over international media for, you know, for quite a bit of time. They basically, so it's called South African TV, but this was produced by Lifetime movies, produced a movie that was.

So again, it was in 2017 that the Supreme Court changed his sentence to 15 years. In that same month on november 18th um south african tv aired oscar pistorius blade runner killer a basically what i can only assume from looking at it and i didn't even watch the trailer is like a lifetime movie version of this yeah that's the tracks with a name like that they did not get consent from either family of pistorius or sten camp um and pistorius's family actually tried to like threaten legal action sure yeah um but uh yeah so this story is like not as clear-cut as i thought it was

gonna be i thought i was gonna get to come out. And tell a fall from grace. Sports story. With a clear cut bad guy aspect. But I mean. And he even admits. This is his testimony. He shot her. He just didn't mean to shoot her.

And that was known from the get go. And it was never denied. So the whole trial just rested on intent, which whoever knows the complete truth of anything, especially things like this, but that's part of the reason why it became such a sensation, at least. Everyone thought they either knew or they they they really believed what they thought and it just was you know it was up to a judge to decide what was going on

whoa and just like you know hilton botha and his weird shit yeah i feel like it's like yeah like girlfriends everywhere like every character's got their own drama yeah and like this is just me this is not even getting to everything that was in the documentaries i'm sure there was more in the court and other things but yeah i hope it was entertaining for you and for fans all stemming from you guys not knowing who oscar historius was It was because I asked one question a few weeks ago. So maybe me asking a question at some point in this will stem a future story in another month or two.

I can only hope. I apologize it went long, but I hope it was enjoyable. We'll figure out a way to trim it down, but I think it's a pretty solid story. It's really good. i had no idea when i especially i asked that one question like oh was i didn't even know what kind of killer he was let

alone like this whole drama and then the whole olympic drama before this yeah like you were right i mean honestly i really felt like that's where i was nervous i was like christine this is i have five pages of notes how long should this take she goes 45 minutes i'm like i don't know because i got like because it's like it really is multi-parter like i headlined his early life his athletic career by itself is like its own story a controversial might be the wrong word but it's like there's like stuff like you said it again i'm gonna go back to it one more time like it does play into things like – there's arguments about this now. This stuff happens in sports now with transgender athletes, people who identify as female playing traditionally male sports like football and wrestling. wrestling like you know there there are stories every year of wrestlers who refuse to wrestle someone who identifies as a woman or a female and it's like why like you're afraid you're gonna lose

bro like yeah if that's it like just quit but yeah it's just at certain points it's just like you know it's hard because there definitely are things that are cheating like using steroids in the trans world i've also heard the argument of like if you're uh if you're afraid of uh people who identify as female playing in sports and having the advantage advantage over cisgender females then or cisgender women, sorry, if they identify as a woman but they have more testosterone, naturally, you could argue, well, yeah, a lot of athletes out there are famous

because they've got some weird, freaky anomaly in their body that has caused them... Michael Phelps having a wide-ass wingspan, so should he have been kicked out of swimming? Like there's, there's always arguments. No, it's so,

I mean, I mean, of course it's a horrible argument now. Cause he did cheat. Maybe I should check on this before I say that. But like Lance Armstrong was known for having like super human aerobic, like activity levels. Like he could just hold his breath for a long time and ride a bike

but you know he also did a lot of you know probably cheating i don't know it for a fact but it was you know so it but it just like where do you draw the line and i guess sometimes just i guess my only takeaway would be maybe try the face value version first because in oscar pastoreus's case in terms of whether he should be able to compete in the olympics versus the paralympics the face value argument is he should have been able to compete in the olympics without argument is is he fast enough and can he hold his own and if the answer is yes then i don't know what the problem is but then again we are i'm not like if you're an o Olympian and have an opinion on this, let

me know. But I, until further notice, I think that's a pretty fair argument. And also for Christine to say that only five pages takes 45 minutes, it all depends on the type of, like my notes are always only one page and takes an hour. So like, it's, it's always all over the place. So no worries. Yeah. Let's blame Christine for all of all of this okay let's just do that title of the episode christine takes all the blame well when i uh when we come back next week she will officially be back from maternity leave

so she will probably have heard this you're welcome everyone so thank you uh to you and also thank you to everyone who was willing to come on and take time out of their day to do research and take time out of their day to record with me and i'm sure i don't need to tell you this but to anyone else who also guessed it christine and i both appreciate you very much and uh thank you for being our final guest i it's i'm sure everyone's been wanting to hear from you i was like oh there's a there's a costume change with like two seconds to go uh well thank you so much and uh again congratulations on your little baby and if you do have a second one we might ask you to come back on for the next uh bout of maternity leave so sounds good to me

all right since you seem to know the show pretty well i guess you know how this ends right all right and that's why a break we drink